Hoddinott - Symphony nr. 6; Lanterne des Morts

Another work that I was reminded of when listening to Petrassi's Secondo Concerto is Alun Hoddinott's Sixth Symphony (1984). I got to know this via a Chandos CD I added to my collection maybe 15 years ago. I relistened to this moody 20 minute-work but have to conclude that it inhabits a quite different musical universe. There is something of a neo-classical restraint and mellifluousness in the symphony, but overall it's a more romantic conception, richly harmonised in a very attractive clair-obscur. Although it features some exciting fast music, it basically comes across as a single arched adagio. It's a lovely composition which bears repeated listening, particularly on these kinds of gloomy winter days as we are currently experiencing. The disc features a number of other works, notably the symphonic poem Lanterne des Morts, op. 105, nr. 2. This is a stunningly atmospheric work that takes its cue from a monolithic stone tower in the French town of Sarlat (in the Dordogne). 'Lanterns of the dead' can be found in several places in the South-West of France. Although as a rule they are located in the immediate vicinity of a cemetery, no satisfactory explanation has been found as to their functioning. Legend has it that the souls of the deceased transmigrated out of these towers as pigeons. That is the image that Hoddinott has been able to musically evoke in a quite marvellous way. Qua atmosphere the work connects seamlessly to the symphony. The scoring is ravishing, with muted trumpets, darkly intoning trombones, glockenspiel and wind machine adding to the brooding atmosphere. There is a daring but quite successful quotation from the Romanza in Vaughan Williams' Fifth Symphony transporting us to the latter's luminous mysticism.

Hoddinott was a prolific composer who left a significant oeuvre, including 10 symphonies, 5 operas, more than 10 concertos and 10 piano sonatas. Most of it has not been recorded. Pity Chandos or Naxos have not yet picked up the gauntlet. Lyrita has a few recordings in their catalogue that are likely worthwhile to collect. To be continued.

Petrassi - Secondo Concerto; Honegger - Symphony nr. 4

I've been listening patiently to Petrassi's Secondo Concerto per Orchestra, a composition from 1951. The music is not that difficult but it does show a certain measure of abstraction and hence it takes a while to get a feel for the overall structure. The idiom clearly connects to the Primo Concerto, although the stance is somewhat less heroic. The work is also more transparently scored, and sounds more genuinely as a concerto for orchestra. Once you get into the music it is very atmospheric and Petrassi conjures some wonderful textures from the orchestra. The work it reminded me most strongly of is Honegger's Fourth Symphony, 'Deliciae Basilienses' (1946). Incidentally, both the Petrassi Concerto and the Honegger symphony were commissioned by Paul Sacher. This is a name that continues to pop up once one starts to dig into the neo-classical modernists' repertoire from 1930s to 1950s. The Honegger symphony is in a still more relaxed and narrative vein than the Concerto. But the airiness of the textures and the general harmonic feel do overlap a lot. It was a pleasure to relisten to the Honegger symphony in a truly excellent version by the Bournemouth Sinfonietta led by Tamas Vasary (another pianist-turned-conductor; recording is still available in the Chandos catalogue). Vasary's choice of tempo is just right and he coaxes beautiful playing from his wind soloists and trumpets, suffusing the work with a melancholy light and a bittersweet tone that is quite unique.

Lutoslawski - Concerto for Orchestra

I hadn't listened to the Lutoslawski Concerto for Orchestra for ages. Truth be told, for me Lutoslawski's music starts to be really interesting only from the late 1960s onwards when his mature style flowered into arresting compositions such as Livre pour Orchestre, the Cello Concerto, Les Espaces du Sommeil and Mi-Parti.

On the one hand the Concerto is an approachable symphonic spectacular; the music is pleasingly angular, athletic and colourful. So it's certainly not a burden to listen to. On the other hand I find it lacking in a coherent overall structure. Particularly the finale fails to convince on this account. And that's a pity as it is longer than the first two movements combined.

I followed the music with Charles Bodman Rae's analysis (in The Music of Lutoslawski, Faber and Faber, 1994) in hand. The finale starts with a Passacaglia, the theme of which is 8 bars long and is repeated 18 times as it passes from the basses to the highest registers of the orchestra. In counterpoint with the Passacaglia there is a sequence of 13 episodes - mostly also 8 bars long - with contrasting material. For the most part they do not overlap with the beginning or end of the Passacaglia theme (an early example of what Lutoslawski later would call his 'chain' technique). These episodes are not variations as there is not really a relationship between them. After the Passacaglia follows a bristling Toccata, driven forward by very energetic brass. This gives way to a chorale, first in the woodwinds, then in the brass. Afterwards, the Toccata picks up again leading to a final section in which the chorale reappears fortissimo in the brass. A fast coda ends the work. One problem seems to be that there is  an abundance of thematic material in this 15 minute movement. Furthermore, the different sections - Passacaglia, Toccata, Chorale - seem to be disconnected; they come across as a sequence of brilliant but unconnected vignettes. Interestingly Bodman Rae also observes that in the Concerto only 76 of the work's 956 bars are not in some kind of triple meter. I think one can sense this rhythmic monotony over such a long musical structure. Paradoxically it may add to the sense of disjointedness.

I listened to different recordings, the most successful of which was taped by Christoph von Dohnanyi with the Cleveland Orchestra in 1989 (Decca, no longer available). It's a very taut and objective reading, the dryness of which is reinforced by a bone hard, close-miked recording from the Masonic Auditorium. Nevertheless, it's not unpleasant to listen to. The tight control suits this brilliant, sprawling music very well. The reading by Yan Pascal Tortelier with the BBC Philarmonic initially convinces, not in the least because of the attractive, meaty Chandos recording. The Intrada and the scherzo-like second movement come off really well. But sadly Tortelier is not able to keep the finale as convincingly together as Dohnanyi. I also listened to Lutoslawski's own recording, made in the late 1970s with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra (Katowicze). It's a fine recording that is in itself not particularly illuminating, however. His orchestra also lacks the sparkle of their Cleveland counterparts.

The Decca recording is coupled with Bartok's Concerto (which I still have to listen to) and the question poses itself as to how the two compositions might be related. There seems to be little agreement on this issue. Paula Kennedy writes in the liner notes for the Dohnanyi recording: "However, the main influence on the work is indubitably that of Bartok. This can be heard both in the clarity and directness of the musical language, and also in such structural details as the arch form of the first movement and the chorale of the last movement (in its manner of presentation, this chorale bears a striking resemblance to the one which occurs in the second movementof Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra). The economy with which musical ideas are developed also owes much to the example fo Bartok." On the other hand, Simon Ravens in the notes accompanying the Chandos disc finds the similarities more cosmetic than real. (However, he makes the rather surprising assertion that whilst Bartok generally tried to be faithful to the character of his folk material, Lutoslawski used folk themes as merely raw material to build a large musical form. I think this is disputable). Bodman Rae essentially agrees with the observation that there is no dominant and direct influence of Bartok in Lutoslawski's Concerto: " ... if one were to draw a meaningful parallel with Bartok, it should be with Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, rather than his own Concerto for Orchestra." Pity he doesn't elaborate this connection. Personally I would also side with the latter viewpoint. Apart from the orchestral brilliance and some anecdotal correspondences (I think most chorales resemble one another) the two compositions seem to inhabit rather different spheres of the musical continuum.

Comment: Kennicott on active listening

In the February 2010 issue of Gramophone magazine there was an unusually perspicacious column by Philipp Kennicott, culture critic for the Washington Post, in which he captured very well what 'active listening' would ideally be about:

I'm interested in a listening device that actually helps one listen. We've had a century of remarkable progress in machines that reproduce music but most of those machines explicitly aimed to mimic the concert experience. I'm interested in machines that would enhance or develop the concert experience into something entirely different. First order of business: I want a device that can scroll the musical score as the music is playing but not require that I sit at a computer screen. I want to see the music passing by no matter where I'm listening — lying down, sitting on a train, jogging. This may mean projecting it onto a screen, or some kind of invisible screen, or maybe even using holographic technology. Now, if I'm feeling lazy, or lend my new device to someone who isn't proficient at score reading, I want the option for the score to standardise.

We're not through yet. Given the advances in video game technology, perhaps we should have another option that represents music in sculptural form. The listener will pick the basic shapes — Euclidean solids, cloud forms, fractal patterns, Henry Moore statues — and the computer will use them to represent the basic elements of music. This should be sophisticated enough that I can turn it on, project it onto a table top and leave it playing alongside the music, like kinetic sculpture.
And while we're at it, I may desire to hear certain inner lines more clearly than the musicians are projecting them. It would be nice if, when I reached out and touched them (either in the score or in their sculptural analogue) they would become more prominent. Thus I could listen to the performance much more interactively, more like a conductor than a mere audience-member.

