Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (CD review)

Bernard Haitink,
Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam. Philips 410 398-2 (2-disc set).

OK, so I’m thirty-plus years behind with this review.
Better late than never. Not only that, the record company, Philips, has gone
out of business, and the disc hasn’t been in the catalogue for over a decade.
However, if you’re interested (and why else would you be reading this if you
weren’t?) you can find the disc used, and ArkivMusic still makes the recording
available new by reproducing it under authorization from the Decca Label Group.

Anyway, the Mahler Seventh
Symphony recording in question is Maestro Bernard Haitink’s second of three
stereo recordings for Philips. Haitink has always been an expert practioner in
Mahler and made his first recording with the Concertgebouw in analogue over ten
years before this one. Then he made present Concertgebouw recording digitally
in 1982, and another in the mid Nineties with the Berlin Philharmonic. Maybe he
wanted to continue recording it until he got it right. In any case, it’s his
first recording I like the most for its more-vivid interpretation
(unfortunately, available only in a box set of the complete symphonies); the recording under review I like second best for the sheer beauty of its
interpretation and sound; and the Berlin account I like least because by then
Haitink seemed to have let a lot of the wind out of his sails.

How much you will like Haitink’s 1982 account may depend
upon your own view of the Seventh
Symphony, one of Mahler’s more problematic and ambiguous works. As I wrote
a few weeks earlier, it’s a transitional piece, connecting the darker Sixth Symphony with the triumphant Eighth. Of course, musical scholars
point out how Mahler connected all nine (or ten or eleven) of his symphonies,
forming one grand musical statement. If there is a grand scheme in things, the Seventh has long been the neglected
stepchild of the lot. While the other symphonies get most of the love, the Seventh often goes wanting.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) wrote the Symphony No. 7 in E minor in 1904-05, and it is probably his most
biographical work. Along with the Fifth
and Sixth Symphonies, the Seventh
forms a middle trio of Mahler symphonies, all of them purely orchestral, with
the Seventh being the oddest of the
group. Even more so than most of Mahler’s works, its five movements are open to
multiple interpretations. I remember one critic once explaining that the
symphony was a recounting by Mahler of his trip to the countryside, complete
with his packing of suitcases, traveling through rural roads, along pastures,
and on to his destination. Other critics see its five movements more generally
as a journey from dusk until dawn or a nightly walk into the morning, the whole
thing a kind of eccentric, extended nocturne.

So, what is Haitink’s view? It’s certainly not the
high-powered outlook rendered by conductors like Georg Solti or Claudio Abbado,
who point up every contrast in the work and emphasize its darker, more-bizarre
side rather than its purely lighter moments. Haitink, on the other hand, seems
intent on being as solid and straightforward as possible, all the while
stressing the music’s expressive delights. Some listeners will simply find it
slow and dull, which is probably what a lot of people would think if they had
only heard one of the more dynamic readings around. In fact, Haitink did take a
more leisurely approach to the symphony this second time around than he did the
first time, losing a little tension along the way. He made up for it in sheer
attractiveness, though.

Haitink builds his reading of the Seventh around
Mahler’s two central Nachtmusik
segments, which are quite magical and atmospheric. The opening movement is more
progressive than most, starting out very slowly, very gravely, and building
momentum. Haitink’s handling of the Scherzo
is less bizarre than it is under many other batons, and even the troublesome Finale, which can oft-times resemble a
haphazard succession of anticlimaxes, comes across as a well-shaped series of
purposeful variations. You may not agree with Haitink’s vision of the Seventh, but it’s hard to deny it
doesn’t hang together well, start to finish.

One minor drawback, however: The penalty for taking your
time through this massive symphony is that it might not fit on a single disc.
Haitink’s rendition takes a pair of discs, with the first two movements on disc
one and the final three movements on disc two. Even so, having to change discs
is a small price for so lovely a performance. Mahler’s Seventh Symphony is one of those pieces of music that begs for
different interpretations, and doubtless it’s worthwhile having several
versions in one’s library. For me, Haitink’s rendering is one of them.

Philips recorded the music digitally at the Concertgebouw,
Amsterdam, in December 1982, and it was another fine job by the recording team.
From the mid Sixties to the late Eighties Philips seemed able to do no wrong in
the Concertgebouw. Their recordings always sounded substantial, full, deep,
dynamic, ambient, and, above all, realistic. This one’s no exception; the sound
is glorious. You hear one of the world’s great orchestras in all its glory,
with the hall lending its hand in resonant bloom. Nevertheless, when Decca started
recording the orchestra, they never seemed able to capture that same golden
glow. Decca’s Concertgebouw recordings have always sounded flatter to me,
closer, more “hi-fi.” Indeed, I cannot think of another recording of the Mahler
Seventh that sounds better than
Haitink’s ’82 digital effort, reproduced here.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Down by the Sea: A Collection of British Folk Songs (CD review)

Settings by
Grainger, Holst, MacMillan, Moeran, Warlock, Vaughan Williams, and others.
Hilary Campbell, Blossom Street. Naxos
8.573069.

No, it’s not the song by Men at Work. Nor is it part of
the refrain from The Drifters’ “Under the Boardwalk.” It’s an album of classic
British folk music, arranged for choir by various famous British composers.

Hilary Campbell, founder and director of the chamber choir
Blossom Street, laments the dearth of British folk song on the concert
platform, despite the public’s continued interest in the subject and the number
of prominent British composers who have contributed to the field. Obviously,
the present album is her attempt to amend this issue. Certainly, one could not
find a better advocate of the genre.

In addition to leading the Blossom Street choir, Ms.
Campbell is a freelance musician based in London, the Musical Director of the
Music Makers of London, office choirs at L’Oreal and Hearst Magazines, Choral
Director at Blackheath Conservatoire, and Assistant Conductor of Barts Choir.
She is also the 2012-13 Meaker Fellow at the Royal Academy of Music, the first
choral conductor so honored. Busy woman.

As far as concerns the Blossom Street choir, there appear
to be between ten and twenty-three members. I say that because a booklet
picture shows ten of them, and underneath the picture the booklet lists
twenty-three: six sopranos, five altos, six tenors, and six basses. I suppose
the number varies depending on the material they’re singing.

Of course, the composers on the album didn’t actually
originate the folk songs for which they are famous. They collected them,
arranged them, reset them, reinterpreted them, what have you. A folk song by
definition is one that originates among the common people of a country and is
passed on by oral tradition from one generation to the next, often existing in
several different forms. Only these days, modern composers have often made
their own folk-song arrangements the standards by which we have come to know
them.

Anyway, Down by the
Sea is a collection of folk and folklike songs with a nautical theme, all
about sailors and whalers and often the girls they left behind. It begins with
the tune you can hear an excerpt from below, “Lassie, Wad Ye Loe Me?” arranged
by James MacMillan. Folk songs and poems are often big on dialect. See Robert
Burns. The choir sing it like angels. Not only is there a remarkable smoothness
to their presentation, there is a commendable integration of voices. The
singers combine as one, strong and flexible, never losing focus. The four
sections of the choir come through splendidly, each a distinct segment of the
whole but with such seamlessness that you never notice them as separate
entities unless forcing yourself to do so.

