Piano Concerto No 1: Romanza (Chopin); Traumerei (Schumann); Piano Concerto in A minor: allegro affettuoso (Schumann); Petrarch Sonnet No 104; Piano Concerto No1: andante semplice (Tchaikowsky); Piano Sonata No 1 in C: rondo presto; Piano Concerto No 4: rondo vivace (Beethoven); Piano Concerto: allegro con brio (Bliss); The Heart’s Assurance (Tippett) with Peter Pears (tenor)
This is an important recording which ought to be listened to by anyone with a serious interest in the piano repertoire.
Noel Mewton-Wood’s career was like a blazing comet which, having soared across the heavens, vanished –suddenly and without warning – from the firmament. Mewton-Wood’s suicide – over a lovers’ tiff – when in his early thirties, robbed the world of one of the most articulate and profound pianists ever to place music on record. These nine tracks are a catalogue of keyboard marvels that makes Mewton-Wood’s exit from the scene at so tragically early an age even more poignant.
As a child, at the dawn of the LP era, the writer was given a gift of a second-hand recording featuring Melbourne-born Mewton-Wood as soloist in Tchaikowsky’s Piano Concerto No 2 in G. To this day, the sense of wonder and delight experienced on hearing this prodigious offering is as clearly recalled as if yesterday. I still treasure that now-ancient LP with its pops and crackles a legacy of being played times without number.
None of this performance features on this recently released CD which brims with other good things, not least wonderfully insightful readings of single movements from concertos by Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven, Tchaikowsky (No 1) and Arthur Bliss. With their frankly stunning insights by a musician of seemingly unlimited potential, this cornucopia of near-peerless offering is a reminder of what a loss the world sustained on Mewton-Wood’s premature death in England. In the Schumann movement, the playing is in turn imperious, tender and virile, every aspect of the music presented with unassailable aesthetic logic.
There’s an astonishing track devoted to the finale from Weber’s Sonata No 1 in C. I listened in astonishment to the sort of breathtaking virtuosity one more usually associates with Horowitz in his prime. It’s a feat of prestidigitation that needs to be heard to be believed. The music, qualitatively wafer-thin, has little inherent worth but the dazzling skill with which it is played makes it, for the duration of the piece, seem infinitely more important than it really is –and it is only a wizard of the keyboard that could cast such a spell.
Again and again, as one listens to these tracks, there is the sad realisation of a blazing flame of genius extinguished prematurely. Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnet No 104 provides a stunning listening experience.
Liner notes by Cyrus Meher-Homji make for fascinating reading.
Hopefully, more of Mewton-Wood’s glittering piano legacy will be made available on CD not only as a reminder to those who have already experienced the magic of this extraordinary musician but to reach out to those who have not yet come upon this glittering musical treasure trove.
In the Chopin track, the musical argument is expounded with a cogency and lucidity that are breathtaking, insights that are beyond criticism in the conventional sense. Recorded sound is excellent. And Mewton-Wood manages, too, to make Bliss’ long-winded and often-vulgar concerto far more approachable than it, in fact, is.
All the works on this CD are mentioned in Sonia Orchard’s novel The Virtuoso.
Chiquitita la novia (Obradors); 5 Tonadillas (Granados); The Three-Cornered
Hat (Falla); Two Romances ( Luis de Milan); Castilian Lyrics (Rodrigo); Verlaine Songs (Brophy); Chamber Concerto (Shaun Rigney)
It is the instrumentalists who score highest in this attractive compilation. Guitarist Slava Grigoryan is in top form, not least in an accompanying role in a bracket of Tonadillas by Granados. Of course, the original score calls for piano accompaniment to the vocal line. But although the guitar lacks the tonal power of a piano, the accompaniments are played with a stylistic understanding and fragile beauty that go a long way to compensate for the guitar’s lower decibel levels.