It should also be wired into a huge musical encyclopedia and database, complete with a catalogue of thematic material that allows the listener to stop the music and say, hey, isn't that like a theme I know from Mahler? I want the answer to that question, and I want it now. Of course, we're going to want some default switches on this device, so that it's absolutely clear when the listener is interfering with the "truth" of the recording. And as with all new gizmos, the more options the better, so if I want to use the machine like an ordinary DVD player, I can turn off the "extras" and simply watch the musicians perform.

I'm not holding my breath. The technology is probably the least of the problems. The main issue is that this fantasy listening device fills a need that not many people recognise: to listen more actively. Listening generally falls into the category of entertainment, and technology often assumes that what people want (in addition to listening) is distraction. Most of the half-hearted attempts to create classical music video tend towards this direction — visual fantasies that seem almost apologetic about the music they supposedly serve.

My device would be completely different, using the emergent gaming technology and video wizardry entirely in service of the score, the performance and the listener's curiosity about the construction of the music itself. Which is why I'm not expecting to see it on the market any time soon. But if it arrives, and prices come down to reasonable levels, I'll put it straight on my wish-list.

Petrassi - Primo Concerto

A couple of years ago my friend HK demoed a snippet from one of Goffredo Petrassi's Concerti per Orchestra. It took a long while to follow up on his suggestion but now I'm happy to have the full set of 8 Concerti on a double CD issued by the Stradivarius label. The Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra is conducted by the redoubtable Arturo Tamayo - for whom I have great respect since his traversal of Xenakis' complete symphonic oeuvre on the Timpani label.

Petrassi's Primo Concerto makes for a very promising start. It's a very muscular three movement work - Allegro, Adagio, Tempo di Marcia - lasting just over 23 minutes. Rhythmically and harmonically it has Hindemith written all over it, but then it's a more sanguine and athletic version of the original. Not surprisingly, one is also reminded of the Walton of the First Symphony, as well as of the 'angry' Vaughan Williams of the Fourth and Sixth symphonies. So, it's the kind of taut, epic and rather abstract symphonic music that goes down extremely well with me.

Again, it's rather amazing how this body of work is able to lead such a peripheral existence. Likely, Petrassi has a big reputation in Italy but beyond its borders he must be very little known. His discography is very spotty, with some of his alleged masterpieces - Coro di Morti, Noche Oscura, the operas - unavailable. Chailly, for example, recorded the complete Varese and the Hindemith Kammermusiken, so why didn't he go on and recorded the Petrassi Concerti? Anyway, let's see where this leads us. The Secondo Concerto follows 17 years after the first so we may be in for a very different experience.

Bartok - Piano Concerto nr. 3

On Monday I listened a couple of times to Bartok's final piano concerto (and basically his final composition, if we discount the controversial Viola Concerto) in the Kocsis/Fischer recording. Today I auditioned the Schiff/Fischer version. Both are great renditions, Schiff projecting the score in a slightly more 'feminine' way and with more depth of feeling, which is likely more in keeping with the spirit of the work (as Bartok wrote it for his wife Ditta).  It's a delightful score, easy on the palate, almost Mozartian in its sunny disposition and exquisite sense of proportion.

Lutoslawski - Chain 1-3

The recent acquisition of a CD issued by Naxos with Lutoslawski's last recorded concert - October 24, 1993, barely three months before he died of cancer in February 1994 - was a good opportunity to relisten to some of his late masterpieces. I selected the three works that go under the name of Chain:

• number 1 dating from 1983 and written for a mixed chamber ensemble of 14 instrumentalists, 
• number 2 dating from 1985, a 'dialogue for violin and orchestra' (dedicated to A.-S. Mutter), 
• number 3, from 1986, for full orchestra.

The Naxos recording is a re-issue of a disc that has been in (limited) circulation for a while. It was taped in Toronto during a concert with the New Music Concerts Ensemble and independently issued. Now Naxos seems to have purchased the rights.

Without wanting to connect everything that I listen to Bartok, one can easily intuit a kinship between the work of these two composers. Both reflect an artistic integrity that led them to develop a highly sophisticated musical language, innovative and uncompromisingly modernist but without pandering to the tastes of the contemporaneous avant-garde. Both have something of a musical watchmaker, setting great store by harnessing the visceral energy of their musical ideas with a formal equilibrium and almost neoclassical poise of their compositions. Without being able to substantiate it, I also seem to feel an harmonic likeness between the two, perhaps reflected in their focus on integrating diatonicism and and chromaticism in a single framework and their pechant for darker colours and night musics.

Anyway, the Chains are masterpieces of the late Lutoslawski. Despite their sequential numbering they do not form a cycle. The formal principle that ties them together is that of partially overlapping sections, differentiated by harmony, melodic line and texture (there is a good deal more to be said about this). My favourite is Chain 3 which despite its limited duration (a good 10 minutes) has an impressively epic sweep and monumentality. (Sibelius' Tapiola is the archetype of these kinds of works with an apparently very high specific gravity). There is a fantastic recording of Chain 3 on another CD which has been branded as Lutoslawski's final concert on the obscure label KOS Records Warsaw. It dates from a Warsaw Autumn festival concert late September 1993.

For Chain 2 we are still best served by Lutoslawski's DGG recording with the work's dedicatee as a soloist (despite a rather fat recorded sound from Walthamstow Town Hall). But Mutter's playing has tremendous fire and the BBC Symphony Orchestra is in great form. A good second is Isabelle van Keulen's rendering with the Philarmonia under Heinrich Schiff (Koch-Schwann, coupled with the Schnittke Viola Concerto). The recording on the present Naxos disc is, I am sorry to say, not up to the same standard. The soloist is not in the same league and the performance lacks forward momentum.

Chain 1 has been recorded less often than either of the other works. It's the more uncompromisingly avant garde of the three, and leans qua spirit most towards the mildly surrealist atmosphere that characterizes some of Lutoslawski's other late works (notably Chantefleurs et Chantefables).
My favourite recording is one with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra under Daniel Harding, issued in 1996 on the Virgin label and long since disappeared from the catalogue. Another very lively performance has been recorded by the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, led by the composer. Again, the Naxos recording is not a worthy competitor I find.

There's a charming documentary on Lutoslawski - made on the occasion of this visit to the School of Music at UCL in 1985 - here, here, here and here.

Bartok - Piano Concerto nr. 1

When one would have asked me at the outset of my Bartok traversal what works where most familiar to me, I would certainly have included the piano concertos. I was not a little surprised then to draw a blank on the First Concerto when I started to listen to these works a few days ago. Unlike the Second and Third Concertos, it sounded utterly new. And what a discovery this was! I had been wanting to listen to something punchy and energetic when zooming in on the concertos and what I got was an orchestral spectacular with the percussive energy of a Blitzkrieg bombing run. I listened five or six times in a row to this spectacular but complex work. Even with Janos Karpati's excellent essay (in the Bartok Companion) on the first two concertos in hand, it is difficult to figure out what is really going on in this music. That's simply because Bartok works with rhythm rather than melody as a foundational principle. And whatever there is in terms of melody appears in ultra-reduced thematic cells that morph and evaporate before you can aurally grasp them. The harmony too is exceptionally tightfisted. Only towards the end of the finale there is a brief flourish that brandishes something that could be considered as pathos. The real enigma is the slow movement which is hard to get a handle on. It grasps ahead at the terseness of the Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, but there is also something of the Mandarin there with that insistent, march-like, and very long (58 bars) ostinato on the piano, supporting a sequence of langorous and orientalising woodwind figurations.

In terms of performances I listened time and again to the Kocsis/Fischer reading on Philips, which seemed just about perfect in all respects. The phenomenal rhythmic drive is matched by the precision of the performance and the transparancy of the recording. The Anda/Fricsay is very good too - with Anda even more ferociously brutal than Kocsis - but I do miss the many orchestral felicities that are so obvious in the Philips recording. The version with Schiff and Fischer's BFO presents us with a more refined and lyrical choice, but I rather stay with the percussive primitivism of the Kocsis (or the Anda). Schiff's approach works much better in the Third Concerto to which I will return in the next couple of days.

Wagner: Tannhaüser Ouvertüre/Tristan Liebestod

My listening diet has dried up to a trickle stream. Which does not mean that my musical life is uneventful. Last week, on Thursday, on an impulse I played two short pieces in sequence: the 4th dance from Bartok's Wooden Prince and Wagner's Tannhäuser Overture and Bacchanale music. There is indeed a certain resemblance between them in the combination of that typically yearning Wagnerian chromaticism and a rather frenzied, eroticised dance-like episode. I find that 15 minute section from the Bartok ballet an impressive piece in itself. A pity, maybe, that Bartok never turned it into an autonomous, rounded composition. I am quite sure it would have secured a reputation similar to, say, Bax's Tintagel, Strauss' Tod und Verklärung or Rachmaninov's Island of the Dead, to name just a few examples of tone poems where this late romantic opulence flares up in impressive clair-obscure.

