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Strings Attached
Apart from the single-movement
Sonatensatz written when he was just
15, Schubert’s works for piano, violin
and cello all date from 1827, the year before
he died. Two of the three works from
that year — the E-Flat Major
Piano Trio Op.100 and the singlemovement
Adagio or Notturno,
also in e-flat — are featured on
a new CD from Trio Latitude 41
(ELOQUENTIA EL 1129).
The Op.100 is a large, fourmovement
work that makes an
immediate impression and clearly
has a great deal of depth. The
booklet notes quote Robert
Schumann’s 1836 description
of the trio as a work that
“blazed forth like some enraged
meteor,” with an opening movement
“inspired by deep indignation
as well as boundless longing.”
The artists here — Canadian
pianist Bernadene Blaha, violinist
Livia Sohn and cellist Luigi
Piovano — find all this and more
in a memorable performance. A
finely-nuanced and highly effective
performance of the Notturno
completes an excellent recital
disc. Recorded at the Rolston
Recital Hall in the Banff Centre,
the balance and ambience
are perfect.
The first thing that comes
to mind whenever I receive
a CD of the Tchaikovsky and
Mendelssohn Violin Concertos
is: do we really need yet another
recording of these classic works?
Well, yes, of course we do: established
artists often find something
new to say, and all new artists have to measure
themselves against these cornerstones
of the repertoire. For the young violinist
Ray Chen, the choice of these works for his
second Sony CD (SONY 88697984102) — his
first with orchestra — was easy: he won the
Menuhin Competition in 2008 playing the
Mendelssohn concerto, and the prestigious
Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels in
2009 with the Tchaikovsky.
The first words I wrote down while listening
to the Tchaikovsky were “relaxed
tempo/approach in first movement,” so it
was interesting to read “relaxed and peaceful
… that is also what Ray Chen demands of
his interpretations of the two concertos” in
the booklet notes. That’s very much how the
works come across, although that certainly
shouldn’t be taken to imply any absence
of line or a lack of intensity when needed.
Chen’s playing is expansive, warm and
tERRy ROBBINS
sympathetic, and he communicates a clear
empathy for these works.
The conductor of the Swedish Radio
Symphony Orchestra is the outstanding Daniel
harding, whose name on a CD virtually
guarantees a top-notch accompaniment,
and that’s certainly
the case here. Great balance and
a lovely recorded ambience make
for an impressive CD that promises
a great future for Chen.
The latest CD in the outstanding
Hyperion series The
Romantic Violin Concerto is
Volume 11. It features the works
for violin and orchestra by Max
Reger in terrific performances
by Tanja Becker-Bender and
the Konzerthausorchester
Berlin under Lothar Zagrosek
(hyperion CDA67892).
Reger, who was only 43
when he died in 1916, trod a highly
individualistic road as a composer.
As was the case with Mahler,
who had died exactly five years
earlier, his main exponents and
interpreters left Germany in the
1930s, but, unlike Mahler, his
music and reputation failed to
gain a foothold on foreign soil
after the Second World War.
The Violin Concerto in A Major,
Op.101, from 1907, is a simply
huge, melodic and immediately
accessible work, almost an hour
long, and clearly in the post-
Brahms tradition. The Two
Romances in G Major and D
Major, Op.50, written in 1900
and scored for a smaller orchestra than
the concerto, were a deliberate attempt to secure
more concert performances in the major
German cities. Wolfgang Rathert’s excellent
booklet notes refer to their “fusion of contrapuntal
texture and flowing melody,” which
is a pretty good description of Reger’s music
in general. They are simply gorgeous works,
reminiscent of Brahms and Bruch, and they
receive sympathetically beautiful performances
by Becker-Bender and Zagrosek.
Reger still tends to be criticized for the
complexity and turgidity of his compositions,
but it’s really more a case of an overabundance
of creative ideas making it difficult for
the listener to discern the overall shape and
form. It’s quite beautiful writing, however,
and if you don’t know any of his music then
the three lovely works on this terrific CD offer
the perfect opportunity to put that right.
It’s really difficult to know what to say
about Silence, on joue! A Time for Us, the
new CD from Angèle Dubeau & La Pietà
(ANALEKTA AN 2 8733). It’s a collection of
movie themes quite clearly aimed at a mass
market — and, sure enough, it’s already being
enthusiastically played on a certain Toronto
FM radio station.
Film music is an extremely important area
of contemporary composition, of course,
and the big names are here in force: John
Williams, James Horner, Howard Shore,
Erich Korngold, Ennio Morricone, Nino
Rota, John Barry. The problem is that there
seems to be little of any real substance: of
the 20 tracks, 12 are under four minutes
in length, and only one exceeds five minutes
— just. It’s unrelenting easy listening,
with no real “bite” anywhere, although this
may well be due to the fact that virtually all
of the 15 basic tracks (there are five “bonus”
tracks from previous Dubeau CDs) are –
hardly surprisingly — transcriptions, adaptations
or arrangements.
Tracks include My Heart Will Go On,
Over the Rainbow, Smile, the Love Themes
from Romeo and Juliet and Cinema
Paradiso, and music from The English
Patient, Lord of the Rings and Dances
with Wolves. The bonus tracks include
the “Cavatina” from Stanley Myers’ The
Deer Hunter and the main themes from
Schindler’s List and The Mission.
Dubeau, clearly a top-notch player, is
apparently the only Canadian “classical”
musician to have earned two gold records
for album sales exceeding 50,000 in one
year. This CD will probably do equally well,
although one may hopefully be excused for
pondering the relationship between quantity
and quality, and wondering whether or not
Dubeau’s undoubted talents could be put to
better use.
Strings Attached continues at www.
thewholenote.com with the latest from the
New York orchestra The Knights with works
by Schubert, Satie and Philip Glass among
others.
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72 thewholenote.com April 1 – May 7, 2012