TRANSFIGURATION

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Berlin Phiharmonic Orchestra
The MET Orchestra*
James Levine (conductor)
Siegfried Idyll (Wagner), Verklaerte Nacht (Schoenberg),
opus 6 (Alban Berg), Six Pieces, opus 6 (Webern), Five Pieces, opus 16 (Schoenberg)`

DG 469 804-2 (2-CD)
TPT: 2:38:00

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Perhaps it is only those who can recall the days before the invention of the long playing record who can fully appreciate the miracle of the compact disc.

How very different expectations were in pre-LP days when a playing duration of 5 or 6 minutes was considered good value from a 12″, 78rpm shellac record.

Even the shortest work included in this compilation would have needed a good many shellac records to be heard in its entirety. Blissfully here, we’re able to listen to it without the sort of interruptions that were par for the course in the days of the 78s.

A vivid childhood memory is of my father stacking four or five or even more records on the turntable’s central spindle and how at intervals one after another of the records would crash down on the revolving turntable.

But if, say, side two was on the reverse side of record one, the stacking method was not possible and it would be necessary to manually lift the record after side one had been played, flip it over and replace it on the turntable . That this cumbersome arrangement was accepted for the most part uncomplainingly, now almost beggars belief.

Then, in 1948, came the long playing record which was a quantum leap forward, once again revolutionising t he way we listened to recorded music. This, many believed, was a breakthrough that would never be surpassed. It was looked on as the ultimate achievement in uninterrupted listening – and, at the time, there was nothing better available. Unquestionably, the 33 and one third rpm LP was a huge improvement on what had gone before. And the prospect of listening to twenty minutes or more of completely uninterrupted music was greeted with hosannas as a near-miraculous advance in technology.

(How many, I wonder, can recall that other, short-lived development, an LP running at 16 and two thirds rpm that made a sensational but brief appearance before being quietly dropped by its manufacturers.)

Some years later, it was the turn of the sound cassette, that ,too, heralded as THE breakthrough to take the world by storm. Yet again , it was considered a development of such significance that it would forever remain the standard by which all other recording processes would be measured . Wrong again. The CD, superseding all that had gone before, was, predictably, greeted with waving palm fronds and a mad rush to buy the new technology .

Right now, there are those declaring this to be the ultimate in recording technology, an achievement that can never be matched. Really? History teaches otherwise; the compact disc , for all its many attributes, may yet turn out to be just another way- station on the journey to ever better recording techniques.

For the present, the CD unquestionably provides listeners with longer uninterrupted stretches of music than ever before – and, more often than not, beautifully recorded without the crackles, hiss and pop that were the inevitable accompaniment to music played on shellac recordings.

Compilers such as the indefatigable Cyrus Meher-Homji have done wonders in exploiting the potential of the CD to advantage, bringing landmark recordings in formats that are as competitive price-wise as they are qualitatively excellent.

The Transfiguration compilation is a case in point, more than two and a half hours of some of James Levine’s most accomplished interpretations. Richard Strauss’ Tod und Verklarung is a frankly marvellous reading, a particularly fine instance of Levine’s great gift for allowing the music to speak for itself. Here, as ever, Levine is scrupulous in avoid ing the temptation to interpose himself between the music and the listener, so allowing the work , as it were, to speak for itself.

Trademark fastidious attention to the minutiae of performance Without losing sight of the overall design of whatever work Levine happens to be directing, makes this CD a joy from start to finish..

The Strauss tone poem is played by New York’s Metropolitan Opera Orchestra with which Levine has had a long and distinguished association. All the other works are presented by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra from which Levine coaxes readings at stellar levels.

His account of Schoenberg’s Verklaerte Nacht borders on the sublime. This is a performance to savour with its perfectly evoked atmosphere of anguished despair that informs so much of the writing. Levine’s touch is faultless, too, in the extended episode that describes acceptance by the male protagonist of his partner’s pregnancy by another. And the compassionate tenderness the BPO and Levine convey is a stunning achievement. The CD is worth having if only for this exquisite interpretation .

There’s more splendour in Berg’s Three Pieces, opus 6 with Levine providing yet another moodfest. This is some of Berg’s most imaginative writing. Certainly, Levine and the BPO respond splendidly to the opening movement, with its eerie murmurs suggestive of desolation and fear. And the concluding movement calls to mind a procession of tortured phantoms.

In less than expert hands, Berg’s work can so easily sound meandering and terminally tedious. Here, every subtle nuance is captured in a way that would surely have brought approving nods from Berg himself had the shade of the great composer hovered over the proceedings.

