Music: A Critic’s Sampler

This article represents my fifth anniversary as Crisis music critic—55 consecutive articles in this space, not counting ravings at greater length that have been published during the past five years. I will celebrate by quickly gorging on a number of worthy releases that there is neither time nor space to treat adequately.

And herein lies the problem of this endeavor to bring you the often hidden treasures in music. Looking back, I am surprised at the amount I have written but, at the same time, discouraged by the fact that I have only scratched the surface of my subject matter. I will run out of time well before I run out of music. Time is growing shorter not only because of the grim certainties of the actuarial tables, but because, though I have already reached the age of short-term memory loss, I have three children under the age of five. (Yes, I can remember their names.) When asked what I am listening to, I respond, “Screaming.” Still, there is the CD player in the car on which to listen to new releases while commuting, and the occasional luxury of a traffic jam.

The problems, however, are not only auditory; there are also gustatory perils. My little daughter is a bottom feeder. Last year, I was meticulously preparing for an article about the fine 20th-century Hungarian composer, LazIo Lajtha. The extensive listening notes I had taken on his nine symphonies were on little yellow Post-it Notes stuck to the jackets of seven Marco Polo CDs. My daughter ate them. My heart sank and I have yet to recover sufficiently to start over. (My apologies to the Marco Polo label.) But on to the music…

Though my heart is in the Middle Ages, my ears are in the 18th century. When listening for sheer pleasure, I find myself most often repairing to the Classical world of harmony, order, and grace. I do not think musical culture has ever surpassed the last half of that musically golden century. A sign of how elevated that period was is how good the second-and third-tier composers were.

The Naxos, Chandos, and CPO labels have continued their series of releases that illustrate this point. CPO has issued a delicious recording of five symphonies of the early classical composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil (1715-1777), the court composer for Empress Maria Theresa. There may still be echoes of the late Baroque in these works, but they are already on the solid ground on which Haydn would build so imposingly. While I usually loathe original instrument performances, L’Orfeo Barockorchester, under conductor Michi Gaigg, has convinced me of their merits in these enlivening performances [CPO 999 450-2]. Anyone curious about what was in vogue before Haydn should listen to this.

Chandos has another minor gem in its wonderful “Contemporaries of Mozart” series, featuring the London Mozart Players under conductor Matthias Bamert. A new CD [Chan 9661] is devoted to the symphonies of Francois-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829). Of Walloon origin and French residence, Gossec proved that the symphony was not exclusively an Austro-German development. These are attractive works with much melodic charm. They do not, however, rise to the level of Gossec’s great requiem, from which both Mozart and Berlioz might well have drawn—such is the depth of its inspiration and novelty. I will write more about this stunning work when the foolish Erato label reinstates its wonderful recording of it.

In its delightful “18th Century Symphony” series, Naxos adds another chapter with its second volume of Christian Cannabich’s enlivening, vivacious symphonies—this time, Nos. 47-52 [8.554340]. Though the orchestra is different, the Nicolaus Esterhazy Sinfonia, under Uwe Grodd, give performances that are just as good as those in the first installment of what one hopes will be a complete series. These same forces essay the music of Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813) in what is announced as Volume 1 of his symphonies. The good news is that only one of the four symphonies is duplicated on the Chandos label’s earlier release of this composer’s fine works.

In prior columns dealing with the Teldec and Chandos releases of his symphonies, I have already sung the praises of Francesco Antonio Rosetti (1750-1792). CPO helps complete the picture of this Bohemian, who Italianized his name for public relations purposes, with a CD of his clarinet concertos and a concerto for two horns [CPO 999 621-2] and another CD containing six of his string quartets [CPO 999 338-2]. The wind concertos are thoroughly delectable and, like the symphonies, charged with energy. The quartets are somewhat more subdued for this composer but written with economy and sureness. They may be less distinctive than his other works due to their early date of composition.

Marco Polo has completed its traversal of Ludwig Spohr’s String Quintets with Volume 4, containing Quintet No. 7 and adding the substantial Sextet in C major, Op. 140, and the early Potpourri, Op. 12, to fill out the disc. Spohr (1784-1859) was an early Romantic, but his love of Mozart makes him an honorary Classic. His complete quartets and trios are already available from Marco Polo. His finest chamber music has a Schubertian poignance to it, and it is never less that well crafted and engaging. Both attributes obtain in these two late works [8-223600]. By the way, CPO has released an extraordinary bargain pack of six CDs of Spohr’s 16 violin concertos [999 657-2]. Anyone interested in the genre will find these works far more musically substantial than those of Spohr’s chief rival, Paganini.

A Spohr connection brings us into the 20th century and to several composers who never broke their connections with the traditions in which they wrote. The son of a granddaughter of Spohr, Walter Braunfels (1882-1954), though of partly Jewish heritage, was an ardent Catholic. What apparently first brought him to wide notice was his sacred music, especially his Te Deum, Op. 32. One can only hope an enterprising label will record this work and his Great Mass, Op. 37, to give us a more complete picture of this genius.

Between the wars, Braunfels was among the most widely performed opera composers in Germany. His opera, The Birds, based on Aristophanes, premiered in 1920 and had 50 performances in Munich in its first two years. The great musicologist Alfred Einstein wrote, “I do not believe such a complete work of art has ever before been performed on the German operatic stage. There is an imperative at work here which calls for comparison with the Mastersingers and Pfitzner’s Palestrina.” All that need be added is that anyone who enjoys the lyrical operas of Richard Strauss is in for a major treat. The world premiere recording of this jewel, featuring various soloists, the Berlin Radio Chorus, and the German Symphony Orchestra—Berlin, under Lothar Zagrosek, is a triumph [London 448 679-2].