And so it goes through fifteen selections. Composers
represented include the aforementioned MacMillan, plus Alexander Campkin, Ralph
Vaughan Williams, Judith Bingham, Peter Warlock, John Duggan, Percy Grainger,
Hilary Campbell, Gustav Holst, John Byrt, Stuart Murray Turnbull, Paul Burke,
Kerry Andrew, Andrew Bairstow, and E.J. Moeran.  Moreover, seven of the songs make their debut on the album with
world-première recordings.

Favorites? The opening number, to be sure. In addition,
Warlock's "Yarmouth Fair," a snappy ditty; Grainger's setting of a
traditional Scottish melody, "Mo Nighean Dubh" ("My Dark-Haired
Maiden"), a really sweet love song; Holst's "Awake, Awake" in
which the sopranos hold forth with wonderful supporting accompaniment from the
others; Byrt's jaunty "Among the Leaves So Green, O." The last half
dozen items on the program become quite hushed, the choir most evocative and
atmospheric.  Then the album closes with
Moeran's "The Sailor and Young Nancy," a fairly traditional folk tune
from Norfolk about a sailor bound for the West Indies saying good-bye to his
love, whom he promises to marry upon his return...if ever.

If there is any minor complaint I have about the album, it
is that its fifteen tracks add up to less than an hour of music. I understand
that rehearsing and recording more numbers would have cost more money, but,
still, a CD can hold up to eighty minutes, making this disc’s fifty-five
minutes seem a bit short. Just sayin’.

Naxos recorded the songs at St. Philip’s Church, Norbury,
London in November 2012. The acoustic lends the choir plenty of reverberant
air, making them sound like an even bigger group than they are. Yet the
resonance takes little away from the clarity of the voices, just adding a
greater degree of mellowness and space to the proceedings. The high end (upper
midrange, actually) can sound a touch bright at times, but it is not especially
distracting and probably contributes to the choir's overall definition. So,
while it may be a tad too reverberant and occasionally too bright for some
listeners, it is probably a fairly accurate representation of the singers in
this church environment.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Tchaikovsky: Capriccio italien (XRCD24 review)

Also, Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio espagnol. Kiril Kondrashin, RCA Victor
Symphony Orchestra. JVC JM-XR24013.

Years ago, a reader
took me to task for praising what he considered the unnecessarily high price of
JVC’s XRCD series of audiophile remastered discs. In his opinion, paying
upwards of a dollar a minute for a half an hour’s music was a rip-off. He had,
of course, a point; especially today when you can only find some of these
things used at even more exorbitant prices. These remastered discs from JVC,
FIM, Hi-Q, and others are expensive, and they do not provide any longer playing
times than their counterpart LP’s provided when they first appeared back in the
old vinyl days. 

On the other hand,
you get what you pay for. Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Bugattis are very
expensive automobiles and generally only seat two people. But if you have the
money and the desire, the cars are worth the price. The cost of the JVC discs
isn’t only in their manufacture, although the packaging they come in is
undoubtedly more costly than an ordinary jewelbox. The price factor comes into
play in the extra time, engineering, and equipment required for JVC to make the
transfers. This isn’t brain surgery. No one is forcing a person to buy JVC’s
remastered discs or anyone else’s. And since their superiority over the regular
product is only slight at best, no one is even recommending that people do so.
But if you want the best, you pay for the best. It’s that simple.

Anyway, moving on.
Kiril Kondrashin had been conducting music for a long time before he struck it
rich accompanying Van Cliburn in RCA’s historic recording of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto in May of 1958.
Thereafter, Kondrashin became much better known, especially in America, and
continued to record for many years. Several months after recording the Piano Concerto, RCA asked him to do a
series of recordings for them, one of which is this coupling of Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Capriccio espagnol. I remember the album
at the time of its release being stunning. Audiophiles considered the LP
version among the best demo fare of the day, and, of course, I couldn’t wait to
get my hands on one, even though I was just in high school at the time and
didn’t really have the money for too many classical records.

Nevertheless, I
bought it, and the LP remained in my collection for many years until it
succumbed to the CD revolution. Foolish me; I figured at the time that
literally all of the great recordings of at least the stereo age would quickly
make it to compact disc. Well, this one took quite a while, and I never did buy
the RCA CD issue. So I have only a memory with which to compare this JVC
remastering.

Frankly, in the
Tchaikovsky Capriccio italien I was
expecting more. JVC’s 2003 XRCD24 remastered disc begins with what sounded
initially to my ears like something much too bright and hard. As the music
continued, I realized that what I was hearing was a very clear, very clean high
end, a fairly transparent midrange, and very little compensating bass.
Kondrashin’s rather slow performance also took me somewhat aback; I remembered
it as being more vigorous and exciting. Yet both the sound and the interpretation
grew on me, and by the last few minutes of the piece, the conductor had,
indeed, built up a good head of steam, and even the sound was showing signs of
low-end response.

The Capriccio espagnol, however, was an
entirely different case. Recorded on the same day as the Capriccio italien and engineered and produced by the same team of
Lewis Layton and Richard Mohr that brought us Fritz Reiner’s great “Living
Stereo” recordings, the Capriccio
espagnol sounds almost entirely different from the Capriccio italien. The
sonics appear smoother, less bright, and more weighty in the bass; and the
performance is exhilarating from the very outset. Go figure. In fact, I’m
willing to say this is the best Capriccio
espagnol currently before the public.

Is the price of the
JVC disc worth the thirty-one minutes of music it holds? Not by any practical
standards I can think of, especially since you can buy the regular RCA edition
new for about five bucks, and it even contains additional music. But is the JVC
disc worth the price if you enjoy it immensely and play it multiple times?
Then, yes, I’d say maybe so, even if the JVC album is practically unavailable
at the moment except used from a limited number of sources. In fact, at the
time of this writing, I noticed somebody at Amazon offering it used for an
asking price of nearly $2,000. If anybody would like to tender that offer for
my copy, I’d be glad to entertain the bid. :)

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Mahler: Symphony No. 7 (SACD review)

Markus Stenz,
Gurzenich-Orchester Koln. Oehms Classics OC 652.

Oh, joy. Another live recording.

Readers who wish to avoid having to read a personal rant
may safely move on to the next paragraph. I mean, even the phrase annoys me. Is
a studio recording or one without an audience a “dead recording”? I know that
many conductors and record companies swear by recordings made before a live
audience, saying it makes the performance more spontaneous and all. Leonard
Bernstein insisted on doing most of his recordings live from the early
Seventies on, saying that he liked the results better. Maybe he felt the
audience inspired him the way no empty hall could. I dunno. What I do know is
that I’ve heard very few live recordings I thought sounded better than
more-controlled studio productions. In a live recording the engineer has to
minimize audience noise either by placing the microphones too close to or too
far away from the orchestra for my liking, and still I usually hear or sense
the audience’s presence. Then there are the unfortunate bursts of applause that
some engineers, conductors, or record companies persist in retaining. It seems
to me that the primary reason for most live recordings is economic. It’s
expensive to pay an orchestra for a studio recording session, and, therefore, a
paying audience helps subsidize the recording costs.

That said, there is surely little to criticize about the
performance on the present disc. Markus Stenz has been the conductor of the
Gurzenich Orchestra Cologne since 2003, and the orchestra itself is one of the
oldest in Europe, tracing its origins back to 1827. Moreover, the orchestra
premiered a number of big works in its time, including both the Mahler Third and Fifth Symphonies. Furthermore, Stenz himself has already proved his
worth in Mahler by recording most of the symphonies and songs to good effect.
His Seventh is no exception.

