The prolific Cuban American composer Orlando Jacinto García recorded three of his string quartets with the invaluable Amernet Quartet for METIER. The CD came to my attention as a result of his having recently received a well-deserved GRAMMY nomination.

After listening intently to the three quartets in the METIER CD I came away impressed by my compatriot’s intriguingly complex and moving compositions, to which I listened in this order: String Quartet No. 1, “rendering counterpoint”, String Quartet No. 2, “cuatro”, and String Quartet No. 3, “I never saw another butterfly.”

Orlando Jacinto García’s music defies categorization or, worse, labeling. Thus I have to resort to subjective language as I did above – “intriguingly complex and moving” – rather to musicological lingo. For the musically untrained listener this music will not begin to sound like anything you have ever heard before, that is unless you are an habitual attendee of “new music” concerts.

That said, this music dispenses with the triple tenet of Western music of the last seven centuries: there is no harmony to speak of, neither counterpoint nor melody – certainly not as one has come to understand the meaning of those three terms. Instead García spins continuous, seemingly uneventful music in which minute changes of texture and tone happen imperceptibly. In listening to these quartets the listener must commit to complete attention. If one does indeed commit, quietude settles in, and the rewards then to be derived are immense.

Whereas some of the titles that this imaginative composer assigns to his works might at first seem cryptic, that of his String Quartet No. 3, “I never saw another butterfly” elicits at once an intense emotional response from those who are familiar with Celeste Raspanti’s play of the same title, or the poem by Pavel Friedmann that inspired it. The eerie calm that pervades this one-movement, 24-minute sonic landscape is now and then bluntly interrupted by a dramatic thudding sound from the cello that, given the largely even sound of the composition sends shivers up one’s spine.

The Amernet Quartet plays this music with complete discipline and sensitivity. The engineering is exemplary. I hope that METIER will continue to record the fascinating music of this pioneering artist.

Rafael de Acha     ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

In the PENTATONE CD Handel’s Unsung Heroes, the instrumentalists of La Nuova Musica are placed on the same plane as the singers.

Three marvelous players – violinist Thomas Gould, oboist Leo Duarte and bassoonist Joe Qiu stand shoulder to shoulder with soprano Lucy Crowe, mezzo-soprano Christine Rice and countertenor Iestyn Davies in an array of nine arias, and shine in a variety of instrumental turns.

The three singers – countertenor Iestyn Davies, soprano Lucy Crowe, and mezzo-soprano Christine Rice are nothing short of spectacular: Iestyn Davies sets the bar high for peer countertenors, delivering two show-stopping arie di bravura from Rinaldo: Or la tromba in suon festante and Venti, turbini, prestate le vostre ali a questo pie.  

Mezzo-soprano Christine Rice’s lyric sound is perfect for Pena tiranna io sento al core from Amadigi di Gaula, ideal for Ariodante’s Scherza, Infida, and incomparable in Sta nell’Ircana pietrosa tana from Alcina.

Lucy Crowe’s dispenses warp-speed runs with aplomb and rides the high tessitura of Cleopatra’s arias from Giulio Cesare with ease, later producing a flute-like dulcet sound for Galatea’s Qui l’augel da pianta in pianta from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo.

Leading unobtrusively, accompanying the singers, and dominating the proceedings in the various instrumental passages David Bates is the ideal Handel conductor.

Rafael de Acha    ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

SYMPHONIC SIBELIUS

A just-released SWR Classic 3 CD set features recently re-mastered studio recordings made in the late 1950’s for Deutsche Grammophon of Sibelius’ Symphonies Nos. 2, 4 and 5 and, as a bonus filler, Three Songs for Bass and Orchestra nicely sung by the late Finnish bass-baritone Kim Borg. It features the Südwestfunkorchester Baden-Baden conducted by Hans Rosbaud.

Right after the success of Finlandia, Jan Sibelius was lucky to find a patron who sponsored the still young Finnish composer to get away from the snows and months-long winter darkness of Finland by setting him up in a villa in Rapallo, Italy, where he completed his second symphony in less than a year. Sunny Italy did the usually sullen Finn a lot of good as can be discerned from the generally positive tone of the work’s first movement and the triumphant tone of its final D major Allegro.

