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| Earlier
this year, Deborah Voigt received a flood of attention from
well beyond the insular world of opera lovers. London’s
Royal Opera House unceremoniously dumped Voigt from a long-planned
staging of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos
because she was too heavy for the Little Black Dress the production
designer had in mind for her character—the title role,
no less. This disc appeared soon thereafter, as if to underscore
how spectacularly boneheaded Covent Garden’s decision
had been. It’s divided into Wagner and Strauss halves—Elisabeth,
Sieglinde, and Isolde; then Chrysothemis, Ariadne, The Empress,
and Salome. Those who have seen Voigt perform knew this already:
there’s nobody currently active who is better in this
repertoire. EMI undoubtedly called this release Obsessions to sell CDs—are these protagonists really any more “obsessed” than Tosca or Lucia?—but Voigt is theatrically convincing, and alert to the very different circumstances of each heroine. (Elisabeth, after all, in “Dich, teure Halle” from Act 2 of Tannhäuser, is singing of her affection for a room, while Salome is making love to a severed head.) We can hear how much Isolde has been transformed between her angry “Curse and Narration” and a radiant “Liebestod.” The Strauss excerpts are equally well-delineated, though the eighteen-minute final scene from Salome is particularly riveting—disturbing, creepy, terrifying, well beyond “obsessive” and into the realm of psychosis. Apart from her dramatic acuity, Voigt’s vocal instrument is pretty much unassailable from a technical standpoint. Lustrous and focused throughout its entire compass, it never hardens when the volume’s turned up, and possesses a supremely confident top that’s naturally connected to the rest of the range. This is a big voice, but a flexible one, as demonstrated by the Empress’s “Ist mein liebster dahin” from the opening act of Die Frau ohne Schatten. Sir Richard Armstrong and the Bavarian ensemble provide superb support—Wagner’s lush orchestral underpinnings and Strauss’ even lusher, denser ones. The recording captures well the character of Voigt’s voice as heard live and the orchestral contribution is gratifyingly detailed. The great Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson, whom Voigt sometimes brings to mind, was once asked about what was required to succeed in the most strenuous Wagnerian roles. She replied: “A comfortable pair of shoes.” Deborah Voigt, too, makes it sound that easy. Andrew Quint |
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In
the twenty-four poems that constitute Schubert’s Winterreise,
a young man, jilted by a girl he wanted to marry, sets out on
a wintry journey that eventually reveals in himself hopelessness
so deep and pervasive as to make him fear that even death will
not release him from his anguish. If this is the greatest of
all the Romantic song cycles, it’s because it more  perfectly
weds form and feeling, meaning and music than any other. As
Charles Rosen observes in The Romantic Generation,
“each song is a completely independent form, well-rounded
and finished,” but none is fully comprehensible except
in relationship to the others as they chart the young man’s
abject spiral from heartbreak to despair. The tragic effect
here depends not upon a literal death, but a psychic one. Emotionally
exhausted, psychologically devastated, homeless and helpless,
the young poet is left bereft of nearly all capacity to feel,
frozen in a kind of narcotized contemplation of an old organ-grinder,
grinding out a monotonous threnody as neighborhood dogs snap
at his feet.I was privileged to hear Matthias Goerne and Alfred Brendel perform Winterreise in Los Angeles’ Disney Hall this past March in an evening of—there’s no sense using a lesser word—transcendent music-making. There came a point in the second half during “The Inn”—a key song, the inn envisioned as a graveyard with no room for the young man—when the performers’ concentration was so focused I realized I was holding my breath for the song to end. I’ve never heard a greater range of poetic insight or drama, at once nuanced and intense, brought to this material than Goerne brings. His voice is a radiantly beautiful instrument: supple, exquisite, powerful, each as needed. Rosen again: Winterreise “is unsurpassed in the art of musical representation,” most of which is conveyed in the keyboard. Alfred Brendel, a master Schubertian, is the most probing and lyrical of pianists; together he and Goerne achieve unsurpassed unanimity of purpose and expression. The unobtrusively excellent sonics, taken from a pair of recitals in London’s Wigmore Hall in October 2003, serve the material. This recording captures a great musical event. Don’t wait for it to become a legend before giving yourself a chance to experience it. Paul Seydor |
