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| Star Ratings Key * Poor ** Fair *** Good **** Excellent ***** Extraordinary | ||
 Shostakovich:
Symphonies Nos. 5 and 9. Kirov Orchestra, Valery Gergiev, conductor.
Andrew Cornall, producer; Vladimir Ryabenko, Sergei Parfenov,
engineers. Philips B0002487. Music: *** 1/2 Sound: *** 1/2 |
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 Schnittke:
Symphony No. 6; Concerto grosso No. 2. Russian State Symphony,
Valeri Polyansky, conductor. Polyansky, producer; Igor Veprintsev,
engineer. Chandos 10180. Music: **** 1/2 Sound: **** |
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| Shostakovich’s
popular Fifth Symphony is controversial: triumphant celebration
of “Soviet man” or grim portrait of Russia under
the Soviets? It began life in controversy too; Shostakovich,
condemned by Stalin for his “decadent” opera, Lady
Macbeth of Mtsensk, saved his skin with this apparently
conformist work, now read as bitterly anti-Stalinist. Either
way, it’s a great symphony. Gergiev often seems a better self-publicist than conductor, but he’s on good behavior here. The opening movements go well, and if the beginning could have more tension, the first  movement’s
march-like tread, desolate downward runs, and pealing threatening
brass of the climax leave you shaken. But he almost turns the
wrenching, long-lined plaintive Largo at the heart of the work
into a series of generic Romantic gestures, without the full
measure of variety and sustained pressure others bring to it.
Gergiev’s slower than usual in the last movement, but
still packs plenty of punch. The Ninth, which the composer called
“a merry little piece,” goes its charming Haydnesque
way with high-spirited wit, only a too-slow first movement raising
doubts. Not ideal, but a good coupling that should satisfy.The two works by Alfred Schnittke show numerous influences and make many allusions, but also bear his personal stamp, while affirming his reputation as Shostakovich’s heir as a musical poet of angst. The Sixth is a late work, from 1992, by which time the composer was seriously ill. The opening shocks: a low bass rumble that grows from pianissimo to triple forte as winds, brass, and full strings enter and make their way through the 12 notes of the chromatic scale in piled-up chords. Textures are spare. Like much of Schnittke’s music, there’s a sense of dislocation as phrases start but don’t go where you expect them to. It’s as if the music stutters and then veers off in another direction. Contrasts are strong; dynamics range from barely audible to piercingly frantic. The grim, questioning Adagio leads directly to a last movement whose portentous opening is followed by alternating lyrical passages squelched by brass outcries, the strings ultimately fading into silence. The Concerto grosso dating from a decade earlier is also powerful, as Schnittke effortlessly transforms a staple Baroque form into something both imitative and aggressively modernist. Throughout, passages that sound like a standard 18th Century concerto disintegrate into chaos. The second movement’s delicate interplay between the soloists and a walking bass line metamorphoses into a menacing array of percussion, ending with a slithering timpani glissando. In the finale, there’s an Ivesian riot of conflicting themes and rhythms resolving into a long flute motif picked up by the soloists, the calm after a storm. Superb performances by Polyansky, his band, and, in the Concerto grosso, violinist Tatiana Grindenko and cellist Alexander Ivashkin. Chandos’ engineering is first-rate, capturing the wide dynamic range of the music and conveying it with textural weight and brilliance. Philips’ rendering of Gergiev’s Shostakovich is admirably clear, but with a hint of artificiality. Like other Gergiev/Kirov recordings, the orchestra doesn’t sound like the same ensemble I’ve heard live. There’s a glossiness, as if multi-miking and post-production manipulations turned a decent orchestra into an international world-beater. Dan Davis Further Listening: Shostakovich: Symphonies 5 and 9 (Bernstein); Schnittke: Symphony No. 8 (Polyansky) |
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 Kletzki:
Symphony No. 3. Flute Concertino. Sharon Bezaly, flute; Norrköping
Symphony, Thomas Sanderling, conductor. Robert Suff, producer;
Thore Brinkmann, engineer. BIS 1399. Music: *** Sound: *** 1/2 |
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 Dances
of Our Time. Stucky: Dream Waltzes. Chen: Duo Ye.
