CD Review: Finnissy and Gershwin, lone wanderers at the end of musical history

Classical music composers in the 21st century find themselves in an unenviable position. Can there really be anything new under the sun? After the disintegration of the mid-20th century avant-garde, followed by the implosion upon tonality that was the minimalist movement, it can sometimes seem as if the composers of today are lone wayfarers on a landscape decimated by the tramping of the giants which had preceded them. Some composers have sought their way out by finding refuge in a past which provides some semblance of order; others, like Michael Finnissy, rummage through the wreckage of musical history and ponder what it all meant.

The jumbled kaleidoscopic visions of Finnissy’s Gershwin Arrangements and More Gershwin are no straight transcriptions, not even “rambles” in the style of Percy Grainger. Even when they are at their most exuberant, the prevailing mood is that of a post-mortem. The once living human being known as “George Gershwin,” these works suggest, has been obliterated by the sheer weight of his own success; his resulting absorption into postwar consumer culture stripping him and his legacy of their original organic meaning. Instead, what Finnissy creates here are edifices that are the aural equivalents of a mobile sculpture composed of trash, akin to Sabato Rodia’s Watts Towers: Recontextualizing detritus into something entirely new and strangely beautiful. Gershwin’s melodies are treated like random found objects repurposed with newly devised incongruous, often audacious results that their original creator could never have possibly dreamed of. Musical history is over, one often feels listening to these works, and all that is left is to write the obituary.

Pianist Lukas Huisman is a compelling and clear-eyed guide through these wondrous, phantasmagorical scores; dancing sure-footedly through this complex music which sounds as if the Roaring ‘20s were processed through a meat grinder. He also provides the disc’s excellent liner notes. Piano Classics’ sound is close-up, but not garish, allowing enough reverberation to impart a mildly hallucinatory quality to the proceedings.

There is no woe or despair in Finnissy’s declaration of death as proclaimed by Huisman. Rather, both composer and pianist invite the listener to consider how a new music could arise from the ashes of the old. Classical music is dead, long live classical music.

CD Review: Yunus Kaya's gorgeous Brahms recital

Pianist Yunus Kaya is a name I had not encountered before this recent album of Brahms’ late piano music on Ars Produktion. A quick search for the name on Qobuz turned up a single track of Eurotrash EDM—perhaps another Yunus Kaya? 

At any rate, in his brief remarks included in his own recording of Brahms’ late piano works, this Yunus Kaya writes: “It is important to me that my interpretation seems spontaneous, almost improvised.” How exactly one goes about to achieve this or even to define what “spontaneous” and “improvised” sound like are not explained. Likewise, the artist’s biography in the same liner notes are filled with airy marketing mumbo-jumbo about his interpretations evolving “between inner silence and intimate communication with the audience.” Huh? 

Kaya’s recording, at least, is an excellent contribution to the distinguished discography of these winsomely autumnal works. He seems to have a natural feeling for their smoky, interior world; with an easy, but never facile command of their sometimes tricky polyphony and unostentatious melancholy. His playing sounds deeply considered, to use my own critical mumbo-jumbo, with carefully balanced voicing and unhurried pacing which allows the rich harmonies of this music to bloom. The impression is one of beauty borne out of nobility; even in the occasional tempestuous passages in these late works, nothing ever sounds ragged or coarse. 

Ars’ production matches the beauty of these interpretations with lush sound to match. The stage sounds deep, with enough air around the piano, but not excessively resonant. Kaya’s instrument—a Steinway D—sounds lovely.

In short, a very welcome recital by a name which, hopefully, will become better known to music lovers in the coming years.

CD Review: Vänskä’s Mahler 7 as Modernist Urtext

The emergence of BIS’ ongoing cycle of the Mahler symphonies under Osmo Vänskä’s direction was, at least to me, unexpected. His rhythmically punchy, excessively accented interpretations would seem to be an ill fit for Romantic music of long-breathed melodic sweep, as it indeed has been in the previous installments of his flawed survey of the Austrian composer’s symphonies. (The less said about his role in Stephen Hough’s Tchaikovsky concertos, the better.) When the symphonies of so many other worthy composers—Roger Sessions, Vagn Holmboe, Gavriil Popov, George Rochberg, et al—are practically screaming for a top American orchestra to take them on a spin to the recording studio, why yet another mediocre Mahler cycle? So the arrival of this present recording of the Mahler Seventh with the Minnesota Orchestra was not exactly an auspicious one. Nor is the work itself considered much of a treat.

