KARL AMADEUS HARTMANN: Symphony No.6

BENEDICT TENT (Aspen, Colorado)

K A R L   A M A D E U S   H A R T M A N N

Symphony No.6

Aspen Festival Orchestra

Ingo Metzmacher

VIII.14.2011

Benedict Tent

Aspen Music Festival

Aspen, Colorado

256 kbs mp3 (no re-encoding)

This is how you know you're listening to an orchestral recording made by engineers who understand and care about music:  At your usual volume setting the music sounds far too quiet and muffled.  You decide to increase the volume of the files before burning them on CD but discover that the peak volume is already at nearly 100%.  And your heart skips a beat because you realize that what you have is an orchestral recording with completely uncompressed dynamic range, and without any post-production boost of high frequencies.  So you just crank up the volume on your amplifier, and every time there is an orchestral sforzando or a forte whack on the bass drum, the music "opens up" with thrilling vitality, and there is not the the slightest fatigue experienced by your ears throughout the entire piece.
     Unless, of course, your amplifier is inside your laptop or computer speakers, and delivers just enough juice to power your grandpa's hearing aid or your grandma's vibrator.  Or it is a stand alone audio-video-microwave-toaster-washer-dryer-and-everything-else-you-can-think-of-plastic-piece-of-shit, with more blinking lights on its front face than you'd see in Tokyo's Shibuya District on a Friday night, and with the manufacturer's promise to deliver hundreds of watts into countless speakers, doorbells, alarm clocks, pacemakers, and anything else you can plug into it - but only so long as this power is measured on a tiny interval of midrange frequencies, and lasts no longer than a fraction of a second.  In that case the orchestral peaks will be clipped and what you'll hear will be a lifeless, muffled, faintly congested, and two-dimensional Muzak.  You'll hate it, naturally, and once again praise the Lord for all those commercial recordings whose dynamic range is so compressed that you can hear ppp passages on your iPod earbuds while squeezing a couple of hundred rounds through your .45 Colt Automatic at a shooting range, and whose high frequency content is boosted so much that your cheap speakers (or iPod earbuds) will buzz and sizzle like the power transmission lines that run across the Nevada Basin desert.

Now you can understand why I was so pleased with the sound quality of this live and unedited recording of Hartmann's 6th Symphony.  (Corigliano's Piano Concerto on this blog is another live orchestral recording whose engineering I find that gratifying.)  Add to this the fact that Aspen's Benedict Tent is essentially an open space venue, and you will understand why I would gratefully carry the sound engineer's photo in my wallet (if I carried a wallet, that is).
     As for the performance, the orchestral playing is good, and it communicates the excitement of a live concert to make a far stronger case for Hartmann's "conservative modernism" than what I remember from slippery and two-dimensional sounding commercial recording by Ingo Metzmacher and the Bamberg SO.  (Apropos, the incompetent cocksuckers at EMI who produced this commercial set of Hartmann's symphonies did not even bother to invest minimal care into splicing together different takes without audible hiccups.  Just check the Adagio of the 7th symphony at around 9:26.5 for one example of how the CD-buying public repeatedly gets fucked by the perpetually self-pitying recording industry).  The Aspen orchestra, by the way, is essentially a "master class" orchestra, in which the front desks are occupied by experienced (often world-class) musicians, and the rest of the players are very talented young musicians (conservatory students or recent graduates).  Many of these youngsters will go on to become players in top orchestras, and some may become world-class soloists - as it happened in the past with Joshua Bell, Lyn Harrell, Sara Cheng, and other famous musicians who are alumni of the Aspen Music Festival and School.

SAGUARO TRIO: Chopin, Mendelssohn

CHOPIN: Piano Trio in G minor, Op.8
MENDELSSOHN: Piano Trio No.2, Op.66

Saguaro Trio
http://maximaltd.com/saguarotrio/bio.htm
Luanne Homzy, Violin
Karen Kang, Cello
John Chen, Piano

Bennett-Gordon Hall
Ravinia Festival
VI.30.2010 (Chopin), VII.11.2010
256 kbs mp3 (no re-encoding)

Judging by these superlatively recorded, live and unedited performances the Saguaro Trio must be one of the finest ensembles before the public today - and not just among the young generation of performers.  A special treat for me was the playing of the pianist John Chen who won the Gold Medal at the 2004 Sydney International Piano Competition.  As I listened to the Mendelssohn trio I thought that Chen was blending too much with the string players and I wished his playing were a bit more assertive.  Then I listened to the Chopin trio and realized that Chen's deferential playing in the Mendelssohn piece was not at all a matter of his musical personality.  Perhaps it was simply Chen's way of acknowledging that although Mendelssohn keeps the piano busy, he does not give it all that much to say.  In any case, in the Chopin trio Chen came forth with such luminous, glowing tone, and with phrasing so pure and inevitable that I had to listen to the entire piece once again right away - just to make sure I was not imagining things.  (Chen is reportedly very passionate about French music, and he recorded the complete piano works of Dutilleux for Naxos.)
     My piano buff gushing aside, it is the ensemble, of course, that impressed me deeply.  Their playing in these recordings, while technically immaculate and tonally refined, does not at all sound over-rehearsed or self-conscious (as it occasionally happens with chamber ensembles striving for technical perfection and tonal refinement).
     

