Handel’s time continues to come a rollin’ with great strides almost every month. If we had to name one composer who has undergone a critical and popular re-evaluation, and one that has enhanced his reputation one hundred fold, it would certainly be Georg Frederick. From a Messiah curiosity of the last century with a smattering of concertos and other works played occasionally, his star has now risen to many music-lover’s Top Ten lists, with the wonders of his oratorios and operas discovered in not one or two versions, but sometimes three or four, almost unheard of except from composers of the likes of Verdi, Mozart, and Wagner. We knew he was smart (IQ of 145 by most accounts), shrewd (a superior negotiator for the presentation of his own works), and inspired (Messiah took three weeks and change), but what most people of that long lost twentieth century did not realize was the immense depth of his writing, the heady emotional content, and the extraordinary manner of putting the meaning of the words as well as the syllables themselves to music.

Every soprano who is worth her salt is now feeling the need, if not quite yet the necessity, of turning to this German composer living in England and writing Italian music, and of proving her worth at bringing the ancient and sometimes non-existent characters to life. Period instruments have revitalized the perception of structural integrity and wondrous counterpoint that Handel threw off almost as yesterday’s lunch, and seasoned collectors like me will have about eight to ten fully competitive and eminently enjoyable solo albums on their shelves that get played quite regularly. Joyce DiDonato, lurching headlong into her fifth solo album including a successful Wigmore Hall Live release, has chosen the music of this Poet’s Corner resident to launch what will be by all counts a highly important release in the world of Handeliana and great recordings in general.

DiDonato, a Kansas native, has been establishing a career slowly and surely over the years so that she is now one of the most respected mezzos in the world. For this program, titled “Furore” (Fury), she takes on the challenge of some of Handel’s most difficult and maddeningly maddening music. All of the characters are angry, scorned, and vengeful–you name it–if it implies a rising in the emotional barometer. This is consequently some of the best music the composer ever set to paper, full of dramatic impetus and stinging, rapid fire violin passages that stunningly amaze one every time you hear it. DiDonato slays the Handelian dragon with all the weapons at her disposal, a powerful, evenly balanced voice that refuses to distort in the higher registers while offering a graceful pianissimo in the lower. Technically she may not be the equal of the human Gatling gun that is someone like Cecelia Bartoli, but don’t take that as an invitation to criticism; her runs are superb and equally tempered, while always the aim is the enunciation of the dramatic moment.

This neither supplants nor takes away from the many fine Handel solo albums available, but it certainly joins their rank with distinction. Rousset and company provide amply resonant partnership in a sterling effort.

TrackList:
1. Serse: Crude furie (Serse)
2. Teseo: Dolce Riposo
3. Teseo: Ira, sdegni, e furore + O stringero nel sen
4. Teseo: Moriro, ma vendicata
5. Giulio Cesare: L’angue offeso mai riposa
6. Admeto: Orride larve
7. Hercules: There in myrtle shades
8. Semele: Hence, Iris Hence away
9. Imeneo: Sorge nell’alma mia
10. Ariodante: Scherza Infinda
11. Admeto: Gelosia, spietala Aletto
12. Amadigi Destero dall’ empia Dite
13. Hercules: Cease Ruler of the day to Rise
14. Hercules: Where shall I fly

— Steven Ritter
 

This is Volume 1 of what will be three or four discs devoted to the piano music of Charles Koechlin (1867-1950), part of the ongoing Koechlin edition fostered by Hanssler. Koechlin (pronounced Kecklin) is a man whose influences proved irretrievably inconsistent—Debussy, Schoenberg, Wagner, Faure, and Stravinsky all took a spin through his head at various times, and the final product could vary according to the needs of any one moment. Suffice it to say that, as a generality, the music took a road less traveled, and while no less revolutionary than these other fellows, Koechlin’s compositional mysteries are far more subtle and esoteric than that of his famous counterparts.

I have always been a fan of this composer, and a defender against not insignificant musical criticism, which is not hard to do with this man’s work since so much of it is based on an extreme internalization. Why, for instance, is Debussy’s piano music so much easier for us to relate to than Koechlin’s especially since it is so closely related in style and methodology like modes, fast flourishes, and loads of fourths and fifths swimming through the bass while the impressionistic melodies soar above? I think in the end it is because Debussy sought a means of composing that is able to finally relate to all of us his own common experiences; Debussy sees the White Cliffs of Dover and presents us with his own feelings of majesty that are most likely what we would experience also. Koechlin gives us the time he went hiking on one of them and found an underground trail, something perhaps true to his own personal outing, but in no way connected with what we might be feeling. The intense personal digression is one of the things that keep this music from the last ounce of communicativeness that is missing in his bigger orchestral works, and that causes us to view his piano works as slightly diffident. This might be the difference in great composing and second tier composing, but I will leave that one alone for now.