So, what’s the Seventh
all about, this typically massive Mahler symphony? The conventional answer is
that it’s a transitional work, connecting the darker Sixth Symphony to the triumphant Eighth. Of course, musical scholars are keen on pointing out how
Mahler interconnected all nine (or ten or eleven) of his symphonies, forming
one grand musical statement. If there is a sublime scheme in things, the Seventh has long been the neglected
stepchild of the lot. While the other symphonies get all the love, the Seventh often goes wanting.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) wrote the Symphony No. 7 in E minor in 1904-05, and it is probably his most
biographical work. Along with the Fifth
and Sixth Symphonies, the Seventh
forms a middle trio of Mahler symphonies, all of them purely orchestral, with
the Seventh being the oddest of the
group. Even more so than most of Mahler’s works, its five movements are open to
multiple interpretations, and with practically every conductor on Earth having
recorded them, we get a variety of readings. I remember one critic once
explaining that the symphony was a recounting by Mahler of his trip to the
countryside, complete with his packing of suitcases, traveling through rural
roads, along pastures, and on to his destination. Other critics see its five
movements more generally as a journey from dusk until dawn or a night walk into
morning, a kind of eccentric, extended nocturne.

Maestro Stenz takes a more middling approach than most
conductors, attempting to make the music all things to all people. He opens the
symphony (when "Nature roars") on an appropriately heavy note,
setting us up as Mahler intended for a journey from darkness into light, for as
the composer himself commented, it was a work of "predominantly cheerful,
humoristic content." Well, whether you believe that or not is beside the
point. I suppose you could say that most of Mahler's work was
"humoristic" if you count the various ironic, sardonic movements.

Let's say that Stenz carries out the composer's
instructions that "the music must always contain a longing for beyond this
world." Stenz provides an airy, singing, otherworldly quality to the
playing. This is particularly evident in the two Nachtmusik interludes that bookend the middle movement. These
serenades have a lilting yet shadowy air about them, the second one more
pastoral than the first.

Then, speaking of "shadowy," the central Scherzo is a kind of demonic dance
macabre, which Stenz pulls off pretty well, without making it too melodramatic.
Although it's still a little creepy, it's never a caricature of itself. It
seems more of an inevitable piece of the bigger composition than sometimes
occurs when a conductor gets carried away with the bizarre nature of Mahler's
creation. The unrest is there, but it's mostly just mysterious without being
cacophonous.

That brings us to the Finale,
one of Mahler's more unruly movements. Many listeners hear echos of Wagner's Meistersinger in it, the fairground, the
hustle and bustle, and, naturally, the jubilant fanfares. They're surely hard
to miss. Stenz guides us through the hurly-burly pretty successfully, never
letting the music simply march along from one Wagnerian crescendo to another
but smoothly laying out the plan and seamlessly connecting the dots. In other
words, Stenz ensures that Mahler's music remains of a whole, building and releasing
the conflicts and stresses in perfectly natural, free-flowing rhythms, ending
on a wonderfully triumphant note. It's a most enjoyable reading.

Producer and engineer Dieter Oehms recorded the music live
for multichannel and two-channel stereo SACD, June 23-27, 2012 in the Kolner
Philharmonie (Cologne Philharmonic Hall), Koln, Germany. I listened only to the
two-channel SACD layer where I found the sonic value of the live recording
remained high despite the relatively close miking. There is a moderately good
sense of depth to the orchestra, and we get a reasonably wide dynamic range and
impact. However, the miking also reveals flaws in the orchestral execution.
What's more, the midrange sounds a tad too soft, warm, and weighty much of the
time where you might expect more transparency (the orchestration is lighter
than in most Mahler symphonies). High-end extension sounds impressive, and
occasional bass thumps make their mark. One almost never hears the audience,
thankfully, but there is a slight background noise present during quieter
passages.

Oh, and there is no applause at the end to interrupt our
final appreciation of the music. With no applause and a quiet audience, it’s
almost like a non-live recording. Which is what they should have done in the first
place.

For some years now my favorite recordings of the Mahler Seventh have been those from Bernard
Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, his earlier analogue account for its
greater tension and his later digital one for its greater beauty (both for
Philips). As for Stenz, his interpretation holds up pretty well by comparison,
offering some of the same combinations of tenseness and delight. Nevertheless,
the Gurzenich Orchestra cannot match the Concertgebouw for sheer richness of
tone, lushness of character, or precision of playing.

One last note: While the music never sounds rushed, Stenz is able to move it along well enough to fit on a single disc.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Rejoyce: The Best of Joyce DiDonato (CD review)

Joyce DiDonato,
mezzo-soprano. Erato 5099993412124 (2-disc set).

It seems like just a few years ago that American
mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato was a young, upcoming opera singer. That was well
over a decade ago, and she’s already issuing a “best of” album. I suppose that
shows my age and how fast time flies. Here, we have a collection of thirty-one
selections recorded over a ten-year span and spread over two discs, with half
of dozen of the numbers newly recorded (2013).

As I’ve said before, I know next to nothing about opera,
despite my having heard a ton of it live and on record over the years. For my
taste, most operas are too long, too slow, and too melodramatic for my limited
attention span. That said, it’s hard not to like the best operas and doubly
hard to resist a good operatic singer like Ms. DiDonato. While most young
tenors and sopranos seem to disappear from view after their first performance
or two, Ms. DiDonato is one of the survivors, a woman who has proved her worth
over the past decade or so, becoming one of the world’s truly great singers. Gramophone magazine awarded her “Artist
of the Year” status in 2010, and she won a Grammy Award for Best Classical
Vocal Solo in 2012.

Although Ms. DiDonato began early on in her career
specializing in vocal music of the Baroque and Classical periods--Handel,
Mozart, Rossini--she has expanded her repertoire since then, and the present
collection additionally contains works by Bellini, Berlioz, Richard Strauss,
even Rogers & Hammerstein and Arlen & Harburg.

Ms. DiDonato possesses a robust lyric-coloratura,
mezzo-soprano voice, with a good deal of control and flexibility, which she
amply demonstrates on the many tracks offered here. Whether the situation
demands a display of love, pain, joy, anger, or sorrow, Ms. DiDonato is ready
with the appropriate vocal gesture in a tone so pure, it kept even this
non-opera fan in rapt attention. In short, she is able to do almost anything
with her voice, exhibiting a remarkably wide vocal and emotional range.

I won’t try to list all thirty-one operatic arias and
popular songs in the album, but I will tell you the composers involved, the
accompanying orchestras and conductors, and a few of my own favorite numbers.
The music comes from the pens of Handel, Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Porta, Orlandini,
Giacomelli, Mozart, Gluck, Rossini, Bellini, Berlioz, Richard Strauss, Heggie,
Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Arlen & Harburg. Providing the accompaniment
are Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco, Christophe Rousset and Les Talens
Lyriques, Emmanuelle Haim and Le Concert d’Astree, Fabio Biondi and Europa
Galante, Kazushi Ono and the Orchestre de l’Opera National de Lyon, Yannick
Nezel-Seguin and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Edoardo Muller and Antonio
Pappano with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia-Rome,
Patrick Summers and the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra, John Wilson and the John
Wilson Orchestra, and Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony. That’s quite
a supporting cast.

