Volume 23 Issue 9 - June / July / August 2018

DISCOVERIES | RECORDINGS REVIEWED
DAVID OLDS
When a new recording of the Bartók Viola
Concerto crossed my desk recently it
immediately caught my attention. Begun in
1945 and left incomplete at the time of his
death – actually it was just a few sketches –
this was the composer’s final composition.
Although in the words of Grove’s Dictionary
of Music and Musicians Bartók’s assistant
Tibor Serly’s completion of the concerto
“cannot be considered definitive,” it has always been a favourite of
mine. Motherland (Warner Classics 0190295697693 warnerclassics.com)
features young superstar violist David Aaron Carpenter
performing concertos by Dvořák, Bartók and Walton, plus a number
of concerted works by Kiev-born, New York City resident Alexey Shor
(b.1970) with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Carpenter, born in NYC in 1986, has had a remarkable career,
winning the 2005 Philadelphia Orchestra Young Artists Competition,
the Walter W. Naumburg Viola Competition the following year and
an Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2010. His first recording, Elgar
and Schnittke concertos, was praised highly in these pages in
October 2009 by Terry Robbins, and two subsequent outings met with
similar attention in Robbins’ Strings Attached column in recent years.
With that in mind, I had no qualms about holding back Carpenter’s
latest recording for my own collection. Of course I had to start with
the Bartók, and I was immediately transported back to the heights
I first scaled when introduced to this work by Yehudi Menuhin’s
performance with the Philharmonia Orchestra under Antal Dorati’s
direction half a century ago. We’ll likely never know just how much
of this atypical work is Bartók’s and how much that of Serly. Strangely
though, it is a much more original work than Serly’s own Rhapsody
for Viola and Orchestra which is replete with borrowings from his
master. Carpenter’s stunning performance reminds us why, its questionable
pedigree notwithstanding, this concerto is a staple of the
viola repertoire.
The first CD (of two) opens with Joseph Vieland’s transcription of
Dvořák’s masterful Cello Concerto, to which Carpenter has added
his own refinements. It is very effective, but as a cellist I can’t help
but notice that the power and anguish of the cello’s upper register,
its chanterelle range, is not equalled when the viola plays the same
pitches. That being said, it is still a captivating performance, with the
orchestra under Kazushi Ono in fine form. Especially noteworthy
are the horn solos. The second disc begins with William Walton’s
concerto, which was commissioned by Lionel Tertis in 1929. Tertis was
not convinced and declined to premiere the work but later, in words
of Andrew Morris “was good enough to admit his mistake.” Tertis said:
“The innovations in [Walton’s] musical language, which now seem so
logical and so truly in the mainstream of music, then struck me as farfetched.”
To our modern ears it seems hard to imagine this lush and
romantic work being received as anything but a masterpiece.
There is more than an hour of music by Shor dispersed across
the two discs, and frankly I don’t know why. The inclusion of his
Seascapes, a four-movement work for viola and orchestra, would
have more than sufficed. His motion-picture soundtrack sensibility
makes even the Dvořák and Walton sound modern, and the 13-movement
Well Tempered Chanson, a compendium of encores written for
Carpenter, seems like just too much dessert. The Bartók, however, is
worth the price of admission.
Speaking of film scores and people named Shor(e)… last year Canadian
superstar film composer Howard Shore took time out from his day job
to compose a celebratory cantata to honour Canada’s
sesquicentennial. Sea to Sea/D’un ocean à
l’autre was commissioned by the New
Brunswick Youth Orchestra (nbyo-ojnb.
com) and was first performed on July 2, 2017
at the Canada 150 Stage, Riverfront Park,
Moncton. That performance featuring New
Brunswick’s pride and joy, soprano Measha
Brueggergosman, and the Choeur
CANADA150 Choir was recorded and is now
available from Leaf Music (LM217 leaf-music.ca). With bilingual lyrics
by Elizabeth Cotnoir, the nine-minute work opens with a horn fanfare
to set the stage and then launches into jubilant praise for our fair land.
After the bombastic opening there is a contemplative middle section
gently declaring “We hold a vision.” The final section is a return to the
opening exuberance, this time en français. The CD single also includes
two “radio edit” versions, just under three minutes each, one in
English and one in French.
The latest project from the 2016 Canadian
Folk Music Awards Best Instrumental
Group of the Year – Andrew Collins Trio –
is the cleverly named pair of CDs Tongue
and Groove (andrewcollinstrio.com).
The first is a departure for the band, with
11 tracks featuring lead vocals by multimando
frontman Collins for the most part,
with harmonies and occasional lead lines
provided by bass player James McEleney. The
third member of the trio, Mike Mezzatesta,
keeps busy on guitar, mandolin, fiddle and
mandola. It’s an eclectic collection of traditional
“down homey” numbers, novelty
songs, cover versions and a few originals. Of
particular note are Collins’ own reworking
of Marijohn Wilkin and Danny Dill’s Long
Black Veil and Roger Miller’s The Hat. But for me it is the instrumental
disc Groove that really shines. Replete with some of the finest bluegrass
pickin’ you’re likely to find this far north, there’s also a mix of
styles, including some very Django-like vibes to which the double
strings of Collins’ mandolin give a new twist, a beautiful lullaby and
a couple of fiddle tunes. Standouts include Poplar Bluff, Kentakaya
Waltz, Badabada Ba Ba and Big Toaster.
Concert note: Andrew Collins Trio launches Tongue and Groove at
Lula Lounge on June 10 as the final event in this year’s edition of
Lulaworld.
It seems that every month we receive a
dozen or more CDs from the Parma
Recordings group, which includes the labels
Ravello, Big Round, Asonica and, in this
case, Navona Records. Although my current
activities as an amateur cellist are focusing
on string-only ensembles, quartets and at
the moment a trio, for many years I also
played with pianists in the traditional piano
trio formation – violin, cello and piano.
Beginning with the classics, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn (Felix
and Fanny), Schumann (Robert and Clara), but eventually moving into
the 20th century with Debussy, Shostakovich and contemporary
Canadians including Colin Eatock and Daniel Foley – both of whom
will be familiar to readers of The WholeNote – I spent countless hours
72 | June | July | August 2018 thewholenote.com