Of his symphony Sibelius said: “My second symphony is a confession of the soul” even though some of posterity’s critics were harshly dismissive of the work, with the New York Herald Tribune’s Virgil Thomson lashing out at the Finn by describing the work as “”vulgar, self-indulgent, and provincial beyond all description.” It is doubtful that Sibelius got a copy of Thomson’s snarky commentary, but he still lobbed one at his American nemesis and all those like him when he wrote: “Pay no attention to what critics say. No statue has ever been put up to a critic.”

The SWR Classic recording also includes the Symphony No. 4 in A Minor, Op. 63 and the Symphony No. 5 in E-Flat Major, Op. 82, neither of which attained the popularity of the composer’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, op.43 and both of which in one way or another reflect the conflicted personality of a flawed man and erratic artist who after life-long struggles with alcohol and other personal demons fell into a thirty year silence that ended with his death.

Hans Rosbaud’s conducting does not compare well to the many recordings of this music with younger and more contemporary maestros making Sibelius’ music vibrate with excitement. If you are looking for faithful adherence to the abundant indications set down by Sibelius then this recording is for you. If you absolutely love the music of Jan Sibelius, then this recording is for you. If you are the type of collector who loves to compare recordings of the same music interpreted by different artists, then this recording is for you.

Rafael de Acha            ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

In Tianwa Yang’s newest recording for Naxos (Naxos 8.574107) the Chinese violinist performs three Prokofiev works for violin: two violin concertos and a Sonata for Solo Violin.

Prokofiev wrote his Violin Concerto No. 1 early in life when he heard the playing of his composition teacher, Reinhold Glière. The Violin Concerto No. 2 premiered in 1935 in Madrid, Spain when the composer was on tour, while the much simpler to the point of naïveté Sonata for Solo Violin, Opus 115 was commissioned by the Soviet Union’s Committee of Arts Affairs as a pedagogical work for talented violin students, designed to be played not by one soloist but by multiple young performers in unison: three altogether diverse compositions, written under completely different circumstances, that sound at times as if coming from the pens of three different composers.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1963) lived in difficult times. Like his contemporary Igor Stravinsky he left his native Russia fairly soon after the 1917 Revolution. He toured. He lived in France for a while, in the States next. He married twice, after divorcing his Spanish wife for his Russian mistress. He was embraced by the Soviets, received numerous awards and commissions. He fell out of favor with the Soviets, much like his colleagues Khachaturian and Shostakovich did. At first he wrote decidedly dissonant music – termed “Modernist” back in the day, while later he shunned atonality and created his own brand of “Modernist” composition, flirting with polytonality, embracing a harmonic language chockfull of deceptive cadences – a kind of Russian post-Romanticism that more than once got him in hot waters with the Soviet cultural police.

While any neglected or just simply any rarely performed Prokofiev is better than no Prokofiev at all, repeated listening to all three of the works in this CD failed move me. Much of this music sounds cold, formulaic and academic. While there are plenty of flashes of brilliance in Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, in his Peter and the Wolf, in his Alexander Nevsky score for Eisenstein film of the same title, in his rapturously beautiful score for the ballet Romeo and Juliet, and in his Lieutenant Kije suite, I find the twists and turns of Prokofiev’s personal journey infinitely more compelling than much of his music.

In this recording Tianwa Yang plays with fiery drive and determination, receiving strong support from the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra led by Jun Märkl.

Rafael de Acha   ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Violinist Ida Haendel (1928-2020) remains in the memory of those who heard her in person as one of the great violinists of the 20^th century. The possessor of tremendous technique and an artist of passionate musicality she can be heard in a series of three compact discs (SWR CLASSIC 19427) that feature her playing under the baton of Hans Müller-Kray, chief conductor of the Radio-Sinfonieochester Stuttgart before 1967.

The collection includes: Brahms Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77; Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64; Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35; Dvořák Violin Concerto in A Minor, Op. 53; Khachaturian Violin Concerto in D Minor; Bartók Violin Concerto No. 2.

There is very little left to be said about the extraordinary Ida Haendel. Her music-making is injected with tremendous strength tempered with maturity and impeccable taste. In the Andante movements of the Brahms, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky concertos she spins a seamless legato line as if her Stradivarius were a human voice. And her endurance in long movements, like the opening Allegro of the Brahms violin concerto is remarkable, even for a then young violinist in her early thirties and in the early stages of her career.

