Tahra TAH 663, 62:53 [www.tahra.com] **** :

The name Aida Stucki (b. 1921) remains relatively obscure to music lovers and collectors, but this important document literally rescued–by Ms. Stucki–from the “housecleaning” of Swiss Radio archives should revive her repute. A pupil of Ernst Wolters and Carl Flesch, Stucki came to the attention of conductors Abendroth and Scherchen, especially when violinist Stefi Geyer (1888-1956) passed on the score of the Othmar Schoeck Violin Concerto into her hands for future performance. Stucki’s most enduring biographical fact seems to lie in her having taught Anne-Sophie Mutter, who says of Stucki that she “incorporates bewitching sound, personal instinct coupled with great insight to the wishes of the composer.”

The Beethoven Concerto (30 December 1949) passes in good sound, and it elegantly projects a performance of both power and uncanny, tender lyricism and spiritual nobility. Stucki’s tone is quite distinctive: clean, clear, birdlike and “feminine,” without affected delicacy. Somewhat reminiscent of the playing of Bustabo and Martzy, Stucki’s penetrating style might well be mistaken for the softer tissue we hear in Schneiderhan or Olevsky, if we were to ignore gender roles in music. Scherchen’s conducting is no less fiercely lyrical exalted in this, his only surviving document of the Beethoven Concerto. The periods enjoy an expansive grandeur, while the small details of half-step articulation and woodwind support in oboe and bassoon remain sutured to Stucki’s internal shifts in meter and shapely phraseology. Stucki plays the Kreisler cadenza in a broad, throaty style, the lower notes full in the manner of a spirited viola. The transition to the coda with pizzicati strings, bassoon, tympani and French horn thrills one’s sense of aesthetic closure.

Despite some sonic deterioration, the G Major Larghetto casts a haunting aura before it, a plaintive, poised discourse that melts each cadence into the next with liquid authority, the suavity we associate with Neveu and Morini, but with a fuller tone, a fast and richly timbred vibrato. Stucki’s ability to maintain a lyric tension, a high musical line with no sag becomes wistfully evident in the latter part of the slow movement, her part over the string pizzicati, then a broad, arco melos from her intensely personal instrument. She and Scherchen squeeze every drop of musical juice into the transition to the Rondo allegro–the briefest of Kreisler cadenzas leading–then grace and muscular jocosity combine for their assertive variants of Beethoven’s wondrous, flighty dance. Even with the loss of some sonic definition and presence, the relentless drive of the movement insists on our attentions, its lavish celebration of Beethoven’s figures undeniable. Listen to her sail through the secondary theme, accompanied by the Beromuenster bassoon. Scherchen’s conducting itself becomes refreshed by each repetition of Stucki’s entry material, the firmament lit by the luster of their collaboration. We must, with Ms. Stucki herself, be “happy that Tahra label has issued this almost sixty-year-old document and warmly thank Myriam Scherchen and Rene Tremine.”

To fill out this excellent disc, Tahra issues the July 1953 studio recording of the Bach E Major Concerto with violinist and quartet-leader Walter Barylli (b. 1921, a contemporary of Aida Stucki), a performance in a modified “authentic” style, with harpsichord continuo. I must confess to have found Scherchen’s Bach style occasionally ponderous and heavy; but here, the collaboration reveals lithe, quick tempos and fleet, exuberant, elastic movement. Barylli’s tone evokes a well-tempered cat, a feline presence in the midst of bouncing or–in the case of the sweet Adagio--purring figures. At moments, especially after a long-held pause, we feel that the music might become Vivaldi. The Allegro assai finale exudes festivity in every bar, violin and orchestra in fluent harmony, plastic and joyful at once.

To quote Anne-Sophie Mutter once more: “This recording is a must for any string player and music lover.”

–Gary Lemco

Cembal d’amour CD 133, 76:21 [Distrib. by Qualiton] ****:

Pianist-producer Mordecai Shehori has assembled excerpts from his various New York City recitals to comprise this disc, concerts that span 1979-1987 from two distinct venues, Merkin Hall and the 92nd Street Y. Always conscious of projecting a rich, variegated tone, Shehori opens–with an ’encore’ if you will–his own arrangement of the Largo from Bach’s F Minor Concerto (20 May 1987), so we have, by association, a throwback to the liquid, “golden” pianism of Edwin Fischer and Myra Hess.  The Beethoven Sonata in F (20 April 1983) makes an immediate contrast, its weird agogics and mocking tone in two movements seeming to synthesize aspects of the G Major Sonata, Op. 31, No. 1 and the cumulative momentum of the last movement from the E-flat Major Sonata-quasi-fantasia, Op. 27, No. 1.  The Menuetto that constitutes the first movement explodes periodically, only to break off into delicately brittle shards, trills, and impulses from the original materials.  Shehori keeps the moving threads of the Allegretto light, even, but plastic in contour and evanescent coloration.