The Wagner disc I selected is a late Karajan recording, dating from 1984. It's a favourite of mine. This is what the Gramophone Classical Music Guide (2009) writes about it: "When, in modern times, have you heard from Berlin (or anywhere else) such long-drawn, ripe, intense, characterful, perfectly formed and supremely controlled Wagner playing? Not from some other sources with the Tannhäuser Overture, whose Pilgrims are less solemn and whose revellers produce less of Karajan's joyous éclat. Moving on a few minutes, and the passage where Karajan's Venus succeeds in quelling the riot finds him effecting a spellbinding sudden diminuendo (from 4'41", track 2), leaving us with the enchanted eddying of the orchestra. It must surely qualify as one of Karajan's 'greatest moments', if the seemingly unstoppable tidal wave that preceded it hadn't already done so." And so on.

This is indeed a great recording and it led me to dig into Youtube to unearth that documentary that I saw on television more than 20 years ago. I didn't recall a lot about it, only that the ageing Karajan rehearsed the Tannhäuser Overture and that at a certain point he lets the trombones play the main theme by themselves to conclude that "this was how he had heard it in his dreams." (or an exclamation to that effect). It was not so difficult indeed to rediscover the "Karajan in Salzburg" film (taped in 1987, never released in Europe on DVD) with its many moving and interesting sequences, amongst them the Tannhaüser rehearsal (here and here), the Liebestod rehearsal with Jessye Norman,  and the final Liebestod concert. Particularly against the background of that fateful and drily uttered "Fini" at the beginning of the sequence, the concert is a very poignant testimony to the unconditional love for the music that impregnated likely every fiber of Karajan's being. That combined with his masterful professionalism and his unconditional quest for perfection is something that continues to inspire me.

Friday evening I fell ill and Saturday and best part of Sunday I spent in a slumber, with fever peaking up to 39°. I know from experience that in cases of illness, music can have a healing impact. (I still remember listening to a Mahler 6 (Maazel version) 25 years ago when I was struck with a mysterious illness I had caught in Switzerland. There was at that time no better tonic for me than that music). But now I hardly listened. I just put on a single disc, sotto voce - the Fabula Suite Lugano from Christian Wallumrod and his ensemble (ECM). The wrong choice, however, as this is a musica povera of the most uncompromising sort, unlikely to infuse anyone with a boost of energy. But meanwhile the music was going on relentlessly in my mind. Predictably I fell back on the Mehldau/Tokyo disc I had listened to earlier in the week. But also Gershwin's An American in Paris popped up, surprisingly. And the Tannhäuser, of course. On Sunday I was a little better, and I tried to listen to the second half of the Karajan disc: the Meistersinger Act III prelude (this only is worth a lot) and the Prelude and Liebestod. However, my mind was too unfocused: I could hear the sounds but could not follow the music. No way I could grasp the larger structures but the gorgeous orchestral sound in itself made a deep impact.

All this amounts to precious little music, however. The combination of greater listening discipline and lack of time has reduced my exposure to music significantly. So one gets used to silence as well. I can sit for hours in silence without needing music. Likely the pendulum will swing the other way again quite soon. But for the time being, it's a good experience.

Der Bote - A Lubimov recital

Listened twice this week to this wonderful recital recorded by Alexei Lubimov. Why don't we have more of these intelligent and adventurous compilations, rather than perennial rehashes of the core repertoire? I'm transcribing Lubimov's own liner notes here:

Melancholy - that is the title one might give to this programme. Nostalgic pictures, some will suggest, and others: quiet meditation. Music written for oneself, one might also think; like a diary not meant for publication, in which you note down only what is most personal, what is memorable for no one but you and yet says a great deal.
Whatever else these collected pieces may be given, one or two words are not enough to show why these unpretentious masterpieces from three centuries so smoothly gather into a single strand that unravels a bundle of associations and memories so dear to their performer. Within these composers' works each piece holds a fairly modest place: in most cases it is but a marginal note in a long novel. However, linked together here by their unassuming, meditative poetry and the deeper inner impulse of their creators, who are not inhibited by any commission or external circumstance, they convey a particular significance to me - and to my listeners too, I hope - with its own logic and atmosphere. Thus what we have here is the story of a sort of journey, each stage of which is meant not so much to reveal the composer's soul as to bring us gradually closer to that essential source from which all these musical compositions draw their kinship and to which they owe their inner unity.
Then it no longer seems strange that Silvestrov's Messenger (Der Bote) should sound as if it had come straight out of the 18th century and C.P.E. Bach's Fantasia should appear nearly the most modern piece in the programme (Cage's In a Landscape); that the gentle wistfulness of Glinka's Parting (La Séparation) and the almost Brahms-like bitterness of Chopin's Prelude Op. 45 should have as their perfect counterparts the aloofness and chaste restraint of the elegies by Liszt, Bartok and Debussy; that Mansurian's Nostalgia and Silvestrov's Elegy should point regretfully to the fact that even the radical changes that followed Webern have vanished in a nostalgic past; and that the most avant-garde composer of the 20th century - John Cage - should present us with a most delicate and poetic flower, a genuine East Indian lotus flower floating away on a sea of oblivion ... Oblivion? - There is no such thing as oblivion, Silvestrov says with his Messenger; it is enough to fling open a window, to strike a match, to look at a cloud, to hear a triad, for memories - not only ours but also those, unknown to us, of all these messengers - to start working a miracle.

Brad Mehldau - Live in Tokyo

I've been listening on and off to this treasured recording for almost a week. Likely it's one of my desert island discs. Having listened to it by now maybe hundreds of times, the music has seeped into my bones.  I remember very well how I stumbled into it whilst on holiday in Italy, five or six years ago. That whole week in the Marche got drenched in the tremendous artistry, energy and concentration of this formidable piano solo live concert. It may not be the most subtle piano playing around (in the sense that Shostakovich is likely not the most subtle symphonist around) but there is a no-holds-barred, joyful reverence for the sheer beauty of music that touches the heart. Nietzsche might have liked this kind of 'mediterranean' inspiration. It is the perfect blend of improvisational dash, wistful lyricism and hymnic exuberance that gets me enthralled every time again. I just love those rapturous, meditative, chiming chordal waves, those daring modulations in harmonic hyperspace, those complex contrapuntal textures (often including three separate lines) and also those fragile, sparse right hand musings. I have two versions of this recital: one featuring a selection only issued as a single CD, and another one (Japanese import) with the complete recital on a double CD. I almost always prefer the single CD version as the pacing and sequencing of the tracks is just perfect, starting from the disciplined but intriguing impro on Nick Drake's Things Behind The Sun, momentary settling down in Gershwin's Someone To Watch Over Me, onwards to the ever more dense and dazzling textures of Porter's From This Moment On and the riotious energy of Monk's Dream to culminate in the jaw-dropping, 20 minute long meditation on Radiohead's Paranoid Android. Then there is a lull, with Gershwin's sweet How Long Has This Been Going On?, only to launch into Drake's River Man as a rousing, exalted finale. What adds to the excitement too is the generous acoustics of Sumida Triphony Hall - with audience's intrusions adding to the atmosphere - that have been wonderfully captured, allegedly by a simple set of overhead microphones. It's a shame that Nonesuch seems to prefer a much drier and less involving sound for its other Mehldau recordings. For me, this is the provisional high point in Mehldau's output. I am curious to hear his next solo installment, but having heard his rather unfocused live concert earlier this year (in Hasselt) I am not hopeful it will upstage the Tokyo disc. Doesn't really matter. This one has brought me already so much pleasure, and will continue to do so for a long time.

Paolo Fresu 5ET - Incantamento

I'm getting behind with documenting my listening trajectory. During my stay in Stockholm I listened to just two discs on my Sony mp3 player. Easy listening fare, to chill a little bit after the rather strenuous thinking at the architecture school during the day. Incantamento is one disc in a series of five that Paolo Fresu and his quintet have been recording since 2005 for Blue Note, at the occasion of their 20-year existence (without changing their lineup!). Each of the titles is dedicated to original compositions of one the band members. In Incantamento saxophone player Tino Tracanna had a free hand. It's a beautifully crafted, suave recording featuring strong, but rather diffident compositions and superbly polished playing. Fresu himself is curiously reticent on this recording. It's all very enjoyable but maybe a little too polished for its own good. Most of these recording have already disappeared from the catalogue, I notice, but there is now a 2-disc collection that features the highlights from Fresu's Blue Note years (he is with ECM now).

The other audition was a rather less pleasurable experience. Jan Garbarek's In Praise of Dreams, an ECM production, brings together a star cast with Kim Kaskashian on viola and Manu Katché on drums. But musically it's a disappointing affair. Whilst the Fresu disc may not be very demanding either, there is the feeling of genuine musical invention. Here Garbarek leans a little too much to mindless new age schlock for comfort. I found this really getting on my nerves.