The Seventh, as Jeremy Barham reminds the listener in his fine liner notes, is the ugly duckling among the composer’s symphonies, being his least discussed and performed. Though the public has remained cool to the work, cognoscenti such as Schoenberg and Webern agreed with its composer’s high estimation; while decades later, Shostakovich would copy out parts of it for study as he prepared his own Fourth Symphony.

This time around, Vänskä’s approach is an asset rather than a detriment to Mahler, and very much at home in the forward-looking qualities of this tricky score. By digging hard into the startling dissonances of this vast nightscape and letting its incongruities fall where they may, Vänskä presents the symphony as if refracted through the lens of the present; or better still as if an awestruck revelation of a long lost modernist urtext. Although the cumulative effect deliberately focuses on contrasts rather than blend, he deftly navigates the Minnesota Orchestra through the crashing rapids of its shifting moods, managing to keep the whole unwieldy thing from coming apart. 

In the inner Nachtmusiken, orchestra and conductor are carefully attuned to Mahler’s proto-Klangfarbenmelodie orchestration, imparting edgy tension to the Nachtmusik I and Scherzo which are often glossed over. The symphony’s starlit serenade in the Nachtmusik II, for once and correctly so, is kept from dissolving into the treacle ordinarily heard; its sentiment instead recalling the “masculine tenderness” that elicited Beecham’s admiration in Mozart’s music.

Equally revelatory is the symphony’s knotty finale, wherein Vänskä steps aside and lets the listener decide for themselves what all its bustling noise means. Is its merry-making sincere, or is it a spiritual progenitor of the unsettling cavalcade to come at the end of Nielsen’s much later “Sinfonia semplice?” No matter. Its festive glitter becomes a concerto for orchestra, a triumph for Mahler, as well as an occasion to celebrate a partnership between orchestra and conductor which for the past 17 years has been one of the great success stories in American classical music. 

Whether you know this symphony well, or consider yourself one of its many detractors, you owe it to yourself to hear this fresh perspective on a problematic score.

Beautiful and strange: Osmo Vänskä and the Minnosota Orchestra’s traversal of Mahler 7.

CD Review: Urbański’s Strauss for the soyboy generation

Following their excellent Lutosławski and Shostakovich discs, the NDR Elbphilharmonie and their music director Krzysztof Urbański now turn to some of Richard Strauss’ best-known music in their latest installment of their ongoing series of recordings for Alpha. To which one can only ask: Why? It is a question worth asking when the competition consists of a virtual roll-call of the greatest conductors of the last century, starting with the composer himself. 

Just to be clear, none of these are bad recordings, and one can imagine themselves emerging from a concert hall fairly pleased after hearing Urbański’s readings live. On records, however, superior alternatives are at least as plentiful as Don Juan’s lovers. 

Speaking of which, the opening riff of the eponymous tone poem which he inspired falls flat with excessively tenutoed and legatoed articulation that robs this music of the sensuality, charm, and dazzle its composer intended to convey. Till Eulenspiegel hobbles about with none of the insouciance of the best performances, resigned from the start to his unhappy destiny. And the revelations of Also sprach Zarathustra seem to go no further than the performers’ navels. 

Alpha’s sound is warm, with fine midrange presence (if a touch shallow in the bass), but is hardly enough to save these perfunctory performances. 

Pass.

If only he had spent at least half as much attention on Strauss as he did on his hair…

CD Review: Gardner's journey through Schoenberg's waking dream

Late in his life, Otto Klemperer sniffed dismissively at it. “[It] isn’t Schoenberg’s greatest work,” he said, “not at all.” The late Alan Rich was more to the point: “If you believe, as I once did, that Ein Heldenleben is the ugliest of all major orchestral works, you don’t know Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande.” 