Among my favorites, I liked Handel's "Ombra mai
fu," of course, a part of which you can hear below. It amply demonstrates
Ms. DiDonato's rich timbre and ability to adapt to almost any part. I enjoyed
Handel's "Crude furie degl'oridi abissi" not only for the virtuosic
nature of DiDonato's voice but for the greater dimensionality of the orchestra
behind her. Vivaldi's "Non saria pena la mia" and Orlandini's
"Col versar, barbaro, il sangue" show off the singer's gymnastic
pliability; Mozart's "Voi che sapete" and "Aprite, presto
aprite" display her lighter side.

But trying to find favorites among favorites is a
thankless and futile task. Still, I think it was her Mozart and Rossini I
enjoyed most. Runners-up, though, include her excursions into Broadway and
movies with selections like "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel, “Climb Ev'ry Mountain” from The Sound of Music, and "Over the
Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz.
As I've said, she appears able to do anything, and I confess to shivers of
delight with "Over the Rainbow."

Now, I’m sorry if I seem a little vague about who’s
recording and releasing what these days, but here we have an Erato/Warner
Classics release of recordings made between 2004 and 2013 by EMI, Virgin
Classics, and Erato. I think the answer to who and what lies in the fact that
Universal Music Group bought EMI in 2012 and subsequently sold the Parlophone
Label Group, including EMI Classics and Virgin Classics, to the Warner Music
Group. Then Warner announced that they would absorb the EMI Classics artist
roster and catalogue into their Warner Classics label, and Erato Records would
absorb Virgin Classics. So, I suppose we can look forward in coming years to a
ton of old EMI and Virgin material re-released under the Warner or Erato
labels. That it will thoroughly confuse the classical-buying public seems a
mere afterthought.

Anyway, the sound understandably varies a little from one
track to the next due to the time span covered, the different venues, and the
number of ensembles involved. However, there is a surprising uniformity among
them, all of it miked somewhat closely and sounding slightly “pop” as opposed
to most full-scale opera recordings. Most of the items are studio productions,
but at least three of them, with the Houston Grand Opera and the Kansas City
Symphony, are live recordings and don't sound quite as good as the rest. The
voice throughout is often close, very well focused, well defined, with clear
but occasionally one-dimensional ensemble accompaniment (although this, too,
varies, and the best tracks display a good deal of orchestral depth).

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

The Rascal and the Sparrow: Poulenc Meets Piaf (CD review)

Antonio Pompa-Baldi,
piano. Steinway & Sons 30015.

This is another of those “theme” albums. Except the theme
is a little nebulous. According to the record jacket, critic Claude Rostand
described French pianist and composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) as “a lover
of life, mischievous, bon enfant, tender and impertinent, melancholy and
serenely mystical, half monk and half rascal.” A nightclub owner gave popular
French singer Edith Piaf (1914-1963) the nickname “The Little Sparrow.” They
were both French, both popular in their field, and roughly contemporaneous. On
the present album Italian-American pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi performs piano arrangements
or elaborations of music by both musicians, and to very good effect. Especially
when he plays them so well, so sensitively, so captivatingly.

If you’re not sure about Pompa-Baldi, he has over a dozen
recordings to his credit, most of them for the Centaur label. In addition, he received third prize in 1998 at the
Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition in Paris, winning a special prize
for the best interpretation of a contemporary work written for the competition
(Tumultes by Serge Nigg). Later,
after winning the 1999 Cleveland International Piano Competition, he won a
silver medal at the eleventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in
2001, where he also received a prize for the best performance of a new work (Three Impromptus by Lowell Liebermann).
After moving to the United States, he served on the piano faculty of the
Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, and currently serves on the faculty of
the Cleveland Institute of Music. He has been a Steinway Recording Artist since
2003, and now that the folks at Steinway & Sons are recording him on their
own label, one hopes he’ll continue to get exposure.

The Rascal and the
Sparrow contains twenty-seven short selections, seventeen written by
Poulenc and ten taken from Piaf standards. Things start out with Poulenc’s “Les
chemins de l’amour” (“Paths of My Love”), a delightful waltz tune you can hear
in part below. It’s an attractive way to begin the program because the song is
so delightful with its slightly melancholic tone and always lilting rhythms,
done to perfection by Pompa-Baldi, who caresses every note. All of the tunes
follow suit.

Poulenc's "Hommage a Edith Piaf" (Improvisation for piano No. 15 in C minor)
is probably the most-obvious thematic connection between the two musicians,
although no one knows if Poulenc and Piaf ever met. Pompa-Baldi's delicate,
graceful style brings both musician’s music vividly to life.

The first of the Piaf arrangements (elaborated for piano
by Italian pianist and composer Roberto Piana) is "Hymne a l'amour,"
again a beautiful rendition of a lovely song. And so it goes. These are love
songs done in a grand yet gentle manner. Who could ask for more?

Among my favorites? Certainly, that opening number I
described,“Les chemins de l’amour.” Then there's Piaf's "Un grand
amour," "Mon dieu," the immortal "La vie en rose,"
and, of course, "Non, je ne regrette rien." They sound heavenly in
Pompa-Baldi's hands, each a virtuosic tour de force. As for more Poulenc,
there's the haunting "C" from Deux
poemes de Louis Aragon, the Debussy-like "Le Pont" from Deus Melodies sur des poems de Guillaume Appolinaire,
"Nos souvenirs chantent," "Le depart," and many more.

Pompa-Baldi offers up a bouquet of fragrant blossoms, and
while every song is different, they combine to create a single, smooth-flowing
stream of poignant melody. It's a captivating album.

Producer Dan Merceruio and engineer Daniel Shores recorded
the album at Sono Luminus Studios, Boyce, Virginia, in April 2013. The sound is
full and lush, with a wide dynamic range and a mild hall bloom to provide a
realistic ambience. It's a little warmer and softer than some music might
require, but for the French bonbons presented here, it seems perfect. There's
an airy lightness enwrapped in the resonance that offers the music its own
special charms. And those long, lingering decay times add to the leisurely
nature of the songs.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Ravel: Bolero, La Valse (SACD review)

Also, Pavane; Rhapsody espagnole; Daphnis et Chloe. Stanislaw
Skrowaczewski, Minnesota Orchestra. Mobile Fidelity UDSACD 4002.

A few years ago, I
found myself lamenting the passing of a good many audiophile record labels,
forgetting that Mobile Fidelity had not been out of business for long before
they had regrouped and begun producing high-quality products again. True, they
no longer produce everything in the 24K gold format they used to, and they are
now more into multitrack discs, but it’s good to have them around in any case.

Like Telarc some
time ago, Mo-Fi saw the potential in multitrack SACD, a sonic potential that I
find perfectly valid because on the occasions I’ve listened to a Super-Audio
compact disc through my Sony SACD player, they have sounded pretty darn good.
However, I believe that most people who have bought into multichannel sound
have done so for the specific purpose of listening to movies in multichannel
surround, not for listening to music alone. So, anticipating this dilemma, the
folks at Mo-Fi are doing as the folks at Telarc and other companies still
making SACD’s have been doing, producing discs in hybrid, dual-layered,
two-channel and three, four, and five-channel SACD’s so they’ll play both on
regular stereo CD players and on multichannel SACD machines. Like it or not,
however, I continue to do my own music listening in the old-fashioned,
two-channel mode in my living room, and I do my movie watching in a separate
home-theater room equipped with 7.1, non-SACD playback. There is no
multichannel SACD music in sight for me, I’m afraid, but, as I say, I like what
I hear from the two-track SACD format.