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 Mozart:
The Marriage of Figaro. Soloists, Concerto Köln,
Collegium Vocale Ghent, René Jacobs, conductor. Richard
Lorber, Martin Sauer, producers; Sebastian Roth, Reiner Kühl,
engineers. Harmonia Mundi 801818 (3 CDs) |
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| The
very first notes of the Overture tell you what to expect: a
fleet performance, period instrument sonorities, and a reading
filled with light and air. The initial impact may startle those
used to string-heavy sound. Here, the winds dominate, bassoon
timbres to the fore, coloring the scampering strings. The Overture
sounds faster than it actually is due to the band’s precise
articulation, a musical virtue that’s carried through
to the rest of the opera, making the singers’ words comprehensible
and the vibrant orchestral playing a delight. Like Don Giovanni, Figaro is labeled a dramma giocoso. Its fun-filled passages carry with them serious undertones—issues of class conflict, sexual intrigue, trust, deception and forgiveness, weighty matters clothed in music of the utmost buoyancy. The Beaumarchais play on which it’s based was banned, so librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte rewrote and condensed it to make the opera palatable. Conductor René Jacobs titles his booklet note “A Subversive Composer,” and his performance plays up the revolutionary aspects of Mozart’s score. Wide dynamics, sharp accents, and tempos that teeter on the brink of excess, both fast and slow, stress the radical nature of the work. Unfortunately, they sometimes subvert the singers, especially in the Countess’ big arias, and far too often Mozart’s music is undermined by a grossly interventionist fortepianist. Such missteps aside, the net result is exhilarating, the soaring music making it seem as if the score’s still wet with Mozart’s ink. Spontaneity informs the singing, too. More than most, this Figaro focuses on ensemble singing with young (and young-voiced) singing actors fully inhabiting their roles, making this one of the most dramatically cogent of all available versions. Simon Keenlyside’s beautifully detailed and sung (not barked) Count is among the best on disc. His Countess, Véronique Gens, slightly disappoints, hampered by lame tempos in her major arias, and by dispensing with the vibrato that lends juice to the creamy-voiced sopranos who usually essay the role. Lorenzo Regazzo’s Figaro is neatly characterized and sung, as are the Susanna, Patrizia Ciofi, and Angelika Kirchschlager’s sex-crazed page, Cherubino. What sets this Figaro apart, even in a field crowded with fine recordings, is the way it captures the give-and-take of a stage performance, a rarity on disc. The vivid sonics effectively transport you into a good seat in an intimately-scaled opera house. Asking for more is being greedy. Dan Davis |
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| Christopher
Rouse has stuck by his conservative, neo-romantic guns ever
since his student days when it was far more fashionable to write
sterile, serial dissonance. Now, as one of the most consistently
successful living composers, he has the last laugh. Rapture
begins with a luminous, almost Rheingoldian C-major chord, and
gradually accelerates in tempo until it concludes in a splashy
orgy of intoxicating orchestral splendor which contrasts sharply
with Rouse’s more darkly colored works. The Violin Concerto
is a big, turbulent, romantic work cast in two movements, apparently
modeled after Bartók’s First Violin Concerto. It
is more typically (for Rouse) yin flavored, and is structurally
unified by a dramatic, recurring four-note motif that Rouse
puts through many variations and instrumental combinations ranging
from a powerful statement for massed brass and percussion to
a pianissimo, spooky dialogue for the soloist, celesta,
plucked strings, and timpani that ends the first movement. Anyone
interested in a major new melodic and tonal Violin Concerto
with plenty of dynamic impact should certainly enjoy this work.