Márquez: Dance No. 2. MacCombie: Chelsea Tango. Kilar:
Krzesany. Singapore Symphony, Lan Shui, conductor.
Robert Suff, producer; Jens Braun, engineer. BIS 1192. Music: *** 1/2 Sound: **** 1/2 |
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| It’s the independent
labels (rather than giant conglomerates like Sony or Universal)
that nowadays issue most of the interesting classical music
repertoire on compact disc, and BIS is among the most enterprising
and adventurous of this hardy breed. Two new releases display
the company’s range and expertise. First is the Third
Symphony and Flute Concertino of Paul Kletzki (1900-1973) who
until now most of us thought was “only” a great
conductor. In fact this protégé of Furtwängler,
like his mentor, wrote quite a bit of music. Both works here
were composed just as World War II began, and the Symphony certainly
sounds like it was colored by the unfolding catastrophe. This
is a big, four-movement post-Mahlerian structure that blends
weighty Germanic seriousness of purpose with a lithe punchiness
akin to Roussel and a polychromatic harmonic thickening that
recalls Honegger. Allegros are knotty, muscular, and tumultuous.
The brooding 12-minute adagio, with its dense, glowering vertical
sonorities and implied funereal tread, makes the deepest impression,
dark and angst-ridden enough to have elicited a wan smile of
approval from Alban Berg himself. Kletzki’s 17-minute Flute Concertino, though exactly contemporary with his Symphony, presents a startling contrast. It’s far more Gallic, delicate, intricate, and elusive, and though not quite decorative is definitely much more sensuous and feminine, sounding a bit like pixilated Ibert in its more sylvan episodes. The Norrköping Symphony under Thomas Sanderling plays both works with passion and fine musicianship, though the ensemble is outshone in the Concertino by the gorgeous playing of Sharon Bezaly, one of the best flutists on the concert stage today. Her silvery pure tone and liquid legato are nicely captured by BIS’ tonmeister, if a bit spotlighted. The more naturally balanced Symphony has lots of detail, air, and oomph. But it’s BIS’ Dances of Our Time that really qualifies as an audiophile spectacular. The five goodly-sized (each ten or fifteen minutes long) orchestral dances on this anthology are flamboyant showpieces, and the Singapore Symphony, a flat-out world-class ensemble that plays with thrilling bravura and ravishing tonal allure, is captured in stunning sonics that boast a huge soundstage, tremendous dynamic range, finely resolved detail, and an uncanny immediacy that must owe something to the wonderful acoustics of Singapore’s Victoria Concert Hall. A better program of easily approachable newish music (all of it written in the past two or three decades) to show off the Singaporians and their hall would be hard to imagine. It begins with Steven Stucky’s Dream Waltzes, a half-whimsical, half-nostalgic stream-of-consciousness palimpsest of the Gilded Age that strings together distant fanfares, hallucinatory snippets, twitterings and dots of color, and partially-submerged Viennese tunelets snitched from various masters of the waltz that rise to the surface, aerate the mixture with their lilting buoyancy, then quickly fade away. The remaining items turn to exotic places instead of the past for inspiration. Yi Chen’s Duo Ye intersperses Rite-of-Springy primitivism with exquisitely ornamented quasi-pentatonic tunes culled from a visit to a remote village in southeastern China. With Arturo Márquez’s Dance No. 2, we get a foot-tapping and melodically ingratiating dance suite that one can actually dance to—in fact it’s hard to resist doing so. Think Kurt Weill