In a suite drawn from Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, it is again the instrumentalists who take the lion’s share of the honours in a performance that is an absolute delight with clarinet and horn particularly on form, the latter exceptionally so in the Farruca. From first note to last, there is the most delightful engagement with the music. The CD is worth having for this alone. Paul Dean’s arrangement of the Falla original is masterly in that it preserves the essence of the original to a quite remarkable degree..
Gerard Brophy’s Verlaine Songs make for most appealing listening, too. Soprano Margaret Schindler does wonders with the spoken text in Your Voice, Deep and Low, informing each note with a most compelling, darkly bodeful quality. Grigoryan is well to the fore, too, with profoundly expressive playing in The White Moon, each note registering on the consciousness. And a heart-easing lift to the phrase underscores the dreamy, languorous, Andalucian-style interior mood of It’s True. I rather think that Falla would have loved it. Peter Luff, whose horn playing is like a golden thread through this compilation, wonderfully enhances in A Great Black Slumber that brings Brophy’s work to a close.
ABC Classics 476 6440 plus bonus DVD of highlights
TPT: 74’00”
reviewed by Neville Cohn
Mackerras Opera House
Wagner: Overture: The Mastersingers of Nuremberg; Tannhauser: Elizabeth’s Greeting; Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod; Gotterdammerung: Siegfried’s Rhine Journey; Siegfried’s Funeral Music; Brunnhilde’s Immolation
Here’s a souvenir for those who collect Opera House memorabilia: a recording of the opening concert in what was rapidly to become an international arts icon. I dare say that the cultural cringe was alive and well at the time in that the soloist for the occasion was a singer from abroad. This is not to suggest that Birgit Nilsson was unequal to the occasion. Quite to the contrary, with her formidable voice blasting an effortless way through the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at full bore, there would have been few who would question her musical credentials. .
It triggers a childhood memory of listening to a radio broadcast of the Johannesburg Festival overture premiered in that city in 1956 to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the gold-rich city. At the time, there were more than a few South African composers who would have been up to the challenge but – no! – it HAD to be someone important from beyond the borders of South Africa. So, at a gala concert to open a South African festival, the audience included just about every South African composer but the commissioned work was by British composer William Walton.
Perhaps the same thinking informed the decision to feature a Swedish diva with, I dare say, the cultural cringers convinced, as in South Africa of the 1950s, that ”if she’s imported, she’s bound to be better”. How, I wonder would Joan Sutherland have fared in Nilsson’s place? It’s a pretty safe bet, I believe, that she would have brought the house down bearing in mind that by 1973 she was at the height of her powers.
None of this should be considered a vote of no confidence in the Swedish soprano’s abilities. She is at her superb best in Wagner’s Liebestod, effortlessly riding the crest of the accompanying orchestral wave. And in Elizabeth’s Dich, teure Halle from Tannhauser, she is at the top of her formidable form as Wagnerian diva par excellence.
Siegfried’s Rhine Journey makes for mostly impressive listening with Mackerras coaxing a uniform tonal sheen from the strings to which the brass and woodwind choirs respond with commendable unanimity of attack. Much the same could be said of Siegfried’s Funeral Music with lower strings at their eloquent best. In fairness, though, this SSO performance should not be taken as indicative of the orchestra’s present form which, in an overall sense, is most significantly more polished than in the 1970s.
A bonus, black & white DVD of these events makes for a fascinating souvenir.
5. Moderato, tres simplement et avec souplesse (5.44)
6. Andante, tres tranquille, presque adagio (4.02)
7. Final, assez anime cependant (4.38)
8. Damase: Rhapsodie pour cor et orchestra* (1987) (14.40)
9. Dukas/Terracini: Villanelle** (1906) (6.19)
10. Saint-Saens: Morceau de Concert pour cor et orchestra (1887) (8.47)
11. Marshall-Hall: Phantasy for horn and orchestra (1905) (10.18)
*world premier recording **ditto, in this version
Despite knowing Barry Tuckwell – the horn player with ‘golden’ bel canto – retired from solo performing in the late 1990’s, one still, albeit momentarily, immediately and nostalgically thinks one will hear his magic at work on any new disc devoted to horn music (and bearing his name on the cover). But this latest Melba Recording shows his magic at work as a conductor (of The Queensland Orchestra and Orchestra Victoria) as he provides
steadfast support and subtle interaction with another horn player: Ben Jacks. A changing of the guard perhaps?