There aren’t many percussion concertos out there that occupy a lasting place in the orchestral repertoire. Der gerettete Alberich (loosely translated: “Alberich Saved”) survives the “hear it once and forget it” syndrome by utilizing a unique program that alludes to the moods of the evil dwarf that survived Die Götterdämmerung. The percussion soloist acts as the protagonist, and the musical and thematic interest is heightened by Rouse’s subtle and effective variations on Wagner’s themes from the Ring. Needless to say, Glennie is brilliant and the music is both enjoyable and, in places such as the cacophonous, rock-influenced outburst opening the third movement, quite humorous. Der gerettete Alberich represents a fascinating idea that Rouse executes brilliantly. Ondine’s sound is excellent. There is a very realistic presentation of the orchestra from a mid-hall perspective. Cho-Liang Lin is not too closely miked (as is often the case), and Glennie blends effectively with the orchestra, even when she is pounding everything but the kitchen sink. Rarely do you get the opportunity to hear three new, brilliantly orchestrated, audience-friendly pieces with an individual musical personality in excellent sound. Don’t pass this up. Arthur B. Lintgen |
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| BMG
has released André Previn’s complete Vaughan Williams
Symphonies in an attractively packaged six-CD album for only
thirty-five dollars. This set could be considered historic because
Previn was the first non-British conductor to record all of
the Vaughan Williams Symphonies in direct competition with Sir
Adrian Boult. Although his credentials as an interpreter of
British music were already established with his masterful recording
of Walton’s First Symphony, it is still amazing how well
Previn held up with the critics to a virtual deity. Previn is strongest in the London, Pastoral, and Fifth Symphonies. A London Symphony is the centerpiece of the Vaughan Williams oeuvre. A conductor’s approach to this key work that virtually defines English Romantic music in general and Vaughan Williams in particular is therefore critical to any complete traversal of the Vaughan Williams Symphonies. Previn’s performance is the finest ever recorded. Not only is it superior to his slow, dull, bass-heavy Telarc remake, Previn outdoes Boult in every conceivable way. The hustle and bustle of London in the first movement is blistering in its pace, but never sounds overdriven because of the elasticity of Previn’s tempos. The contrasting pastoral elements of the second movement possess especially delicate filigree. The soft string chords played against haunting trumpet and horn solos are breathtaking, and prepare you for the lyrical beauty of the Pastoral and Fifth Symphonies. Previn is less successful than Boult in the violent upheavals of the Fourth and Sixth Symphonies, though the noble major presentation of the theme concluding the first movement of the Sixth is glorious, and builds to a shattering climax before Williams returns to the wrenching dissonant chords that open the work. A Sea Symphony is more lean and propulsive than the traditional elegiac British approach. Previn anticipates Robert Spano, who is even better with the help of Telarc’s sensational sound. The Sinfonia antartica is similarly excellent. The first movement is second to none, and Previn gets the soft percussion and harp effects in the central “landscape” just right. Some will find the organ to be a little reticent and bass shy, but it blends with the orchestra most naturally. Previn’s Eighth is in the middle of the pack. No one can match Sir John Barbirolli (the Symphony’s dedicatee) in his original Mercury recording, now available on a very desirable Dutton reissue, coupled with Barbirolli’s fine London Symphony. The enigmatic Ninth Symphony, with its novel scoring for a flugelhorn and three saxophones, has justifiably grown in stature over the years, and Previn does it justice. These excellent recordings were made in Kingsway Hall about the same time as the RCA Classic Film Score Series. Kenneth Wilkinson’s sound—with its unique combination of clarity, inner detail, and harmonic richness—is qualitatively similar here. The Vaughan Williams Symphonies are a bit brighter and more lean in the high frequencies, and lack the warm low end of the Film Score Series, but they still sound as good as Boult on EMI. Previn and Boult’s cycles are both outstanding, and their performances differ enough to be complementary for any serious Williams collector. ABL |
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| Evgeny
Kissin can do anything human fingers can do on a piano keyboard,
a gift that carries with it the virtually automatic skepticism
of those who’d relegate its owner to flashy repertoire.
That’s especially so if he’s young and didn’t
make his mark playing the Austro-German masterpieces of the
classical canon. Kissin’s previous ventures into this
territory have met with controversy. So will this exquisite
disc. In part, that’s because the Schubert B flat Sonata is one of the greatest of all piano works and most of the master pianists of our time have left fine recordings of it. So Kissin’s  up
against the ripe Romanticism of Arrau, the poetry of Lupu, the
searching intellectualism of Richter and Serkin, the immediacy
of Rubinstein, and the relaxed intimacy of Kempff, great performances
all. Kissin’s version is not in their class, but it’s notable for the wistful lyricism that pervades the opening movements, the colossal technique that makes the most difficult passages sound easy, and the sprightly vivacity of the scherzo. Admirable too, is Kissin’s intrepid expansiveness. He has no fear of Schubert’s “heavenly lengths”—his first two movements are among the longest on disc but they’re lovingly played, if with an excess of rhythmic freedom. What separates this performance from the great ones is that we haven’t been fully exposed to the work’s inner core, the full measure of depth of thought and feeling that infuses this music. No such qualms elsewhere. The four Schubert songs in Liszt’s transcriptions are delicious desserts after the Sonata main course, lovely melodies played with charm and delicacy. Kissin tends to wallow in “Ständchen,” but who can resist the sentimentality that’s built into the gorgeous melody? Color these items drop-dead gorgeous and enjoy! Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz closes the disc and it’s red meat to a virtuoso like Kissin. His fiery account is dazzling, full of finger-popping pyrotechnics, the right-hand keyboard runs amazingly even, the massive chords never sounding harsh. When it’s over you want to jump up and applaud. RCA’s engineering offers a good facsimile of Kissin’s sound, close-up but never claustrophobic. Its only failing is a softness in the midbass that robs some of the clarity that’s a hallmark of Kissin’s style. DD |
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| The Milken Archive of American Jewish Music | ||
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 Toch:
Cantata of the Bitter Herbs. Jephta, Rhapsodic Poem.
