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18.3.24

Critic’s Notebook: Gunar Letzbor, Telemann, and Other Baroque Encounters


Also reviewed for Die Presse: Seltene barocke Erscheinungen

Tits'n'Telemann


available at Amazon
J.P.v.Westhoff,
Sei Partite a Violino
Gunar Letzbor
Arcana


available at Amazon
G.P.Telemann,
2 Fantasias for Solo Violin
Gunar Letzbor
Pan Classics


available at Amazon
J.J.Vilsmayr,
Artificosus Concentus pro Camera
Gunar Letzbor
Arcana


available at Amazon
J.S.Bach,
Solo Sonatas (BWV 1001, 1003, 1005)
Gunar Letzbor
Pan Classics



Curious concert I was asked to attend. First of all, it happened in the Vienna Konzerthaus’ smallest main hall, the gorgeous, bright, yellow but uneconomic 320-seat Schubert Saal. It’s the hall where the Alban Berg Quartet got their start before attracting the following that allowed them to graduate to the Mozart Saal and eventually play their respective recitals twice in that hall to satisfy demand. Now, if it is used at all, it’s usually rented out for concerts or events… except, apparently, for the “Zyklus Ars Antiqua Austria”, which is part of the Konzerthaus’ official programming, featuring Gunar Letzbor and his early music ensemble in a series of 3+1 concerts.

On February 25th, I was at the "+1", called “Bach in Private” – and it was a one-man show with Gunar Letzbor and his baroque violin. Very casual and informal in feel, a Bachiana if you will, and I wouldn’t be half surprised if Letzbor knows every one of his subscribers by name. (The hall was about half full.) He started with a long anecdote of driving across the Alps a few nights before, with snow-related mishaps and adventures. Then he elaborated on Johann Paul Westhoff, the “father of solo violin music”, who invented his own ‘dual’ system of notation on eight-line staves and two clefs as a means to early copyright protection) and proceeded to perform, by way of example, Westhoff’s Suite No.6 in D-major. The ear grasps for the nearest known music, which is of course Bach, an involuntary act that might distract from the Westhoff Suite’s originality. Similarities exist, of course, but the differences are considerable and there’s an archaic nature that came through nicely, as Letzbor worked hard on the Suite’s four movements.

Telemann (another – very important – copyright champion of his time) is only 25 years older than Westhoff. Yet, his Fantasie No.9, already marks the end of the baroque period whereas Westhoff’s Suite had opened it for that type of composition. There’s a definite flirting with the Galant style going on here, on Georg Philipp’s part, while the Fantasie No.4 is still rather more demure and academic. Speaking of “flirting”: There were three young characters in the concert that didn’t look like your typical “Ars Antiqua” subscription holders. A young lad, I hesitate to call him “gentleman”, looked so ostentatiously bored, that we would have believed him, even if he hadn’t tried to quietly talk on his phone during the performance of the Westhoff. After the Suite, an audience member informed him, in no uncertain words, about the finer points of concert etiquette, which resulted in sulking looks from one of the young ladies in his company and more ostentatious ennui from the communicative offender.

If you thought this was bizarre, it got a lot better, still. Evidently energized by the Telemann, the third of the group, a female perhaps in her very early 20s, got up mid-Suite and carefully un-peeled herself from her jacket and sweater, inviting a view of her pushed-up assets. After each of the Suites, she jumped up to launch into something resembling a standing ovation, carefully bouncing up and down while daintily clapping at Letzbor’s performance. There seemed to be something of a look of pride in her carefully done-up face, as she juggled standard violin-recital behavior with her early-music love, which so clearly was beating strongly beneath that liberally exposed cleavage. Once done with this performance, she proceeded, still standing, still in the middle of the concert, to get dressed again… and marched, her two friends in tow, out of the Schubert Saal, still before intermission, unconscionably missing the nine-partite Johann Joseph Vilsmayr Partita No.4 in D major that followed. Not that the mind easily shifted back to this excerpt from the 1715 “Artificiosus conceptus pro camera”, after that equally rare earlier baroque display… but the little lecture on scordatura, and the bagpipe character that the violin developed in sections of the nicely flowing, even groovy Partita, did eventually recapture the imagination of the baffled and bemused audience.

For the concluding Bach Partita No.1, the preceding talk about the ancient technique of “diminution” that Bach employs in this work, actually helped to hear the work in a different light; mere variations became audible intensifications of the preceding movements, once the Double hits on each of the movements. The performance was as sympathetic as the preceding ones had been; hardly perfect – but somehow that was never quite the point. Rather, it felt as though one had joined an acquaintance for a performance-lecture (I was reminded of a Charles Rosen performance at La Maison Française from years ago). This impression only deepened, when Letzbor reprised the Sarabande, playing it in an entirely different style as just before, now more forward-thrusting, mellifluous, lighter. A nice cap to a baroque geek’s perfect delightful night of hearing and learning. (A shame that @SugarTitz97 missed it.)

