Hartmann - Concerto Funèbre

Yesterday I listened for the first time to another Hartmann composition: the Concerto Funèbre for violin and orchestra. First the version by Poppen and Isabelle Faust on ECM, and then a recording with Spivakov as a soloist accompanied by Conlon's Gürzenich Orchestra. It's early days but, wow!, I was immediately gripped by this very bleak and moody work. At least in the ECM recording. Faust and Poppen make a brilliant case for what must be one of the most impressive violin concertos from the last century. What a strange mix of tradition and novelty! What strange panoramas unfold before the listener's eye! The ECM cover image wonderfully captures this sense of mystery. As far as I can tell, the Capriccio recording is much less successful. Conlon and Spivakov don't seem to have a clue. They wander aimlessly around, squeezing every drop of mournful sentimentality from the score. As a result this wonderful concerto is reduced to salon music. Faust's rapturous and steely rendition of the solo part is of an altogether different world. I hanker for more. To be continued.

Hartmann - Symfonie nr. 4

In the last couple of weeks I have collected a number of different versions of Hartmann's Fourth Symphony and as a result I have gone through it maybe as often as 15 times. And still I do not have the feeling of having grasped this work. Although I haven't heard anything else by Hartmann up to this point, his music seems to share this elusive quality with Petrassi's Concertos, which are also very difficult to pin down. But there is no doubt that both are major discoveries for me that will keep me busy for a long while.

Judging from the different readings I have heard, it seems Hartmann's Fourth is not only difficult for listeners but also for conductors to get a hold on. One senses that quite intuitively. The overall shape of the work remains nebulous in all but the most successful readings. The caesura between the second and third movement (the latter having been composed to it after the war) eludes most of the interpreters I have heard. Despite these formal shortcomings it remains a very compelling work, uncompromising, deeply felt, written in an idiosyncratic language and full of remarkable inventions.

The recordings that I have listened to are: Bamberger SO/Ingo Metzmacher (EMI), Gürzenich Orchestra/Conlon (Capriccio), Bavarian Radio SO/Kubelik (live radio tape, Wergo, both CD and LP), and Münchener Kammerorchester/Poppen (ECM). There is also a DGG LP with Kubelik and the same orchestra but a different recording. I've only heard that cursorily. It's now being cleaned on the KM.

All of these recording have their merits. I don't think there is any that deserves to be binned. But clearly these are all different interpretations. Comparative timings reveal part of the story:

• Metzmacher: 14'54"/10'40"/7'22"
• Conlon: 16'27"/10'02"/7'59"
• Kubelik: 14'32"/9'40"/7'29"
• Poppen: 15'38/8'32"/7'45"

In an earlier post I remarked that I found the differences in tempo between movements in the Metzmacher reading less stark than the indications might lead us to expect (lento - allegro - adagio).  Poppen takes a very different view,  with a deliberately paced introductory movement and a very fast Allegro. I think both approaches can work, but one cannot escape the impression that Metzmacher's take at times seems a little sedate and longish and that Poppen's tempo is a little breathless. Also, I don't like how the latter seems to slightly and intentionally blur the contours of transitions in tempo and dynamics. In both interpretations it is difficult to adjust to the final slow movement and one feels there is a lack of continuity in the overall architecture. But both recordings have also plenty of nice things to offer. Once more the ECM shines because of an uncommonly vivid and translucent sound.

Conlon is consistent in the slowness of his reading. The first movement is delivered as a genuine threnody. The fast middle movement is a little ponderous. The finale does work better here, but at a cost of some excitement. The whole thing tends to get a slightly saccharine taste by the end. A very good point for the Conlon, however, is the surprisingly accomplished playing of the Gürzenich Orchestra and the excellent, very rich recording.

The most accomplished reading here is, it seems to me, the Kubelik. I feel he has cracked the code of this ambiguous work. In his hands it appears as a truly symphonic, tightly woven musical process. Ulrich Dibelius makes a case in a lengthy essay accompanying the Wergo LP set for the essentially symphonic character of Hartmann's oeuvre, and he singles out the Fourth as emblematic. I think this is somewhat of a stretch. The symphonic nature of this work is revealed only in the most capable and empathic hands. Kubelik must have worked hard on this symphony. In the first movement his timing coheres with Metzmacher's but his approach is much more plastic and imaginative, letting the slow sections breathe and baring his teeth in the fast music. The Allegro is truly brutal and bitter, but more poised than in the ECM recording. And he extrapolates this rather ascerbic take in the concluding Adagio in the most satisfying way. Kubelik eschews the comfortable and lush romanticism of the Conlon and Metzmacher readings. Instead we have a harsher and more expressionistic view which likely points ahead at Hartmann's famous Sixth Symphony. I must say that the playing of the Bavarian Radio SO does not show the polish of the orchestras on the more recent recordings. The sound quality is surprisingly good, given that we are dealing with live radio tapes of unknown date. However, a side by side comparison reveals that the vinyl does sound better than the CD, even with the 32 minute work confined to one LP side. The latter suffers from a rather closed sound with a glassy upper edge, not untypical for CD transfers.