Berg - Wozzeck

On Tuesday I attended a sparsely attended performance of Berg's Wozzeck at the Royal Opera in Stockholm. It's a production that has been running for years. Naxos recorded it, with another cast and conductor, in 2001. Now it was Andreas Stoehr in the pit. Gabriel Suovanen sang the title role and Sara Olsson was Marie. Despite the rather dated concept, I found it a satisfying performance with strong voices and a refined orchestral contribution. Stoehr, a baroque specialist, projected the score in a very lyrical and transparant way. One hardly noticed that the music is atonal and supposed to be difficult. I didn't get that last ounce of atmosphere out of this performance, however. Maybe it was the rather empty hall, the severe ambiente of the Stockholm opera building or simply the fact of being preoccupied after a long day of work. I'm planning to return to Berg and the Second Viennese School once I am through with Bartok.

Ralph Towner & Paolo Fresu - Chiaroscuro

I (we) had 48 hours of almost non-stop engagements: 4 appointments on Friday, then friends based in Jerusalem visiting us on Friday evening and Saturday, other friends on Saturday evening. This morning I started with a sloshy run through the forest (met two deer!), then breakfast, doing the dishes and then I settled down for a while with a wary eye on the melting snow that fell from an ash-grey sky. Time to gather around a musical fireplace - listening couch snugly lined up in an equilateral triangle with the speakers - with a marvelously intimate and moody ECM disc.  

Chiaroscuro features Ralph Towner on guitars (classic, 12 string and baritone) and Paolo Fresu on trumpet and fluegelhorn in a series of mostly Towner's compositions. Fresu caught my ear several years ago on Ornella Vanoni's Sheherazade with his sensational, super-cultivated solos. Since I have collected several of his Blue Note recordings with his own quintet. It's great to see him join the ECM roster. Together with Enrico Rava and Tomasz Stanko they now have a superb lineup of brass players. It was Kris Duerinckx who introduced me to Ralph Towner via his 1978 album Batik (he wanted to draw my attention to JackDeJohnette's remarkable contribution to it). Since I added his Anthem to my collection but there is a whole series of ECM discs I have yet to discover.

Already the cover of this CD transports me back to that morning roughly 20 years ago when we were making our way to the Geisspfadpass on the Swiss-Italian border. We set off from Alpe Devero and headed to the northeast hitting the shores of the Lago di Devero by mid-morning. The sun reflected in dramatic chiaroscuro on the lake's surface. A timeless spectacle. It must have been a moment close to perfection as I can recall it so very vividly.

The music on this recording is wonderfully euphonious. Only a hint of improvisation. A tastefully placed dissonant here and there. But otherwise it's just an opportunity to indulge in a series of richly harmonised, almost romantic vignettes. The atmosphere is wistful and mysterious, darkly shaded by the lush timbre of the bariton guitar and the mellow fluegelhorn. Despite the music's accessibility, there is nothing 'easy' or new agey about it. This is superbly tasteful musicianship displayed in an unlikely but remarkable symbiosis of two very different voices. On the B&W 804s it just sounds gorgeous. You can hear the music between the notes. The disc's centerpiece is a track called 'Sacred Place'. The deep sensitivity and reverence that speaks from the music belies the rather grandiose kitschiness of the title. The chokingly beautiful theme is first elaborated by Towner solo in a very classic, restrained way. But every notes plumbs great melancholy depths. Later on there is shorter reprise in which the guitar is joined by Fresu's supremely polished and reflective fluegelhorn. It's just the kind of thing I needed today with that melting snow falling out of an ash-grey sky.

Bartok - The Miraculous Mandarin

The last couple of weeks I have had precious little time to listen to music. I have traveled abroad, mostly on short trips, leaving the Sony player at home.  And work days have been quite long with hardly any opportunity to switch off. So by last Sunday I started to feel quite starved of auditory input.

Meanwhile, I have been conducting this little experiment of keeping a listening diary for a while and my assessment of the experience is very positive. There is something paradoxical about the wish to spend more time documenting listening experiences when professional and other obligations leave so little time for relaxation. But maybe unconsciously it is exactly the lack of time and concomitant pressures that lead me to do this. When the going gets tough I need to replenish myself. Music in its most basic impact is energy. And through this diary I have clearly experienced how rewarding and nourishing it is to attend in a more disciplined way to the listening experience. Also I have the feeling now that I'm really 'in' the music of Bartok. It's not an issue of just 'liking' it anymore. Reading up on the music and life of Bartok has been very stimulating too. I'm certainly happy to have the Cambridge Companion at my disposal which is the most complete and thorough study available.

The only piece I have been able to really listen to is The Miraculous Mandarin. No, not true! Before I left on my trip to France, almost two weeks ago, I had sampled a movement from the Concerto for Orchestra, the 'Giuco delle coppie', by Fischer's Budapest Festival Orchestra. Right in the middle of that movement, after first round of five sections devoted to pairs of instruments (bassoons, oboes, clarinets, flutes, muted trumpets) there is a wonderful chorale-like passage in the brass (tuba and trombone), childlike in its pentatonic naiveté. (From a 1959 Reclams Konzertführer I picked up in a second-hand bookshop: "Urplötzlich dann - über synkopischen Rhythmen des Schlagzeugs - in majestätisch harmonisiertem Blechsatz ein profunder Choral, ernst, klar, brucknerisch.") The BFO musicians play this most deeply-felt and beautifully. I have not been able to get that passage out of my head for almost a week.

The Mandarin, then. I am not finished with it yet. I listened to three different versions: the Fischer/BFO (Philips, 1997; for which they got a Gramophone Award), the Abbado/LSO (DGG, 1982) and the Dorati/BBC SO (Mercury Living Presence, 1964). All of them are most excellent. It would be hard to choose amongst them. Abbado offers the most brutal view (in a cold, biting sound), Fischer the most symphonic (in a transparant but pleasingly grainy sound) and Dorati the most graphically descriptive (in a very meaty analog recording). No doubt the pantomime is a tremendous piece of symphonic writing. But it is a work that is maybe easier to admire than to truly love. It has a unique form and aural signature. Even in Bartok's oeuvre I feel it stands apart. It offers an odd mixture of the urbane, the cartoonish, the primitive and the romantic. A hybrid of Tom and Jerry and Tristan, as it were. When I listen to it, I am thinking of Berg and Gershwin at the same time. To be continued.

Bartok - Short Orchestral Works

Precious little time to listen these days. I am spending all my waking hours writing proposals. Meanwhile a 3-CD box arrived with Ivan Fischer's recordings of Bartok's orchestral works on the Philips label. These are recordings from the late 1990s, re-issued in 2006 as a Collectors' set. They quickly dropped out of the catalogue and are difficult to find today.

I just listened to the Dance Suite again and some of the shorter collections of dances. What I heard is very promising. Clearly, compared to the mid-1980s recordings of the piano concertos and the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, the Budapest Festival Orchestra sounds like a more homogeneous and mature ensemble. The sound is also better. The older set was taped by Hungaroton engineers whilst this has been recorded by a Dutch crew at the Italian Institute in Budapest. The Suite sounds awesome. Really a rival to the Solit which is excellent. I look forward to discovering Fischer's Mandarin and Concerto for Orchestra as soon as I have the time, likely somewhere near the end of next week. There's some travelling to be done first.

Nik Bärtsch' Ronin - Llyria

A somewhat less demanding interlude. I listened to Nik Bärtsch' latest and newly acquired CD - Llyria -  in the background, in order to get a feel for the new production. I don't think I like it quite as much as their previous two ECM recordings, Holon and Stoa.

Nik Bärtsch' Ronin is a Swiss band that produces an idiosyncratic mix of jazz, funk and minimalist music. The line up is as follows: Bärtsch himself on piano, Björn Meyer on bass, Andi Puppato on a mix of percussion, Sha on alto saxophone and bass clarinet, and Kaspar Rast on the drums.

Both their previous CDs have been at times in heavy rotation in the house. I have been really captivated by their very distinctive mix of coolheaded Swiss precision and control, improvisatory flair and volcanic drive. The best tracks are those where the band really gets into the groove, spinning long, rhythmically flexible meandering lines (à la Reich), that teasingly keep gyrating around an elusive climax. As in Reich the music is never static, never just a fix for trance junkies. But there is constant movement, instrumental details constantly flashing up, minute variations traversing the musical texture. The real star of the band for me is drummer Kaspar Reich who in a spectacular way embodies that combination of awesome precision, remarkable self-restraint and spine-tingling rhythmic drive (altogether rather Bartokian features!).

If I have a gripe about Holon and Stoa it is that there is not enough trance rather than too much. Tracks (all of which are titled as abstract 'Modules') last typically less than 10 minutes, never more than 15 minutes. This is the kind of music, it seems, that would benefit from longer tracks allowing the band to explore the material in more diversified ways, building in more and longer waves of rhythmic contraction and expansion. So I was disappointed to see that Modules on Llyria are all between 7 and 9 minutes. It's a different record from the other two too in the sense that it is more lyrical (as the title maybe suggests; on the other hand it also may refer to a recently discovered luminescent underwater creature). They are beautiful, mellow tracks, superbly played and very well recorded. A marvelous disc to chill out. But it's not quite why I'm listening to a Bärtsch gig. We are very well catered for this kind of very tasteful, polite and soothing music elsewhere in the ECM catalogue. What I want to hear on a Bärtsch disc are epic battles wherein violent energy is sublimated into masterful asceticism.

