Volume 28 Issue 4 | February - March 2023

form. Each of the CDs features marqueeworthy
stars including the great Canadian
coloratura Karina Gauvin (cue L’Inquiétude
and Le soir from CD 2). Of course Gauvin is
not the only celebrity soprano featured here.
Others include the quite brilliant Magali
Simard-Galdès (Voix de femmes, CD 9). Still
others include: mezzo Julie Boulianne (Avant
la bataille, CD 10), contralto Florence Bourget
(Le Noël des humbles, CD 5). Tenors include
Eric Laporte (Napolitana, CD 2), while
baritones feature Jean-François Lapointe
(Amoureaux d’une étoile, CD 12), and among
the narrators is Jean Marchand (Le vision de
Loti, CD 12).
While the vocalists are indubitably the
stars on these discs the accompanists also
deserve special mention. The cast of musicians
includes violinist Antoine Bareil, cellist
Stéphane Tétreault, guitarist David Jacques,
harpist Valérie Milot and Olivier Godin who
plays a radiant 1854 Sébastien Érard piano,
harmonium and harpsichord. All the accompanists
play with sublime idiomatic grace
and must be recognised for their restrained
artistry, which allows the vocalists to shine
through the poesy of these works. Rarely has
any box of CDs offered the kind of thrill-aminute
listening as this one.
Raul da Gama
Artur Schnabel – Complete Vocal Works
Sara Couden; Jenny Lin
Steinway & Sons 30208 (steinway.com/
music-and-artists/label)
! In his book The
Great Pianists,
music critic Harold
Schonberg devoted
an entire chapter
to Austrian Artur
Schnabel (1882-
1951), the first
to record all 32
Beethoven sonatas. (I especially cherish
his soul-searching Schubert recordings.)
Yet now almost forgotten is that Schnabel
also composed – a lot! – including three
symphonies and five string quartets.
This first complete collection of his vocal
music memorializes Schnabel’s relationship
with contralto Therese Behr, who brought
her young accompanist (she was six years
older) to public attention. The visually odd
couple – Behr six feet tall, Schnabel five-four
– married in 1905.
Schnabel composed 22 songs for Behr
between 1899 and 1906, influenced by
Brahms’ warm lyricism, rather than the
febrile emotionalism of Mahler or Richard
Strauss. Making her CD debut, American
contralto Sara Couden, with her dark sepia
timbre, perfectly suits the songs’ restrained,
autumnal moods, prevalent even when the
texts rhapsodize about the beauties of nature
or love’s joys and sorrows. Pianist Jenny
Lin admirably provides pianist-composer
Schnabel’s often elaborate accompaniments.
Schnabel wasn’t immune, however, to
the stylistic revolutions of Schoenberg
and Stravinsky preceding World War I.
His 22-minute Notturno, Op.16 (1914),
written for Behr, marked a significant departure
from his previous compositions. In
Richard Dehmel’s lengthy poem, the narrator
recounts an agonized dream about a dead
friend. Dispensing with bar-lines, Schnabel’s
music creates metric ambiguity along with
discordant touches of the atonality he later
firmly embraced. It’s a compelling musical
psychodrama.
Texts and translations are included.
Michael Schulman
Milton Babbit – Works for Treble Voice and
Piano
Nina Berman; Steve Beck; Eric Huebner
New Focus Recordings FCR349
(newfocusrecordings.com)
! Milton Babbitt
(1916-2011)
was one of the
20th century’s
most significant
composers and
music theorists,
whose analytical
work on the music
of the Second Viennese School continues to
influence theory seminars throughout the
world. Babbitt gained notoriety from his 1958
article Who cares if you listen? in which a
strong case for the avant-garde composer
is made, whether conventional audiences
appreciate their efforts or not.
As a composer, Babbitt wrote both electronic
and serial works, including the
songs contained on this album which span
throughout his career. Performed by soprano
Nina Berman and pianists Steve Beck and Eric
Huebner, this recording provides a window
into Babbitt’s inherently complex, yet surprisingly
tuneful style of composition.
Unlike Schoenberg and other proponents
of the Second Viennese School, whose
12-tone methods permit some semblance
of almost-tonality, the serialist approach
employed by Babbitt strips away any reference
to earlier systems of melody and harmony.
Although the scores themselves are incredibly
dense and challenging to execute and the
music is undoubtedly atonal, there is much
for listeners to focus on, for even the most
random and aleatoric method of composition
still results in some semblance of both
melody and harmony, albeit far removed from
the music of earlier times.
Performing and recording music of this
complexity is no small feat and Berman,
Beck and Huebner deserve double praise:
first, for masterfully presenting this collection
of 20th-century art song; secondly, for
bringing greater awareness to one of the
greatest “musician’s musicians” to ever live.
While Babbitt publicly eschewed easy accessibility
and immediate audience gratification,
his music continues to stimulate, challenge
and reward musicians brave enough to engage
with his masterful body of work.
Matthew Whitfield
CLASSICAL AND BEYOND
Pachelbel – Magnificat Fugues
Space Time Continuo
Analekta AN 2 8911 (analekta.com/en)
! This recording
is fascinating,
both in conception
and execution.
Comprised entirely
of Baroque continuo
instruments (i.e.
cello, lute and
organ), typically
heard as the bassline
foundation of early music ensembles,
Montreal-based Space Time Continuo
presents a variety of Johann Pachelbel’s pipe
organ works arranged and performed for
their unique makeup.
As indicated by the album title, this
recording features a number of Pachelbel’s
fugues based on the Magnificat, a canticle
often known as the Song of Mary. Perhaps
best known for its multi-movement setting
by J.S. Bach and the many smaller-scale
versions written by English Cathedral tradition-
composers for use in the Evensong
liturgy, Pachelbel’s Magnificat arrangements
are purely instrumental, with no expression
of the text itself.
Pachelbel wrote a great number of these
little fugues: 95 in all and, while there is
some debate on whether these organ works
were composed for intonation or alternation,
there is no doubt that they were used
in the context of the sung text, either before,
during or after. For this performance, director
and cellist Amanda Keesmaat arranged 13
of these fugues, along with the well-known
Chaconne in F Minor – one of Pachelbel’s
largest-scale organ works – resulting in music
that, although contrapuntally identical to its
original, is strikingly different both in timbre
and texture.
Known largely for his Canon in D and little
else, this recording demonstrates that there
is much music by Pachelbel that deserves
to be rediscovered. From the serious and
solemn to buoyant and joyful, there is much
here for everyone to enjoy and the uniqueness
of having this terrific music performed
by an equally magnificent bass-instrument
ensemble makes this sophomore release
from Space Time Continuo worthwhile
listening for all.
Matthew Whitfield
54 | February & March, 2023 thewholenote.com