Arpeggiation and flowing legato vie for sonorous ascendancy in the Gretchen study (20 May 1987) by Liszt, the girl’s recalling infatuation and tragic love. A mighty silence at the recollection of Faust’s fateful kiss, the spinning wheel marking the cycle of  all affairs. Shehori’s piano imitates Marian Anderson for the Erl-King (27 January 1982), whose narrative conveys tempests of weather and the human soul. Enchanted playing for the Erl-King’s tender, first seduction of the boy to his fatal kingdom. The restrained vehemence of the child’s panic and the father’s consolations burst their bonds as the boy’s inevitable demise reveals itself.  The damper pedal is off for the first bars of Soiree de Vienne No. 6, a compilation of Schubert German Dances and laendler, suave, elegant, eminently melodic according to the composer’s modal lights. Flecks of impromptus manage to insinuate themselves into the brew. The aura softens considerably as Shehori takes us to the Austrian salon and a dazzling series of cascading variants, reminiscent of Chopin’s Chants polonaises.

Liszt (without the hyphen) appears (20 May 1987) in the form of the D-flat Consolation, a past favorite of Horowitz and that other eminent Liszt exponent, Jorge Bolet. Its dreamy, liquid surface drips with soft eroticism, Tristan in a genie’s bottle. Like Vladimir Horowitz and Mindru Katz, both Shehori’s mentors, the demonic Liszt maintains his fascination and digital pyrotechnics for this performer, who admirably meets the constant challenge to balance the electrifying filigree with the formal and ineluctable logic of its Faustian progressions.

The silken tone Shehori has refined finds a natural vehicle in Moriz Rosenthal’s playful Carnaval de Vienne (24 May 1979), an attempt to one-up Leopold Godowsky at his own three-hand effects, using elastic and whimsical chunks of Johann Strauss operetta as grist. When Shehori pours on the fff, watch out! An Israeli-born pianist with Vienna blood, a musical cosmopolite’s dream? Ask the delirious audience.

–Gary Lemco

Decca 478 0037, (2 CDs) 65:33; 54:42 [Distrib. by Universal] ****:

Recorded 2006-2008 at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, Schumann’s very own conducting venue, these inscriptions of the familiar Schumann symphonies in Mahler’s amended edition will legitimize for many the textual adjustments made for clarity’s sake. Annotator David Matthews provides a detailed description of the symphonies’ bar-by-bar adjustments, particularly those related to dynamics, Mahler made to facilitate his notion of Schumann’s best intentions. For the so-called “Spring” Symphony in B-flat Major, Op. 38 (1841) Mahler introduced 630 revisions. The 1845 C Major Symphony No. 2 received 355 changes; the Third Symphony in E-flat Major “Rhenish,” Op. 97 (1850) 465; the Fourth in D Minor, Op. 120 (1841; rev. 1851) 466.  A musical curio is Toscanini’s adopting the Mahler version of the Schumann D Minor Symphony when the Italian maestro came to the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s.

What most reaches our ears in the course of the “Spring” Symphony is the brisk presence of the horn parts, along with palpable crescendos and diminuendos to achieve more terraced dynamics than Schumann had originally wrought. An added trumpet in the last movement doubles the upper string part. In fact, the trumpets, trombones, and French horns gain a brazen sound both adventurous and emotionally pungent. For the C Major Symphony, the very opening removes Schumann’s horn and trombone so the trumpets play alone, a softly eerie effect; the movement’s coda alters Schumann’s designated ‘sempre forte’ to a resounding fortissimo. Chailly sets the Un poco piu vivace as a series of nervous metrics which often explode into feverish frenzies up and down the chromatic scale. Taking the repeat adds to the simmering effect, a study in graduated histrionics. Where Schumann had opted for consistency of dynamics in the Scherzo–like mezzo-forte and sempre forte in the coda–Mahler substitutes staccati, pizzicati, and omits the majority of woodwinds and brass until bar 373. No repeat of trio number one. The second trio (with oboe and string ostinati) becomes a smooth gloss, Romantic cream.