Not Quite. However it could be forgiven for assuming there would be, at least stylistically, a similarity between Barry Tuckwell, in his peerless days, and Ben Jacks, who has just crossed the starting line. There would be an ‘en rapport’ of the minds. But Jacks is no Barry Tuckwell. His style, approach and his sense of shading are altogether different. It might be argued that his technique doesn’t, as yet, have the satin finish or fluency of the master but, as this disc so nicely projects, Jacks has a fine talent which will mature technically as it continues to assert its stamp of individuality. Moreover, it is a bit unfair to compare a present-day aspirant to a legend.
The disc leaves little room for equivocation about its target audience, which happens to be the bulk of the concert-going audience. It does, however, seem a pity to bring together all this Australian flair and dexterity in the service of so much tonal or quasi-tonal French music. One began to sense a distinct lack of music which possesses true rhythmic edge and harmonic bite, so to speak. For example, the opening item – ‘Concerto pour cor et orchestre’ by Damase – was written in 1995 but, for the most part, would probably have been considered passé in 1895!
Damase has made much of his “sincerity” in composition…as he turns his back on Messiaen, Boulez and even ‘Les Six’. It isn’t his sincerity one would question in this concerto (or his orchestration, which is impeccably textbook) but his mode of telling, which is anachronistic to the point of aristocratic aloofness. Even the developments of Debussy, who, incidentally, won the Prix de Rome just 63 years prior to Damase’s bestowal, are ignored.
Having to perform a score which is weak in design and stereotypical in language doesn’t appear to have detracted from Jacks’ excellent moulding of phrases or displaying flexibility of timbre, nor a listener from appreciating these qualities in his playing. The ‘Moderato’ movement is the longest of the four by a considerable amount, in French horn terms. But at no point could one fault the soloist’s approach. Similarly, the orchestra, while giving him both fine support and balanced interaction, was beautifully unified and technically copperplate.
The ‘Andante’ (third movement) afforded Jacks the opportunity to display his excellent breath control through extended lines. He always reserved just sufficient to neatly complete the passage. Nor did he lose the characteristic warm, dark beauty of tone over a surprisingly wide range (a true Tuckwell hallmark). One was also struck by the orchestra’s rich, Philadelphia-honeyed tone: Romantic music’s soul mate!
The ‘Allegro’ movements of the concerto were brief to an extent that made one ponder why it is that ultra-traditionalist composers appear to experience difficulty sustaining a fast paced musical discourse. Whatever the reason, such an architecturally frail structure doesn’t give the soloist a chance to show a sense of large scale thinking in his performance. As more and more fiercely competitive and gifted younger soloists come forward, the more and more one is hearing such questionable nooks and crannies of the repertoire and, consequently, the more one finds oneself writing how impossible it is to critique a performer’s ability to negotiate overall dynamic form. And this is a case in point.
This recording also contains Damase’s ‘Rhapsodie pour cor et orchestre’, commissioned by Barry Humphries and premiered, in 1986, with Tuckwell as soloist. There’s a lot to remark on those facts alone; not the least of which is why Humphries, who I wouldn’t have thought of being that much of a traditionalist, commissioned a Frenchman and why, specifically, Damase. Perhaps what is more consequential is the programmatic outline of the commission: “inspired by the ocean and the atmosphere of the coast”.