Anyway, it’s good to have this collection of short Ravel
pieces from Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the Minnesota Orchestra on CD. Vox
originally recorded them in the mid Seventies and released them on LP in both
two-channel stereo and four-channel quad. The performances, packaged back then
singly and in a four-disc box of LP’s, got great reviews. But when the CD era
dawned and Vox first remastered them onto compact discs, they didn’t sound as
good to me as I had recalled from the old vinyl days. Then, in 2004 Mobile
Fidelity did a splendid job bringing the sonics back up to speed or better in
their Ultradisc Gain 2 mastering process, so it was nice to hear
Skrowaczewski’s Ravel again the way I remembered it.

A booklet note by MFSL chief engineer Shawn Britton tells
us that Vox did the original quadraphonic versions of the recordings in Sansui
SQ, which was stereo compatible, but that the “folded-down stereo” version
yielded artifacts from the SQ-encoded rear channels. In the present
remastering, he says, Mo-Fo have recreated the channels discretely in both the
two-channel stereo and SACD layers, and in stereo there is no longer any
interference from the rear channels. This may account for the sound being even
better than I remembered it from LP days. Not that I found the sound absolutely
perfect, as good as it is. As Marc Aubort, one of the original engineers on the
project, writes additionally in the booklet note: “The top end and especially
the bottom end were rolled off before it went to tape to prevent boominess.”
That may account for the treble not appearing as extended as I’d like and for
the bass being solid but not particularly deep. The result, however, is
extremely vivid in the midrange, and its crystal clarity more than makes up for
any minor losses at the extremes.

Of the five pieces of music presented on the disc, I
enjoyed La Valse best of all. It’s a
sardonic work, and the conductor nicely captures its wry undercurrents as well
as the purely lyrical waltz qualities. It is, in fact, among the best
performances of La Valse I’ve heard
and is itself worth the price of the disc. Bolero
builds up adequate energy through the conductor’s excellent control of ebb and
flow and pays off in its passionate response, one I’ve heard in few other
recordings. The Pavane pour une Infante
defunte is wonderfully atmospheric, leisurely and serene; the Rapsodie espagnole colorful; and the Suite No. 2 from Daphnis et Chloe appropriately characterful, with the welcome
inclusion of an additional segment, “Chloe Is Accosted,” that is now in 5.0
channels for those with the capacity for such playback.

It’s a nice package, undoubtedly sounding better in
multitrack SACD playback than I had the opportunity to hear it. The only
drawback: Since I first heard the Mo-Fi SACD, the company decided to withdraw
it. So if you really want a copy, you’ll have to seek out it out used and
probably pay through the nose. Nevertheless, Mo-Fi still make another
Skrowaczewski Ravel album from the same source available in SACD that includes
the Daphnis et Chloé Suites Nos. 1
and 2, Ma Mère l'Oye, and Valses
nobles et sentimentales. It’s equally good.

To listen to a few brief excerpts from this album, click
here:

JJP

Haydn: Cello Concertos (CD review)

Also, Myslivecek:
Cello Concerto in C major. Wendy Warner, cello; Drostan Hall, Camerata Chicago.
Cedille CDR 90000 142.

Cellist Wendy Warner has produced several very good
albums, mainly playing in duets and trios. This time she goes it alone (well,
if you don’t count the chamber orchestra behind her), soloing in the cello
concertos of Joseph Haydn and Josef Myslivecek. And she not only tackles the
project by herself, she goes head to head with some pretty tough recorded
competition from Mstislav Rostropovich and, especially, Jacqueline du Pre. Upon
direct comparison, Ms. Warner acquits herself well.

Although there are five cello concertos bearing Haydn’s
name, there are only two, the ones Ms. Warner plays here, that the composer
probably actually wrote. However, for many years scholars had their doubts even
about these concertos. They feared the C
major Concerto lost until a musicologist found a copy of the score in 1961;
and they had suspicions about the authenticity of the D major Concerto until a signed manuscript turned up in 1951.

Anyway, Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
wrote the Cello Concerto No. 1 in C major
somewhere between 1761 and 1765. It’s an early work and roughly contemporaneous
with his Symphonies Nos. 6, 7, and 8.
He wrote the Cello Concerto No. 2 in D
major, the more familiar and popular of the two works, about twenty years
later in 1783. Although No. 2 sounds
obviously more mature and complex, it’s still Haydn, so it’s as delightfully
charming as all of his material.

Ms. Warner and Maestro Hall keep things humming along in
proper Haydn-like fashion throughout the First
Concerto. While the performance may not have quite the sweet, easy flow of
du Pre's, it's so close you'd never really know the difference except on direct
comparison. Besides, Warner's playing sounds equally spirited and lyrical, and
the sound of the new recording is cleaner and clearer. And even though this
early concerto may not have the more-serious intentions of the later D major Concerto, it presents some
passages that require virtuosic playing, which Ms. Warner negotiates with ease,
especially the long, singing Adagio,
taken a little quickly but most gracefully.

Ms. Warner ensures that the Second Cello Concerto is always brilliant and expressive with her
passion and precision. Equally passionate and precise is the Chicago Camerata,
who provide admirably sympathetic support. Again we get a highly melodic second
movement, which Warner handles beautifully. Then things come to a close with a
playful Allegro, also nicely managed,
with Ms. Warner never trying to outrace the composer out the door. The quality
of the playing, reading, and sound may be enough to make one almost forget the
du Pre recording.

As far as Czech composer Josef Myslivecek’s (1737-1781) Cello Concerto in C major goes, there is
no date on the manuscript. Myslivecek was another of those composers who was
relatively well known in his lifetime but whose music quickly fell out of favor
after his death, to the point where we hardly hear anything about him anymore.
His Cello Concerto gives us some
indication why both Mozarts, father and son, admired him so much. Because
Myslivecek wrote mostly operas and violin concertos, the Cello Concerto is actually an arrangement of a violin concerto.
Compared to Haydn's cello concertos, Myslivecek's seems a tad more serious; it
also seems a longer time before the cello finally joins in the fun. Yet when it
does, Ms. Warner jumps on it with abandon, producing a lively and, perhaps
oddly, sensual interpretation. The composer marked the central Adagio "grave," but that
shouldn't worry you. It's still light and airy, and Warner's cello playing
floats the music gently over us. The final movement, in the cadence of a
minuet, is cheerful and bright, Ms. Warner ending the piece on a formal but
upbeat note.

The three concertos total about seventy-three minutes, so
in terms of content alone, the disc provides good value. The fact that the
performances and sound are so very good makes the album almost irresistible.

Cedille producer James Ginsburg and ace engineer Bill
Maylone recorded the music at College Church, Wheaton, Illinois in November,
2012. As usual from this source, the sound is excellent, smooth, natural,
realistic. Yet there is plenty of transparency in the midrange, air around the
instruments, quickness and impact in the transient attack, and a broad range in
the dynamics. The cello sounds nicely placed just ahead of the rest of the
ensemble, and it never appears strained. It's one of the better-sounding
recordings I've heard this year.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5 (CD review)

Charles Munch, Boston Symphony Orchestra. United Classics T2CD2013009.

In the first decade
of the home-stereo era, the mid Fifties through early Sixties, RCA made a
series of celebrated recordings with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony,
Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops, and Charles Munch and the Boston Symphony
Orchestra, among others. The recordings were so good and became so popular,
they’re still available in a variety of formats today. The RCA Munch recording
of the Mendelssohn Fourth and Fifth Symphonies under review appeared
originally on LP in 1958, then on CD and SACD from RCA, on XRCD from JVC, and
now on disc from United Classics. No matter how you play it, the Fourth, especially, is a wonderful
performance.