Their derision notwithstanding, Schoenberg’s sprawling tone poem has (along with Verklärte Nacht and the Gurre-Lieder) remained one of the composer’s most enduringly popular works, even over a century after its creation. Well, perhaps not “popular,” but orchestras seem to program it fairly regularly and audiences do not seem to mind. 

In recent years Edward Gardner has become one of Chandos’ house conductors, with surveys of music by Janáček, Bartók, Britten, and Lutosławski already under his belt. Having delivered a fine Gurre-Lieder awhile back, Gardner now turns to Schoenberg’s other early exercise in post-Wagnerian hyper-romanticism.

Pelleas und Melisande is certainly a score which has led a charmed life on records, beginning with Winfried Zillig’s excellent Telefunken recording from 1949. This latest release, played by the Bergen Philharmonic, is another distinguished addition to its discography. Chandos’ spacious, larger-than-life sound befits this cryptic, dream-like, yet curiously phonogenic music; a Begleitmusik avant la lettre. 

Gardner is a precise and sensitive guide through this phantasmagorical soundscape, pellucidly articulating Schoenberg’s orchestration and counterpoint (listen to the haunting layering of instrumental color beginning at :37 on track 3, or the ebbing away of Melisande’s life depicted at the start of track 12). His Danish strings, though lacking the last bit of opulence that one hears in first-rank orchestras, play with great polish and expressive nuance. Their judicious use of portamenti are especially welcome, highlighting the proto-cinematic qualities of early Schoenberg. (Franz Waxman and Max Steiner must have studiously cribbed off of Pelleas for their later film scores.)

On a lesser plane is the performance of Erwartung that is Pelleas’ discmate. Excellently played and sung though it is, Gardner lacks the ability to fully unleash this score’s expressive vehemence; nor does his soloist, soprano Sara Jakubiak, have the vocal heft and dramatic urgency required. For that, listeners are directed to Jessye Norman with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James Levine (Philips), Anja Silja and the Vienna Philharmonic under Christoph von Dohnányi (Decca); and if vintage sound is not an impediment, Dorothy Dow and the New York Philharmonic with Dimitri Mitropoulos (Sony), and the volatile rendering of Helga Pilarczyk with the NDR Philharmonic under Hermann Scherchen (Wergo).

Recommended for Gardner’s superb Pelleas.

Let Gardner be your guide through Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande.

CD Review: "Blue" Gene Tyranny "Detours" Into a Twilit Soundworld

For years I had seen this album staring back at me from the avant-garde section at Amoeba Hollywood, where I had worked years ago. But despite my adoring his Out of the Blue and Country Boy Country Dog (How To Discover Music in the Sounds of Your Daily Life), to say nothing of Detours’ appealingly late 1990s-esque cover, I never took a chance on the album. Having finally acquired it during Unseen Worlds’ coronavirus relief sale, all I can ask is: What took so long?

Tyranny unspools thread after lyric thread of lyricism, while gently peeling off the veneer of pretense and affectation that have encrusted themselves upon minimalism post-John Adams. It is simultaneously a distillation  and an encapsulated retrospective of Tyranny’s art. Wafting by are traces of influences, of musical doings long ago; bits of parlor song calling out across the chasm of time, the sprightly chatter of synthesizers wryly answering back. their wistfulness augmenting this music’s crepuscular feel. It is music borne of a lifetime’s strivings, hopes, heartbreaks, joys; untouched by bitterness; filled only with gratitude.

If Bartók had his “night music,” then in Detours “Blue” Gene Tyranny gives the listener “twilight music”: Rarefied musical visions which dance along the shimmering frontier straddling waking and repose. 

A quiet milestone in the work of a modern American master.

Laid back melancholia: “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s Detours.

CD Review: Roth Versus Ravel—Whose "Authenticity?"

Not content with beating the life out of music of the 16th – 19th centuries, the period performance cult in the last two decades has turned its sights onto the music of the 20th century. Their puritanical, hairshirt conjectures have been able to stubbornly survive given that there is no contemporary recorded evidence for earlier music that disproves their negatives. With music of the 20th century, however, their inflexible dogmas are revealed as just that as such evidence of the composer’s intentions survive, often from the creators directly and sometimes abundantly so. The latest installment of Les Siècles’ ongoing Ravel project under François-Xavier Roth is a perfect case in point. 