Programmatic music depends entirely on who listens to it – a detail some composers and most audiences, in a moment of wistfulness, seem to forget. Generally the composer provides a few ‘shared’ musical archetypes to help guide the imagination, but there are no motivic antecedents or dynamic rises and falls or even the plaintive cry of some seabird in Damase’s ‘Rhapsodie’. In fact, there are so many gestures – unrelated gestures – all jostling for face-room and for no ostensible reason, that one wonders what’s holding the music together…apart from stylistic clichés.
And it pains the heart to realise that Ben Jacks’ excellent perception of sound colour is using this music as its showcase. The score certainly requires considerable dexterity of the soloist and, in that sense only, Jacks executes such difficult passages with admirable panache and security. It would be a delight to round off this compliment by mentioning the soloist’s ability to punctuate the texture with precision and poise but, as the music hasn’t a skerrick of rhythmic vitality, it is impossible to do so.
Paul Dukas’ ‘Villanelle’ (orchestrated by Paul Terracini) is, compositionally, more successful. This is somewhat at odds with the fact that it was written as a competition piece (for horn and piano). True to its purpose, it contains almost every conceivable technical snorter and arabesque. But the musical thread is maintained while traversing the minefield.
In this performance, the horn and orchestra (much to the arranger’s credit) combine to find a depth of interplay that one wouldn’t expect to come across in a work designed, primarily, to winnow competitors. They convincingly balance the performance to give the final climax its proper emphasis. Jacks sure-footedly, but never hastily, negotiates the difficulties with notable élan.
While the recording has other works – each portraying a different view of late French Romanticism – it is Marshall-Hall’s ‘Phantasy for horn and orchestra’ that stands out as an oddity. Its aberrance lies, firstly, in the fact that it was written by an Englishman (an Englishman living and teaching in Australia) and, secondly, the intrigue surrounding his life.
In purely musical terms, the ‘Phantasy’, despite displaying some fairly interesting and slightly quirky Wagnerian harmonies, lets the listener’s mind wander when it shouldn’t. Also, unless I’m shamefully mistaken, Jacks doesn’t quite reach a few of the lowest notes with the same degree of confidence he has shown elsewhere on the disc. To call this a ‘minor offence’ – words with which Marshall-Hall would, I’m sure, agree – would be an over-reaction.
This is a disc which shows class and finery in all aspects of production. If you enjoy your music with every note glowing in Romantic French splendour then this is your type of recording. While you relish its lyricism and sentimentality, spare a moment to realise these younger Australian musicians are, steadily and confidently, attempting to try on the mantles of master performers. It’s a journey in process, as this album shows.
Stuart Hille 2009.
N.B. The information leaflet, which isn’t one of those ‘struggle to pull out/can’t push back booklets’, is to be lauded. Its author, John Humphries, plots the history of the evolution of the horn and relates it to the music being offered. He should start ‘how to’ classes in leaflet writing because, in this instance, his notes are exemplary.
If you’re dissatisfied, for whatever reason, with recording under the dictates of an established label: you might want to branch out into new stylistic avenues as an adjunct to your standard performance repertoire, or you might feel frustrated by not being able to go over and over certain works – with someone always trying to hurry you along – until you’ve reached what you feel to be the definitive interpretation. There could be any number of motivational factors urging you to take some form of action but if you feel strongly enough…set up your own recording company! Imagine it. You would have complete freedom (and a somewhat depleted bank balance). But you have faith in what you doing. Katia and Marielle Labeque imagined it and they liked the notion sufficiently to take action: they started their own label.
But theirs was not a complete leap into the unknown. It was more an ‘in focus’ risk because as a professional touring two piano ensemble, they knew they always had, and will continue to have, wide public appeal. The public are attracted to them for several reasons: the medium itself is immediately accessible, powerful and its historical literature has an unusually high number of quality works, and, most importantly, Katia and Marielle Labeque are very adept at what they do. And while they may not be as robust or full-bodied in their interpretations as are some professional two piano duos, they have a stylishness and virtuosity that can be quite mesmerising.