Of course, there is
hardly a lack of good Mendelssohn Fourths
available these days (Abbado, Blomstedt, Sinopoli, and Klemperer among my own
favorites), but Munch’s was doubtless one of the earliest great stereo versions
and one of my first recollections of the piece. Coupled with an equally good
Mendelssohn Fifth Symphony from a
year earlier, the album makes an easy recommendation, particularly when you can
buy it at so reasonable a price.

Munch’s interpretation of the Symphony No. 4 in A major, Op. 90 “Italian” has all the
forward drive you could want, with plenty of adrenaline flowing in the famous
first movement. Munch begins the symphony with a thrilling surging of pace that
get the blood racing like few other conductors in this work. When the second
subject arrives, it does so under Munch in a sweet, graceful arch, returning to
a variation on the opening. Then he takes the Andante briskly, almost to avoid any major contrast with the opening
movement. It's not exactly the "slow march" we usually hear. The
third movement is a kind of minuet that Munch has a little fun with. Finally,
Mendelssohn said of the Fourth that
he thought it was the "jolliest" of his works, and the final Presto (based on an exuberant Neapolitan
dance) proves it, with Munch bouncing it around for all it's worth. You'll
hardly find a better, more-spirited performance no matter what the cost or age.

What surprised me, though, was how much I liked the
accompanying Symphony No. 5 in D minor,
Op. 107 “Reformation.” I don’t suppose it should have
surprised me; it’s a splendid piece of music. I just keep thinking of it in
terms of its slow, heavy opening movement rather than its superbly light
second-movement Allegro, a movement
that suggests the “Scottish” Symphony
in its delightful, folksy simplicity. Mendelssohn actually composed his Fifth Symphony a year or so before his Fourth; however, he wasn't too keen on
it and dismissed it out of hand. Nobody heard the music again until some twenty
years after the composer's death.

Anyway, after a fairly grave first movement, the
second-movement Allegro vivace dances
merrily along, reminding us this is, indeed, Mendelssohn. And again Munch makes
the most of it. The work concludes with a Finale
quoting Luther's "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," which Munch handles
with appropriate dignity and splendor.

I’ve owned this
recording for several years now on a JVC XRCD remastering that costs a small
fortune to buy, and I find it slightly but significantly more dynamic and
better defined than the standard RCA product. This United Classics edition is
not quite up the JVC standards, either, but it still sounds plenty good.

Like other RCA Munch
recordings of the Fifties, there are things to like about the sound and things
maybe not to like. It is an exceptionally realistic recording, with plenty of
clarity in the midrange and treble and some solid, well-defined bass. On the
minus side, it can also be a tad hard and bright in places. And like many of
RCA’s “Living Stereo” recordings of the time, there is almost too wide a stereo
spread.

The recording’s sound is fine in any format, but on this
United Classics disc we hear what may be a bit more noise suppression than on
the JVC disc. The sonics are very smooth, with the noise reduction having
little effect on the high-end extension. A quick switch to the JVC, however,
reveals the newer product displaying some slight loss of detail, definition,
and focus. Nevertheless, if you don't have the JVC disc for comparison, the
United Classics sound (or the RCA) is still good and surely belies its
fifty-odd years.

Certainly, United
Classics have priced this edition of the recording right. I noticed a number of
retail outlets on-line offering it new for well under ten bucks, making it hard
to resist.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition (CD review)

Also, Night on the
Bare Mountain; Khovanshchina Prelude. Ernest Ansermet, Orchestre de la Suisse
Romande. Decca UCCD-7240 (Japan).

A few weeks before this writing a reader asked me if I had
ever heard conductor Ernest Ansermet’s 1959 recording of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition because he
thought it was quite good. Yes, I had, but I also had to admit it was many
years earlier on an old London LP, and I hadn’t thought about it since then,
probably because I didn’t care much for the sound. Anyway, I told him I’d try
to get hold of the compact disc and give it another try. You’ll find the
recording these days on a regular British CD from Decca, an Australian
Eloquence CD from Decca, a remastered SACD from Esoteric, a remastered copy in
various formats from HDTT (High Definition Tape Transfers), and the one
reviewed here from Japanese Decca.

As you know, Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky
(1839-1881) originally wrote his Pictures
at an Exhibition as a piano suite in 1874. He called these vivid tone poems
“sound pictures,” but they didn’t go very far with the public. Afterwards,
several people orchestrated the suite, the most famous and most often recorded
version being the 1922 one we have here by French composer Maurice Ravel. From
that point, the music took off and became the basic-repertoire piece we know
today. Anymore, because the Mussorgsky/Ravel work became so popular, almost
every conductor and orchestra in the world have recorded it, so the competition
is understandably intense, with recordings by Fritz Reiner (RCA/JVC, 1957),
Riccardo Muti (EMI, 1979), and Lorin Maazel (Telarc/FIM, 1978) heading up my
personal list of favorites. It was, therefore, the Reiner, Muti, and Maazel
recordings to which I compared the Ansermet rendering.

Interestingly, the first thing one notices about the
Ansermet recording is that his Suisse Romande orchestra sounds smaller than the
others, almost chamber size. It's not really the size of the group or the
quality of the venue, however, and Victoria Hall, Geneva is one of the finest
recording locations in Europe. It's just that the Suisse Romande group doesn't
have the big, plush, rich sonority of a Chicago or Philadelphia Orchestra, nor
do they create quite so luxurious an impression.

The performance is another story. Ansermet handles the Promenades and gnome well, the visitor
casually browsing the pictures, the misshapen dwarf extraordinary. The Old Castle has a proper mystery about
it; the quarreling children are a bit tame but fun; the ox cart sounds
appropriately lumbering; and the ballet of the "Unhatched Chicks" is
cute. The two Polish Jews have their rich man-poor man chatter, which comes off
with befitting personality; the marketplace is lively; and the catacombs are
nicely spooky.

Then we come to the big finish, the "Hut of Baba
Yaga," the witch flying through the air looking for human bones, and the
"Great Gate of Kiev" with its majestic climax of processions and
bells. Here, Ansermet is particularly effective, creating a truly grand,
thrilling experience. It's a good rendition, overall, although I still wouldn't
quite place it the category of a Reiner or a Muti.

The real highlight of the disc for me was the accompanying
material, particularly Night on the Bare
Mountain in the Rimsky-Korsakov arrangement. Ansermet takes his time to
shape the music and make it both spiritual and scary. Lastly, the program
closes with the Prelude  "Dawn over the River Moscow,"
which Ansermet shapes with beautiful, pictorial grace.

Decca producers James Walker and Michael Bremner and
engineers Roy Wallace and James Lock made the recordings in Victoria Hall,
Geneva, Switzerland in 1959 (Pictures)
and 1964 (Bare Mountain, Khovanshchina). The sound is reasonably
clean and clear for old recordings.  A
bit of noise reduction has clarified the sonics in Pictures nicely, removing most (but not all) hiss without
sacrificing much high-end extension. During quietest passages, one still
notices the background noise, though, and as with most noise reduction, it has
sucked out a touch of midrange air and life. It's little to fret over, though,
and the quick transient attacks, wide dynamics, and general lucidity more than
make up for it. When Decca first released the LP, I recall reading that it was
something of a demonstration piece. Unfortunately, by the time I heard it on
LP, it was in re-release and perhaps not so well pressed. Now we have it in
pretty good shape, which most listeners will find pleasing enough. The sound in
the two couplings, from about five years later, is noticeably quieter,
smoother, and fuller.