(Symphony No. 5). Theodore Bikel, narrator; soloists; Prague
Philharmonic Choir; Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and Seattle
Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, conductor. Naxos 8.559417 |
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| The
Milken Archive of American Jewish Music was inaugurated in 1990.
After years of research and with more than 600 works recorded,
the first CDs appeared this past September on the indefatigable
Naxos label. The releases have been coming steadily at the rate
of a few per month and will total 50 by the end of 2005, presenting
music in many styles from over 200 composers, both familiar
and obscure. The material dates back to Colonial America but
there’s also plenty from living, active artists. The four
discs considered here are representative of the breadth, ambition,
and creative quality of this massive undertaking. The Eternal Road was conceived as a larger-than-life stage spectacle to attract attention to the fate of German Jews in the 1930s, and to the Zionist cause. A creative team including a number of famous refugees from Hitler’s Europe—playwright Franz Werfel, director Max Reinhardt, and Kurt Weill—fashioned a work that was a combination of biblical pageant, oratorio, grand opera, and Broadway musical. The original show utilized around 250 performers (and 1772 costumes) and lasted for hours, a series of “flashbacks” to Old Testament events. A generous 73 minutes of excerpts from each of The Eternal Road’s four acts is presented, brimming with gorgeous melody, atmospheric choral arrangements, and thrilling instrumental passages. Things unfold more than occasionally with operatic proportions, as with the nearly sixteen-minute “Moses gives the Commandments/The Death of Moses” that closes Act 2. There are also more intimate, tender expressions of faith, such as the scene between Naomi and Ruth from Act 3. Sadly, the production at the Manhattan Opera House closed after just 153 presentations in 1937, failing both financially and in its intended consciousness-raising role. But Weill’s wonderful music is well worth preserving and a sense of the epic scale of The Eternal Road is revealed by these committed performances from Gerard Schwarz, the Berlin orchestra, and a group of soloists who take on multiple roles. Dave Brubeck is best known, of course, as a jazz composer and pianist. But Brubeck studied with Milhaud and Schoenberg, and has written numerous “classical” works, including several large-scale sacred pieces. The Gates of Justice dates from 1969 and is very much of its time: the “message,” according to the composer, was “the brotherhood of man”—specifically, the natural bond between Jews and African-Americans. As the notes fairly point out, relations between these two groups would become strained as political agendas diverged after the civil rights era, but The Gates of Justice does capture that early idealism. The work is scored for chorus, a cantor, a “black baritone” (is there something vaguely patronizing about that designation?), an ensemble of brass and percussion, and jazz trio. Brubeck sets texts from the Bible and other Jewish liturgical sources, spirituals, and Martin Luther King’s speeches. The music doesn’t possess great melodic distinction and there are some moments that may make you cringe (as when the chorus shouts out “Nigger! Whitey! Jew!”), but these performers make the best possible case for the piece. The juxtaposition of Cantor Alberto Mizvahi’s high-tension tenor and Kevin Deas’ sonorous baritone is very effective. The sections for Brubeck’s trio may be the most successful ones. Ernst Toch (1887-1964) was another gifted emigré composer who made his way to the American West Coast in the 1930s, like Erich Korngold and Franz Waxman finding steady work in Hollywood. Toch’s orchestral, stage, and chamber works had been well-received in Europe before his departure, but didn’t generate much interest in the U.S. Too bad. His music is solidly constructed and distinctive; on the conservative side, evolving from a Brahmsian late-Romantic sensibility in the direction of Hindemith. Cantata of