In the Allegretto of the Mendelssohn concerto and in the finale of the Tchaikovsky concerto she takes both tempi in coordination with Maestro Müller-Kray at a nice clip but not so fast as to distort articulation and clarity. There is not in her playing one iota of the sort of grandstanding in which many of today’s younger violinists like to indulge themselves, often at the expense of elegance and sobriety – two sterling qualities intrinsic to Ida Haendel’s playing.

In the great Romantic works – Brahms, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky – Ida Haendel had few peers,  yet she expanded her repertoire to include some of the off-the-beaten path works by Khachaturian and Bartók, both of  whose violin concertos are included here and  to both of which Ida Haendel gave the same attention as she bestowed on the staples of the violinist’s repertoire. Ever elegant, ever noble, ever a servant of the composer, Ida Haendel’s playing lives on in this excellent collection.

Rafael de Acha       ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Little did Bela Bartók suspect that his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta would become perfect for accompanying spooky films by the creators of Being John Malkovich, Stanley Kubrick, and various American, Australian, dramatic and documentary flicks. Perhaps the Hungarian composer should have settled in Hollywood, where he could have had a fine career as a film score writer.

For the final disc in their Bartók trilogy on BIS, Susanna Mälkki and the Helsinki Philharmonic have recorded Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, and the Concerto for Orchestra. While their playing is unimpeachable, I still find Bartók’s music impenetrable.

The first movement of Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is strange enough what with its antiphonal, atonal and somber structure. The second one- a nervous Allegro that puts the seven-player percussion section to work full time perseveres in the pervading strangeness. The third movement, still another Adagio is frenetically driven all for naught. The final Allegro Molto, with still not a melody within earshot, proves that Bela Bartók could set up two string orchestras seated on opposite sides of the stage, with percussion and keyboard instruments in the middle, and still not succeed in developing an audience for his brand of music.

In the case of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra we are in somewhat similar terrain. Divided into four sections, the 1943 work commissioned for the Boston Symphony Orchestra still repeats  some of the same ideas the composer used in the 1936 Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta: moodily quiet sections followed by sudden outbursts of orchestral fortissimo with a sprinkling of Magyar modal folksiness, fugues that start and then go nowhere, a scarcity of true melodic inventiveness, quasi tonal passages that cannot quite decide what musical deity they worship: Second Viennese School, maybe? Not really.

If by now, dear reader, you have still not decided to stop reading my comments I encourage you to go ahead and cut me lose. For my next review I promise I am moving on to more Romantic terrain.

Rafael de Acha      ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

STEFANO MAIORANA CONNECTS TWO KINDRED MUSICAL SOULS

Out of the blue Italian multi-instrumentalist Stefano Maiorana (EN Stefano Maiorana) sent me several links to his superb album ENTRE DOS ALMAS for Outhere Music (outhere-music.com).

Primarily a guitarist who specializes in music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, this extraordinary artist brings to life in this album the music of Santiago de Murcia, a Spanish guitarist and composer who lived between 1673 and 1739 and who during the 66 years of his life lived a hand-to-mouth existence notwithstanding having served the court of Maria Luisa de Savoy, Queen of Spain as Master of the Guitar.

Murcia’s wide ranging talent led him to explore Spanish, French and Italian musical styles and folklore dance forms, which he compiled in his Resumen de acompañar. In his album for Outhere Music, the resourceful Stefano Maiorana takes us on a lovely visit to the music of Santiago de Murcia along with a couple of Arcangelo Corelli sonatas, all with splendid results.

Murcia’s music coming already towards the end of the Baroque and not quite fully inhabiting the Classical era straddles both periods in a charming manner, injecting into it the quintessentially Spanish rhythms of the popular fandangos, jacaras and canaries then in vogue and raising them to the level of courtly music.

ENTRE DOS ALMAS evidences how the Spanish to the core music of Santiago de Murcia and the intrinsically Italian music of Arcangelo Corelli linked each to the other as profoundly connected art forms: two kindred souls enriching one another by way of Stefano Maiorana, an immensely accomplished artist conversant in all the performance practices of the period and in command of a perfect balance of technique, musicality and temperament.

The impressive Sunday September 26 concert that brought the long overdue return of Cincinnati’s Immaculata Chamber Music Series opened with Ernst von Dohnányi’s Serenade in C major, Op. 10, for string trio.

An early 20^th century work written when its composer was in his mid-twenties, the five-movement suite is structured as a collection of five movements: an Allegro in the form of a lively March, a melodic Romanza, a Scherzo, a theme and variations, and a finale in the form of a Rondo.