The exquisite Adagio espessivo quite adumbrates much of Mahler’s own personality, and his edition here grants the theme and its agonized, trilled chromaticism a mountain ethos, Friedrich’s “The Wanderer Above the Sea of Mist” made flesh, even in counterpoint. Chailly takes the last movement rather fast, emphasizing its character as a virtuosic march with skittering, pizzicato subtexts. Muted trombones appear, hopefully to allow the bassoons some credibility. The trumpet triplets never sounded so good. Mahler did not like Schumann’s harmonization bars 559-563, so he opts for a moving bass line on G rather than on Schumann’s designated F. The aerial effect lightens the texture certainly, but it also propels the materials forward in a most adventurous volley of joyful sounds, redolent with hymnody.

While the Rhenish Symphony’s first movement  retains its exuberant energy, its trumpet parts in the first movement–originally extended over 311 bars–has been reduced by over one third, and Mahler has edited the tympani part as well. The horn parts that remain gain an added luster, their appearance, especially four horns in unisono, forte, against pianissimo flutes and oboes. This is Schumann’s most confident symphony, at least in his own orchestration. The two performances that set this music apart for me forty years ago were those of Bernstein and Szell; and now, Chailly imparts a grand, driven panache to this inspired score. Mahler terraces the dynamics in the Scherzo, moving from mezzo-piano for fortissimo. Chailly keeps the affect airy, a sort of martial andante, the horns and buzzing strings in constant communion. The last pages beguile in their hints of Austrian laendler, even in the midst of strong horn and woodwind pedal points. More Schubertian touches for the third movement, Nicht schnell, in which pizzicati lighten the texture. Mahler alters the violin and viola pizzicati, now to be played forte, at the opening of Schumann’s contrapuntal Feierlich movement, its layered strings and horns evocative of the Cologne Cathedral. The finale moves at a stately pace, Mahler having revised the trumpet and trombone parts to assure their effectiveness when they do appear. Chailly’s string attacks and woodwinds’ bite keep the music briskly charged, and the big climaxes enjoy a jubilation as sweet as they are vibrant.

Mahler changed the horn parts of the Fourth Symphony’s outer movements extensively, wishing to create a thinner texture that would allow the diverse, interior lines more clarity. Chailly pushes the opening movement after the langsam indication quite hard; the violins have gained more sonority in Mahler, and an added tympani can add a C and D-sharp to the harmonic mix. With added horn parts and tremolo effects removed, the entire ethos has lost its pesant, gloomy character and become a through-composed symphonic etude for a virtuoso ensemble. Doublings tend to remain intact in the two interior movements, and the Romanze moves between chorale and dreamy rhapsody along the same minor scale that permeates the entire symphony. The Scherzo has the cello and bass in the Trio section enjoy a pizzicato effect for the eight-bar phrases. Chailly urges this music along, the scale of the Romanze singing, even sliding, forward. An extra drum, extra horns, and cutting the finale’s exposition make the transition and last movement dramatically fluid; in fact, the horn parts assume a decidedly “display” role, along with brilliant trombones, all supported by doubled bass trombone, bassoons, cellos, and violas.  The high horns give the coda what Rick Blaine would called “a wow finish.”

Any good score-reader can glean the sum of Mahler’s emendations to Schumann’s rich music; but the real thrill of these Chailly readings is the totally acute response of a world-class Gewandhaus Orchestra, an instrument surgically secure, whose spirit has been revitalized by their affection for their gifted conductor.

–Gary Lemco

Bridge 9276A/D  (4 CDs, mono) 77:46; 78:53; 76:54; 67:10 [Distrib. by Albany] *****:

Culled from concert (the B Minor Sonata, from 21 November 1947) and Westminster studio recordings, 1955-1957, these fine restorations present us the cumulative Chopin inscribed by Nadia Reisenberg (1904-1983), the Russian-born virtuoso who taught at the Curtis Institute and who made a sensation 1939/1940 by performing the complete Mozart piano concertos. Always refined and sober in her interpretations, Reisenberg consistently maintained–like her idol, Artur Rubinstein, except she practiced more–the ability to “make tone,” to project the depth of the bass and harmonic contour while sustaining a singing, flexible top line.

Listen to her well-respected set of the Chopin Nocturnes: try the last page of B Major, Op. 9, No. 3, for clarion passion and vocalized phrasing.  The G Minor from Op. 15 serves as another example of a series of halting phrases made fluid by intellectual, beautifully harmonized groups and the fine balance between recitativo and arioso articulation. The ease of transition soon compels our attention, as in the subtle slide into the maestoso, mazurka-style of the middle section of the Op. 27, No.1, a dramatic island in the middle of lulling, diaphanous water piece.  A leggierissimo as fine as any Leschetizky pupil could produce lavishes its gifts on the sister piece, the D-flat, Op. 27, No. 2.  If the B Major, Op. 32, No. 1 offers us a jeweled music-box, its companion in A-flat Major proceeds in the style of a fluid ballade, lit by innumerable shades of pianissimo and poised rubato. 