the Bitter Herbs is based on the Passover story and includes choral movements, orchestral interludes, and settings for vocal soloists, the whole thing held together by a Narrator, here none other than Theodore Bikel. The musical syntax may be pretty traditional but the symphonic accompaniment for the Narrator’s enumeration of the ten plagues is quite evocative—a reminder of why Toch’s movie scores garnered three Oscar nominations. There’s some positively incandescent string writing toward the close of “Psalm 126,” the work’s spiritual center. All of Toch’s seven symphonies were written after he turned 60, with No. 5 completed in 1963. It’s a 25-minute, single-movement “rhapsodic poem” inspired by the biblical story of Jeptha. The powerful programmatic content of that legend is communicated well. This is intense and uncompromising music, more harmonically ambiguous and texturally adventuresome than the Cantata. Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony do it full justice. Klezmer music may well be the most widely appreciated Jewish music in our pluralistic culture, encountered at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and in hipper “neo-klezmer” forms. It’s no surprise that its characteristic sonorities and energy have intrigued serious composers. K’li Zemer, by the Viennese-born Robert Starer (1924-2001), is a clarinet concerto in four movements, each with a descriptive title: “Prayers,” “Dances,” “Melodies,” and “Dedications.” David Krakauer’s an ideal interpreter, both classically trained (Juilliard, Paris Conservatory) and a respected klezmer artist who has recorded with the Klezmatics. He delivers the characteristic inflections—shrieks, moans, tremors, half-swallowed tones, glissandos—that make this style of playing so expressive. Paul Schoenfield’s (b.1947) Klezmer Rondos features flute and tenor soloists; the first of two movements ends with a Yiddish folk-style setting of the poem Miriele by Michl Virt, a touching story of a shtetl beauty who remains aloof and unavailable to her many admirers, and dies alone. The CD is filled out with four shorter “encores.” The Maypole and Canzonetta by Jacob Weinberg (1879-1956) and Hasidic Dance by Abraham Ellstein (1907-1963) feature Krakauer as soloist. Rocketekya, from Osvaldo Golijov (b.1960)—for clarinet, violin, electric viola, and bass—is definitely neo-klezmer: Jean-Luc Ponty meets Tevye. Many production teams (and venues) were involved and the sound varies in quality, sometimes from track to track on the same disc. But it’s always acceptable and occasionally quite stunning, as with the Starer work. The notes are exceptionally comprehensive, making each release an educational experience as well as a musical adventure. More information can be found at www.milkenarchive.org. AQ |
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SACD |
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 Ravel:
Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2. Pavane pour une
infante défunte. La Valse. Ma Mère L’Oye.
Boléro. Cincinnati Symphony, Paavo Järvi, conductor.
Robert Woods, producer; Michael Bishop, Robert Friedrich, engineers.
Hybrid multichannel. Telarc 60601 (Sonic rating: 9) |
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 Stravinsky:
L’Histoire du soldat. Ragtime. Dumbarton Oaks
Concerto. Concerto in D. Suites 1 and 2. Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie
Bremen, Paavo Järvi, conductor. Stephan Schelmann, producer;
Markus Heiland, engineer. Hybrid multichannel. PentaTone 5186
046 (Sonic rating: 10) |
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| In
his 2002 TAS interview (Issue 137), Paavo Järvi made a
point of insisting that although, as an Estonian musician, he’s
naturally drawn to Nordic composers, he isn’t “just
a Nordic man.” This claim is borne out by the wide range
of repertoire Järvi’s recorded, and it’s no
surprise to see him following up discs of Berlioz and Prokofiev