Bottom line: It’s all a matter of personal taste, of
course, but for my money, I’d rank my own favorite Pictures as those from Reiner (RCA/JVC) first for its characterful
performance and vivid sound; Muti (EMI) second for its colorful realization and
dynamic impact; Ansermet third (Decca) for its incisive interpretation and
acceptably good sonics; and Maazel (Telarc or LIM) fourth for its expressive
reading and wide-ranging audio.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1-4 (CD review)

Also, “Haydn” Variations; Alto Rhapsody; Academic and Tragic Overtures.
Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Orchestra. EMI 7243 5 62760 2 8 (3-disc set).

Two prefacing comments:
(1) I am not the biggest fan of the Brahms symphonies, my appreciation limited
to the final movement of the First
Symphony, much of the Second Symphony,
little but parts of the opening and third movements of the Third Symphony, and most of the Fourth
Symphony. (2) I am a fan of Otto
Klemperer, whose command of the basic Germanic repertoire--Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms, Bruckner, Mozart, Mahler, Mendelssohn, and Wagner--I find largely
unequalled (well, OK, except Bach). Klemperer is, along with Bruno Walter and
Sir Adrian Boult, the only conductor who can make the parts of the Brahms
symphonies I enjoy come alive for me. That said, I welcomed with open arms a
few years ago this three-disc set of remastered Klemperer Brahms from EMI in
their “Great Recordings of the Century” series.

These works by
Brahms were among the first things Klemperer recorded when he took over the
Philharmonia Orchestra from Herbert von Karajan in the late Fifties. They
showed him to be a towering figure on the podium, who enjoyed the respect of
music lovers for the next two decades as he had for a half century before. Now
he gets their respect through his many recordings. The three discs in the set
include not only the four symphonies but the Haydn Variations, the Alto
Rhapsody (with Christa Ludwig), and the Academic
and Tragic Overtures.

Klemperer’s way with
the First Symphony is as granitelike
as always, yet the music flows almost unconsciously from his direction. The
famous march tune in the Finale is,
of course, as prominent as ever and crowns the work for the heroic tones that
precede it; but even the prior three movements show the power and conviction of
both Brahms and Klemperer. The conductor clarifies points a listener might not
know existed by presenting the music as directly yet as profoundly as possible.
People criticized the conductor early in his career for being too literal with
his interpretations, but by 1957 the world had caught up with him and
recognized his genius. Frankly, though, I hadn’t heard these recordings since
their old LP days, and was expecting the worst. It didn’t happen. While I
remain largely unconvinced the Brahms symphonies represent the greatest music
in the world, I enjoyed every minute of them.

Folks often consider
the Second Symphony Brahms’s
“pastoral” symphony because of its often casual and bucolic manner, and
certainly Klemperer brings out these qualities. His is a more angular vision of
the piece, however, than Boult’s more romanticized and curvacious rendering.
Still, Klemperer’s way with the Second
is lovely and serene, building to a nice climax in the energetic final
movement, which tends to be perhaps a bit too rowdy for the nature of the
preceding movements but blame that on Brahms, not Klemperer.

Although audiences
had to wait six years for its appearance, the Third Symphony takes up where the “Pastoral” Second left off. But it is perhaps even more personal, and
especially pastoral in its middle sections, with familiar and graceful tunes in
the first and third movements. Klemperer seems surprisingly gentle in molding
the inner sections while standing typically firm in the outer ones, the payoff
being a reading of the Third more
appealing than any I’ve heard. Despite my initial reservations about the work,
listening again to Klemperer, poetic yet strong, makes me think no one may
match his performance.

The Fourth is probably Brahms’s most wholly
satisfying symphony, with much of it standing up well to repeated listening.
The opening movement begins most gracefully and builds in drama using some of
the composer’s most memorable tunes. The second movement is as placid as ever,
and its heart is in the right place. The third movement Scherzo is cheerful, festive, and exuberant, leading to a powerful
and relatively serious Finale.
Klemperer’s manner is more severe in the Fourth
Symphony than many of his fellow conductors like Blomstedt, Walter, or
Abbado, with Klemperer driving the music more steadily forward until each
movement culminates in the appropriate degrees of joyfulness or excitement. Not
everyone will respond positively to Klemperer’s approach, but it is a feasible
alternative to many of the more spontaneous but often more sentimental
interpretations of his rivals.

The sound in all the
works is quite good for its age, although if played at a high volume there is a
small degree of background noise one can note. At normal volume, the sound is
quiet enough, though. The recording dates range from 1954 for the “Haydn” Variations, a mono recording, to 1962
for the Overtures, with Klemperer
having recorded the symphonies in 1956-57. EMI remastered and noise-shaped them
in 1999 (releasing the present compilation in 2004) using the Abbey Road
Technology Prism SNS system (ART), but an even newer remastering might have
rendered the First Symphony,
particularly, even quieter. The mono Variations
are actually the most transparent, but the others are in good-sounding stereo.
In fact, several of my favored Boult recordings disappointed me when I put them
on for comparison; they sounded rather plump, overly plush, alongside the
decade-older Klemperer things. Oh, well. Maybe it’s time EMI remastered and
cleaned up the Boult discs, too.

Anyway, the
Klemperer recordings display a wide stereo spread, good dynamics, and a
satisfying low-end thump. What’s more, the sound stage often appears deep and
three-dimensional, the sound quite natural in every respect except perhaps the
highest violins, which tend to be a bit hard. I have already enjoyed this set
immensely for several years and will no doubt continue to do so for a very long
time.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Chopin: Souvenirs (CD review)

Warren Mailley-Smith,
piano. Sleeveless Records SLV1002.

At some point in the career of almost every pianist, he or
she decides to release an album of favorite Chopin short piano pieces. It’s
understandable; Polish pianist and composer Frederic Chopin (1810-1849) was one
of the foremost champions of the piano, a man whose music remains as popular
today as ever. As I recall, the second LP I ever bought, some fifty-odd years
ago, was Van Cliburn’s My Favorite Chopin,
so British pianist Warren Mailley-Smith is in good company with his sixth
album, Chopin: Souvenirs.

Mailley-Smith appears to be a rising star in England. His
Web site tells us that “the award-winning concert pianist Warren Mailley-Smith
has made his solo debuts to critical acclaim at Wigmore Hall London and
Carnegie Hall, New York. In 2011 he made his much anticipated debut with the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto.” He is in
increasing demand as a solo concert artist and has received over thirty
invitations to perform for the British Royal Family at Buckingham Palace,
Highgrove House, and Sandringham House.

“Mailley-Smith studied at the Royal College of Music where
he won numerous postgraduate prizes including a Countess of Munster Award and
the French Piano Music Prize. He then took further private studies with Peter
Feuchtwanger and the late Ronald Smith.” His solo career “now sees him
performing in festivals and concert venues across the UK, accepting invitations
from further afield to perform in Europe and the U.S. His concerto repertoire
includes works by Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Mozart and
Tchaikovsky, and he works regularly with duo partners Rowena Calvert (cello),
Susan Parkes (Soprano), and Matt Jones (violin).”