There’s magic, too, in Levine’s direction of Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll , the tenderness that informs so much of the writing evoked to the nth degree.

This CD is a celebration of excellence. Highly recommended.

© December 2003


2003 – Music in Perth

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An Overview                                           2003

reviewed by Neville Cohn

The death of an elder statesman of music, a visible greying of concert audiences, the possibility of the Terrace Proms collapsing ­ and the first ever performance in Perth of one of Wagner’s Ring cycle operas made 2003 a memorable year year for concertgoers.

After a long illness, emeritus professor Sir Frank Callaway, arguably Australia’s best known music educationist in international terms and founder of the University of Western Australia’s School of Music, died, full of years and honours.

Mere hours after his passing, a message of congratulations he’d dictated from his sickbed was read out to an emotional gathering to launch long-time colleague Wallace Tate’s book The Magic Touch, a treatise on piano technique and one of the most significant works of its sort to come off the printing presses in years.

The W.A.Symphony Orchestra notched up 75 years, a notable milestone marked by the publication of Marcia Harrison’s book Celebrating 75 Years as well as the commissioning by the WASO of fifteen Australian composers to produce 15 short works for orchestra. The last of these, by veteran musician Peter Sculthorpe, featured in the WASO’s last Master Series concert for the year. The 15 works will be released on an ABC Classics CD in 2004.

Of all W.A. music organisations, incidentally, it is only the WASO management which has tackled the endless problem of audience coughing in a practical and effective way by continuing through 2003 to offer throat lozenges gratis to anyone wishing to use them. It’s a long-standing initiative that might to advantage be emulated by other concert managements,

Almost entirely unsung, not only this year, but going back decades, are the St John Ambulance volunteers who front up for duty night after night at major concert venues around the town in case there’s a call on their first aid skills.

The Terrace Proms, the brainchild of emeritus professor David Tunley, a music fest that brings St George’s Terrace alive and jumping on one Sunday each year, was imperilled in 2003. The continued existence of this admirable initiative depends on an injection of capital. Are any white knights on the way?

Musica Viva, like many other concert-giving organisations, is concerned about a greying audience with dismayingly fewer younger people taking up the slack. In an admirable and resourceful way, Music Viva, the world’s biggest chamber music entrepreneur, reached out to younger folk through its Menage series this year, mounting high-level performances in venues patronised by young people – taverns, gay bars and the like. Whether this will have a positive medium- to long-term result, remains to be seen.

Similarly concerned, the WASO will also be making a pitch for young adults through its WASO Lounge series that’s aimed at patrons up to 36 years of age – and the orchestra’s Early Childhood program aimed at kids from the ages of two to six years continued to be of pivotal importance as have been the performances the WASO provided for primary and secondary school children.

The W.A.Opera Copmpany’s production of Cavalleria Rusticana was its most impressive effort during 2003. Superb sets with voices to match made this a memorable event. And reassuring evidence of substantial youthful potential was on show at the Australian Opera Studio’s admirable production of Die Fledermaus.

Over time, there has often been cause for complaint about the quality – or lack of it – of electronic amplification of high-profile, out-of-doors concerts. But at Jose Carreras’ performance in Supreme Court Gardens, the standard of amplification was superb, the best I can recall in twenty years. It’s a shame, though, that the star of the evening left something to be desired. It was left to a supporting act – soprano Rachelle Durkin – to take out top vocal honours.

There was more good news on the amplification front at the Octagon Theatre where an excellent sound system has been installed.

An increasing trend towards informality in concert giving, a breaking down of barriers between onstage musicians and audiences was often apparent in 2003. Whereas a generation ago, it would have been unthinkable for male musicians to come onstage wearing anything other than white tie and tails (still a feature of WASO concerts), nowadays most musos opt for lounge suits or even more casual attire.

Perth’s first taste of Wagner’s Ring cycle was a fine concert version of Gotterdammerung with Susan Bullock magnificent as Brunnhilde and Philip Kang unforgettable as a dastardly Hagen.

Minimalism guru Steve Reich fronted up – in trademark baseball cap – at Mandurah Performing Arts Centre in a celebration of his work. And TaikOz was far and away the noisiest offering of the year.