Unlike those of his fellow Hungarians Bartók and Kodály, Dohnányi’s compositions do not find their inspiration in Hungarian folk songs, instead being closer to the post Romanticism much in vogue in Europe at the turn of the 20^th century: still tonal, occasionally melodic, shunning any influence from the Second Viennese School, the Serenade in C major sounds at times like a chip off the old Brahms block, correctly structured, but more compositional perspiration than inspiration.

Violist Martin Hintz, cellist Jonathan Lee, and violinist KayCee Galano played with precision and boundless energy.

The second half of the concert featured the String Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20, written by Felix Mendelssohn at the age of 16.Conceived for a double quartet: four violins, two violas, and two cellos little did its young composer know that he was creating a new kind of work in the field of chamber music, a composition that set the name of Felix Mendelssohn on the musical map of 19^th century Europe.

Structured in four continuous sections: a breathless Allegro moderato ma con fuoco in E-flat major, a lyrical C minor Andante, a G minor Scherzo that reminded one of the similar movement in the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and a race to the finish finale in Presto tempo that returns to the initial E-flat tonality, the Octet is a miraculously unpredictable composition, every bar filled with melodic and harmonic riches.

KayCee Galano, Maggie Niekamp, Kanako Shimasaki, Mwakudua waNgure, Martin Hintz, Judy Huang, Jonathan Lee, and Lucas Song were the eight players of the Mendelssohn, some of whom previously performed the Mendelssohn Octet in concert at the Immaculata Chamber Music series. With the peerless Kanako Shimasaki leading the ensemble, the eight musicians gave an exhilarating performance, marked by faultless intonation, technical accuracy, agility, and superb musicality. In short a great performance.

Information about upcoming concerts in the Immaculata Chamber Music series may be found on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ImmaculataCMS

Rafael de Acha        ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Thomas Beecham conducts Sibelius

The ARIADNE 5013 release of a portion of SOMM’s ground-breaking The Beecham Collection which altogether spans 24 volumes, many of the compositions with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is just now being released. It includes the only known live recording of Sir Thomas conducting Sibelius’s Symphony No.1 with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Sibelius’ Scènes historiques. The disc has been meticulously curated by Jon Tolansky, the original founder of the Music Performance Research Centre, now renamed Music Preserved. The First Symphony heard here comes from a live performance in the 1952 Edinburgh International Festival.

Sibelius’s Fourth and Sixth Symphonies, and early recordings dating from 1946 featuring, among other major works, Mozart’s Symphony No.40, and Schumann’s Piano Concerto, with Moura Lympany  as soloist are also part of The Beecham Collection.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1946 by Beecham to inject new energy and new ideas into British orchestral life. Cantankerous, opinionated, self-righteous, prone to quarrels, capricious in his tastes, happily trading the whole of J.S. Bach for one act of Massenet’s Manon, disparaging of other conductors, Sir Thomas was also a passionate advocate of the music of some composers – Sibelius and Mozart, above many other – and a formidable technician at the podium. Both feared and yet deeply admired by many of his musicians- though not loved by any – Sir Thomas left a memorable legacy leading the Royal Philharmonic, the Hallé Orchestra and the Liverpool Philharmonic in Great Britain, and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra  in America.

The live performance faithfully caught here, is emotional, muscular, forceful, sparse in subtlety though abundant in bristling energy. In short, this is a must hear, must have recording.

Rafael de Acha      ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Claudette Sorel Rediscovered

Claudette Sorel plays selected works for solo in a commemorative edition of two albums the pianist piano. 

Sorel (1932-1999) a French-American pianist and a committed advocate of equal rights for women in the arts, left France with her family in 1940 and migrated to the United States, where she studied at the Juilliard School of Music and at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute.

While researching the piano music of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, Sorel discovered two nocturnes by the composer that had been neither published nor performed before. She premiered these in 1973 at a recital celebrating the composer’s centenary, unfortunately her last public appearance, as soon thereafter she was injured in a fall and never performed again. 

This recording includes bravura pieces by Raff and Moszkowski, Fredric Chopin’s Sonata No. 3, and Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Nocturne in A Minor Op10, in addition to the three Nocturnes she unearthed.

Throughout this invaluable recording, available from Amazon Music, Sorel displays tremendous technical prowess, coupled to elegant musicality and acute sensitivity.

Rafael de Acha     ALL ABOUT THE ARTS