At any rate, Koechlin is fortunate enough to have found an interpreter on the order of Michael Korstick, a pianist with a delicately nuanced touch who knows how to go easy on the pedal and to bring out the shimmering substance of the composer’s many varied harmonic schemes and nuanced dynamic touches. I really cannot imagine these works getting any better treatment than here, and the piano is brought forward with no loss of sound quality. This is not for everyone, and I would not recommend starting with this disc if you are new to the composer, but for seasoned veterans this will likely be a series of some considerable value. Excellent multilingual notes.

— Steven Ritter
 

Peteris Vasks, like his fellow Baltic composer Arvo Pärt, is known for his lyrical, contemplative themes, and the solid harmonies he likes to disrupt with arch dissonances. Unlike Pärt, he doesn’t seem particularly entranced by the Christian religion. He’s an environmentalist and if you listen closely, you can find traces of nature adulation in his work. He may even be a pantheist.

The works on this disk form an excellent cross section of this pleasant and engaging composer. Musica Adventus is a tasty mix of the late romantic string symphony and a late twentieth century secular lacrymosa. The final movement recalls Henryk Górecki’s dolorous Third Symphony (“Symphony of Sorrowful Songs”), but not so much as to be derivative. There is too much busy invention for that, such as Vasks’ sudden birdlike sounds injected at key moments. While the piece is Mahlerian at times, it is also highly original in its thematic development and recapitualtion. When its agitation becomes almost too much to bear, Vasks knows just when to pull back. He tidily ends the piece, folding it into nothingness.

Viatore, another work for string orchestra, is even more mysterious. Sometimes its low register string theme lurks like the shadow of death, but then we hear a contrasting, repeated staccato theme on woodwinds. I know this scent—it’s minimalism– but one of slow progressions and haunting dimensions. Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra begins languorously like the previous two. With Normunds Šnē on the English horn, we know we’re in good hands. He plays it transparently, devoid of distracting vibrato and cheap showmanship. His instrument reminds me of the funereal oboe in Luciano Berio’s Sequenza VII. But in the next movement, the work perks up and assumes a folk music character, with a rhythmic dance you might stumble into while touring Vasks’ native Latvia. There’s no telling what will happen next in this composer’s work, other than it will be something extraordinary. The man seems to be equally at home with ensemble work and concertos. The music goes down easy and, like an attentive lover, beguiles anew at each encounter.

TrackList:
Musica Adventus
Viatore
Concerto for English Horn and Orchestra

— Peter Bates
 

I cannot believe, after what has to be considered a long line of sterling successes, that Ondine has released this new Philadelphia recording in standard digital only instead of SACD. One of the glories of this series was hearing the remarkable acoustical spread of the Kimmel Center, showing that the orchestra (despite the silly rankings of a recent Gramophone Magazine article) is in splendid form and capable of creating some stunningly beautiful sounds. Hearing it in two dimensions is a little disappointing, and I don’t think that the Philly has been caught at their best, at least not according to what is emanating from my speakers.

Part of this may be the fault of conductor Eschenbach, who, despite a remarkable Sixth a while back, seems completely at sea in this one. From the very opening, where he imitates the Simon Rattle penchant for starting the sixteenth-note upward run slowly in order to make the accelerando sound properly (and not what Mahler wanted, never indicating a slow-down first, but instead a rushed flurry to the top of the scale), the first movement is torn with overblown ritards and too-emphasized phrase beginnings. The pulse is torn apart completely, and the conductor tends to treat the various sections (and there are a lot of them, to be fair) as individual tone poems instead of a part of a unified whole. There is no energy, no propulsion, and no sense of where to take the music. Even the orchestra seems confused by it all.

The second movement is far too slow and disjointed, lacking any sort of “pleasant memories” that Mahler’s text asks for in a 1901 program. The third movement is not bad, but even here there are too many tempo confusions, and overemphasis on parts of the music that simply don’t need it. Bernstein, who was a master of this symphony, engaged in this sort of activity also, but he knew how and when to do it, always making sure that Mahler was serviced first, whereas Eschenbach seems completely self-indulgent to his own aberrant conception of the piece.

“Urlicht” proves the exception—this is as finely sung and lovingly shaped as any I can recall, with the mezzo-soprano Yvonne Naef supplely supplying a carefully studied and meaningful interpretation to this short yet vital interlude in the work. When at last the final movement arrives, the entrance of the chorus is moving yet not convincing, even though Eschenbach manages to keep the phrasing correct by holding the chorus over to subsequent phrases, whereas in so many recordings they simply give up. But by then too many disappointments have rendered this normally thrilling ending merely irrefrangible, all hope gone.