A noticeable trend during 2003 was the increasingly high profile of the tango, as much locally as around the world. Sparked by the ubiquitous Astor Piazzolla’s seemingly endless essays in the genre, tangos were much in evidence in recitals around the town, notably at the Terrace Proms where Cathie Travers and friends mined Piazzolla’s repertoire for a selection of tango gems that charmed the ear. And at Roger Smalley’s 60th birthday concert, we heard Travers’ The Tower, a finely crafted essay in tango mode, presented by the Australian Piano Quartet.

During 2003, a pageant of astonishingly accomplished young musicians from abroad came to Perth, among them a parade of world class violinists who appeared as soloists with orchestras, among them pint-sized prodigy Pekka Kuusisto in short works of Sibelius with the Australian Chamber Orchestra – and, in recital, Julian Rachlin with pianist Itamar Golan were flawless in recital for Musica Viva. And Perth’s Jessica Ipkendanz rose to violinistic heights in ensemble with pianist Raymond Yong. An older musician, violinist Shlomo Mintz was magnificent in the Sibelius Concerto.

Young baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes is clearly on a fast track to the stars. So, too, is Macedonian pianist Simon Trpceski, stunning in Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No 1 with the WASO which scaled the heights in response to Paul Mann’s visually flamboyant conducting of Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

One of 2003’s odder offerings was an arrangement by Hans Zender of Schubert’s Winterreise with tenor Steve Davislim doing his best in ensemble with Zender’s extraordinarily fussy reworking of the piano part for small orchestra.

Two very different singers made their mark in 2003: Tim Freedom, of pop group The Whitlams, who seduced the ear with a stream of mellow sound and perfect diction in concert with the Australian Chamber Orchestra – and counter-tenor Andreas Scholl who reached for the stars in Vivaldi’s Stabat Mater with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra.

© December 2003


Elandra Ensemble

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Elandra Ensemble

Callaway Auditorium

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Tapping into the seemingly limitless repertoire of Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla, the musicians of the Elandra Ensemble (a loose coalition of professionals drawn mainly from the W.A.Symphony Orchestra) played a number of his idiosyncratic tangos as well as music by Istvan Marta and two of the Elandra musicians. But while Piazzolla represented the lion’s share of the program, it was Blues for Gilbert by Mark Glentworth that proved the chief joy of the evening.

Percussionist Paul Tanner, who has been a stalwart of the local music scene for a good many years, was at his persuasive best at the vibraphone. Much of the work is couched in gentle, languid terms and here Tanner did wonders, using his mallets to produce delicate arabesques, note streams clothed in auras of glowing sound. And in more robust episodes, he employed multi-mallets with trademark control and accuracy.

I very much admired, too, the ensemble’s account of Piazzolla’s Fugato which came across as a fascinating exercise in quasi-Bachian style, with Catherine Cahill (clarinet), Zac Rowntree (violin), Tanner on percussion, Tom O’Halloran (piano) and Peter Jeavons on double bass demonstrating an iron nerve and a cool mind to bring this tango to exhilarating life. Stylistically, it was entirely convincing.

And O’Halloran’s own Guapo which oscillated between swagger and swoon, employed rapidly repeated chords to dramatic effect.

Piazzolla’s Soledad was another delight, not least for its wide range of timbres, including warm, dark tone from the clarinet’s chalumeau register, a groaning double bass and vibraphone keys struck with the wooden reverse ends of the mallets.

Also on the bill was Piazzolla’s Michelangelo ’70, an engaging miniature with little screams on the violin and an irresistible, toe-tapping rhythmic underpinning.

© November 2003


Verdi Discoveries

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Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi

Riccardo Chailly (conductor)

DECCA 473 767-2

TPT: 1:20:48

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

This is a fascinating compilation, not only for legions of Verdi enthusiasts but anyone interested in music seldom heard either in concert venues or on disc or radio. In fact, no fewer than four of the ten tracks are claimed to be world premiere recordings.

It is not generally known that Verdi was considered an unusually fine pianist who seriously entertained the possibility of becoming a fulltime virtuoso. Fortunately for posterity, he opted for composition.

The score of Verdi’s Variations should be marked ‘for virtuosos only’. Pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet is unquestionably in that category ­ and here he demonstrates his extraordinary command of the keyboard with such verve and style that, for the duration of the performance, he makes the work sound far more significant than it really is. In Thibaudet’s hands, trash becomes treasure. In this sense, the French superstar of the piano is a musical illusionist of the first order.

Also on disc is the Aida Sinfonia which Verdi wrote to take the place of the opera’s original overture. Unsurprisingly, after Verdi heard his Sinfonia in rehearsal, he withdrew it and went back to his original because the Sinfonia is so intensely dramatic in mood and tone that, as liner note writer Dino Rizzo puts it, there was the risk of it ‘putting the characters themselves in the shade’.