One reason Braunfels is unknown is that he fell afoul of the Nazis. Not only was he partly Jewish, but Braunfels also had the effrontery to reject the Nazis when they approached him to write their party anthem. When Hitler gained power, he retaliated by banning Braunfels’s music and dismissing him from his post as founding director of the Cologne Academy of Music. Living in internal exile, Braunfels wrote an opera based on Paul Claudel’s mystery play, L’Annonce Faite à Marie. One can only wonder at the faith burning in the heart of a man who could write a work about divine forgiveness as he lived under an ideology of pure hatred.

Nonetheless, Braunfels produced an opera of concentrated radiance and luminosity. He was animated, he said, by “the possibility of creating a musical mystery play which makes visible the knowledge of the greatest possible beauty and eternal order.” In the next-to-last scene, when the Gospel Christmas narrative is sung, Braunfels came very close to his goal. Verkundigung (The Annunciation) was set to a German translation, since Claudel would not give his permission for a French version. As a sort of perverse revenge, EMI provides the libretto only in German in the otherwise wonderful production, recorded live in 1992, under conductor Dennis Russell Davies, with a German cast and the Cologne Symphony Orchestra [CDS 5 55104 2, available as an import]. In his internal exile, Braunfels also penned two quartets, Nos. 1 and 2, now available on CPO [999 406¬2] in excellent performances by the Auryn Quartet. These are substantive works of somber beauty whose lineage clearly goes back to Schubert.

Now that the fatwa has been lifted from tonal music, it is permissible to listen to the works of another composer whose works were banned by the Nazis, Austrian-born Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and even to admit to enjoying them. Korngold’s reputation has endlessly suffered from the nasty pun that his work contains “more corn than gold” and from the fact that he is primarily remembered as a film composer for Errol Flynn extravaganzas. It is true that his works are sometimes overwhelmed by their own richness, but if you are in the mood for dessert, this may not bother you.

A spate of Korngold chamber music releases demonstrates his extraordinary talent. A star-studded cast on Sony Classical [SK 48253], including Yo-Yo Ma and Leon Fleisher, plays Korngold’s Suite for Two Violins, Cello and Piano Left Hand, Op. 23. The suite has extreme mood swings, a few of which veer a little too close to schmaltz for my comfort, but it is dazzling music. Its disc-mate is Franz Schmidt’s superb Quintet in G major.

Korngold’s even earlier work, the Sextet in D, Op. 10, displays no problems with consistency of tone and is a gorgeous work by any standard. It is simply astounding to realize that Korngold was 17 when he wrote it. This little masterpiece is on a new ASV disc [CD DCA 1062] with Korngold’s Third String Quartet, masterfully played by the Flesch Quartet. This would be the perfect CD to introduce someone to Korngold’s chamber music.

The Piano Quintet, Op. 15, is another sumptuous work with only an occasional whiff of the salon. Even so, it is very hard to resist its felicities. It is accompanied on a mid-priced Varese Sarabande CD [302 066 049 2] by the even better String Quartet No. 2.

For the curious, most of Korngold’s orchestral works are available on four CDs in a budget box offered by CPO [999 150-2], with the Nordwest-deutsche Philharmonie, under Werner Andreas Albert. It includes the great Symphony in F sharp but not the equally wonderful violin concerto.

Giorgio Federico Ghedini is a 20th-century Italian composer (1892-1965) completely new to me. Koch Schwann has released a CD [3-1782-2] of his music for cello and orchestra, containing three substantial works: Musica Concertante (1962), Invenzione (1947), and the Concerto for Two Cellos and Orchestra (1951). I cannot think of a recording of 20th-century cello music that is more intensely lyrical and beautiful than this. These three works are a gorgeous autumnal outpouring of poignant melodies with an irresistible, nostalgic pull.

The Musica Concertante is especially redolent of Othmar Schoeck’s glorious cello concerto, and the very beginning of Invezione sounds uncannily like Arvo Part’s Tabula Rasa. This hauntingly lovely music is leading me on a search to find out everything I can about Ghedini and his works. Is there more such buried treasure under the slag heap of Luigi Dallapiccola and the other Italian serialists who dominated so much of the 20th century? These pieces are very well served by cellist Werner Thomas-Mifune and the Munich Chamber Orchestra, under Hans Stadlmair, and, in the two-cello concerto, with the additional cellist Antonio Meneses, and the Bamberger Symponiker, under Georg Schmohe.

Several issues ago, I discussed Gavin Bryars’s Cadman Requiem. He has now produced a cello concerto for the outstanding British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber [Point Music 454 126-2]. For the most part, this is a serenely rhapsodic work with a gorgeous cello line beautifully delivered by the soloist, who is kept busy playing either the main melody or ostinato figures throughout the entire 35 minutes. Bryars seems to be one of those composers, like John Tavener or Peteris Vasks, who thinks that intense beauty is sufficient in and of itself and needs no further excuse. Anyone who enjoyed Tavener’s ecstatic work for cello and orchestra, The Protecting Veil, should be happy with this lovely piece, movingly performed with the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by James Judd.

Author

  • Robert R. Reilly

    Robert R. Reilly is the author of America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding, forthcoming from Ignatius Press.

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