The gushing liner notes state: “[T]he approach of François-Xavier Roth with his ensemble Les Siècles, which gives pride of place to period instruments, is the obvious way to do full justice to this masterpiece. . .” Fair enough. Only problem is that Ravel composed the work for Serge Koussevitzky, who left behind not one, but two recordings of the work. 

Comparison with his 1930 RCA Victor recording, the first ever made of Ravel’s arrangement and set down only eight years after it was premiered (while the composer was still very alive, it should be noted), reveals a performance that is the polar opposite of Roth’s bland, featureless recording. Under Pierre Monteux, Koussevitzky, and Charles Munch, the former “aristocrat of orchestras” cultivated a tangy, lithe Gallic sound that was in keeping with Ravel’s expectations. The color they were capable of defies the limitations of their era’s sound reproduction. Fruity winds beautifully complement and contrast Boston’s sleek strings; cumulatively their orchestral palette is Technicolor to Les Siècles’ monochrome. Listen, for example, to the Bostonian trumpet principal on “Samuel Goldenberg und Schmuÿle,” whose bittersweet solo verges on words, mingling sarcasm, anger, and pity. Roth’s soloist, on the other hand, merely plays a series of difficult repeated notes (albeit splendidly). “Baba Yaga” and “The Great Gate of Kiev” under Koussevitzky possess a cinematic breadth, a sense of structural cohesion and dramatic line that continues to impress nearly a century later. The blazing coda of the latter movement is the triumphant end of a long journey, its joy daubed with pathos. Roth, for all his “period” conceits, is unable or unwilling to actually conduct in the period style of podium auteurs like Koussevitzky. 

Its discmate, La valse, is no better. As so happened, Monteux conducted the first recording of the score in Paris in 1930. That performance—alive with vibrato, portamenti, and tempi fluctuations—sounds nothing like the perfunctory blandness masquerading as “authenticity” of the Les Siècles recording. Not only that, but evidence suggests that Ravel himself preferred hearing the work interpreted in a far more virtuosically dramatic manner than what Roth is capable of. 

“I have never heard [La valse] shine so bright,” the composer wrote to Willem Mengelberg, not exactly a conductor known for his interpretive reticence, following a performance in Amsterdam. “I would like to tell you once more how pleased I was at the beauty of what you performed. . . You are not only a great conductor, but a great artist.” 

Then there is the unforgettable nightmarish vision of this music from Victor de Sabata, another conductor whom Ravel praised, with the Vienna Philharmonic in 1951. 

Wherefore Roth and Les Siècles’ scrupulous adherence to period performance practices then? So much for scholarship and fidelity to the composer’s intentions!

Hard pass on Roth’s “period” conceits.

CD Review: Harty beguiles in compilation of British music

Among British conductors of the 20th century, the work of Sir Hamilton Harty is sometimes lost in the shuffle, at least on this side of the Atlantic. Hereabouts listeners may be more familiar with him as a composer and arranger, but in his lifetime the Irish-born maestro was considered one of the best conductors in England. His last years, unfortunately, were clouded by professional setbacks and deteriorating health, which forced him to abstain from performing for an extended period before his death at age 61 from brain cancer. At the peak of his career and health, however, he earned critical and public acclaim as music director of Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra; not only for shoring up the ensemble’s standards, but also for his wide and sometimes daring repertoire. (Although his personal tastes could be eclectic. He admitted to disliking Franck and Scriabin, looked upon Brahms skeptically, and rated Wagner below Berlioz.) 

“[N]obody has given so many inspired performances and nobody displayed the same inherent taste for diverse works or the same remarkable versatility,” eulogized John F. Russell.

Collectors have been treated to a handful of Harty compilations in the CD era from Dutton, Symposium, and Pearl, but they have all since vanished from the catalog. So it is very welcome to find Pristine devoting a number of releases to his recorded art, including this latest program of British music.

The debut recording of Bax’s Overture to a Picaresque Comedy, which opens this program, remains unsurpassed 85 years after it was recorded. Contrasting with the Sibelian mood of his better known symphonies, this work captures Bax in a playful, rakish mood. Hardy demonstrates a superb sense of comic timing in the chattering orchestral back-and-forth, as well as great suaveness in the overture’s more lyrical moments. The London Philharmonic, at their Beecham era peak, give Harty (the score’s dedicatee) finely etched playing brimming with character, especially the winds. 