Llyria is different but it's also more of the same. Bärtsch shifts to another register but doesn't change his formula. And I'm afraid that it starts to sound a little formulaic. There is a fair amount of mythography going on around Bärtsch' Ronin. The master himself feeds these stories with his musings about Zen, martial arts, flocks of birds and schools of fish moving like giant clouds of organic matter. Then there's the band's curious discipline of playing a Monday evening concert in their same Zürich club every weeks, for years on end (they have over 300 performances behind them by now). All this is intriguing. But I wonder how long you can keep this up without it becoming a pose. We look keenly forward to Nik Bärtsch Ronin's next production, in about two years time.

R. Strauss - Scenes from Elektra

On Monday I returned to that Reiner disc I dug up last week and relistened to the scenes from Elektra. Really compelling stuff that makes want to audition this opera more completely. Inge Borkh is, of course, legendary in this role. I also have her DGG recording made under Karl Böhm with the Staatskapelle Dresden. Despite its expressionistic antics the work struck me as more Wagnerian than ever. The Recognition Scene, with sonorous Wagner tuben playing an important role in its darkly hued sound world, reminds me of Walküre Act I (in fact Elektra contains what may be the most difficult tuba parts in existence). To be revisited soon, I hope.

Bartok - Wooden Prince, Scriabin - Poème de l'Extase

Still working on that Wooden Prince. I went to HVC to pick up the Järvi/Philharmonia version on Chandos. Järvi is a musical omnivore who has more than 400 recordings under his belt. Late Romantic, sprawling, colourful scores such as the Wooden Prince are core Järvi territory. Predictably his reading is less refined than the Boulez but he has that swashbuckling approach to the music that keeps one easily involved. Possibly his experience with the Russian repertoire is of assistance here too as the Scriabinesque overtones are becoming ever more obvious the more one listens to this work. Technically the Chandos is hardly better than the Boulez/DGG. A resonant and rather brightly lit recording typical of the early Chandos years.

Yesterday I listened to the whole ballet and today I picked out the fourth and longest dance only. Over 15 minutes long it is a full-fledged symphonic poem in itself. Quite breathtaking too with this no holds barred, feverish yearning that animates the whole orchestra. By the way, focusing on just one of the dances has the advantage that one can forget about the larger context. I find the ballet's nonsensical plot highly distracting when listening to the music. I am not interested at all in princes, princesses and fairies. I just want to listen to music. I have the same experience in Strauss' tone poems where the trivia underpinning his Sinfonia Domestica and Heldenleben keep intruding during auditions.

It's typical for the Wooden Prince in Bartok's output that one keeps looking for influences. That temptation does not exist in Bluebeard and the Mandarin which are so overwhelmingly and idiosyncratically Bartok. In case of the Prince, Stravinsky, Strauss, mature Liszt and early Schoenberg readily come to mind. But listening to that fourth dance suggested a connection with Scriabin. And whilst the latter may have gone a little further in exploring the boundaries of tonality, a back-to-back audition of his Poème de l'Extase (Mehta/LAPO, Decca) easily reveals the consonance of both works' musical substance.

R. Strauss - Elektra & Salome Scenes

I was a little puzzled yesterday after listening to that Wooden Prince. Reading all those accolades for the quality of the technical recording and contrasting that with my own experience, I started to doubt my own observations. Maybe I was being overcritical? Then I listened to the recording through my headphones and, indeed, liked it better than the audition on the speakers.

I decided then to do a little comparison between two recordings with the same orchestra (Chicago Symphony Orchestra) at the same recording venue (Orchestra Hall) but realised almost 40 years apart. Boulez' Wooden Prince, taped in December 1991 and Fritz Reiner's recording of Strauss scenes from Elektra and Salome, one of the first stereophonic recordings made by RCA Victor made in 1954. Of course, the chromatic, expressionistic Strauss is at the heart of Bartok's formative musical universe. One of his piano students reminisced that

... some lessons where devoted entirely to hearing him play by memory from Richard Strauss' Salome and Zarathustra - music forbidden at that time at the Academy as devilish and corrupting! - whilst I followed it closely with a pocketscore he always carried around in his portfolio.

Just a few measures into Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils I knew I wasn't wrong in my assessment of the DGG recording. There's so much more liveliness in the Reiner tape! One hears it particularly in the strings which really shine in an unforced, natural sort of way. There's a suppleness, a wealth of microdetail in the orchestral fabric that is totally lacking in the digital recording which sounds cramped and artificial. I did the test with Ann who has not a particularly sensitive ear for audio subtleties. But she also noticed immediately that the Boulez sounded more muffled and veiled, "as if it is played under a cloth".

It's one of my favourite rants but I'm really very annoyed by developments in modern recording techniques. What is sold to us as high resolution technology or Super Audio is, in fact, a hoax. We have learned nothing since the 1950s. To the contrary we're drifting further away from good practice all the time. And when you put on a good LP it becomes all too obvious what we have lost. Nobody seems to notice or to mind. I was happy, though, to see some likeminded critics writing in Fanfare, commenting on dull and lifeless SACD productions and comparing them unfavourably with analogue recordings from the late 50s. There a few lucky exceptions, particularly on smaller labels, with ECM leading the way in producing a natural, unforced, richly layered sound with a pleasing sense of space. This is not only about sound fetishism. The nature of recorded sound does in my opinion significantly influence our ability as listeners to connect to the unfolding musical process.

As to the Strauss-Bartok connection: it seems to me both composers at that stage of their creative development were looking for ways to expand the vocabulary of tonality without lapsing into chromatic immobilism. Elektra and Salome rely heavily on tonality as a structuring, expressive element (certain characters associated to particular keys etc.). The same applies to Bartok's stage works. He once requested a theater director that in the programme notes for a forthcoming 'double bill' performance of his opera and ballet the following should be noted:

You should not overemphasize the folkloristic elements of my music;
You should stress that in these stage works, as in my other original compositions, I never employ folk melodies;
That my music is tonal throughout;
That it has nothing in common with 'objective' and 'impersonal' tendencies (therefore, it is not properly 'modern' at all!).

Bartok - The Wooden Prince

We move on with Bartok's stage works. Kodaly thought that Bluebeard and the Prince ought to be played back-to-back to experience their full impact:

... the constructive energy of the music (of Duke Bluebeard's Castle) becomes even more evident if we hear the Wooden Prince immediately afterwards. The playful, mobile Allegro of the ballet serves to balance the desolate Adagio of the opera. The two works fit together like two movements of a huge symphony.

I really don't buy that assessment. Bluebeard is powerful enough to stand on its own as a quiet, mysterious monolith. And although the Prince's Prelude starts in the same C major that suffuses the central episode in Bluebeard, I find these works to project a very different musical ambience. In contrast to the opera's magnificent coherence of plot, atmosphere and musical structure, the Wooden Prince has always struck me as somewhat shapeless. Today's audition seemed to confirm that impression. It's in a way a more conventional piece grafted on a meandering, fairy tale-like narrative. One is reminded of the great Tchaikovsky ballets and, of course, Stravinsky's Firebird and Petrouchka. I suppose that the music of the complete ballet is to a certain extent tied to the stage action, which is why certain episodes come across as rhapsodic.

That being said, there is no doubt that this is a great score, impregnated with a deep, almost Tristan-like yearning. Another way of looking at the piece, rather than as a balletic sequence of tableaux, is as a giant symphonic poem elaborated as a set of variations on a single theme. Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisande or, better still, Liszt's Faust Symphony come to mind. The Verzerrungstechnique that Liszt deploys in the latter maybe comes close to the way Bartok projects his material into the grotesque and even demonic.

One reason why the Prince fails to make a bigger impact on me is the recording. I have been listening to Boulez' digital rendering on CD, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. It won two Grammy Awards (one for best orchestral recording in 1993 and one for best orchestral performance in 1994) and was enthusiastically praised by Gramophone critics as well. The technical quality of the recording has been universally applauded. I honestly can't fully endorse that enthusiasm. Interpretation-wise there is indeed a lot to be admired. But I find the digital sound to be rather airless, with an annoying kind of sheen enveloping the instrumental voices, somewhat veiling inner detail. Tuttis are sounding compact and slightly saturated too. And although the music often sounds very loud, the recording does not strike me as terribly dynamic. In short, it is a typical run-of-the-mill, early 1990s digital product. Compared to what some labels produce today (ECM, Harmonia Mundi) it sounds positively bland. And let's not mention what the RCA engineers accomplished in Orchestra Hall at Fritz Reiner's time.