SCHNITTKE: Quintet for Piano and Strings

GORDON HALL (Falls Village, Connecticut)

ALFRED SCHNITTKE

Quintet for Piano and Strings

Alexander Mekinulov, piano

St Petersburg String Quartet

http://www.stpetersburgquartet.com/quartet.phtml

VIII.21.2011

Gordon Hall

Falls Village Connecticut

 Music Mountain Festival

320 kbs VBR mp3 (no re-encoding)

If music can be said to evoke bubbling brooks, bird calls, war, love, death, and even transfiguration, then why not Dissociative Identity Disorder?  There are distinct and seemingly independent musical identities - rooted in serialism, polytonality, dadaism, Stravinskian neo-classicism, Mahlerian romanticism, tawdry cabaret music, and sentimental film scores - which co-inhabit Schnittke's musical psyche, and which manifest themselves within a single piece by abruptly taking control of Schnittke's "compositional behavior" for a few bars here and there before being displaced by another musical identity.
    If heard in studio recordings - where the inherent fakery of depersonalized assembly of musical material is combined with Schnittke's alternating, dissociated musical personalities - Schnittke's music is unbearably irritating for me.  Yet, strangely enough, the same music can have a curious (if perhaps neither lasting nor healthy) impact in live performances.  One such performance, I believe, can be heard in the present live and unedited recording of the Piano Qunitet.
 
I have not heard the Russian pianist Alexander Mekinulov before, and I'm reluctant to judge his pianism on the basis of a single performance, especially in light of the fact that the piano tone always sounds a bit milky and clattery in the unresonant acoustics of Gordon Hall.  But I thought that Mekinulov's serious, musicianly handling of the piano part suited the music rather well.  As for the St Petersburg Quartet, I actually dislike their "Russian sound" in the Classical repertoire, but in Schnittke's music their somewhat roughly blended textures proved to be an asset rather than a liability.

RON REGEV at Ravinia Festival (2007 - 2011)

BENNETT GORDON HALL

R   O   N       R   E   G   E   V

p i a n o

 http://www.ronregev.com/bio.html

Bennett Gordon Hall
R a v i n i a    F e s t i v a l  
2007 - 2011

All recordings 256 kbs mp3 (no re-encoding)

SCHUMANN

Sonata for Violin and Piano no 2 in D minor, Op. 121
Alexi Kenney, violin
VII.9.2011

POULENC

Sonata for Cello and Piano
Tony Rymer, cello
VII.1.2011

BEETHOVEN

Sonata for Cello and Piano no 2 in G minor, Op. 5 no 2
Gilad Kaplansky, cello
VII.28.2009

BRAHMS

Sonata for Viola and Piano no 2 in E flat major, Op. 120 no 2
Wei-Ting Kuo, viola
VII.10.2009
      

BRITTEN

Lachrymae for Viola and Piano, Op. 48 

Luke Fleming, viola

VII.10.2008

STRAUSS

Sonata for Violin and Piano in E flat major, Op. 18
Tessa Lark, violin
VII.3.2008

SCHUBERT

Sonatina for Violin and Piano in G minor, D 408/Op. 137 no 3
Diana Cohen, violin
VII.12.2007

BEETHOVEN

Sonata for Violin and Piano no 9 in A major, Op. 47 "Kreutzer"
Caitlin Tully, violin
VII.11.2007

BEETHOVEN

Sonata for Cello and Piano no 5 in D major, Op. 102 no 2
Gilad Kaplansky, cello
VII.23.2008

George Szell is the only other pianist whose playing I find so captivating despite the fact that, like Ron Regev's playing, it is known to me only through his performances of chamber music.  This is not to say that Ron Regev's pianism is similar to Szell's.  Regev's phrasing is more spontaneous, his tone is richer and warmer, with a proverbial "golden ring" to it, and his chords are voiced less analytically (albeit without any loss of transparency).  For me the similarity between these two pianists comes at a more general, abstract level, and I would describe it in terms of authority radiated by their playing.  This admittedly elusive notion involves far more than just unimpeachable technical security in the handling of the piano part.  There is a feeling that the pianist knows the full meaning of every note in every instrumental part of the piece, and that each note of the piece seems to fall into place under the guidance of the piano part.  I certainly don't suggest that most other pianists do not bring this kind of knowledge to their performances, only that their playing rarely makes me feel so strongly that they do.  (Richter's and Serkin's recordings of chamber music surely radiate this kind of authority, but I am talking here about pianists known to me only through their performances of chamber music.)