Collectors of musical trivia might like to know that this was one of the very few scores that Toscanini, whose reverence for the printed note was a byword, felt compelled to alter before giving its first public performance as recently as March 1940.

Verdi’s Sinfonia in C, a prentice work (not to be confused with the Aida Sinfonia), is also well worth listening to despite its rather unadventurous harmonies and tendency to resort to cliché. Nimble, fluent strings are in excellent fettle here, so, too, the trumpets.

A bustling introduction gives way to some wondrously accomplished oboe playing in Canto di Virginia, a set of variations on a theme that enable Alessandro Potenza to demonstrate a phenomenal command of this most treacherous of wind instruments. Certainly here, Potenza succeeds in taming this wild child of the woodwind choir to do his bidding in even the most villainously demanding measures. Potenza produces a stream of sound so fine and pure that it would surely coax even the grumpiest bird from a twig.

Also on disc is a Prelude to Otello, a work Verdi put aside on the advice of librettist Boito. Conductor Riccardo Chailly learned of its existence only very recently, giving this gem its first performance (for this CD) in Milan in 2002.

Another novelty is the Capriccio for bassoon and orchestra which, the liner notes tell us, cannot definitely be attributed to Verdi but is included anyway. Whether by Verdi or another hand, the Capriccio is a pleasantly amiable piece made memorable for the agility and mellow tone of Andrea Magnani.

© November 2003


The Last Recital

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Fritz Wunderlich (tenor)
Hubert Giesen (piano)
Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Richard Strauss

DG 9806790

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

The history of music is replete with instances where the circumstances surrounding the composition or performance of this or that work are so unusual that it is difficult, if not impossible, to listen to it divorced, as it were, from the events associated with it. A prime instance is that of pianist David Helfgott whose extraordinary life inspired the hit movie Shine. After attending numberless recitals by Helfgott, for instance, my reactions to his playing cannot avoid being coloured by an awareness of his severe illness and how he copes with it.

Kathleen Ferrier, that superb contralto, is another who springs to mind; her brave battle against terminal cancer – and her determination to keep giving recitals until almost the very end – endeared her to a huge audience around the world.

Now, DG has released a compact disc – The Last Recital – featuring tenor Fritz Wunderlich with pianist Hubert Giesen in a performance given for the Edinburgh Festival. In the ordinary course of events, this mono tape recording would probably have landed up on some or other music library shelf and simply forgotten, perhaps even wiped.

But events that took place shortly after that recital militated strongly against its abandonment or destruction.

Only a week before his 36th birthday and only days after his Edinburgh recital, Wunderlich fell down a flight of stone steps at a friend’s castle in Heidelberg and died from his injuries. It was a terrible loss for his family and friends – and it also robbed the world of his extraordinary artistry.

It should be said that the surviving tapes of Wunderlich’s last recital were second, possibly third, generation. In electronic terms, it was a compromised recording – and there was no technology at the time to produce an acceptable commercial recording from it. Certainly, it was not without blemish in performance terms. And had the great tenor not had that tragic accident, it is doubtful whether these tapes would ever have been seriously considered as a marketable commodity.

All this changed, of course, in the aftermath of Wunderlich’s death. But it is only recently that technology has developed to a point where rescuing these tapes became a realistic proposition. The sound engineers have done wonders. In a tour de force of electronic wizardry, they have transformed what would now be considered a basket case in sound-engineering terms, into an acceptable, if not flawless, listening experience.

Occasional blips notwithstanding, the artistry of Wunderlich and Giesen is, for much of the time, magical and magically preserved. Now and then, Giesen uses the damper pedal too generously with resultant blur. And, here and there, a vocal phrase is less than immaculate – but these detract only minimally from listening pleasure.

Their account of Schumann’s Dichterliebe is interpretation at an impressive level. Wunderlich breathes tenderness and ardour into these exquisite vignettes – and, for the most part, Giesen provides accompaniments fit for royalty to which Wunderlich responds with princely authority.

This represents the lion’s share of the recording. As well, there are lieder by Schubert and Beethoven – and Richard Strauss’ Ich trage meine Minne, mistakenly cut off by the engineers before its end.

Wunderlich’s last encore is deeply poignant. Heartbreakingly – and unknowingly at the time, of course, this last lied – Schubert’s An die Musik, that most tender of salutations to the magic of music – was to be Wunderlich’s swan song, his musical farewell to the world.

© November 2003