It comes as little surprise to find this, the first disc under their own label, devoted entirely to the music of Ravel. A further skein is added to the disc’s colouring by highlighting a somewhat tenuous Basque connection (Ravel was born there and spent his first three months of life there, and the Labeque sisters, as mentioned on the leaflet, spent their early childhood there). Whether the connection is strong enough to support a transcription of ‘Bolero’ with traditional Basque instruments accompanying the two pianos, is something we will discuss later. At this juncture it is more consequential to suggest Ravel never wholeheartedly embraced any philosophical/aesthetic construction, be it jazz, Basque music or old dance suite forms. He tended to use traits superficially (and there is much to be said for ‘suggesting’ rather than ‘portraying’) as he felt necessary. Whether these ‘suggestions’ are sometimes used to mask structural flaws…well, that’s a different proposition.
Nevertheless, it is true that Ravel often treats promising ideas (i.e. ideas which beckon development) as rigidly fixed gestures that are repeated, to give a surface sense of unity, but not allowed to evolve. Oddly, it is at such times – when the composer relies on repetition rather than development – that these pianists display one their finest qualities: their ability to tincture, through varying the phrasing, finger pressure etc, numerous repetitions. A perfect example of this is evinced in the very first item on the disc. ‘Prelude a la Nuit’, from ‘Rhapsodie Espagnole’ (consisting of four pieces) is little more than an iterated descending four note scalar pattern and a few swirls of colour. In other words, on paper, or in the hands of lesser pianists, the music lacks depth and any perception of melodic growth. Yet these performers manage to turn it into a process of evocation, through their excellent choice of dynamics, softness of touch and astute pedalling. They turn the mundane into the atmospheric.
The downward four note scale appears later in the ‘Rhapsodie’ but even when the composer accelerates the speed of its series in ‘Feria’, the final piece of the bracket, it is as if he is saying: “At the beginning you thought I was going to take this idea somewhere…great idea…but I couldn’t think what to do with it”. This is nothing like Debussy’s use of, for example, the cor anglais gesture in ‘Nuages’. This composer has a deliberate structural purpose for it: to punctuate the texture momentarily. Debussy understands that to immediately repeat something gives rise to an expectation of progression. Moreover, he wouldn’t, as Ravel does, make a distinct reference to another style (jazz, in the case of ‘Feria’) and be content not to explore its possibilities. But because Ravel is happy to do so he unwittingly places the onus heavily on the shoulders of the pianists. Katia and Marielle Labeque show considerable insight into trying to find a way to resolve this critical issue in Ravel’s music.
But not even a duo of their skill and sensitivity can salvage ‘Habanera’. If, at the time of writing this piece, Ravel had thought ahead to the little jazz references he would be using in ‘Feria’ he would have seen this was the perfect time to fully explore them. Moreover, using the jazz references as the basis of ‘Habanera’ and reminding the listener of them in ‘Feria’ would have created much stronger internal cohesion. But he didn’t. The listener of ‘Habanera’ gets nothing more than a meandering. It is as if an orchestra is tuning-up backstage – snatches of the Habanera rhythm, a few runs, lots of repeated single notes – without any intention of going onstage to perform a full Habanera. The listener should compare Bizet’s use of habanera in ‘Carmen’, as clichéd as it now is, to Ravel’s desultory treatment of it in ‘Rhapsodie Espagnole’. The former makes full use of the style and character but the latter leaves it stone-cold. On this disc, the performers try everything to breathe life into the piece but to little avail.
As a pianist, one is always at odds with Ravel because he writes so beautifully, so instinctively, so stylishly and evocatively for the instrument. But as a composer, one is constantly frustrated by his lack of architectural discipline and his willingness to rely on gesture rather than substance. When is he lucky enough to find a form, as he does in ‘Bolero’, where gesture is transformed into substance – something that is normally quite alien to the composer – and combines this with a phenomenal gift for orchestration, he manages to produce a dynamic and living piece of music. But, for the most part, his music is all about projecting style.