goes Latin. Even better is Bruce MacCombie’s slinky and seductive Chelsea Tango, niftily laced with billowy pulsations imported from minimalism and an edgy undercurrent of cinema-noir erotic menace. Finally there’s Wojciech Kilar’s Krzesany (no, I can neither pronounce the title nor tell you what it means). This is a wild and wooly rhapsody in the nationalist-schmaltz tradition of Liszt and Enesco that begins with a hymn-like evocation of misty Polish mountaintops looming up through the clouds followed by some bumptious and very earthy peasant dances. The hurtling-out-of-control-roller-coaster finale has to be heard to be believed. It rattled windows two houses down the alley. Mark Lehman Further listening: Furtwängler: Symphony No. 2 (Barenboim/Chicago); Skrowaczewski: Concerto for Orchestra (Skrowaczewski/Minnesota) |
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 Joseph
Calleja: Tenor Arias. Andrew Cornall, producer; Roberto
Brenner, engineer. Decca 02140. Music: **** Sound: **** |
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| The latest entry in
the Pavarotti succession sweepstakes is Joseph Calleja, a 26-year-old
lyric tenor from Malta, who’s rapidly progressed from
provincial opera houses to international competition prizewinner
to big-time roles in Munich and Vienna. Judgments about tomorrow’s
superstars are chancy at best; some highly touted contenders
haven’t withstood further exposure. But this Italian aria
collection accompanied by Riccardo Chailly suggests Calleja
may one day go all the way. His voice is a narrow, bright instrument, its shining top shown to splendid effect in arias such as “De’ miei bollenti spiriti” from La Traviata, where he also caresses phrases with a  tenderness
in vocal coloration not often heard from young tenors on the
make. He has an elegance to his style as well, bringing a welcome
delicacy to “La donna mobile” from Rigoletto,
and a despairing softness to the tomb scene of Donizetti’s
Lucia di Lammermoor that tells you he understands the
text and the style, as well as the vocal requirements of bel
canto. Indicative of that is his ability, again rather rare in a young singer, to put a “face” on each aria—that is, to embody the character and the situation so we don’t get the feeling of sameness that pervades too many aria collections. He also boasts, and often demonstrates here, command of a lustrous diminuendo, although occasionally a loud, high note sounds pressured. Calleja’s program is well-chosen, and plays to his strengths. Even the three verismo arias that close the disc are relatively well suited to his lighter voice (though the full roles from which they’re taken require beefier vocal equipment). Given how many promising lyric tenors have ruined their careers by leaping into inappropriate roles, one can only hope Calleja resists the temptation. Expert accompaniments add to the disc’s success, once again proving that Chailly is as good as any Italian opera conductor on the scene. Decca’s engineering endows the voice with presence amply surrounded by air. Details, like the chugging wind figurations in Macduff’s aria from Verdi’s Macbeth, are clearly heard, and even the dying reverberations of a big cymbal crash in “Fra poco” from Lucia are audible through the chorus and orchestra. DD Further listening: Rolando Villazon: Italian Tenor Arias; Luciano Pavarotti: Greatest Hits |
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 Weill:
The Seven Deadly Sins. Songs. Marianne Faithfull, voice.
Hudson Shad. Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dennis Russell
Davies, conductor. Malgorzala Kragora and Wolfgang Sturm, producers;
Anton Reininger and Kurt Kindl, engineers. RCA 82876-60872.
