Volume 23 Issue 3 - November 2017

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY
Shostakovich – The Golden Age
Bolshoi Ballet
BelAir BAC443
!!
A friend and I
watched this video
of, as we used to
call it, The Age of
Gold, with neither
of us knowing the
story nor what they
were dancing about.
Nevertheless, it was
so brilliant that we
watched it with
delight for quite
some time, simply revelling in the joyous
and boisterous music while captivated by the
goings-on onstage.
Shostakovich had a gift for musical satire,
as his opera The Nose exemplifies. This story
plays out on the floor of the Golden Age,
a restaurant in the south of Russia and a
favorite haunt of petty criminals in the 1920s.
Interlaced with a floor show in progress at
the restaurant, a young girl, Rita, now known
as Mademoiselle Margot, is desired both by
Boris, a young fisherman and aspiring actor
and Jacques, Rita’s dance partner, in reality
Yashka, the leader of a local gang of bandits.
Inevitably, as in any good melodrama, eventually
someone is stabbed to death. The librettist
and choreographer is the legendary
Yuri Grigorovich, well known and adored
in ballet circles. Thanks to Shostakovich
and Grigorovich the action is vibrant and
non-stop. There are a few familiar tunes,
including the Polka and Tea for Two. For
those in the know, the principal dancers
are Nina Kaptsova (Rita), Ruslan Skvortsov
(Boris), Mikhail Lobukhin (Yashka), Ekaterina
Krysanova (Lyuska, Yashka’s accomplice) and
Vyacheslav Lopatin (variety show compere at
the Golden Age). The high-definition video
is, as expected, breathtakingly real, as is the
usual astonishing virtuosity of the Bolshoi
orchestra as heard in earlier releases. For fans
of Shostakovich and/or Grigorovich this is a
self-recommending must-have.
As we are getting to that time of year, here
are two apropos serious gift suggestions: The
Great Bolshoi Ballets: four Blu-ray discs in
one package – Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty,
Giselle and The Flames of Paris (BelAir
BAC610), breathtaking in every respect; and
Shostakovich: The Complete Symphonies
& Concertos with Valery Gergiev and the
Orchestra and Chorus of the Mariinsky
Theatre & six soloists (Arthaus Musik 107552,
four Blu-ray discs plus hardbound book).
These are definitive live performances
recorded over the span of a year in the Salle
Pleyel in Paris. Unique.
Bruce Surtees
George Antheil – Symphonies 4 and 5
BBC Philharmonic; John Storgårds
Chandos CHAN 10941
!!
Best remembered
for his
futuristic Ballet
mécanique of 1926,
the New Jerseyborn
pianist and
composer George
Antheil (1900-
1959) was in his
youth the darling of the Parisian avant-garde
and a rising star of American music. Alas,
his attempt to replicate his Parisian acclaim
with an ambitious, high-profile American
remounting of this work at Carnegie Hall
in 1927 was a disaster from which the selfproclaimed
“Bad Boy of Music” was slow
to recover. His scandalous score (originally
conceived for an orchestra of player pianos,
percussionists and airplane propeller) was not
to be heard again for 60 years. Dejected, the
pugnacious, pistol-packing composer eventually
found work in Hollywood, where he
scored films and worked as a journalist. The
patriotic fervour of wartime 1940s America
brought him back into the spotlight with a
catalogue of works radically more conventional
than those of his youth. Antheil’s
Symphony No.4 (subtitled “1942”) was broadcast
nationwide by Stokowski in 1944 to great
acclaim and received numerous subsequent
performances. Later Eugene Ormandy would
come calling to commission his “Joyous”
Symphony No.5 (1948) for the Philadelphia
Orchestra. Throughout the 1950s however,
the quest for the “Great American Symphony”
faded along with Antheil’s career. He died
suddenly in 1959 of a heart attack.
The numerous tempo changes noted in
the track details to the movements of these
two symphonies hint at Antheil’s problematic
sectional approach to composition. It is
a challenge for any conductor to tie so many
mood swings together coherently, a task that
Storgårds for the most part achieves, though
to my mind Hugh Wolff’s CPO recording of
the same symphonies with the Frankfurt
RSO from the year 2000 is superior in this
regard. Despite the patchwork nature of
Antheil’s music there is never a dull moment;
the listener, though perhaps a tad confused,
will find the music consistently engaging
and effectively orchestrated. Surprisingly,
despite the self-consciously upbeat all-American
profile of these works, both symphonies
exhibit strong influences from the leading
Soviet composers of the era, notably the
obsessive dactylic rhythms of Shostakovich
and the harmonic twists of Prokofiev. A bonus
track brings us the first recording of Antheil’s
Over the Plains (1945), a cinematic evocation
of the landscape of Texas. All told, an
intriguing and enjoyable album, quite plushly
recorded and very keenly played.
Daniel Foley
Facets
Cline/Cuestas Duo
Independent (clinecuestasduo.com)
!!
There are many
fine flutists in the
world these days,
and Jenny Cline of
the Cline/Cuestas
Duo is definitely
one of them. She
and guitarist Carlos
Cuestas have put
together a terrific program which combines
four substantial contemporary compositions
balanced by music from the late 19th and the
early- and the mid-20th centuries.
At 15 minutes, Maximo Diego Pujol’s
Suite Buenos Aires is the longest of the four
contemporary pieces. Composed in 1995, its
four movements depict different parts of the
city after which it is named. The slow second
movement is particularly exquisite, opening
with a guitar solo beautifully played by
Cuestas, setting up Cline for the heartrending
solo which follows. The last movement too, is
particularly noteworthy, bristling with excitement
and precise teamwork.
Among the earlier compositions are six
of Bartók’s Romanian Dances and Enrique
Granados’ Danza Española No. 5: Andaluza,
from which the duo draws haunting nostalgia
for times past in pre-cataclysm Eastern
Europe and Spain respectively.
Daniel Dorff’s Serenade to Eve, After Rodin
(1999), beginning passionately lyrical and
moving to an astonishing virtuosic conclusion,
is yet another great addition to the
contemporary repertoire for flute and guitar.
So too is Gary Schocker’s Silk Worms, music
of great refinement commissioned by the duo
in 2013 and interpreted here with warmth
and conviction.
Credit also goes to Oscar Zambrano, who
mastered the recording, for really getting
the balance between the two instruments
just right. Congratulations to all who were
involved for an excellent first CD.
Allan Pulker
Klezmer Dreams
André Moisan; Quatuor Molinari; Jean
Saulnier
ATMA ACD2 2738 (atmaclassique.com)
! ! Originating
hundreds of year
ago, the roots of
klezmer, the instrumental
party music
of Ashkenazi
Jewish communities,
were enriched
by contact with the
music of the people
of Central and Eastern Europe and beginning
in the early 20th century, with jazz.
The performance of klezmer music generally
76 | November 2017 thewholenote.com