Anyway it was great to take a deep dive into this work. Time to move on now.

Comment - Bartok's Legacy timeline

I've added a Dipity-timeline to the blog which is going to retrace my exploration of Bartok and the various tracks that veer away from this central line of inquiry. So I will include works of other composers that bear a relationship - in spirit or musically - with Bartok's oeuvre. The timeline is cross-referenced with the blog and with relevant Youtube videos. I expect that this temporal perspective will enrich my understanding of Bartok's pivotal position in 20th century musical history.

Bartok - String Quartet nr. 3

I've been tiptoeing for a while around Bartok's quartets. Supposedly they count as the pinnacle of his impressive oeuvre. And I am not very familiar with them. So there was some apprehension in attacking this musical Everest. But the happy discovery of the Maconchy quartets made it somewhat easier to shunt to the Bartok series.

Just as Maconchy's Third Quartet (1938) is a rather short work (even taking into account that none in her series extends beyond 20 minutes), Bartok's Third (1927) is a dense and concise statement. Well, talking about density: compared to the Bartok quartet, Maconchy's sounds positively rhapsodic! Despite its short duration Bartok's quartet is a musical splinterbomb that explodes with a dizzying fury of ideas. It very much shares the charged energy and kaleidoscopic fabric of the First Pianoconcerto which immediately precedes it (1926). Just as in the concerto, Bartok works with ultra-reduced musical cells as the basis for a dense process of thematic expansion and variation. As a result it sounds defiantly strident and modernist.

I listened to various interpretations in quick succession. First the recent recording with the Belcea Quartet. This is a very gripping interpretation, bold and very colourful and sounding as if the musicians are completely on top of their game. Then the New Budapest Quartet on Hyperion. A big disappointment. Small wonder these guys have never been really able to convince me of the greatness of these works. The performance is underpowered, uneven and hesitant, hinting only at the shockwaves that this music is able to generate. I have friends who swear by the readings of the Vegh Quartet. I have their 1970s recordings and indeed they are very good. Earthy and muscular but not quite as virtuosic as the Belcea. But I prefer them to the Juilliard Quartet on Sony whose reading is rather poised and urbane but lacks some of the Vegh's and Belcea's grit. The Keller Quartet on Warner then. Very persuasive reading. Though the reading sounds slightly more lyrical and relaxed than the Vegh and Belcea, there is certainly no lack of commitment and focus. Pity the recording is a little lacklustre. So, as far as I can tell the Belcea come out on top. But I am very happy to have the Vegh and Keller interpretations too. I will certainly return to the Belcea recording in the next couple of days. I am looking into the Hungarian and Hagen Quartet too (both available as budget re-issues). I will steer free of the Emerson and Takacs, which I suspect to be too much in-your-face.

The XX

This one has seen serious rotation on the car stereo ever since I bought it early last summer. The XX is a 4-piece freshman South-London band and this was their first CD (2009). Self-produced. Recorded in a garage, often at night. For me it's perfect pop music: easy to listen to, unpretentious but also honestly evocative, without gimmicks. The album has a very distintive atmosphere, start to finish. Which is why quite a few people find it dull. But it isn't. It is very intimate, languorous, teasingly sexy, disarmingly youthful. Almost all tracks revolve around a whispery dialogue between a nubile Romy Croft and the grainy voice of Oliver Sim, supported by a simple, distinctive beat (mid-tempo at most) and subtle synths. An Amazon reviewer spoke of 'a charmingly laconic ambience. There is a total absence of frenzy. In fact nothing much happens throughout in the nicest possible way.' I couldn't have said it better. A nice album, indeed. 