By the time Chopin penned the Op. 37 Nocturnes, his chromatic harmony had advanced well beyond his flashy contemporaries, Hummel and Moscheles, and even his glissandi assume an organic relation to the whole. Under Reisenberg, the pair merge night music with impromptu, the middle section of the G Minor, Op. 37, No. 2, achieving a plaintive, choral style similar to the noel in the B Minor Scherzo, Op. 20.  The Op. 48 likely approximate what Reisenberg might have given us had she recorded the B-flat “Funeral March” Sonata, Op. 35. Earnestness without heaviness, solemnity without bathos, all the while hurling thunderous torrents of sound and fury, this diptych plays like The Tragedy of Othello, even if my metaphor invokes Macbeth. Even though my preferred interpretation of the F Minor, Op. 55, No. 1 belongs to Shura Cherkassky, Reisenberg bestows intimate poise on its lovely figures, the trills as soft as the musical line is poignant, the trio breaking into a Polish call for freedom.

To fill out her survey of the Chopin Mazurkas, Nadia Reisenberg added three pieces dear to her heart, the first of these the Op. 60 Barcarolle, which enjoys her big gestures, passionate éclat., expansive trill, and Italianate melodic line. Street song, nocturne, and water piece at once, the Barcarolle displays Reisenberg’s muscular approach to liquid music, often recalling her contemporary Guiomar Novaes for breadth and panache. The Op. 57 Berceuse in D-flat Major makes a kind of extended study in deft, light touch and variable harmonic rhythm over an ostinato bass. Reisenberg’s music-box effect rivals the classic version by Solomon, graceful and inward. Her recording of the Op. 46 A Major Allegro de Concert had only one competitor, that of Claudio Arrau for EMI. Reisenberg had been encouraged to study it with her mentor, Leonid Nikolayev, at the St. Petersburg Conservatory; and her bravura performance elicits an image of her other instructor, Josef Hofmann, as well.

Reisenberg spoke of “the very special rhythms of these stylized dances,” when referring to the complete set of Chopin Mazurkas, “which need so much freedom and rubato and fantasy, yet they must be focused and planned out at the same time.”  With 56 of them to choose from, I can only hint at the many delights that await the collector: the pert metrics of Op. 6, No. 2, its intricately noble delicacy and air of mystery. For the naturalness of the obereks and krakowiaks, Reisenberg claimed her Russian blood, as in the E Major, Op. No. 6; the seductive Op. 7, No. 2 in A Minor; the explosive Op. 30, No. 2 in B Minor. For concentrated breadth of scale, try the Op. 17, No. 1 in B-flat Major. A moment of Spanish fire in the otherwise Polish-national F Minor, Op. 7, No. 3?  The tragic muse nods her head in the A Minor, Op. 17, No. 4, the polyphony suggestive of depths into which we must tread lightly. I often associate this sad dance with Madame Emma Bovary. Chopin altered his chromatic palette for the Op. 24 set, and Reisenberg finds in them an illumined (G Minor) or quicksilver (C Major) or haunted (B-flat Minor) melancholy. One might survey each of Reisenberg’s realizations of only the C-sharp Minor Mazurkas, beginning with Op. 30, No. 4; then Op. 41, No. 1; the Op. 50, No. 3–a favorite, demanding comparison with Rubinstein and the impetuous William Kapell–and onward to Op.  63, No. 3; and Op. 68, No. 3.  Each and every mazurka has its own persuasiveness, its own affect; I do not mean to slight other favorites, like the D-flat Major, Op. 30, No. 3; the ubiquitous D Major, Op. 33, No. 2 and the passionately epic B Minor, Op. 33, No. 4; the entire opera of Op. 56 and Op. 59, models of Chopin’s late harmonic style spliced to his most fervent national ethos, the real “cannons hidden in flowers” of which Schumann wrote. Reisenberg ends her traversal with a group of the posthumous Mazurkas – some 15 of them, if we include the Op. 67 and Op. 68 groups, along with “les tendresses” like A Emile Gaillard and Notre Temps. 

At 5:00:40 total playing time spent with Nadia Reisenberg, we could hardly ask for a better, extended sojourn into the rich tradition of her Chopin experience. Highly recommended!

–Gary Lemco