So I'm definitely interested to look a little further afield to find a more engaging alternative to the Boulez recording.

Bartok - Bluebeard's Castle

This has always been one my favourite Bartok pieces and it's surely destined to remain that way. It's a hypnotic piece that derives its quite unique atmosphere from a very distinctive and typically Bartokian set of features. Many of Bartok's later works have a lapidary quality, a deceptive plainness that for an uninitiated listener easily masks the intricacy of their construction. Despite the lushness of the symphonic tapestry that pervades Bluebeard, that lapidary quality is very much in evidence in this early work too. One act, one hour of music, one (metaphorical) place, two protagonists which carry the proceedings in equal measure. The work starts in medias res and ends equally abruptly. The plot revolves around a single issue - negotiating the tension between inside and outside, between sun and moon, light and darkness, male and female - which is taken up in 7 variations. This basic tension is reflected in the piece's musical architecture, where a wealth of musical material is stitched together by a single, persistent 'blood' leitmotiv (a minor second). Bluebeard's short declamatory sentences and the evident fact that the whole piece is actually an uninterrupted hour-long Lento contrast with the glittering sophistication of the orchestration, the richness of the lyricism and the sinuousness of the instrumental voices (the strings and clarinet in particular). Finally, the work is strictly tonal, stretched as an arc between the F# passages at the beginning and ending of the work and a C major scene (tonally the greatest possible distance from F#) placed in the centre of the work. As a listener we sense the clever simplicity of this architecture in the hypnotic power of the music. It is almost beyond belief that Bartok composed this so very rewarding work at such an early stage of his career, at a point where he had no experience at all, beyond folk song arrangements, in writing for voices.

I have only a single version of this work in my collection with which I am perfectly happy: a 1979 DGG recording with Wolfgang Sawallisch at the helm of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester, with an impressive Julia Varady and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the key roles. Meanwhile it has disappeared from the catalogue.

Comment - ECMreview.com

Talking about ECM: a while ago a received a kind mail which read as follows:

My name is Tyran Grillo. I currently run an ECM Records blog entitled "between sound and space" which you may view here:

http://ecmreviews.com

I recently came across your beautifully composed review of Schnittke's Ninth Symphony on Amazon and was wondering if you would mind my adding it, and any other ECM reviews you might have, to my "Guest Reviews" page. Feel free to take a look at my blog and let me know what you think.

I was happy to oblige with the request and the ECM reviews that I originally posted on Amazon.com now have been added to the bottom of the 'guest reviews' section.

The blog is really an interesting resource for ECM afficionados. Tyran's aim is eventually to review every single ECM disc (there are over a 1000) and to provide an open forum for all things ECM.

Bartok - 44 Duos for Two Violins

The exploration of Bartok's oeuvre continues with a work that I hadn't heard before. What a magnificent, heartwarming ECM production this is ! I have confessed my love for this record label (if we can call it like that) before. This, once more, is a perfect package. The 44 Duos are a work that is singular in its scope, form and instrumentation. The musicianship is of the highest order, but at the same time it is also relaxed and down to earth. The recording (at ECM's familiar Kloster St Gerold in the Austrian Vorarlberg) is transparent, vivacious and set in a pleasingly resonant acoustic. Finally, the accompanying booklet is impeccably produced with an intelligent essay by Wolfgang Sandner (music editor at the FAZ) and a very evocative picture by Peter Nadas gracing the cover.

This is Bartok at his most approachable. The 44 Duos were composed in the early Thirties as a kind of pendant to his For Children for the piano. The initial purpose was didactic: a set of pieces for a German compendium of graded violin pieces. A little later this concept blossomed into the Mikrokosmos. Almost all are based on folk material, from all over the Balkans. Initially Bartok arranged them in order of difficulty but he anticipated that people would make selections of pieces for concert performance. In this recording, Andras Keller and Janos Pilz (both founding members of the Keller Quartet) have rearranged the order of the pieces so as to allow for sustained listening throughout the whole set. And this works admirably. It really is not a burden to sit through 52 minutes of music which occupies after all a relatively narrow textural bandwith. The overall impression is uplifting and cheerful but also epic, timeless. The music sounds like unbuttoned folk, yes, but in addition we hear echoes of Bach, Beethoven and, as Sandner discusses in his essay, also the grammar of New Music is brilliantly woven into the music (Malcolm Gillies makes a similar argument in The Bartok Companion). The avant garde echoes are reinforced by the two very short works from other Hungarian composers - Ligeti and Kurtag - that are complementing this recording.

Bartok - Divertimento

I took my leave of the Divertimento with another audition of the Camerata Bern/Zehetmair version. The smaller ensemble (slightly over 20 strings; similar in size to Sacher's orchestra at the premiere) and the typically airy ECM recording make for a transparent, pulsating reading which brings the concerto grosso-character of the work nicely into relief. Zehetmair's is also a very romantic reading that underscores the contrast between the lively outer movements and the somber Molto adagio. The ensemble plays with great precision and verve.

Dorati's recording with the BBC Symphony Orchestra is also very compelling. A bigger ensemble, it seems, that produces a rather compact and weighty sound. But that accords well with a rugged vision which is projected on a more epic scale than in the ECM version. The recording incidentally is also very good: originally released on the Mercury Living Presence label it features the depth and liveliness customary for this source. I have the CD on loan from HVC and comparison between vinyl and CD shows them very close. Not surprising, maybe, given that Wilma Cozart Fine, who produced the original recordings, was also responsible for the transfer to the new medium.

The Blue Nile - Hats

On Saturday a pop intermezzo. Ever since I received a Blue Nile CD - 'Peace at Last' - from PC (part of our exchange project) I have held them in high regard. Nevertheless it took a long while before I added two other CDs to my collection: 'Walk across the rooftops' (1984) and 'Hats'(1989). I like all of them, but Hats is my favourite. A collection of moody ballads drenched in boreal spleen, carried by Paul Buchanan's melancholy voice, tastefully arranged (guitar, bass, drums, synths and strings), and superbly recorded (by Linn Records; in fact it appears that the record label was established with the express purpose to release the band's first CD). I also love that the songs are rather long, with three of the seven songs on the disc lasting over six minutes. 'Over the hillside' is a great opener with the thumping bass and morose horn suggesting the exhilaration of travel and the pang of farewell, respectively.

Bartok - Divertimento

I have been listening the whole day to the Divertimento - in my head! Particularly shreds of the first movement have been streaming from my internal headphones.

Bartok - Divertimento

Another great Bartok piece! Although it is rarely included in his canon of masterpieces, I find it heartstoppingly beautiful. Ever since I wrote a program note about it, maybe 20 years ago, for the Royal Flanders Philharmonic (now De Filharmonie) the Divertimento has been very dear to me. Despite its ostensibly genial and sunny disposition I find it a very disquieting work which is pervaded by an atmosphere of doubt and even doom. That it was hastily written in those last fateful days in August 1939 before a cataclysm swept over Europe is a circumstance that I find difficult to dismiss. The works that, for me, show a musical and emotional kinship with this music all have to do with war: Strauss' Metamorphosen and Britten's War Requiem. As regards the latter I am particularly thinking of the undulating theme in the strings that underpins the moving Agnus Dei. It so closely resembles the Divertimento's main theme from the Molto Adagio that I wonder whether Britten was consciously quoting it.

I am lucky to have a number of very good recordings of the Divertimento. The one that has been longest in my collection is a Capriccio recording dating from 1988 by the Camerata Academica des Mozarteums Salzburg, led by the venerable Sandor Vegh. Then there is also an ECM recording with the Camerata Bern under Thomas Zehetmair. Finally, an LP version with Antal Dorati and the BBC Symphony Orchestra (the back side of a Music for Strings etc which I found only soso).

All of them have great qualities. I will get back to them in a separate post.

Bartok - Music for String, Percussion and Celesta

It's time to move on, it seems. I have listened now so many times to this piece and I must say that it is fiendishly difficult to find a well-rounded, engaging performance.

Tonight I listened first to a performance with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer. It's a recording from 1985, taped by Hungaroton engineers at an unspecified location in Budapest, and marketed by Philips. It's not a bad reading but rather run of the mill. What is disturbing is the generic, lifeless quality of the strings. Maybe it's just a typical early digital recording, maybe the orchestra had not had enough time together to produce a more vibrant string sound (the BFO had been established just two years earlier and was still functioning very much as a project ensemble). Anyway, I certainly missed the excitement I had experienced at a live concert with the same orchestra and conductor 20 years later.

Then came a disappointing trio of recordings on vinyl. First the Reiner/CSO which I also have on CD. This particular LP had not been taken through a Keith Monks treatment and it showed. The acidic highs made listening well nigh impossible. A pity as it is probably the most compelling version available at this point.