Following are three selections that show off Harty’s work as composer and arranger, as well as the playing of the Hallé Orchestra, to which he was contracted to until he was unfairly ejected shortly after these recordings were made. Their collective sound is handsome, well burnished, and balanced, with some beautifully string shaded playing.

At the end we arrive at the music of Elgar, this collection’s center of gravity. The two wistful Dream Children miniatures are tenderly caressed, but the Enigma Variations are the real stars here. Save for a hard to find commemorative disc that was briefly available from the BBC 30 years ago, this performance is otherwise new to the digital era. Listen to how Hardy overlaps the wind and string textures in “W. N.,” like a play of light and shadow that follows a breeze in the canopy of a forest. “Nimrod” is sensitively moulded, with careful use of string portamenti at expressive nodal points that balance poignancy with noble bearing; a lesson for conductors today who post-Bernstein are wont to turn the variation into a funeral dirge. There are also reminders that the music was still somewhat fresh when Hardy recorded it in 1931, as well as telltale signs that the Hallé, for all its quality, was still technically below the ensembles in London, never mind those in continental Europe or America. There are moments in the faster variations (try “W. M. B.”) where Hardy’s orchestra is being stretched to its limits, occasionally scrambling to keep up with his pace. Despite all that, the performance overall is excellent; perhaps the best of all the early ones of this piece.

Mark Obert-Thorn’s transfers of this material is, as ever, superb. His use of reverb is tastefully and discretely applied; as is his noise reduction, which never threatens to dilute the fullness of sound often lost in less skilled hands.

For collectors new to Harty’s art, this attractive collection is a great place to start.

Pristine offers an assortment of British works on their latest volume devoted to Sir Hamilton Harty.

CD Review: Stokowski Basks in Gallic Sunshine at Studio 8-H

Leopold Stokowski was certainly one of the most versatile conductors of the 20th century. His affinities matched his vast repertoire, which ranged from the centuries old to the freshly inked. Though his living composer contemporaries (and critics) may have bristled at the liberties he allowed himself, there is little doubt that his discography preserves a consistently high level of engaging interpretive commitment, not to mention sonic opulence. 

A born cosmopolitan, Stokowski was home nearly everywhere in the realm of music, but there were certain corners of the orchestral literature which were especially tailor-made for his talents. This selection of his NBC performances of Debussy, Milhaud, and Ravel, for example, finds him at his opulent best; especially in the shimmering colors of the older two composers, whose post-Wagnerian sensibilities called out to Stokowski’s own. 

The NBC Symphony, for all the excellence of its individual members, was not exactly celebrated for the beauty of its corporate sonority. Most of the blame can be laid on the powder dry acoustics of Rockefeller Center’s Studio 8-H, which Stokowski helped to mitigate during his brief tenure at the orchestra’s helm 1941 – 1944. But the ensemble’s fierce loyalty to Toscanini, which made them skeptical of ideas from other conductors, also did not help. Despite those challenges, Stokowski conjured from them playing of spellbinding gorgeousness. 

Listeners here are treated to two of his sumptuous orchestrations of Debussy’s piano music—La cathédrale engloutie and La soirée dans Grenade respectively—with the former opening this compilation, followed by the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune. A Stokowski favorite, he recorded the score he praised as a “dream world of pagan loveliness” several times. They all follow the same basic interpretive outline, although each has telling details unique to them. This NBC performance from 1944 is no different, boasting a number of retouchings that, while not “faithful” to the score, are undeniably effective. Take a listen to the evocative 3-D effect achieved by the last of the horn calls that echo the opening flute motif, which Stokowski directs to play stopped. Or try his use of chime bars at the coda; very different from the fragile timbre of Debussy’s crotales, but lending a haunting glow to the work’s closing pages. 

The present performance of two “symphonic fragments” from Debussy’s incidental music to Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, on the other hand, are the only ones in Stokowski’s discography. They are quite fine, too, if a tad steelier than one would prefer in this ethereal score. 