with these two new Ravel and Stravinsky anthologies. The Ravel program on Telarc is well-traveled territory, and the competition is intense from such Gallic luminaries as Paray on Mercury and Martinon on EMI and RCA, my own touchstones in this music. The Cincinnati Symphony, as always, plays with dazzling sheen and sensuous allure—the wind soloists in particular are seductive and imaginative—but I don’t think Järvi quite matches the enraptured hedonism and exultant glory that, for instance,  Paray
finds in Daphnis et Chloé. Järvi’s
opening sunrise is cooler, less buoyant and excitable, more
marmoreal, more—well, more Nordic. This touch of Sibelian
monumentality, this emphasis on the long, slow line, may not
be exactly idiomatic, but if Järvi’s Daphnis
doesn’t quite glow with Mediterranean ardor or pantheistic
abandon, it most certainly is sumptuous and richly
sonorous. Again I’d turn to Paray for the demented lilt,
the brutality and malevolence, of La Valse, though
Järvi and his Cincinnatians bring impressive color and
muscularity to the piece. Järvi’s at his nearly-unbeatable
best in Ma Mère L’Oye; he responds to
the gentle, childlike fantasy of Ravel’s most intimate
orchestral composition with more poetry and more personal feeling,
and the result is pure loveliness. (I heard him conduct the
work in Cincinnati’s Music Hall last year and could hardly
believe how beautiful it sounded there.) And oh, my, those silken,
diaphanous strings. Consider Järvi’s stately Pavane
and brisk, incisive, unusually fresh and momentum-accumulating
Boléro as bonuses.Telarc’s recording, surely one of the company’s most successful, is as full of light and air as Prospero’s enchanted island, and the sweet-sounding multichannel SACD casts an immersive ambient soundfield that will test the dynamic limits of your system yet resolves the smallest details with startling clarity and timbral fidelity. This is a gorgeous recording of gorgeous music marvelously enhanced by the sonic benefits of multichannel technology. Like Ravel, Stravinsky eschewed romantic self-expression, frankly identifying himself as a maker of artifice—“an inventor of music,” as he once phrased it. But where Ravel is lush, sensual, and evocative, Stravinsky is playful, ironic, pungent, lean, and sec. Most of the pieces on PentaTone’s program—the concise Suites and twangly Ragtime as much as the explicitly narrative L’Histoire du soldat—with their brusque tunelets, clever displaced accents, sophisticated naiveté, numbers restricted to a minute or two duration, and sparse scorings, are as pared-down and sharply outlined as a Picasso line-drawing. These stylized, parodic miniatures—marches, tangos, shuffles, polkas, and so on—seem written to accompany the herky-jerky, mechanical gestures of marionette theater, with its mimed scheming and pageantry, rather than any actual human drama or emotion. In the two concertos, Dumbarton Oaks for winds and strings, Concerto in D for strings only, it’s a historical musical style—most obviously Bach in sewing-machine mode—that Stravinsky parodies, chugging along with his characteristically tart mixture of affection, amusement, and reptilian detachment. The Bremen chamber orchestra under Järvi plays with precision, spunk and, in L’Histoire, gleeful malice. I compared them, where the repertoire overlaps (the two Suites, Ragtime, and the Concerto in D) with another recent and brilliantly performed Stravinsky collection by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra [DG 453458] and found the latter to have a tad more bite, emphasized by DG’s closer, dryer acoustic. Though I like the DG (a conventional CD) very much, and recommend it in particular for the superb assortment of Stravinsky gems not duplicated by Järvi’s selections, it doesn’t come close to PentaTone’s superlative sonics, which are graced by loads of air, exceptional tonal accuracy, terrific impact (dig the floor-shaking percussion in L’Histoire), pinpoint imaging, and huge, layered soundstage. In sum: a stunningly persuasive recreation of the sound of real instruments arrayed in a real performing space—in this case, Radio Bremen’s lively Grosser Sendesaal. Mark Lehman |
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 Matt
Haimovitz: Please welcome.... Luna Pearl Woolf and
Tod Machover, producers; Mark Thayer and Ed Hammond, engineers.
