Monthly Archives: April 2003

MRAVINSKY SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No 8

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SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No 8, opus 65
MOZART: Symphony No 33 in B flat K319
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra
EVGENY MRAVINSKY (conductor)BBC Legends BBCCL 4002-2
TPT: 1:20:29

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

The symphonies of Shostakovich are now so integral a part of the international orchestral repertoire that it comes as something of a surprise to be reminded that his Eighth Symphony, completed in 1943 and premiered in Moscow in November of that year with Evgeny Mravinsky conducting, was only heard for the first time ‘live’ in the UK in September 1960 when Mravinsky himself (the dedicatee of the work) and the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra gave a series of concerts at London’s Royal Festival Hall. This is one of a considerable number of significant events broadcast ‘live’ by the BBC, the recordings stored in its massive archives and now made available on compact discs for a new generation of listeners. This musical treasure trove includes Stokowski conducting Falla, Monteux directing Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, Enescu presiding over Bach’s Mass in B minor with Kathleen Ferrier one of the stellar vocal soloists. Many more recent BBC releases of archive material feature Benjamin Britten as conductor.

To get back to Mravinsky, that gaunt, chain-smoking figure who, at the time of the Eighth’s premiere and for some years afterwards, was a close friend of the composer (their relationship deteriorated over time): how keenly attuned he is to the requirements of the score. Low-register, sombre tones are like a call to attention – not to some frivolous entertainment but one of the weightiest and most profound utterances to come out of what Russia called The Great Patriotic War.

What co-ordination and intensity of expression Mravinsky secures from the Leningrad strings – and what tremendous tension the playing develops, with timpani crashes like harbingers of doom, and relentless, dissonantly screaming brass mounting an all-out frontal assault on the ears, suggestive -a s Shostakovich was so expert at doing – of brutal power.

Listen to the merrily peeping piccolo in the second movement allegretto – and how it gives way to insistent drummings and urgently blaring brass. And in the third movement, Mravinsky unerringly homes in on the emotional epicentre of the music with its woodwind cries and implacable thuds on the side-drum, evoking what one commentator suggests denotes the mindless drive of war. I particularly admired the skill with which the conductor gives point and meaning to some of Shostakovich’s most poignantly introspective musical ideas in the largo. And a finely stated flute line helps to transform – as Robert Dearling so perceptively writes – despair to a mood of guarded optimism. And in the finale, a movingly expressive flute line is like an oasis of sanity in the madness of war in 1943 Russia.

Throughout, the musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonic play as if the work was written specially for them which, in a significant sense, it was. Many of those performers, or those near to them, might well have been touched by the WWII siege of Leningrad by the nazis – and this lends an extra frisson to the listening experience.

A minuet that sounds a shade stolid and effortful does little to raise an account of Mozart’s Symphony in B flat, K319 above the routine.


BRITTEN the PERFORMER

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MOZART: Piano Concerto in E flat, K 482; Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K 546; Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, K364
Sviatoslav Richter (piano)
Norbert Brainin (violin) Pieter Schidlof (viola)
English Chamber Orchestra BENJAMIN BRITTEN (conductor)

BBCB 8010-2
TPT: 01:15:12

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Mozart playing at a very much higher level is available on a BBC CD with, for much of the time, a transcendentally fine reading of the Sinfonia Concertante K364 with, as soloists, Norbert Brainin (violin) and Peter Schidlof (viola) (both members of the legendary Amadeus Quartet). There is a quite wonderful confluence of musical gifts in this performance, given at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1967. Schidlof’s warm-toned, immaculately pitched line – it sings with a voice that almost mesmerisies the listener – and Brainin’s intensely musical response to the score (notwithstanding an occasional, fleeting weakening of concentration) make this a recording to remember. The sunny, optimistic mood of the finale is unambiguously evoked. Throughout, the English Chamber Orchestra, as if drawing inspiration from its conductor Benjamin Britten and the two stellar soloists, are almost beyond reproach. The introduction to the work is particularly well paced; the horns bringh a most effective air of pomp to the proceedings. And in the Adagio and Fugue in C minor K546, the ECO achieves the nth degree in solemnity in the former – and steers a rivettingly dramatic course through the Fugue.

If the Piano Concerto in E flat, K482 is less rewarding listening, it is not in any way due to Richter’s solo playing, which is masterly. Rather, it is because the piano sounds too distant; it needs significantly greater presence to do the performance justice. But although less than satisfactory in this sense, there is still much to admire in the recording, not least the limpid, easeful playing of the ECO strings and Richter’s account of Benjamin Britten’s astonishingly original cadenzas written specially for the soloist.