Photo © Gunar Letzbor?





16.3.24

Critic’s Notebook: Andrè Schuen and the Lied, A Triumph of Youthfulness


Also reviewed for Die Presse: Triumph der unbändigen Jugend

available at Amazon
F.Schubert,
Die Schöne Müllerin
A.Schuen & D.Heide
DG


available at Amazon
F. Schubert,
Schwanengesang
A.Schuen & D.Heide
DG


Boisterous and rough and beloved


Hard to believe that Andrè Schuen was already a Don Giovanni in Niklaus Harnoncourt’s Theater-an-der-Wien production, a decade ago! He seems still so young; on the cusp of an (actually already great) career. And what more could he want? A lusciously-wild shock of hair, athletic build, and an exclusive contract with DG in his pocket – and a large, certainly loud voice, to boot. The Brahms Hall of the Musikverein was full for his Liederabend on December 16th, which may also been owed to the darkness of his voice, the untamed, impetuous quality about it. He had certainly scored big with that, a month earlier, when he was the youthful, guileless Schwanda in Jaromir Weinberger’s terrific Schwanda the Bagpiper (Theater an der Wien). He’s a kind of Siegfried of art song, more brash than subtle, more hero than thinker – and as such he took to Mahler and Schubert.

Is it a problem for Lieder singers, that in the age of GerhaherHuber™ (one word) we’ve come to expect goose-bump-inducing psychological explorations of song texts – to the point where merely singing very well and accurately is no longer enough? Or does it actually add to the attractiveness, to have someone simply jump into the subject matter without giving evidence of having pondered the scope and import of every syllable? The response in the Musikverein suggested as much, even as South Tyrolian Schuen put it on a little thick here and there (“Sei mir gegrüßt” – Schubert, not Tannhäuser) or went for all-out treacle (“Du bist die Ruh”). Daniel Heide was, as always, his accompanist and undoubtedly an invaluable asset to Schuen, but limited in his expression to dynamic differentiation. (Incidentally, he is also a dead-ringer for Southpark's Mr. Mackey.)

Despite the near-triumphal reception, not everything was perfect. The Schubert was theatrical to a breaking point; the breathy pianissimo was daring but surprisingly unstable, not every corner was smoothly taken, and the heights sounded stretched. Mahler took better to the histrionics and yodeling, especially in a hymn of self-pity like “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”. (Which Gerhaher gave such a different spin, a few months later; review to follow.) Schuen sounded his best whenever things got boisterous, be it in the Songs of a Wayfarer or Schubert’s “Schiffer” or “Musensohn”. Encores – Mahler, Strauss, and a Ladin folksong – were de rigueur.

Photo © Clemens Fabry





14.3.24

Critic’s Notebook: Incomprehension and Poulenc at a Kirill Gerstein Recital


Also reviewed for Die Presse: Konzerthaus: Chopin, ganz unschmeichelhaft

Chopin, torn, pensive, cerebral


available at Amazon
F.Busoni,
Piano Concerto
K.Gerstein, S.Oramo, Boston Symphony Orchestra
myrios


available at Amazon
G.Fauré,
Nocturnes
Daniel Grimwood
Peter Edition


Kirill Gerstein is a pianist I like greatly. Hard to believe it had been ten years since I last heard him in two astonishing Strauss-evenings, one with Enoch Arden [Best Recordings of 2020] and another with the Burleske. At a recent recital at the Vienna Konzerthaus’ Mozart Hall (February 24th), I didn’t understand what he was getting at, though. Faced with reasonably popular fare, as opposed to the challenges that are the above Strauss or his masterful account of the beast of a Busoni piano concerto, he introduced a pensive, cerebral, and very fragmented element to Chopin, whether the late Polonaise-Fantaisie op.61, the (very “Grave” and desensualized) Fantaisie op.49 in F minor, or the Grande Valse brilliante op.42, which was so heavy on the rubato that it gave up its waltz-character voluntarily. As the music dissolved into its individual parts, it demanded a concentration to stick with Gerstein and what he might have meant. A task beyond my abilities, that evening.

