Tag Archives: Esa-Pekka Salonen

ENCORE MY GOOD SIR

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Lin Jiang (horn)

Benjamin Martin (piano)

TPT: 59’35”

Melba MR 301116

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Encore

Encore

Robert Schumann: Adagio and Allegro, opus 70:  Peter Maxwell Davies: Sea Eagle:

Gunter Schuller: Nocturne: Esa-Pekka Salonen: Horn Music: Francis Poulenc: Elegie: Marin Marais arr Brain: le Basque: Paul Hindemith: Sonata for alto horn and piano: J.S.Bach arr Hoss: Gigue from Suite No 3 for cello: Otto Ketting: Intrada: Thaddeus Huang: Encore, My Good Sir

 

Lin Jiang, Shanghai-born but resident in Australia since the age of 5, is a young man with a golden horn. And this fascinating compilation, much of it well off the beaten track, is musical treasure trove for those seeking horn rarities. There’s standard fare such as Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro and Poulenc’s Elegie which he wrote in memory of Dennis Brain.

 

Ketting’s Intrada does not so much attract the attention as seize it in a vice-like grip with its flawless fanfares and pure, warm tone.

 

Peter Maxwell Davies’ Sea Eagle, for unaccompanied horn, makes for fascinating listening, its first movement conjuring up images of a young eagle about to make its first solo flight, suggested by what might be thought of as a series of false starts which give way to a swooping motif. Sumptuous tone informs the Lento movement – and in the brief presto finale, Jiang gives us a joyful, even impudent utterance. Trills are near-perfectly spun here. In Schuller’s Nocturne, Jiang’s pure horn sound is complemented by Benjamin Martin’s gently lulling accompaniment at the keyboard.

 

There’s not a dull moment in Salonen’s Horn Music in which both musicians are kept very much on their toes. In turn lyrical and virtuosic, this is an important addition to the repertoire; it deserves to be widely heard. Marais’ Le Basque is a folksy delight.

 

The second movement of Hindemith’s Sonata reveals the composer in insouciant, impish mood, surely a refutation of the silly slander, often advanced, that he is a  chronic autumnal drear. Poulenc, on the other had, is too frequently, and wrongly, dismissed as little more than a lightweight with a sense of humour. Listen to his Elegie with its uncharacteristic dissonances and heavy-toned, funereal quality. This is Poulenc in serious vein – and both musicians are spot-on in their revelation of the music’s dark mood. Jiang and Martin do Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro proud; it’s a joy to hear, not least for the impeccable synchronisation of horn and piano. Martin’s contributions at the keyboard are unfailingly musicianly.

 

Thaddeus Huang’s Encore, My Good Sir is an eminently listenable, rather lightweight encore-type piece and very effective at that level.

 

This CD is highly recommended.


CREDO

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Helene Grimaud (piano)
Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)
Fantasia on an Ostinato (Corigliano); Piano Sonata in D minor, opus 31 no 2 (The Tempest) (Beethoven); Choral Fantasy, opus 80 (Beethoven): Credo (Arvo Part)

TPT:1:08:31
DG 471 769-2

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

credo

If you’ve not yet heard of Helene Grimaud, make a note of the name. In fact, write it in capital letters because this young French pianist, seemingly touched by the little finger of God, is almost certain to have an illustrious career.In decades of listening to, and writing about, music, I have never before come across an account of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy played with such magisterial authority. This is Beethoven in titanic, muscle-flexing mode and Grimaud is clearly the pianist for the job. Her playing exudes authority.

Drawing on a seemingly limitless technical armoury and the deepest wells of expressiveness, she informs much of the score with a grandeur that makes for utterly compelling listening.

 

 

This performance is not the product of the recording studio where, with numerous re-takes and the skills of a clever splicing editor, the end version can be made to sound better than it was in reality. There are innumerable instances of this artificial perfection in the discography.

In Grimaud’s recording of the Fantasy, however, made before an audience in the Berwaldhallen, Stockholm, what you hear is what was played. It’s a phenomenal achievement, a near-perfect collaboration between the soloist and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen who will be remembered by many forstartlingly fine direction of the Finnish National Radio Symphony Orchestra on its visit to Australia in the 1984.

It is still fashionable in some quarters, incidentally, to dismiss the Choral Fantasy as little more than a trial run for Beethoven’s Chorale Symphony. This recording, surely, will convert the doubters.

Not the least of Grimaud’s gifts is an ability to produce pianissimo shadings of the subtlest sort which contributed
in a major way to the tonal colouring of the work; it is a crucial factor in what, in retrospect, is a near-perfect assessment of the score’s stature. The Swedish Radio Choir rises splendidly to the occasion, as it does in Arvo Part’s Credo for piano, choir and orchestra. Part here draws on Bach’s Prelude No 1 in C from the first book of the ’48’. It appears on a number of occasions in different incarnations, in different registers, at different speeds
and decibel levels, sometimes mechanically expounded (as in the work’s opening measures), at other times lyrically stated.

Dissonant, ear-grating chords are played, at first slowly, then with increasing urgency to the point where they take
the form of rapid, insistent hammerings, a backdrop of sound against which the choir utters the Credo.

John Corigliano’s Fantasia on an ostinato opens with powerfully stated chords that are a call to attention. Here, too, Grimaud’s performance was astonishingly communicative. As in the Fantasy, tonal colourings are masterfully employed whether in delicato moments in reflective passages or in bursts of bell-like sound. And as the work draws to a close, we hear, phantom-like, the opening theme of Beethoven’s Symphony No 7. And in unadulterated Beethoven – his Sonata in D minor (The Tempest) – Grimaud, still young in years, gives a performance that sounds like the offering of an arrived master.

Rivettingly tempestuous, tonally muscular playing in the first movement, an adagio in which Grimaud gives full due
to its introverted beauty – and a finale mined to reveal its every detail make for memorable listening.

Copyright 2004 Neville Cohn