Reflections in the Water ELOQUENCE – AROMATHERAPY series

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Handel, Debussy, Johann Strauss II, Ravel, Vivaldi, Smetana, Chopin, Schubert, Tchaikowsky, Delius
various instrumentalists and orchestras

DECCA 466 705-2
TPT 1:14: 33

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

If you’ve come home stressed after a day in the salt mines, this compilation might well work wonders. Put your feet up, place slices of cold cucumber over your eyes, take the phone off the hook and lose yourself in some of the most soothing music ever written. Each of the fourteen tracks has some association with water in various states. Feel the tension in your neck muscles lessen as you listen to Jorge Bolet in Liszt’s arrangement for piano of Schubert’s lied Auf dem Wasser zu singen. Unhurried, glowing-toned, haunting, it’s beyond conventional criticism. So, too, is Pascal Roge. He is magical in Debussy’s Reflections in the Water with its rippling, filigree-delicate arabesques. And in the most famous of all works inspired by microscopic molecules consisting each of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen – Handel’s Water Music – Sir Neville Marriner and his Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields lavish care on three extracts from the suite. The Hornpipe is particularly pleasing; it bristles with pomp. Also included are The Blue Danube, an excerpt from Swan Lake, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude and Delius’ Aquarelle No 2. Drawn from recordings made between 1968 and 1981, sound quality is uniformly fine – in this sense, the recordings have worn well – apart from some slight distortion in string tone in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s account of Smetana’s Ma Vlast.


Country Classics ELOQUENCE – AROMATHERAPY series

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Vaughan Williams, Canteloube, Beethoven, Schubert, Chabrier, MacDowell, Grieg, Massenet, Debussy, Johann Strauss II

TPT: 01:17:02

reviewed by Sophie Saxe-Lehrman 

An abiding impression of this compilation is the imaginative choice of works and a willingness to leaven chestnuts with relative rarities. A number of tracks may well be new to some, typically Shepherds’ Song and Shepherds’ Chorus from Schubert’s Rosamunde and Grieg’s Cowkeeper’s Tune to which Willi Boskovsky and the National Philharmonic Orchestra respond as if to the manner born in a recording dating from 1974. Zither virtuoso Anton Karas (for millions of cinema fans inextricably associated with the classic movie The Third Man) teams up with the Vienna Phiharmonic, again under Boskovsky, who, better than most and second to few, make musical magic in a 1962 recording of Strauss’ Tales from the Vienna Woods. And winning efforts by clarinets and cellos make Richard Bonynge’s direction of the National Philharmonic in Sous les tilleuls from Massenet’s Scenes alsaciennes a delight. I liked, too, Kiwi pianist Joseph Cooper’s lovingly fashioned account of MacDowell’s To a Water Lily. Expansive treatment and glowing tone make this a highlight. Kiri te Kanawa, too, enchants in Bailero from Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne (Jeffrey Tate conducts the English Chamber Orchestra).


 

 

Glenn (David Young) Effie Crump Theatre

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reviewed by Neville Cohn

Few doors open on a single hinge so it is certainly an oversimplification to suggest, as many do, that the sole reason for Canadian pianist Glenn Gould’s decision to stop performing in public was his increasing conviction that many of those who attended his recitals were there primarily to look at him rather than to listen to him. There’s a fair case for suggesting a similar motive on the part of many who attend recitals given by pianist David Helfgott (whose life was portrayed in the movie Shine).

The great virtue of David Young’s play Glenn is that it doesn’t focus exclusively on this hangup but comprehensively canvases the full range of Gould’s neuroses and oddities (his hypochondria, his horror of being touched by anyone are two of many ) of which his withdrawal from the concert platform was only one.

But was turning his back on the recital hall such a silly move? Was this merely childish or eccentric petulance? Or was it a carefully thought out career move to enable him to function more effectively as a pianist.

The evidence for this is compelling: one has only to listen to his probing, superbly insightful recordings of Bach (as well as Schoenberg).

Young’s Glenn calls for Gould to be played not by one actor but by four, a risky experiment that, in this case, comes off convincingly. Certainly, it brings home how multifaceted a personality Gould was.

James Sollis as Gould the puritan, Andrew Hale in Gould’s incarnation as a perfectionist, Roderick Cairns characterising Gould as theperformer and Glenn Hall as Gould the youthful prodigy give a virtuoso, high-energy display of verbal co-ordination. As well, the four are required to give a host of cameo performances – and here, too, versatile to a man, they come up trumps.

As ever, Raymond Omodei’s directorial touch is everywhere apparent, most significantly in the pacing and pausing of dialogue. There are torrents of lines here ­ and in less than skilled directorial hands, the entire presentation could collapse under the weight of thousands of often rapidly articulated words.

It seemed a miscalculation, though, to have recordings of Gould playing Bach in the background as the play unfolded. True, decibel levels were low but, as always, Gould’s interpretative genius and infallible finges were so irresistible an aural attraction that, at times, they made one feel that the actors’ lines were an irritating intrusion, surely not the intention of the author.

Perhaps the production might have been better served by taking out the piano backing altogether and playing it at as an overture cum introduction to the play as well as during the interval when it could be savoured in its own right without getting in the way of the action.