The last Nocturne of Fauré (No.13, op.119) fared better. Usually, the Fauré and Chopin meet somewhere on a common plane of romantic solo piano music, as Fauré is usually performed with an eye to his seductive, charming side. Here the pointillist Nocturne was closer to Alban Berg than to Satie or Debussy: Dark, threatening, chromatically charged, and very much true to its 1921 year of creation. Whatever Schumann wanted to say with his Faschingsschwank wasn’t clear here. Yes, this hymn of disappointment to Vienna isn’t funny to begin with. But did it need to be so hard-driven, so purposefully avoiding natural agogics, so decidedly undermining any expectation? Like so much this evening, it felt hard fought for, pensive, and wildly introspective. Animated on the outside, hollow on the inside. Ditto Liszt’s Polonaise 223/2, Rachmaninov/Kreisler’s Liebesleid (notably, fittingly no Liebesfreud), and the two funereal Armenian “Dances” by Komitas of the encore – which reminded of the terrible second anniversary that day.

The only silver lining was Poulenc. Not only for being on the program in the first place, which is rare enough. The Three Intermezzi managed to do what Poulenc does so well: Fuse seriousness and humor. They even elicited a few heartening giggles from the audience. Still, I don’t think I’ve ever understood or ‘gotten’ so little at a recital.





8.3.24

Critic’s Notebook: Too much beauty from the Dresden Staatskapelle and András Schiff?


Also reviewed for Die Presse: Retro-Schönklang im Konzerthaus: So hat man Bach und Mozart lange nicht gehört

An excess of gorgeousness, if that is possible


I’ve never been to a concert where an orchestra played so well and annoyed me as much. The travel-contingent of the Dresden Staatskapelle was in Vienna with Sir András Schiff conducting and playing with them, and it was a bath of beauty, mostly. But was something amiss?

Throwback-Bach

Certainly with Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.5 (taking on the part of the overture in this most classical of overture-concerto-symphony sandwich concerts). Not necessarily the very old-fashioned sound and style from the interpreters, concert master Matthias Wollong and solo flute Sabine Kittel, who played next to Schiff who was operating on his gorgeous, shiny, red-and-black Mahagony Bösendorfer, although that’s a matter of taste, too, hearing Bach performed as if by Karajan. Perhaps it might even have been neat enough to hear that kind of throwback-sonority (but at reasonably brisk tempi), but the balance was completely off, usually with Schiff drowning out his colleagues or the soloists together the little orchestra.

Retro-Mozart

A similar kind of retro-prettiness hung over Mozart’s Piano Concerto No.23 in A major, played with a flawlessness and beauty that is rare and impressive, but it also felt spelled-out, rather than impetuous or spontaneous, and had its share of sentimental moments that bordered mawkishness. If anyone found it too slow, Schiff made up for it with a racing encore of the first movement of Bach’s Italian Concerto.

Confectioner’s Mendelssohn

Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony raced out the gates like a horse possessed. Or, as I wrote in my German review, “chattering like a stork on cocaine”. That I had better kept to myself, as it prompted a slew of sternly worded letters to the editor, not all of which stayed clear of invective. The well-oiled machine that was the Dresden Staatskapelle played with gorgeously. András Schiff seemed to enjoy it as much as the audience, happily waving his arms before them. With the speed determined at the outset, the symphony seemed to uncoil impeccably. Every group was clean, the sections together, and the strings shone with a noble, dark timbre. Beauty goes a long way, not the least in Mendelssohn, but at least to these ears, there was something curiously unsatisfactory about the relentless loveliness. It rang a little hollow, giving the Symphony a Midsummer Night's Dream-esque, fairy-like character. The orchestral encore – Mozart’s Figaro overture, didn’t undo that impression. Suggesting that, after so much sugar and beauty, a beer and a cigarette were needed, to return to the real world, also did not go over well with the reader who thought the suggestion “disgusting, classless, repulsive, and objectionable”. I wonder if it had been better, had I suggested instead that after a concert such as this, the only thing to do was to wake up – and bow before such skill.

Photo © Manuel Chemineau





5.3.24

Critic’s Notebook: Daniil Trifonov in Recital


Also reviewed for Die Presse: Wie Daniil Trifonov den Mount Beethoven erklomm

Daniil Trifonov - Shtick but Shtupendous!"


available at Amazon
Rachmaninov for Two
S.Babayan/D.Trifonov
DG


available at Amazon
L.v.Beethoven,
Hammerklaviersonate
Maurizio 'The God' Pollini
DG