Mailley-Smith specializes in Romantic repertoire, which he
plays most deliciously, sometimes a little flamboyantly, always Romantically.
It’s hard not to like his pianistic technique, although some listeners may find
it too fanciful, too dramatic, too ostentatious; too much playing to the
audience, if you will. Certainly, no one can accuse him of not being virtuosic,
though. He is a most-skilled practitioner of the art, with the kind of poetic
style that may seem old fashioned in an age of clarifying, analyzing, and
elucidating every note. It seems to me that the best pianists--Pollini,
Ashkenazy, Perahia, Argerich, Brendel, Kovacevich, Rubinstein, Gilels, Richter,
Michelangeli, Janis, et al--generally combine the two approaches. We’ll see how
Mailley-Smith proceeds in his career, and whether he can equal what only a
handful of pianists have already accomplished.

That said, there’s a lot to like here.

Mailley-Smith opens the program with the Fantasie Impromptu No. 4, Op. 66, an
excerpt from which you can hear below. The track pretty much exemplifies
everything the man does on the disc. It’s lush and it’s plush, and it will blow
your house down. Not that it’s slow or lackadaisical, however; indeed, it is
fleet and surefooted. It’s just that Mailley-Smith so caresses each note, it
sounds as though he’s making love to the instrument (a Steinway model D). This
is not only Romantic piano playing, this is a romance between the performer and
the music. It’s quite hypnotic, actually.

And so it goes through fourteen items on the disc, each
one played in a smooth, flowing, polished, yet thoroughly engaging manner.
Mailley-Smith performs with flourish and sensitivity, pointing up every ornate
contrast the composer has to offer.

With the exception of just a few items, the numbers on the
album duplicate the program presented on pianist Idil Biret's very fine
collection of favorites for Naxos. So, I had a good comparison there without
having to dive into five or six different CD collections of nocturnes, waltzes,
etudes, etc. And what I can say is that Mailley-Smith acquits himself very well
next to his older compatriot, matching Ms. Biret in virtuosity and sensitivity
and surpassing Naxos's slightly clearer but edgier sound. While it is still
open to question whether Mailley-Smith will ever match Pollini or Rubinstein in
Chopin, we shall see, but he's off to a promising start.

The Nocturne No. 2
in D flat, Op. 27 is as creamy and dreamy as anyone could wish for. The Etude No. 8 in F major, Op. 10,
nicknamed "Sunshine," is all bright light and sunny skies. The famous
Prelude No. 15, Op. 28,
"Raindrop," exudes the sort of beauty you want, with a wholly
appropriate gentleness of touch. The "Minute Waltz" comes through
with flying colors, and sounds less breathless by the end than we sometimes
hear it. Then, there's a degree of melancholic dignity in the Waltz No. 2 in C sharp minor, Op. 64
that’s refreshing.

Interestingly, both Mailley-Smith and Biret open and close
their programs with the same two selections, the aforementioned
"Fantasie" Impromptu and
the Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23.
Just as interesting is Mailley-Smith's inclusion of the Souvenir de Paganini, a delightful little set of variations one
doesn't often encounter. It rounds out a program that quite won me over.
Mailley-Smith provides the kind of Romantic expressiveness that makes him a
crowd pleaser.

If I have any minor argument with the disc, it’s that it
provides less than an hour (55’05) of content. Surely, the pianist has other
favorites he could have included, or was it a matter of cost considerations in
recording? I don’t know, and it’s a small matter in any case.

Producer and engineer Alex Van Ingen recorded the album in
June 2009 at champs Hill, West Sussex, England. The sound is among the best
I've heard for a piano. It's rich and resonant without being hard or harsh. The
piano has just the right amount of warm, mellow clarity to make it appear real,
as though it were on a stage just a few rows ahead of one. Nor does it stretch
clear across the room as sometimes happens in these solo affairs, but remains
anchored out firmly between the speakers, with just enough width to simulate a
live situation. I couldn't have been happier with the sonics.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP

Domingo: Verdi (CD review)

Placido Domingo,
baritone; Pablo Heras-Casado, Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana. Sony
88883733122.

For the past four or five decades, two tenors have
dominated the operatic scene: the late Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo.
Pavarotti may have had the more thrilling voice, but Domingo had the richer,
more versatile voice. It’s always a pleasure when the man releases a new album.

The back cover of Domingo’s latest CD (2013), titled
simply Verdi, explains that “for the
first time the world-renowned tenor has released an album of baritone arias--an
exceptional document of Domingo’s discovery of opera character new to him, and
a tribute to Verdi, who has played a crucial role in Domingo’s career. ‘Verdi
is a wellspring of great music, and every lyric singer is grateful to him. So
for me this recording is a special celebration and an act of thanksgiving and
love toward Giuseppe Verdi.’” What goes without mention here is that doing an
album of baritone arias is also a nod to Domingo’s age, since the man is as of
this writing in his early seventies. Not that I believe he isn’t still fully
capable of doing tenor arias; just saying. Besides, he has already recorded
every major tenor aria there is, so perhaps it’s best to give him the benefit
of doubt.

Anyway, Domingo provides well over an hour of music on the
album, eighteen tracks from nine different Verdi operas, starting with
“Perfidi! All’anglo contro me v’unite!” from Macbeth. No, these aren’t the most-common numbers for non-opera
fans, and as I have less interest in opera than I should, I found most of them
only vaguely familiar. Nevertheless, one cannot deny that Domingo has the
talent for them.

As always, the voice is still strong and flexible. The
intonation remains remarkably accurate, and the tone smooth, mellow, and
mellifluous. What's more, although these are baritone arias, Domingo's natural
tenor continually manifests itself. Some minor tremolo creeps in at times,
whether intentional or not. It's not distracting, and many listeners will
welcome it.

And so it goes through further selections from Rigoletto, Un ballo in maschera, La traviata,
Simon Boccanegra, Ernani, Il Trovatore, Don Carlo,
and La forza del destino. The voice
remains relatively strong, and if anyone doubts the power, one has only to
listen to "Si, la mia figlia!" to learn otherwise. The control is
still there, the projection, the phrasing, the precise articulation and
control, even at his age, if not always so exacting as in his prime.

As important, the poetic qualities of Domingo's voice
continue to manifest themselves. Listen to the lyric flow of "Di Provenza
il mar, il suol" or "Il balen del suo sorriso," and you'll see
what I mean.

On several tracks other singers join Domingo: soprano
Angel Joy Blue, tenor Aquiles Machado, baritone Fernando Piqueras, and basses
Bonifaci Carrillo and Gianluca Buratto. Maestro Pablo Heras-Casado and the
Orquestra de la Communitat Valenciana lend commendable, sympathetic
accompaniment throughout.

The greatest tenor of all time? The greatest baritone of
all time? Perhaps the greatest singer of all time, period? Who knows. I won’t
take sides. But it is pleasurable listening to his voice again, even in its mature
years.

Domingo made the recording in 2012-2013 at the Palau de
les Arts “Reina Sofia” Auditori, Valencia, Spain and Angel Recording Studios,
London, England. The sound displays an acceptable depth of field for a
recording of this sort. There is good dynamic impact, too, making for a fairly
realistic presentation. Clarity seems fine most of the time as well, although
there are occasions when the orchestral accompaniment can be a touch bright.
It's an overall welcome sound, in any case.

To listen to a brief excerpt from this album, click here:

JJP