The sound still retains a certain amount of depth and fine bass, though the spread is missing that we have become accustomed to. I can’t tell you what dire straits I found myself in after hearing this. There are many better SACD versions, including the Tilson Thomas and Ivan Fischer. I have not heard the Gergiev just reviewed here, but what I have heard so far of his Mahler leaves me cold and completely unimpressed. For regular CD, Bernstein’s New York recording still holds sway (and still sounds great), though there is a Cleveland tape in existence that I wish the Cleveland Orchestra would release of Bernstein’s one and only appearance with the orchestra at the Blossom Festival in 1970 that is simply fabulous. The Levi recording with the Atlanta Symphony is one of the best sounding I have ever heard, the chorus in the last movement simply astounding. Others might look to Klemperer or Rattle, wayward as that last one can be. But don’t look here, and it hurts me to say it.

— Steven Ritter

Out of the blue, Stephen Kovacevich makes his debut on the distinguished British Onyx label with a stunning recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations. Instead of one of the recognized approaches—such as the incandescent classicism of a Schnabel, the passionate intellectualism of a Serkin or the youthful exhilaration of a Mustonen—Kovacevich comes at it as if he were unaware of other interpretations, even his own (recorded 40 years ago for Philips).

The musical impact comes straight from the notes, not from any conventional expressive phrasing within each variation or from an implied sense of dramatic continuity from one variation to another (or even a 33-variation arc). It is powerful and intense, as if Kovacevich were hard-lining the content directly to the listener. Each variation takes control with such little regard for what has gone before that the effect can be almost brutal, although occasionally when a connection is made, as from Variation 25 to 26, the effects is magical.

After the Beethoven, Bach’s Partita No. 4 provides a welcome aural palette cleaner, with its more civilized combination of warmth and logic. Although the notes do not say which was recorded first, it seems as if the Bach had been recorded in the Beethoven’s overwhelming wake. In retrospect, the limited availability (or at least low visibility) of Kovacevich’s Beethoven recordings for EMI, the complete sonatas and concertos (the latter with the Australian Chamber Orchestra and including an orchestral version of the Great Fugue Op. 133) seems a great pity.

Recorded at Wyastone Concert hall in the Welsh border town of Monmouth (the birthplace of Henry V and, perhaps more relevant, the home base of Nimbus Records), the sound is what digital does best, creating an absolutely silent space with just touch of reverb in which Kovacevich’s Steinway D simply makes music.

Consonant with the excellence of the performances and the sound, the liner notes comprise brief but insightful comments by the pianist (“It seems to me that as much as Variations Beethoven was often unconsciously writing Études…”) and splendid notes by Joseph Kerman.

Keep an eye on Onyx. Next on their agenda seems to be a complete set of Bach’s solo violin music played by another free creature of nature, Viktoria Mullova. But first, check out this Beethoven!

– Laurence Vittes

This disc presents us with three of the “solo” cantatas of Bach dating from the year 1726. Actually the name is a little misleading in the instance of BWV 169, as the last number is indeed a chorus; but the rest of the works here are indeed sans choral forces, and that gives us a chance to examine more closely the relationship of Bach’s omission of these forces to the nature of his writing for a single voice.

This year marked the end of his first great creative period in Leipzig (ongoing since 1723) and he was in desperate need of a respite, bringing in some works by other composers to fill the gaps of the needed and required weekly Sunday services, something that must have been an exhausting task for one man up to that point. When he returns to work on the weekly series, beginning with the 12th Sunday after Trinity in September of 1726, certain dance-like rhythms were put into play, along with a freeing up of the organ from continuo role to full-fledged virtuoso partner, demonstrated by the sinfonia that begins the work, obviously a concerto remnant from somewhere (the rest of that particular work is lost). Throughout the piece and indeed throughout all of the pieces in this disc we find the organ engaged in full partnership with the soprano, acting almost as a second voice, and certainly a creative foil for her dramatic persuasions as interpreted in the texts.

The siciliana style is especially prevalent in these works, Bach cleverly engineering the wide and flowing meter present in such a dance to allow the instruments full freedom of flowing and pastoral motion. The results are arias with a lot of movement and ability to paint texts as revealingly demonstrative as “To be alive is irksome to me, therefore take me, Jesus, unto you!” Using the two main protagonists here, voice and organ, Bach skillfully allows the contradictions and difficulties in those sorts of torn feelings to be musically spoken with the freshest of means.

Bernarda Fink need prove nothing to you or to me in this repertory, having long ago established her mastery. The Freiburgers also, thanks to HM’s continued support, are rapidly becoming the equal of any period band anywhere, if indeed they have not attained that position already. Good Bach, great production values, fine sound, excellent performances. Well?

— Steven Ritter