Hybrid multichannel. Oxingale 229 (Sonic rating: 7) |
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 Yo-Yo
Ma: Obrigado Brazil. Jorge Calandrelli and Steven Epstein,
producers; Richard King and Todd Whitelock, engineers. Single-layer
multichannel. Sony 89935 (Sonic rating: 6) |
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| Here
we have two master cellists, both habitually eager to explore
musical vistas beyond the usual classical sphere. Matt Haimovitz is not only heard in concert halls, playing concertos and chamber music, but also in bars, clubs, and other “alternative venues.” Haimovitz once recorded for DG but, in terms of artistic temperament, wasn’t a good fit with a major label. With his wife, composer Luna Pearl Woolf, he started Oxingale Records. Artemis Classics has taken over distribution of Oxingale and presents selections from five Haimovitz discs, remastered and mixed as a hybrid multichannel SACD. Haimovitz is impressive with an extraordinary range of material. The disc opens with Bach’s D minor solo cello Suite (Haimovitz recorded all six), a reading with decidedly tragic overtones. Next comes a compelling eleven-minute excerpt from Tod Machover’s Begin Again Again... for “hypercello”—the instrument and player are connected to a computer to control electronically-generated sounds. Haimovitz partners with pianist Itamar Golan for Chopin and Paganini, and with soprano Eileen Clark in Slice for St. Ursula, an arrangement of a brief sequence by everyone’s favorite Eleventh Century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen. The SACD also holds 9:11 Blues by Toby Twining, a short but brilliant piece utilizing microtonal techniques that’s almost agonizing in its intensity, and, finally, Anthem, the cellist’s take on Jimi Hendrix’s infamous take on “The Star Spangled Banner”—a live recording that truly captures the legendary guitarist’s mind-bending flamboyance. Haimovitz’s alluring cello sound is slightly smoky, with grit and texture. The multichannel is conservatively executed, although with the Machover piece, there’s a 3-D quality to the soundfield that’s very absorbing. Yo-Yo Ma has also manifested a wide-ranging musical appetite through collaborations with bluegrass artists, his Silk Road Ensemble, and other projects. On Obrigado Brazil, he’s joined by a group of distinguished Brazilian musicians for a program that although varied in texture—Ma plays with from one to seven others—is generally sunny (or no more than pleasantly melancholy) in tone. True aficionados of Brazilian music may grumble that Ma is coasting, but there’s no denying that he negotiates the sinuous contours of the characteristic melodies with grace and flair. He is accompanied by the British pianist Kathryn Stott for three gems that most closely approach a “classical” feel—two by Camargo Mozart Guarnieri and one by Villa-Lobos. Striking, too, are several selections featuring two guitarist brothers, Sérgio and Odair Assad. There’s music by Pixinguinha and, of course, Antonio Carlos Jobin. It’s an easy program to listen to in one sitting. The tonal qualities of the instruments—Ma’s cello, the guitars, Pacquito D’Rivera’s delicious clarinet—are very natural and appealing. Sony’s multichannel mix is more like a pop production, with percussion prominent in the rear channels, but Ma is kept front-and-center, where he belongs. AQ |
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Deborah
Voigt: Obsessions (Arias and Scenes by Wagner and
Strauss). Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Richard
Armstrong, conductor. Wilhelm Meister, producer; Peter Urban,
engineer. EMI 57681
Schubert:
Winterreise. Matthias Goerne, baritone; Alfred Brendel,
piano. Martha de Fancisco, producer; Jean Marie Geyser, Philip
Siney, engineers. Decca 2000802
Rouse:
Der gerettete Alberich. Rapture. Violin Concerto.
Evelyn Glennie, percussion, Cho-Liang Lin, violin; Helsinki
Philharmonic Orchestra, Leif Segerstam, conductor. Seppo Siirala,
producer; Enno Maemets, engineer. Ondine 1016
Vaughan
Williams: The Nine Symphonies. Concerto Accademico
for Violin and Orchestra. Concerto for Tuba and Orchestra.
The Wasps: Overture. Three Portraits from The
England of Elizabeth. London Symphony Orchestra, André
Previn, conductor. Peter Dellheim, James Burnett, producers;
Kenneth Wilkinson, James Lock, engineers. RCA 55708 (6 CDs)
Schubert:
Piano Sonata in B flat, D.960; Schubert-Liszt: 4 Song transcriptions.
Liszt: Mephisto Waltz No.1. Evgeny Kissin, piano.
Jay David Saks, producer; Mike Hatch, engineer. RCA 58420
Weill:
The Eternal Road (Highlights). Soloists; Ernst Senff
Chor; Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Gerard Schwarz, conductor.
Naxos 8.559402
Brubeck:
The Gates of Justice. Kevin Deas, baritone; Alberto
Mizrahi, tenor; Baltimore Choral Arts Society; Dave Brubeck
Trio; Russell Gloyd, conductor. Naxos 8.559414
Klezmer
Concertos and Encores. David Krakauer, clarinet; Scott
Goff, flute; Alberto Mizrahi, tenor; various orchestras, Gerard
Schwarz, conductor. Naxos 8.559403Advertisement
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