Music: **** 1/2 Sound: *** |
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| There is often good
reason to wonder about the motives behind the involvement of
pop artists in classical projects, as commercial considerations
can trump aesthetic ones. Not so here. Marianne Faithfull’s
contribution is credited simply as “voice”—to
even call her an alto would be pushing it, as she renders The
Seven Deadly Sins a full octave lower than written. But
Faithfull’s world-weary vocal texture and knowing delivery,
at once tenderly sympathetic and cruelly cynical, are perfect
for telling the story of Anna, who crisscrosses early 20th Century
America as a dancer to pay for a new family home back in rural
Louisiana. Along the way, Anna must confront the range of human
weaknesses and temptations. It’s clear that Kurt Weill
and his lyricist, Bertoldt Brecht—some feel this was their
most successful collaboration—don’t see the seven
transgressions as merely human foibles but as potentially self-obliterating
impulses for the protagonist, and symptomatic of a diseased
society as well. This is a compelling psychological and political
journey we go on with Anna, the music incorporating popular
forms of the time—foxtrot, shimmy, waltz, etc. The original
was in German, of course, but the English version performed
here, created by no less than W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman,
is smoothly idiomatic. The recording was first released in 1998 and is now reissued in RCA’s new mid-priced “Classic Library” series, which will include 50 CDs by the end of 2004—Handel to Messiaen, and all from top-notch artists of the past five decades. Dennis Russell Davies and the Vienna orchestra provide vividly incisive accompaniment; the male quartet, featuring members of the Hudson Shad ensemble, is superb. The CD is filled out with four well-known Brecht/Weill songs, including “The Ballade of Sexual Dependency” from The Threepenny Opera and “Bilbao Song” from Happy End. Faithfull’s vocal is a little on the “hot” side in the manner of a pop recording, and the spatial presentation may be somewhat flat. But the overall presentation is satisfyingly immediate, with a solid low end. Andrew Quint Further listening: Teresa Stratas: The Unknown Kurt Weill; Ute Lemper: Berlin Cabaret Songs |
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| I have the dubious distinction
of dutifully seeing all these films, and can safely say that,
with the exception of Troy, the music works well in
each of them. These scores reinforce the curious fact that brainless
popcorn films are frequently the best vehicles for orchestral
film music. In the case of Van Helsing, Alan Silvestri has concocted a combination of Jaws, Le Sacre du printemps and Carmina burana with fortissimo pounding drums, rushing strings, staccato brass chords, and choral chants that are relentless, but do not numb the senses because of his formidable technique and use of a conventional orchestra. If you can make it to the final cue, Silvestri presents an expansive, lyrical theme right out of the Golden Age before returning to a brief presto coda. The exceptionally clean sound easily encompasses the extreme decibel levels with no harshness or strain. There has been a major controversy surrounding the music for Troy. Gabriel Yared’s score was summarily rejected about a month before the film’s release, reportedly following some negative comments from a small focus group at a test screening that heard an incomplete mix. Yared had worked on his critically acclaimed music for a year in close consultation with director Wolfgang Petersen. James Horner completed this replacement score in about two weeks. The fanfares and action music are actually pretty good, but it really doesn’t matter. Horner’s music will be forever associated with the ethnic wail that distractingly appears at virtually every key dramatic moment in the film. And just when you thought you were safe as the end credits roll, Josh Groban breaks out into the most ridiculous and inappropriately sappy song since Lord of the Rings. You have to wonder how anyone could possibly take Troy or its music seriously at moments like this. If it matters, the sound is dull and drenched in artificial reverb that badly detracts from its immediacy and impact. Harald Kloser has composed a haunting, understated orchestral score for The Day After Tomorrow. It opens with the customary solo female voice, but in this case the soloist effectively creates an aura of desolation. This is followed by an ineffably sad main theme played over soft percussion imitating a ticking clock. Kloser does not overuse the vocal or synthesizers, and a few loud percussive passages offer the necessary contrast. Still, the persistently lugubrious tone of the music will not reward repeated listening, unless you enjoy the densely layered orchestral sound nicely delineated by the engineer. There isn’t a whole lot of dynamic range, but the soft rumbling bass has tremendous warmth and depth. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a dazzling display of musical virtuosity. Its style ranges widely, including soaring romantic themes, an edgy cue reminiscent of the “Cantina Band” sequence from Star Wars, a delectably mischievous concert waltz, an original instruments group, and an ethereal choral passage that transcends the usual clichés. There is also a spooky song that is a sinister variation on “Hedwig’s Theme” in the manner of Berlioz’s idée fixe. Williams amazingly unifies this stylistically disparate material by building most of his new themes from “Hedwig’s Theme,” which has become the principal motif of the series. The score is transparently orchestrated in a chamber-like fashion. Shawn Murphy returns with a recording that is quite analytical, but maintains a true concert-hall presentation with an upfront perspective. Only the solo recorder is miked too closely. The Terminal further demonstrates Williams’ versatility. The music is a cross between Henry Mancini and Catch Me If You Can. There is a jaunty main theme, a simple non-pretentious love theme, and a touch of jazz, with prominent solo parts for clarinet (played brilliantly by Emily Bernstein), piano, and accordian. The score contains numerous stylistic niceties typical of Williams, but they have perhaps never been combined in such a charming, low-key package. The sound discretely spotlights the soloists, but doesn’t plaster them along the front of the soundstage as is customary with most overmiked soundtracks. Arthur B. Lintgen Further listening: Herrmann: Vertigo; Waxman: Objective Burma; Williams: The Fury (The Deluxe Edition) |
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 Bach:
The Art of Fugue. Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields,
Neville Marriner, conductor. Wilhelm Hellweg, original producer.