Also making its only appearance on his programs is this New York City premiere performance of Milhaud’s brief Symphony No. 1. Although his catalog of works had already by then swollen into triple-digits—with a number of operas, oratorios, ballets, and string quartets already under his belt—he was a symphonic late-bloomer, not penning his first essay in that form until he was nearly fifty. (Perhaps his friend Honegger’s own Symphony No. 1 from ten years earlier had deterred him.) It is a sprightly, lively work alive with Milhaud’s typical harmonic and rhythmic playfulness, all of which Stokowski does proud in this zestful performance. 

Closing is this compilation is an impassioned rendition of the second suite from Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, which turns urgent unto hectic in its “Danse générale.” If its finale could have benefitted from a more measured approach, the preceding “Lever du jour” and “Pantomime” are practically erotic desire itself manifested in sound. While some may prefer Stokowski’s later, more relaxed Decca recording, this performance has its own rewards which demand to be heard. 

Abetting these performances are the superb remasterings from Pristine’s Andrew Rose, who skillfully imparted the illusion of space around the NBC Symphony. One could imagine the sonic wizardry on these restorations having elicited the approval of Stokowski, himself no stranger to the possibilities afforded by the studio mixing console. Especially benefitting from this are the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Daphnis et Chloé. Stokowski’s lushly atmospheric stereo recording of the former for Capitol has been my favorite for as long as I can remember, but the sound on this Pristine issue, which markedly improves upon the sound of the Cala transfer from two decades ago, helps carry this performance to the top. 

A welcome companion for the languid summer afternoons just around the corner. 

Stoki and the NBC get steamy in all-French program from Pristine Audio.

CD Review: Mengelberg and “His” Concertgebouw’s living “lingua franca,” courtesy of Pristine audio

It has been a bit of a sentimental journey listening to Pristine Audio’s latest release. Thanks to a $20 gift certificate to The Wherehouse a friend gave me on my 18th birthday, these recordings, albeit in a now long out-of-print compilation from the defunct Pearl label, were my gateway to Willem Mengelberg and historical recordings about 20 years ago. What dazzled me then continues to now: The crisp, tart sound of the Concertgebouw Orchestra; and the marshalling of its musicians into feats of seemingly spontaneous virtuosity by their music director with the shock of red hair that matched his temper.

Of course, these recordings hardly need another recommendation. The just over 100 sides that Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra cut with English Columbia represent some of the finest things ever preserved on records. Their glittering reading of the once popular Anacréon overture by Cherubini is a capsule demonstration of the best qualities of this artistic partnership: Vibrant tone color that is skillfully blended and offset as needed, flexibility of phrasing held together by steely ensemble unanimity; all of it embodying a belief in musical performance not as ossified ritual, but as a living act of the moment. Then there is their flashy strut through Beethoven’s “Turkish March” from The Ruins of Athens, which with its sly charm and play of color gives Sir Thomas Beecham a run for his money. Best of all, arguably, is the June 1929 recording of Liszt’s Les préludes, a swashbuckling symphonic drama in miniature approached by very few other conductors and surpassed by none. 

Only the fallible (and cut) recordings of Mendelssohn and Berlioz stumble, but even giants must trip every now and again. 

Some of this repertoire was re-recorded for Telefunken (or captured in live broadcasts) a few years later, but by then interpretive bloat and a perceptible drop in the orchestra’s near-superhuman standards crept in. It is in these recordings made between 1926 – 1931 where Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw can be heard at their staggering prewar peak; a partnership which combined interpretive verve, orchestral color, precision, and flexibility of response that was equaled perhaps only by Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra. 

The second volume of that aforementioned Pearl set had been fetching handsome sums on the second-hand market for years, which alone makes this new and inexpensive recompilation from Pristine something to celebrate. Better still, these discs now sound better than ever thanks to fresh transfers by Mark Obert-Thorn (who also transferred that earlier set, as well as selections of this material for Naxos Historical). Much has changed since the 1990s and that era’s preferences for taming as much as possible the inevitable “bacon fry” that 78 RPM records make as the needle drags through their shellac grooves. The unavoidable trade-offs, however, were often fuzzy sounding instrumental attacks, tubby bass, and a glassy treble. Some collectors continue to have their sleep disturbed by the horrific, chalky, over-CEDARed nightmares produced by the likes of Grammofono 2000 and Iron Needle (“Rusty Needle” would have been more fitting). These present transfers are discreetly noisier than their predecessors, but gain over them considerably in depth and presence. 