In ‘Ma Mere l’Oye’, a work that is perhaps over-exposed, he again allows style, more than any other aspect, to weave the fabric. Except, here, there is also a storyline (‘The Ugly Duckling’, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ et al) to guide the listener’s imagination. And it works: which is why it is a classic. There are plenty of colour (timbre) changes within the style and the hues balance each other convincingly. Whether we admire the performers’ sense of dynamic shading in ‘Pavane de la Belle au Bois Dormant’, linear clarity in ‘Petit Poucet’, lovely sense of atmosphere in ‘Laideronnette Imperatrice des Pagodes’ (where, incidentally, I didn’t realise the composer had indicated to hold the sustaining pedal for this long at the conclusion: nice touch), dramatic feel for ‘edge’ or tension in ‘Les Entretiens de la Belle et la Bete’, or their ability to measure the point of true climax in ‘Le Jardin Feerique’; we end up with a rendition that is every bit as stylish as the music it portrays. Sometimes it lacks the characteristic Labeque fieriness but, in the scheme of things, this a well-round and insightful performance.
The three works which follow ‘The Mother Goose Suite’ – ‘Menuet Antique’, ‘Pavane pour une Infante Defunte’ and ‘Prelude’ – are more like dream sequences than solid musical statements. The ‘Menuet’, for example, in spite of Ravel’s professed love of old dance suite forms, only has snippets to suggest antiquity – just enough to give the mind something upon which to peg an image – and the rest is atmosphere created from an intimate knowledge of the keyboard. The “Pavane’, particularly if the story is correct, is very sensitive but to the point of hypersensitivity. And without wanting to appear unduly cynical or unsympathetic, it should be noted that hypersensitivity is more an aristocratic sensibility. I know nothing of the ‘Prelude’ – when or why it was written – except it is a vapid piece of writing. The pianists do the very best they can with the material at hand but, even after their nicely tessellated account of the ‘Pavane’, there is no material here to work with. What can they do? Perhaps they could have devised a different program?
Whatever the case, the main thrust of the disc is a transcription of ‘Bolero’. I should state, from the outset, I have no particular ‘angst’ in respect to transcribing this music to two pianos and Basque instruments. Ravel certainly didn’t experience qualms when he transcribed Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’, which is deservedly used in orchestration classes, so he could hardly point an accusatory finger when the situation is, more or less, reversed. Not that that alone justifies it. Everything depends on the transcriber, and the performers, being able to shed new light on the music.
This transcription succeeds because it does just that. We are given an insight into the fabric of the existing music and, simultaneously, welcome a new addition to the repertoire. Whether or not future performances should involve Basque instruments is debatable because the Basque connection is somewhat superficial, or at least it doesn’t appear to be of critical importance to Ravel. If one accepts the notion of transcribing the music and one wants to lend it a Basque colouring, then something, other than a piano (for practical reasons) or a snare drum (which is used in the original) needs to carry the omnipresent rhythmic pattern. The atabal seems the obvious choice, given the criterion. Nothing can quite replace the E-flat clarinet or saxophone entries – moments of orchestral magic – but then transcribing is all about finding compromises.
Aurally judged, this account of ‘Bolero’ sounds tigerishly difficult and in a live concert performance it would constitute a huge risk. In recording though, undertaken within a controlled environment, the result is intoxicative. Moreover, there is no race to the work’s climax because the pianists have left themselves room to manoeuvre by not over stressing subsidiary high points.
It is the inclusion of ‘Bolero’ that lifts this disc out of the ordinary. One wonders if Katia and Marielle Labeque are pointing out a new direction for the future of the two piano literature: good and justifiable transcriptions. Imagine what could be done with ‘Gaspard de la Nuit’? ‘Daphnis et Chloe’?
Stuart Hille 2009.
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