Maconchy - String Quartet nr. 3

Another fantastic discovery, it seems! Yesterday I received an order from Amazon.co.uk including a complete set of Elizabeth Maconchy's string quartets. I had never heard a note of this composer. But her name was not unfamiliar. I must have come across it when I was still a regular reader of Gramophone magazine. Anyway, during my Bartok explorations I happened to follow an internet trail that in passing alerted me to the quality of these quartets. They simmered a little bit on my wish list. But as the set is available for the modest sum of 10 pounds, there was little point in waiting. As they arrived I wanted to sample a short work and chose the one-movement Third Quartet (1938). It's barely ten minutes long, but from the first bars onward - as it throws that soaring, richly harmonized theme in your face - I was captivated. What a great piece of music! It sounds astonishingly self-assured and mature (Maconchy was only 31 when she wrote it), combining unabashed lyricism with a sinewy kind of counterpoint. Likely it does not have the gravitas of late Beethoven and Shostakovich or the expressive range of mature Bartok. But despite its brief timespan it is an eminently satisfying listening experience.What it reminded me - qua atmosphere - perhaps most of is that wonderful disc by the Balanescu Quartet dedicated to Gavin Bryars' two string quartets (Argo, still available via Amazon third party sellers). But the Maconchy piece likely compares favourably in terms of discipline and organisation of the musical material.

I really want to get back to listening Bartok and I will. But discoveries such as the Petrassi Concertos, the Hartmann symphonies and the Maconchy quartets keep me in an orbit some distance away. But I'm certainly not complaining ...

Tavener - Ypakoë/Pratirupa

I have just returned from a short trip to India. It was my first visit to the country. Whilst travelling I rarely venture into demanding repertoire. Usually there's hardly time too as the working days are long and listening in transit - in a noisy plane environment, usually - is hardly uplifting. So I basically listened and re-listened to just two piano pieces by John Tavener that seemed to mesh with the rather exotic circumstances in which I found myself. It took me a while to warm to Tavener's music as I tended to catalogue him with the smooth, spiritual new age crowd - including Pärt and Gorecki - that a number of years ago started to blot out the merits of a more serious musical avant garde in the minds of the average classical music enthusiast. And probably that is also where he belongs. But just as Gorecki's oeuvre offers plenty of compelling stuff beyond the Symphony of Sorrows (his Lerchenmusik, his First Quartet) so Tavener merits an exploration that goes a little further than his Protecting Veil. The Naxos recording of his piano music by Ralph van Raat is a rewarding disc. I find the two longer, later pieces, Ypakoë (1997) and Pratirupa (2003) the most interesting.

Ypakoë allegedly means "to be obedient", "to hear", "to respond" in Greek. An interesting cluster of significances that seems to capture the experience of active listening quite well. Ypakoë is also a traditional hymn chanted in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy. The piece comes across as a keyboard suite consisting of different sections (not cued on the Naxos disc). It opens with a festive preludium, majestic bells pealing, not uncommon in Tavener's music. An understated, attractive 2-part invention follows, emulating a baroque idiom. This mood is extrapolated in the next section, a very simple and sombre chorale melody. No counterpoint involved at all. A short, celebratory peroration soon makes way for the chorale again.  We're halfway and the music moves in familiar Tavener territory with another subdued, hymnic theme, accompanied by rapid, ceremonial figurations in the right hand. Maybe this is the sound of the Greek kanokaki where Van Raat refers in his liner notes? The chorale returns again, but only briefly, almost as a motto theme. Textures continue to thin out in a mysterious grave, pppp. A beautiful, nocturnal meditation that gives way to a rousing finale that connects back to the pealing bells of the beginning.

An Amazon reviewer chastised Van Raat for playing Ypakoë much too fast. It is indeed the case that the dedicatee of the piece, the Venezuelan pianist Elena Riu recorded a much slower version, taking over 20 minutes, on a Linn Records disc (only available for download). Van Raat takes just over 13 minutes. However, comparing the two recordings I must say I side with the interpretation of the Dutch pianist. Tavener may wish the music to attune us to the divine will, but in her desire for spiritual communion Riu tries to spin rather too much yarn from little wool. As a result, the music sounds sentimental and contrived. In Van Raat's hands the piece continues to breath and its relative briskness lends it a beguiling freshness.

The other piece, Pratirupa, takes almost a full half hour. I suppose one has to be in the right frame of mind to stay focused on what ultimately seems to be relatively modest musical material. It's an extended meditation that revolves around three basic components: a gentle, nocturnal fantasy that forms the backbone of the piece, a lullaby that returns as a motto theme and, finally, a set of periodic eruptions of a Messiaen-like density and ferocity.

All in all I found this an apposite musical foil for a short journey in an unknown and exotic territory.