Compare the opening attack of Mengelberg’s dramatic recording of Beethoven’s Coriolan with previous iterations. The articulative bite of the Dutch strings finally comes through with an arresting immediacy and sharpness, underlining the surface gloss with a sense of danger. Tuttis cut through, rather than thump; textures sound taut. Or listen to their joyous romp through Weber’s Euryanthe overture, a deceptively tricky score with overlapping and contrasting layers that shift with dizzying speed. For once, listeners hear the immaculately etched lines that Mengelberg (and Weber) surely intended, rather than runny pastels. 

“I study the score daily and continue to discover new things,” Mengelberg once admonished his orchestra who was languishing under one of his infamously intensive rehearsals of a work they knew well. Garrulous though he may have been in life, these stunning series of recordings are a poignant testament to a time when the language of Bach, Beethoven, Weber, Mendelssohn, were a living lingua franca, not dusty relics codifying rituals in a dead language. 

(A previous Pristine compilation of Mengelberg’s Tchaikovsky for Columbia and Odéon can be found here.)

Latest release from Pristine Audio: The first of a two-part compilation of maestro-auteur Willem Mengelberg and “his” Concertgebouw Orchestra’s recordings for Columbia.

CD Review: Wang and Dudamel Lost Amidst Adams’ Footnotes

If modern mainstream American academic music can seem like a never ending series of footnotes on Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassical phase, then the work of John Adams are footnotes upon those footnotes; less music than it is aural commentary on the original accomplishments of more talented predecessors; descending further into the same, exhausted ready-made gestures that may have amused long ago, but now decades later seem embarrassingly twee. 

Philipp Gershkovich infamously called Dmitri Shostakovich “a hack in a trance.” Had he lived long enough to hear Adams’ blowzy Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?, the former pupil of Anton Webern would have found a more fitting target for his ire.

Composed for Yuja Wang, who premiered the work in Disney Hall last year (and from where this “live” recording was patched together), the work is a three-movement concerto of the usual Adams twitch-and-shout; awkwardly subsuming reminiscences of others’ music within a basic framework of kitsch nostalgia. 

Although the opening movement is marked “Gritty, Funky,” the music is—white boy appropriation of black urban slang from half a century ago notwithstanding—anything but. It ambles about smiling wanly, goaded forward by involuntary rhythmic tics, perhaps geriatric in inspiration. It is minimalism for bluehairs, Liberace for intellectual posers. Pastiches of Bartókian “night music” (shades of the Hungarian’s Piano Concerto No. 2) in the central slow movement give way to the “Obsession/Swing” finale. Those familiar with the composer’s Century Rolls, Chamber Symphony, and Naïve and Sentimental Music (or Stravinsky’s Piano Concerto and Capriccio, for that matter) will have heard it all before. 

Sound as per usual from DG’s recent live recordings tends to be diffuse, yet spotlit (take a listen to the cello riff at the opening). Long on surface, short on substance, the music is tailored well to Wang’s glitzy style, who bangs away as compellingly as the composer presumably hoped. Her performance of Adams’ early China Gates—Terry Riley for yuppies—is fine. Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic have a solid grasp of the work, but their palpable sense of eking through the score one measure at a time suggests they have yet to fully embrace this music. 

Speaking of “Mr. Showmanship,” the underrated composer Michael Daugherty accomplished a quarter century ago in his Le Tombeau de Liberace what eluded Adams here: An ironic pop-flavored tribute/eulogy to “plastic fantastic” postwar culture. Adams’ concerto hardly approaches the brittle wit and transient moments of genuine pathos (to say nothing of originality) of Daugherty’s superior score.

For those seeking a musical equivalent to the egomaniacal, navel-gazing, grand-standing bien pensant smarminess of a Shepard Fairey or Noah Baumbach look no further. Admirers of serious new music, however, would do better to seek Daugherty’s concerto instead. 

Why must Adams have all the good commissions?