Hybrid multichannel. PentaTone 5186 140. Music: *** Sound: **** |
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| There is pretty compelling
evidence that The Art of Fugue actually was intended
for keyboard, but it’s still not considered sporting to
object to any instrumentation for the piece. Although
they are far from the first such group to undertake Bach’s
masterwork, the New Century Saxophone Quartet seems especially
intent on being taken seriously. The notes tell us that a decade
ago, the Juilliard Quartet’s Joel Krosnick urged them
to tackle this repertoire and the group was coached for several
weeks by the renowned baroque performance practice authority
and flutist Stephen Preston. The result is a stunning realization
of this compendium of contrapuntal technique. The four saxes—soprano,
alto, tenor, and baritone—come from the same manufacturer
and are beautifully matched in timbre, yet the Quartet avoids
textural homogeneity over the 78-minute program with carefully
graded dynamic shadings and well-judged articulation. The players
eschew vibrato, and hard attacks are avoided; intonation is
flawless. The musicians’ high level of musical insight
may be most evident in Contrapuncti 12 through 15, arranged
for four different sax duo combinations. Channel’s recording is sufficiently immediate to be very involving, and to ascertain that no nuance of harmony or counterpoint is missed, but extraneous sounds—clacking keys, spit on reeds—are kept to a minimum. The difference in size of the four instruments is quite apparent. Multichannel delivers the soft, not especially reverberant acoustic of a Dutch church, with the players arranged in a slight arc, just as they’re pictured inside the jewel box. Neville Marriner’s 1974 recording—the arrangement was produced by Marriner and Andrew Davis—employs members of the ASMF, five strings, and four double-reed woodwinds, plus keyboards. The forces involved change from movement to movement, ranging from solo organ or harpsichord to string quartet to “full orchestra.” That variation can make for greater interest if one listens all the way through, though the alterations in color, for some, may undermine the cumulative power of the succession of canons and fugues. Still, there’s a wonderful sense of lift to the pieces performed by the complete ensemble and the final unfinished quadruple fugue builds magnificently. Ironically, Marriner’s approach with traditional forces seems more Romantically inclined than the NCSQ version, which is executed with instruments that didn’t exist in Bach’s time, but there’s nothing at all stylistically inappropriate. This is one of the latest PentaTone RQR (Remastered Quadro Recordings) releases, derived from 1970s-vintage Philips quadraphonic tapes. The 4.0 multichannel is conservatively executed with a nicely dimensional presentation of the chamber ensemble. Instrumental tonalities are richly and warmly characterized, belying the recording’s analog origin—a virtue equally evident with the stereo DSD program. AQ Further listening: Bach: The Art of Fugue. (Davitt Moroney, harpsichord); Bach: The Art of Fugue. (Emerson Quartet) |
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 Grieg:
Piano Concerto. Symphonic Dances. In Autumn. Havard
Gimse, piano. Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Bjarte Engeset,
conductor. Tim Handley, producer and engineer. Naxos 6.110060
(Hybrid multichannel SACD) and 5.110060 (DVD-A). Music: ***
Sound: ** 1/2 (SACD), *** (DVD-A) |
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 Tchaikovsky:
Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 3. Konstantin Scherbakov, piano.
Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, Dmitry Yablonsky, conductor.
Lubov Doronina, producer; Dmitry Missailov and Alexander Karasev,
engineers. Naxos 6.110051 (Hybrid multichannel SACD) and Naxos
5.110051 (DVD-A). Music: ** Sound: ** (SACD), ** (DVD-A) |
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| In Issue 149, we compared
SACD and DVD-Audio versions of two pop recordings, Steely Dan’s
Gaucho and Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick
Road. Now there’s the opportunity to do the same
with classical fare. The enterprising Naxos label has started
issuing high-resolution discs of the same program in both formats
including these two, anchored by a pair of Top Ten piano concertos. Gimse’s reading of the Grieg Concerto is solidly competitive in what is, of course, a very crowded field. (Recordings from Earl Wild and Garrick Ohlsson remain top contenders.) The pianist renders this chestnut with warmth, subtlety, and gentle grace, though his touch is always firm and there’s plenty of power when called for. The middle movement is suitably lyrical, even if the majestic climax seems a bit underplayed. Engeset’s Symphonic Dances, a half hour of Grieg’s most luscious orchestral music, is colorful and evocative. The RSNO’s principal oboe deserves special praise for his solos in the charming Allegretto grazioso. The disc is filled out with a “Concert Overture,” In Autumn, an early work that was later revised—and like so much of the composer’s output, inspired by the natural world. Konstantin Scherbakov has prodigious chops, technically. He’s slated to record Leopold Godowsky’s complete piano music, which tells you all you need to know in that regard. While Scherbakov and his capable accompanying forces are always accurate and tasteful, the performance lacks expansiveness and dramatic sweep; it’s somehow reduced in scale and scope. The opening Allegro is without its characteristic monumentality while the slow movement is short on dreamlike fantasy, the Mendelssohnian midsection earthbound. I miss the slight hesitations others bring to the Finale’s first theme. The disc is filled out with a three-movement version of the Third Concerto, cobbled together from an Allegro brillante completed by Tchaikovsky and two movements from an abandoned symphony that were rewritten and orchestrated by the composer’s colleague Sergey Taneyev. Decidedly lesser stuff than Concerto No. 1, but worth hearing for fans of late-Romantic piano concertos. Both recordings were PCM jobs—the packages say 48kHz/24-bit, though my Esoteric DV-50 universal player reports that the Grieg is 44.1/24. Both DVD-As also carry DTS and Dolby Digital surround programs; the stereo high-resolution version is embedded in the MLP multichannel program. The multichannel on the Grieg delivers a mid-hall perspective with the solo instrument honestly scaled. Though the rear channels are sonically invisible, we get an excellent sense of the venue, Henry Wood Hall in Glasgow. The sound is warm and detailed, if a little dull; the DVD-A is slightly more open on top. The Tchaikovsky is less successful, sonically. The piano is too prominent in both the stereo and surround mixes; one feels as though he’s on the soloist’s lap with the multichannel. There’s some muddiness to the mid-bass, massed string sound isn’t the most appealing, and the soundstage is on the narrow side. In this instance, I hear no significant differences between the two formats. AQ Further listening: Grieg: Orchestral Music. (Ruud/Bergen) (SACD); Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1. (Lang Lang/Barenboim) (SACD) |
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Silvestri:
Van Helsing. Alan Silvestri, David Bifano, producers;
Dennis Sands, engineer. Decca 233112. 
Horner:
Troy. Simon Rhodes, James Horner, producers; Simon
Rhodes, engineer. Reprise 48798. 
Kloser:
The Day After Tomorrow. Armin Steiner, engineer.
Varese Sarabande 3020665722. 
Williams:
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. John Williams,
producer; Shawn Murphy, engineer. Atlantic 83711.
Williams:
The Terminal. John Williams, producer; Shawn Murphy,
engineer. Decca 292402. 
Bach:
The Art of Fugue. New Century Saxophone Quartet.
C. Jared Sacks, producer and engineer. Hybrid multichannel.
Channel Classics 20204. Advertisement
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