All of the young string players partnered by Regev are very talented, and if some of them occasionally sound a bit reticent, this only adds a degree of charming chastity to the performances.  Perhaps I am aesthetically perverse, but when 19th century chamber music is played with absolute, over-rehearsed (and usually studio-manufactured) perfection of ensemble, it sounds unattractively slick and even counterfeit to my ears.  In any case, the overall level of musicianship is uniformly high, and in some cases no less than world-class.  One of my personal favorites is the performance of Beethoven's Op.5 No.2, where the Israeli cellist Gilad Kaplansky's arctic purity of phrasing, sculpted with a strikingly individual throaty, reedy tone, turned this familiar cello sonata into a nearly heartbreaking experience for me.  The other favorite of mine is the earlier posted violin sonata of Franck, where the violinist Tessa Lark makes the music sound more modern and more communicative than any other string player I've heard in this piece (and that includes cello arrangements).    

And finally there is the quality of recorded sound whose naturalness and realism are simply addictive for me.  (One exception is Beethoven Op.102 No.2, where Kaplansky's cello is balanced in such a way that its sound image is blocking the piano.)  Compared to these live and unedited recordings from Ravinia's Bennett-Gordon Hall, even the best engineered studio recordings of the same pieces sound lifeless.  In fact, the more the hi-fi credentials of commercial recordings are hyped in their CD booklets - Zillion Bits & Khz! Super Duper Mapping! High Definition! 3D Resolution! 360 Surround! Blah Blah Blah - the more lifeless and ugly the actual sounds coming out of my speakers or headphones turn out to be.  Or so it has been in my experience.

When bad news ain't THAT bad...

IF THIS NEWS REPORT MAKES YOU WORRY ABOUT EUROPE'S MENTAL HEALTH:

updated 9/4/2011,  7:29:41 PM

Mental illness affects 38 percent of Europeans, study shows

LONDON — Europeans are plagued by mental and neurological illnesses, with almost 165 million people or 38 percent of the population suffering each year from a brain disorder such as depression, anxiety, insomnia or dementia, according to a large new study.

THIS NEWS REPORT WILL SHOW YOU THAT OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE MORE SERIOUS MENTAL PROBLEMS:

 
Fox News Poll: 

45 Percent of American Voters Believe in Creationism 

Published September 07, 2011 | FoxNews.com

Some 45 percent of American voters accept the Biblical account of creation as the explanation for the origin of human life on Earth.

Contemporary Cello: FONTANELLI, HERRINGTON, WUORINEN

B.P. HERRINGTON (b.1976)
http://herringtonmusic.com/herringtonmusic_002.htm
That Blood's Too Red
(Rhapsody on an East Texas Ballad)

SIMONE FONTANELLI (b.1961)
http://www.simonefontanelli.com/
"...nel tempo che fugge" - II (2009)
(Premiere performance)
I - Andante un poco mosso e rubato (2:16)
II - Con folle disperazione (1:15)
III - Lento, sospeso (4:05)
IV - Brillante (2:04)
V - Estremamente calmo e dolcissimo. Preludiando (2:18)

Daniel Saenz, cello
Brendan Kinsella, piano
20.VI.2011
White Performance Hall
University of Missouri Conservatory of Music
Kansas City, MO, USA.

CHARLES WUORINEN

Variations II for cello

Michael Nicolas, cello

VII.7.2007

Bennett-Gordon Hall

Ravinia Festival

 All tracks 256 kbs mp3 (no re-encoding)

What does one get from crossbreeding Darmstadt master classes (Lachenmann, Furrer, Arpeghis) with childhood exposure to Baptist hymns of the American South and formal training at the Royal Academy of Music (London)?  Apparently something as attractively individual as B.P. Herrington's That Blood's Too Red.  This short piece is modern but not at all academic-sounding, and it combines dissonance and rhythmic complexity with episodes of quasi-tonal and rhythmically stable tranquility in such a way that the music never becomes gratuitously abrasive or boringly accessible.  I have never heard of this composer before, but now I hope I'll be able to hear more of his music.
      Compared to Herrington, Fontanelli's piece sounds more academic and less individual, although it is possible that other musicians (Nicolas Hodges?) could make a more convincing case for this music.