Sit down, play away. Chop-chop, no dilly-dallying. First thoughts on Trifonov racing away with op.106 in the Konzerthaus’ Great Hall: “He can’t possibly keep this tempo up without cracking.” Well, not for lack of pushing the envelope, he didn’t. His way out was a flighty into extreme rubatos, extremes in general, within a movement, within a phrase. As if the sonata wasn’t enough of a high wire act, Trifonov played it without a safety net, almost coming to a halt a few times, then racing away wildly. A bit the cliché of a tempestuous Beethoven, unbridled and famously on perennial bad terms with the comb. There were unwitting elements of George Antheil in this performance and while it was never outright off, there were several occasions where you had to flinch. The slow movement was of ineffable ardency. Again, really going to the limits, seeking, striving, experimenting, putting together an emotional puzzle in the moment. First charming then probing existential questions. Finally the resurrection. In the end, only notes were left, and hardly any Beethoven. Ivo Pogorelich would have been proud. Very nearly absurd? Yes. But also much less annoying that it sounds reading about it. In the Allegro risoluto Trifonov appeared to be in search of time lost in the slow movement, doubling the tempo or making it seem that way, anyway, which underlined the eccentricity of op.106 without actually giving it the needed cohesion.

The flippant, jazzy encore after this (his riff on Art Tatum/Johnny Green’s “I cover the waterfront”), the Chopin-esque bit of Scriabin, or the Chopin-Variations of Mompou’s were very odd and rather out of place, after this titanic struggle.

Speaking of “Pogorelich would have been proud”: The evening started with the Great Hall dimmed well below the usual levels. In this twilight, Daniil Trifonov emerged, all shaggy-bearded and unkempt, in a battered old black suit, walked briskly to the Bösendorfer, sat down, and began before most of the applause arose and before that which had arisen died down. Happily, he doesn’t do any interpretative piano-bench dances, but plays unfazed, fully composed. Yes, it’s still an act, staged and calculated for effect, down to the look, something that’s crept from between some seedier Tolstoi-pages or, half Revenant, half Joaquin-Phoenix-on-Letterman; the sense of a high mass being celebrated; the “don’t disturb the maestro – he is decomposing” air. But happily Trifonov doesn’t just act the ‘great artist’, he is a great artist. Even in the carefully cultivated neglect with which he played the Jean-Philippe Rameau Suite in A minor, all in an introvert shade of pianissimo, forcing the hall into silence. Splendid when it works, although one phone in two-thousand is always on and someone in the audience is always half-way dying of pneumonia. An intermediate mezzo-forted jolted people out of their seats. The introspective, technically astonishing, detail-intense playing lulled one in a sense of safety. And then: Woof! The martial, “too-many-notes” Finale, so not at all French and dainty.

Off stage, back on stage, sit down, on we go. Applause? I don’t think so: Mozart. Sonata in F-Major K.332. Mannerisms galore, showing and trying to show that it’s supposed to be all about the music. Bent over the keys, this was nuanced, very fast, never sloppy, Mozart. A wondrous mix, self-possessed, very personal. How the Mendelssohn Variations sérieuses op.54 have been more often performed at the Konzerthaus than the preceding Mozart can only be explained by K.332 being one of many brilliant Mozart-sonatas, but the Variations one of only a few larger single-work Mendelssohn piano pieces. Not even Trifonov was able to bring forth a different argument for that little factoid.





4.3.24

Critic’s Notebook: A Bum Show from the Wiener Concert-Verein


Enthusiasm and good programming are not sufficient as a substitute for good music-making


available at Amazon
S.Coleridge-Taylor,
Violin Concerto, Ballade, African Suite
Chineke! Orchestra
Deccca


available at Amazon
S.Coleridge-Taylor,
Piano & Clarinet Q5ts
Nash Ensemble!
Hyperion


This concert was a while back – but it refuses to become less memorable for all the distance I’ve put between us. The “Wiener Concert-Verein” is a telephone chamber orchestra of sorts that was founded in 1987 by young members of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, presumably to try out interesting repertoire that they were never going to play with the stuffy ol’ big boys and to get their feet wet. They are now neither associated with the VSO anymore, nor young, but to their great credit, especially given that they exist in Vienna (where it is either Brahms or subsidized avantgarde music but rarely anything between), they still keep up the reasonably interesting programming. A concert in January of this year, for example, featured Elgar’s Introduction & Allegro (Elgar being a rare guest on the continent, that’s nice), a work for string orchestra by Oscar Jockel (made slightly less surprising seeing that Oscar Jockel is their current conductor-in-residence, conducting said concert), Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 (a.k.a. “Concerto in C minor for Piano, Trumpet, and String Orchestra”; not that adventurous no matter which way you twist it), and the always welcome Josef Suk with his Serenade for Strings.

