Volume 29 Issue 3 | December 2023 & January 2024

DISCOVERIES | RECORDINGS REVIEWED
DAVID OLDS
After a career of 47 years the renowned
Emerson String Quartet is calling it a day
and they have enrolled Canadian superstar
Barbara Hannigan for their farewell
offering, Infinite Voyage (Alpha 1000
outhere-music.com/en/albums/infinitevoyage).
The disc opens gently with Paul
Hindemith’s four-song cycle Melancholie,
Op.13 which Hannigan’s pure soprano is the
perfect vehicle for the poems of Christian Morgenstern. Set in memory
of Hindemith’s friend Karl Köhler, whose death on the Western Front
in 1918 left the composer devastated, noting “Everything is dreary and
empty. I feel deathly sad.” This is followed by Alban Berg’s String
Quartet, Op.3, with its references to Tristan und Isolde as a tribute to
the composer’s beloved – and later its eerie prefiguring of the madness
depicted in his own opera Wozzeck – in a deeply moving performance
by the quartet. Pianist Bertrand Chamayou joins the others for Ernest
Chausson’s Chanson perpétuelle, a setting of abridged verses from
Charles Cros’ Nocturne in which the narrator, abandoned by her lover,
prepares for suicide. At nearly half an hour, Schoenberg’s String
Quartet No.2, in F-sharp Minor, Op.10 is the most substantive work
presented here. The first two movements are scored for traditional
string quartet. The first movement expands the tonality of the key
signature without venturing too far outside the lines. Things begin to
go astray in the second movement, when toward the end a fractured,
but recognizable rendition of the popular song O du Lieber Augustine
with it’s refrain “All is over” is heard. The third and fourth movements
both feature soprano and the poetry of Stefan George: Litany built on
motives from the previous movements using a text that opens “Deep is
the sadness that gloomily comes over me”; and Ecstasy, in which
there is no longer a key signature and the words begin “I feel air from
another planet” as the work indeed leads us into a new world of
tonality. Once again Hannigan’s is the perfect voice for this powerful
and haunting work, which provides a fitting end to the Emerson
Quartet’s “infinite voyage.” Their journey lasted most of half a century
and they produced nearly three dozen recordings. The Emersons will
be missed, but what a legacy!
Transfigured featuring the Kaleidoscope
Chamber Collective and soprano Francesca
Chiejina (Chandos CHAN 20277 chandos.
net/products/catalogue/CHAN%2020277)
presents a program of chamber music from
the turn of the 20th century with and
without voice. The disc begins with
Alexander von Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen
blühten überall for soprano and string
sextet from 1898, a setting of Richard Dehmel’s gruesome poem that
translates to Lilies-of-the-valley blossomed everywhere, which ends
“and the sun burned him to death in the corn.” Anton Webern’s 1907
Quintet for Piano and Strings, at 13 minutes is one of the composer’s
most sustained works. Written early in his studies with Schoenberg, it
shows some influence of Zemlinsky, his orchestration teacher, and
certainly an appreciation of Brahms, as well as an understanding of
his new mentor’s ideas. Zemlinsky, Schoenberg’s teacher and later his
brother-in-law, also numbered among his students Alma Schindler,
who became his lover before her marriage to Gustav Mahler in 1902.
She wrote a variety of compositions before her marriage, but Mahler
decreed that his wife would have to give up composing. He later
relented somewhat and in 1910 sent her music to Universal Edition
who published some of the songs recorded here. Kaleidoscope pianist
Tom Poster has arranged them quite effectively for soprano and string
sextet and in this form they perfectly complement the other repertoire
on the disc. Chiejina’s dark, dramatic voice is well suited to these
songs which actually show more affinity with the world of Zemlinsky
and Schoenberg than that of Mahler. In 1899 Schoenberg wrote the
string sextet Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) which remains his
most celebrated work, with the possible exception of the mammoth
Gurrelieder published a decade later. Like Zemlinsky’s Maiblumen
and the first of Alma’s songs presented here, Die stille Stadt, it is based
on an emotionally charged poem by Dehmel. In this case however, the
text is interpreted solely through music in an extended and gripping
tone poem replete with sturm und drang. As the notes tell us,
“indebted to Brahms in its string sextet form, the work seemed to be a
deliberate repudiation of such a soundworld and its harmonic rules.”
Although still some years away from his development of the “atonal”
12-note system of composition, and still using a traditional key signature
(D minor), in this seminal work Schoenberg expands the tonality,
stretching it almost to the breaking point while still conveying the
depths of emotion in this star-crossed love story. Kaleidoscope rises
and falls exquisitely with all the rollercoaster twists and turns of the
plot until eventually, a half hour later, the quiet and compassionate
resolution brings this very satisfying disc to a resplendent close.
I have spent some time in recent months
sorting through several thousand LPs in my
basement and came across Glenn Gould’s
two iconic recordings of Bach’s Goldberg
Variations. I took the opportunity to give
them both a spin and was surprised at just
how much I appreciated Gould’s “mature”
1981 version (51 minutes) with its leisurely
approach versus the sprightly, often breakneck
tempos of his youthful 1955 debut (38 minutes). A few days after
this comparative listening session a new recording of the Goldbergs by
Icelander Vikingur Ólafsson arrived at my desk (Deutsche
Grammophon 486 4553 vikingurolafsson.com) and to my surprise, I
now have a new favourite of this much-recorded work. As the opening
Aria began, I got the impression that, as with the elder Gould, I was in
for another treat and settled in for a smooth and relaxing ride, but
48 | December 2023 & January 2024 thewholenote.com