After that a recording with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Daniel Barenboim (EMI, presumably from 1972). A scrappy affair with a small ensemble that was clearly ill at ease in this music. The whole thing struck me as extremely contrived and underrehearsed. For those interested, it can be downloaded in lossless format here. There's also a contemporaneous Gramophone review on that site which is far too polite in my opinion in pointing out occasional problems of intonation. I found the recording average at best.

Finally a version with the Philarmonia Hungarica under Antal Dorati on Philips. Another a muddy recording which didn't bring anything new in my opinion. I will likely not revisit it.

So it looks like, for the time being, we will have to rely on either the Reiner recording (dating from 1956!) or the Boulez live concert in the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall.

Mahler 2

After having sampled a Boulez concert (with Bartok's Music), I slipped into the Berliner's Digital Concert Hall to attend a performance of Mahler's Second Symphony "Auferstehung". Simon Rattle conducted the house orchestra with Magdalena Kozena (mezzo), Kate Royal (soprano) and the Rundfunkchor on duty. It's supposed to be a live concert, but I am not sure exactly how 'live' it is.

Anyway 'slipped' is the word as my initial attempts to connect were rebuffed because of server capacity problems. When I finally got in the first piece, Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw, was already well under way. It was the first time I heard this work which must still create some rather uncomfortable vibes in Berlin.

The Mahler symphony started without much ado immediately after the last bars of the Schoenberg had died down (one reason why I suspect it is not a genuine live event). I must admit not being a great admirer of this particular work. In Mahler's canon it's the symphony I return least often to. It's the scale, the melodrama, the pious claptrap that goes with it which feed my circumspection. Despite the scale and the use of progressive tonality, I also feel this is a work which belongs more firmly to the 19th century than anything else that Mahler has written. In a way Brahms' Fourth symphony sounds more modern to my ears. So, I've gradually come to sympathise with Debussy and Dukas who at the time left a Paris performance objecting that the music sounded 'too Schubertian'. I certainly prefer the more abstract and modernist late Mahler.

Kudos to Rattle and his Berliners then to prove my prejudices very wrong! I had to laugh a little at myself when I was sitting mist-eyed through the rousing finale. The great thing about this performance was Rattle's impressive grip on this sprawling mega-structure. There was nothing particularly new or revelatory about anything in this reading. Luckily no disturbing histrionics, only an occasional indulgence in highlighting an expressive detail. But the sentiment of a vast structure gradually, relentlessly unfolding was there from the beginning, a spellbinding ebb and flow stretching away over movements, culminating in that outrageous last stanza of the Klopstock hymn. Remarkably, those 80 minutes seemed only half as long. 'Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit', to put it with a Wagnerian cliché.

Enough said. It was a great performance. Rattle and his Berliners and the soloists put their hearts in it. My faith in the Resurrection has been re-confirmed. Also lately my confidence in Rattle has been on the rise. I have never been a great admirer of this conductor. Too many times I have been disappointed by recordings that show all the portents of perfection but in actual effect sound terribly dull and lifeless. But last year I was impressed by a performance here in Brussels with the Berliners in a truly terrifying Bruckner Ninth. And then now this riveting Mahler symphony ... Maybe Rattle is maturing, maybe he just doesn't shine in the studio. I will have to dig a little deeper in the Digital Concert Hall archives to recalibrate my view on this conductor.

Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

The exploration of this fascinating piece continues. This time I looked at a performance of the Berliner Philarmoniker conducted by Pierre Boulez via their Digital Concert Hall. For just under 10 euro one has 24 hour access to the DCH's archive of about 75 concerts and a live concert if there is one in your time slot. It's similar, of course, to watching a music DVD. The difference is that the content is streamed over the internet. Everything is taped in so-called High Definition. Of course, it can never be a substitute for a live experience, but I can imagine that in a carbon constrained world we will have to make do with these surrogate experiences more often. Also, I must admit that I almost stopped going to live concerts. Partly it's an issue of time. But it has become much more stressful too with the busy traffic into Brussels at all times of the day. We used to leave the house at 7 pm and drive leisurely to the Bozar, but that is not possible anymore. An earlier start also means that you have the tail of the evening peak hour which makes it even more risky. Therefore I welcome opportunities such as these to partake at least partially in the live atmosphere.There are additional advantages such as access to program notes and interviews with the artists.

The Boulez performance is a very good one. In fact, it may be the best I have heard so far, with the exception, perhaps, of the Reiner. It's a big, muscled rendering, of course, with a string section that must be at least double of what Paul Sacher had at the premiere with his Basel Chamber Orchestra. Boulez conducts stoically, almost with a priestly kind of dignity, with minimal movements but to great dramatic effect. Despite the size of the ensemble, there was an overarching sense of clarity, with the big lines weaving themselves effortlessly through the whole structure. The pacing was excellent too with appropriate gravitas in the slow movements and a punchy kind of urgency in the Allegros. I will certainly return to this performance.

The program notes were also very informative. I particularly liked the succinct but very clear description of the piece's overall architecture:

It consists of four movements that seem to be sprinting through the history of musical forms. The study trip begins with a chromatic fugue, whose even-numbered entries open out in rising fifths from the initial A, while the odd-numbered entries descend by fifths, a pattern then reverse with the theme inverted (and from the entrance of the celesta, mirrored) until the music concludes in unison on the concluding A. Taking a step forward, historically speaking (from Baroque to Classical), the second movement represents a sonata form. Next comes an adagio in Bartok's favoured, strictly symmetrical arch form, and finally, a Rondo-like finale which fuses the elements already introduced in a new language, with a contribution from Bartok's folk music research.

Bartok - Dance Suite

Onward to Bartok's Dance Suite (1923), one of his most engaging and accessible works. This collection of orchestral pseudo-folk dances is a longtime favourite of mine. I used to listen to Solti's recording with the Chicago SO (my father has it in his collection) but I have a copy on CD of his earlier recording (1965) with the London Symphony Orchestra. It's a beautifully crafted, superbly paced performance and also the recording is in a class of its own: dynamic, spacious, richly detailed and with a very attractive and subtle graininess that suits the music very well. I would almost say it sounds 'analog'. CDs don't come any better than this. Decca engineer on duty was the resourceful Kenneth Wilkinson. It was he who in the 1950s developed the Decca tree spaced microphone array for stereophonic recordings. Wilkinson also discovered Walthamstow City Hall as a recording venue. But the Dance Suite was taped at his favourite location, Kingsway Hall. I have never realised that one of the best recording locations in the world does not exist anymore. It has been demolished to make space for a hotel. There's a very informative and sympathetic account of Wilkinson's way of working on Wikipedia.

I also listened to Fricsay's mono 1953 recording with the RIAS Berlin orchestra. It's no match for the Solti, partly on account of the sound quality, of course. Furthermore, the Suite shares an LP side with the last movement of the Second Violin Concerto. The grooves are so narrowly spaced that the needle jumps out at very loud passages. Qua interpretation I think Fricsay only has the edge in the Molto Tranquillo. Very strange is his lumbering tempo in the ensuing Comodo. On the whole I vastly prefer the Solti which is a classic.

Finally I put on the piano version of the suite, played by Zoltan Kocsis. Whatever the qualities of the piano playing, it's very difficult to listen to it without hearing the colourful orchestral version in parallel.

Bartok - Music for S, P and C/Mahler - Adagio, Symphony nr. 10

Listened to Ferenc Fricsay's reading of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, on LP (dating from 1954). Although there is much to admire, it will likely not become my favourite recording. It is mono, which is a distinct disadvantage in a piece where the string orchestra is divided into two antiphonal groups. The orchestra is set in a rather hollow acoustic, which drowns a lot of the percussion details. The timps sound unattractively muffled. But I found much to enjoy in the string playing, despite the RIAS Berlin orchestra likely not having been a top ensemble. But maybe it's just that, and the fact that in those times Bartok's music will not have been as thoroughly absorbed in players' collective memories as it is today, which put players on edge in this recording.

Anyway I picked something up from this recording that didn't strike me from listening to any of the other versions. Suddenly, towards the end of the first movement, when the fugue subject plays softly over its inversion, the oscillating strings reminded me of Mahler's Tenth Symphony. More particularly, the hesitant passage in the strings right before the climatic dissonant chord in the Adagio's coda came to mind. So, I put on Ormandy's early recording of the Deryck Cooke performing version (taped in November 1967 at the occasion of the US premiere). It is a splendid reading with the Philadelphians in Olympian form. And indeed, from the very beginning the stark chromaticism of the movement's first theme, presented by the violas, sotto voce, reveals the kinship with Bartok's piece. Another thing that strikes in both compositions is the constantly changing meter.  Furthermore, there may be an harmonic relationship as well. The opening Andante of Bartok's Music is anchored in the tonic of A, on which the movement begins and ends. This tonality is also pivotal in the Adagio. Jörg Rothmann writes in the Cambridge Companion to Mahler (p. 154) about the climatic passage at the end of the symphony's first movement: "It is also interesting that the starting point from which all the tension of the ensuing sonority grows is an unaccompanied A, two above the middle C, in the first violins. The chord is built up in four stages with triads below and above, first forte, then fortissimo. The initial pitch, A, is then continued alone in the trumpets after the nine-note chord. The final condensed combination of the unaccompanied A and the abrupt tutti repetition of the nine-note chord suggests that the choice of this pitch, held for then bars in all, is to be understood symbolically as the initial, and only 'playable', letter of the name 'Alma'."  Of course, I may be completely mistaken in looking for these correspondences and they are likely completely anecdotal, but it keeps one involved anyway.

Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta

The renewed engagement with the music of Bartok continues to inspire. Today I listened a couple of times to one of his acknowledged masterpieces. First there was a 1968 LP recording by Pierre Boulez with the BBC Symphony Orchestra on CBS. It's a characteristically objective and restrained reading and I wished the Allegro movements would have had a little more fire. The vinyl was also not in top shape. Very worthwhile, however, are the cover notes by Boulez himself. His discussion of the Music and of Bartok's significance in our recent musical history is illuminating.

Then came what is considered a reference recording, with the Chicago SO under Fritz Reiner. Indeed a splendid Mercury Living Stereo recording which strikes just the right balance between at times frosty introspection and fiery engagement.

Karajan's 1970 recording struck me as less successful. I only listened to the finale but the orchestra seemed to be out of its comfort zone. Karajan presses on relentlessly in this Allegro Molto and seems to forget to let the music breath. The recording in the Grünewaldkirche in Berlin (produced by Walter Legge) is a pretty muddy affair too.

Adam Fischer with the Hungarian State SO taped Bartok's orchestral output in the Haydn-room of the Esterhazy palace. The recording sounds impossibly cavernous. Really unpalatable. Fischer's reading is very loosely woven too. I didn't listen it to the end.

I vividly remember hearing a live performance of this piece by Ivan Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra at the Concertgebouw in Brugge. I think it is worthwhile to seek out the recording he made two decades ago on the Philips label (out of the catalogue, it seems).

The listening was greatly aided by Boulez' analysis as well as by a short, rather technical but informative essay by Malcolm Gillies in The Bartok Companion (Faber & Faber, 1993). One cannot be but impressed by the lucidity but also the naturalness of the conception, by the diversity of 'issues' and tensions that Bartok is able to bring together in a coherent musical structure and the economy of means with which he resolves these problems.

Crumb - Makrokosmos III and IV

From Bartok's Mikrokosmos to George Crumb's Makrokosmos is another intriguing step. I got to know Crumb via his orchestral masterpiece A Haunted Landscape many years ago. I have also a few Naxos CDs with chamber works, the Kronos Quartet's recording of Black Angels, and his complete output for piano. The latter is an intriguing release on 3 CDs issued by an obscure label (Audiophile) and played by an equally elusive Slovenian pianist Bojan Gorisek. The recording and artistic merits of the set are, however, first rate. And this is no mean feat given the extraordinary demands imposed on the artist who has to master the inside of the piano as well as the keyboard.

Crumb's music is difficult to categorise.  I don't quite know anything like it. Maybe a composer like Alexander Knaifel explores similar soundscapes? Thematic development, melody, rhythm and tempo play subordinate roles in this kind of music. It's all about exploring the most exotic sonorous textures and harmonic spaces. Despite these limitations Crumb is able to sustain an interesting (at times outrageous) musical process over longer stretches of time. Despite its often ritualistic character there's nothing particularly new agey or minimalist about it. I find the music refreshingly vigorous and, despite the exoticism, unostentatious. Crumb himself points to Bartok, Debussy, Mahler and Ives as his most influential predecessors. There's a rather funny interview with the remarkably youthful composer here.

Makrokosmos III (Music for a Summer Evening) is, in fact, a chamber work for two pianos and added percussion. Makrokosmos IV (Celestial Mechanics - Cosmic Dances for amplified piano four hands). It is, however, a stretch to link these works back to Bartok's didactic catalogue of piano works.

Mongolian folk songs

This morning as I was running through the sunlit forest I momentarily hit a pocket of warm air and with it came a smell that I associated immediately with the sunburnt steppes of Mongolia. Before my mind's eye emerged the view I saw from the air 7 or 8 years back when I flew over this vast emptiness for the first time (altogether I visited the country four times). Then the unruly shantytowns of Ulaanbataar, the dust clouds trailing the vehicles as they make their way through this endlessness.

I remembered having a photo book that came with a CD containing impromptu recordings of Mongolian folk songs. So tonight I listened to this modest audio testimony of simple folk singing their music. I tried to imagine how Bartok spent a large part of his life collecting, transcribing and analysing this sort of material and distilling from it the building blocks for a highly refined musical language that fused the East and the West.

Bartok - Piano Music

The last couple of days I spent with piano music by Bela Bartok. In a way it seems natural to transition from Kodaly to Bartok who were major, contemporaneous figures in Hungarian musical life, and beyond. Both spent a considerable share of their time on ethnomusicological pursuits. Personally they were close too, Kodaly being the only one whose advice Bartok regularly took in compositional matters. Nevertheless, despite this close association I find their music to inhabit quite different worlds with Bartok offering formally, harmonically and texturally an altogether tougher, colder and more sophisticated musical universe which consequently asks for a greater commitment from the listener.

I have surprisingly little piano music of Bartok in my collection. There is a recently acquired Philips LP with the young Stephen Bishop (in 1969) playing Book VI from Mikrokosmos, the suite Out of Doors and the miniature Sonatine. And then I have one CD with Volume I from the complete traversal by Zoltan Kocsis. This contains the 14 Bagatelles, a collection of Hungarian and Romanian dances, two Elegies and also the Sonatina.

Interestingly this small collection draws from different periods in Bartok's creative life, giving a good idea of his stylistic evolution. The 14 Bagatelles, Op. 6 come first. They were composed in 1908 as a first attempt to integrate his encounter with Eastern European folk music and with the work of Debussy. I find it a very rewarding work - substantial, varied, harmonically adventurous and offering that peculiar mixture of folksiness and abstraction which to my mind seems to have largely eluded Kodaly (making an exception, perhaps, for his solo cello sonata).

Out of Doors stems from the 'piano year' 1926 and shows Bartok at his most expressionistic. The two outer movements - With Drums and Pipes and The Chase - are violently percussive, stunning compositions. There is also a very typical, haunting night music which evokes roughly contemporaneous avant garde experiments of Henry Cowell. I listened to Cowell's Aeolian Harp and Bartok's Night Music in immediate succession and with different technical means they indeed invoke similar sound worlds.

The later books of Mikrokosmos date from the 1930s and offer a purer, more technical and abstract fusion of Eastern and Western elements (Bach's counterpoint, Beethoven's progressive form and Debussy's harmony).

Both recordings offer very satisfying listening experiences, although I must say the Kocsis is in a class of its own, both as an interpretation as a recording. The latter is exceptionally rich and lifelike (taped in the Friedrich Ebert Hall in Hamburg by Kees de Visser). Kocsis' interpretations seems to have something inevitable striking the right balance between a fiery, masculine kind of virtuosity, and a cool detachment. Meanwhile I ordered the 8-CD bargain box with Kocsis' Bartok recordings.

Kodaly - Solo Cello Sonata

I remembered buying a CD last year with a mixed program of solo cello works, played by Tatiana Vassilieva (Accord 476 7191). One of them is the Kodaly Sonata, op. 8. A good opportunity to listen to it in the wake of my survey of orchestral works as I didn't know the music nor had ever really heard about the soloist.

I knew its reputation as an ineluctable monument in the solo cello literature but never really sat down to listen to it.  I'm happy to acknowledge that the sonata is an impressive work. It's likely the best thing I have heard by Kodaly up to this point. Although it's a relatively early work, dating from 1915,  what strikes is the towering maturity and confidence that speaks from it. It's a long work, over half an hour long, that meshes audacious bravura and dazzling virtuosity with a sober, cohesive musical argument. It has a certain abstract quality in its limited tonal and textural bandwith, the terseness of the musical material and the long, pondering improvisatory stretches. But this is nicely counterbalanced by a mellifluous harmonic language, stretches of infectuous declamatory or peasant rhythms and stunning instrumental pyrotechnics.

Vassilieva plays it very convincingly, it seems to me, with a solid grasp of the musical structure. She modulates confidently between the different emotional registers, never putting herself too much in the spotlight.  I don't find the recording ideal (Temple du Bon Secours, Paris) as it puts the soloist in a somewhat too resonant acoustic.

I know Janos Starker has been a widely admired champion of the piece and I will certainly seek out a recording of his (there are three), either on vinyl or CD. There is a Youtube video of Vassilieva's performance of the piece, but I must say that, impressive as the video is, she sounds more restrained and convincing on CD. Also worthwhile is a video of Starker's rendering of the third movement at the occasion of a Tokyo concert