On the occasion of my visit in the Brahms Saal of the Musikverein on December 11th, it was a mix of Mozart (“Serenata notturna”), Johanna Doderer with Ritus, DWV 150 (I sure hope that “Doderer Werke Verzeichnis” number she gives her works, instead of working with opus numbers like mere mortals, is tongue-in-cheek and not unironic off-the-charts-pretentiousness), Joseph Bologne’s Symphony op.11/2, an excerpt from Aldemaro Romero’s Suite for Strings, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Novelette for Strings and Percussion, op.52/1. The Mozart and the out-of-tune first violins sounded like cats on an off day. The concertmaster was hopelessly out of his depth and the lack of coordination was probably not helped by the unorthodox ‘conducting’ of Glass Marcano, who seemed be engaged in something that was equal parts Tai chi, a Philippe Herreweghe imitation, and an interpretative dance.

The Doderer, while not excessively together, was less afflicted by these woes and the music itself is lovely enough: Austro-Pärt, none too complex, easy on the ears if not the patience. The slight and charming Colombe Symphony was promising in the first movement but torpedoed by miserable second violins in the next, unable to take back. The Romero piece is the kind of fun work that makes European audiences feel daringly exotic – and they were egged on by the suggestive, flashy gestures of the conductor moving along to the music. The violins still sounded sour in the primo Coleridge-Taylor (not yet recorded, so someone get to it!), but by and large all hands were on deck again, despite the painfully hapless conducting going on in front of them. Unfathomably, there were encores given: Venezuelan music important to the very enthusiastic Glass Marcano, enthusiastically played too, but sold under value.

Photo © Venezuelasinfonica.com





3.3.24

Critic’s Notebook: Alexander Malofeev gives his recital debut in Vienna


Also reviewed for Die Presse: Sensationell: Ausnahmepianist Alexander Malofeev begeistert bei seinem Wiener Solodebüt

A piano recital to remember: Alexander Malofeev in his solo debut in Vienna


There was a very young, very blond man in front of the Steinway, sitting low, and bent like an adult in a soapbox racer. Did he saw the piano bench’s legs off? For his Vienna recital debut, Alexander Malofeev, the up-and-coming Russian piano star, chose one half of baroque music and one half of Russian late romantics. He started with Händel, the Suite in B-flat major: There was terrific energy in the last of the variation of the Aria and lovely contrast in the lyrical-tender Minuet. Attacca, Malofeev went right into the Purcell Ground in C minor and from there into Georg Muffat’s Passacaglia from his Apparatus musico-organisticus, giving this part the sense of being a grand suite. In all of this he was unfazed, unsentimental, providing long, structured passages rather than a string of merely beautiful moments. You could hear the structure – and it was beautiful to do so.

He allowed for applause before the twice-transcribed Bach Concerto BWV 593 (in any case too famous to have fitted snugly into that imaginary baroque suite) and almost seemed pleasantly surprised, amazed that he got any, never mind such a boisterousness round. The Vivaldi concerto for two violins, turned into a concerto for solo organ by Bach and then liberally-romantically transcribed to suit the piano by Samuil Feinberg, was a thundering, bell-tinkling affair, imposing and tender in turn, elaborate and ornate here, introverted and sober there. A grand crescendo thunderously reminded of the work’s intermittent origins on the organ. Grand stuff.

Only very minimally less impressive was the second half, beginning with Scriabin’s Prélude and Nocturne for left hand, op.9. Chopin-like, as early Scriabin is wont to be, and for once a Wittgenstein-unrelated work just for the left hand; apparently Scriabin wrote it for himself after a bout with tendinitis and/or wanting to brag in front of an audience. Then again, it’s a piece that’s surprisingly devoid of obvious braggadocio, more dreamy, if anything. Still impressive, though, especially since Scriabin doesn’t at all let the ‘one-hand-only’ thing limit hims to which range on the keyboard he writes for. Incidentally, Malofeev is no braggart himself, either. Nor, in a way, even a virtuoso who goes for the fireworks, even though his brilliant technique would surely allow him to do so.

The concluding Rachmaninov (the first two bits from the Morceaux de fantaisie, a transcription of “Lilacs” from his Twelve Songs op.21, and the B-flat minor Sonata) was full-throated but not violent. Most pleasingly, Malofeev never succumbs to romantic treacle and the Sonata suffered only from being boring because, hey, it’s Rachmaninov. Not that everyone in the hollering crowd felt the same way about good old Sergei, but the encores from Mikhail Pletnev’s Nutcracker Suite made up for it, for anyone who did. What a bloody extraordinary recital!

Photo © Manuel Chemineau