This is my 77th consecutive article in this space. I didn’t know I had it in me. Yet I plow on into my eighth year. It is not as if I could ever run out of material. Time is the finite commodity. I will run out of that long before I have exhausted the treasures I would like to bring to your attention.
And I have been at pains to make clear that there are more treasures being created before our very ears by contemporary composers, many of whom I have interviewed for Crisis. Surveying my efforts of the past seven years, I see that the majority of my articles have focused on 20th-century works. And so will I now, as I scramble to catch up with a pile of CD releases that have built up. They all deserve to be written about at length. There are so many that I can only give them the briefest mention lest they slip by without any notice at all. The only coherence I can provide this potpourri is arrangement by genre: first chamber, then orchestral music.
One of the chamber music CDs that I have enjoyed the most during the past year is Laszlo Lajtha’s music for string trio, Serenade, Op. 9, and Soirs Transylvains, Op. 41. The music is marvelously played by members of the eponymous Lajtha Quartet on a Hungaroton Classic release. French clarity, Hungarian melodies, and a Haydn-like composure combine to make this music a rare 20th-century treat. These two half-hour-long works never flag in their level of invention, wit, and innate musicality. The second of the two works is more completely immersed in the Hungarian musical ethos and the crepuscular magic that were Lajtha’s speciality. I defy you to resist its charms and not be drawn to his other works—which I covered in the January 2001 issue in an article dedicated to this neglected composer, who was also the greatest Hungarian symphonist of the 20th century.
Lajtha’s great Czech contemporary, Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), has received a good deal of attention for his orchestral works, particularly his symphonies and operas. But his string quartets have languished. The complete set, once available on Supraphon and unheard by this writer, seems to have vanished. Not to worry. The valiant Naxos budget label has under-taken a new cycle. The first volume features Quartets Nos. 1 and 2, with an even earlier work, Three Horsemen, played by the Martinů Quartet.
Like Lajtha, Martinů fell under the influence of the French in his youth. These works are steeped in the sound world of Debussy and Ravel. Add to the mix the quixotic Czech melodies familiar to lovers of the music of Leos Janacek, and you will know what to expect in these expansive works. I love them and cannot wait for the brilliant Martinů). Quartet to continue onward.
In one of the finest examples of a label’s dedication to an unknown composer, Olympia has released Volume 17 in its traversal of the works of Mieczyslaw Vainberg (1919-1996), a Polish refugee from the Nazis who spent most of his creative life in the Soviet Union and Russia. This CD contains Vainberg’s Quartets Nos. 7, 8, and 9. There is only one quartet cycle that comes close to Vainberg’s accomplishments in this genre, and that is Shostakovitch’s. If you think that is an exaggeration, Shostakovitch did not. He regarded Vainberg as his peer and playfully alluded to a “race” that he and Vainberg were running to see who could write the most quartets.
If you admire Shostakovitch’s quartets, these are works you should also explore since they are very similar in language to his and are beautifully played by the Dominant Quartet. Then turn to some of the incomparable orchestral music in the other volumes in this great series (with guidance from my February 2000 column about this neglected maestro).
I know that a composer who expired in 1900 cannot be comfortably fit within the 20th century, but so what? Heinrich von Herzogenberg (1843-1900) wrote a wonderful Mass, Op. 87, that I reviewed here several years ago. The CPO label has now issued two releases of Herzogenberg’s chamber music, including two piano quartets and two string trios, played by the Belcanto Strings and pianist Andreas Frolich. If you like Brahms, get these two CDs. You could swear these pieces were written by the master, who was Herzogenberg’s good friend.
On to a few orchestral works… There is great news on the English music front: EMI has finally reissued on CD a wonderful recording from 1976 of the music of Frank Bridge (1879-1941). Poor Bridge is remembered today, if at all, as the teacher of Benjamin Britten, who immortalized him in his famous Variations on a Theme by Frank Bridge, better known as The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. However, Bridge had his own claim to greatness, as can be heard on the EMI release in The Sea, Summer, Cherry Ripe, Enter Spring, and Lament, played sublimely by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, under Sir Charles Groves.
I contend that The Sea is every bit as great a work as Debussy’s La Mer. It is one of the greatest musical evocations of the sea ever composed. Enter Spring is another orchestral tour de force that demonstrates that impressionism found fertile soil in Great Britain in a distinctly English way.
Received too late to include in last month’s article on Gerald Finzi’s centennial is Naxos’s new recording of his Cello Concerto, Ecologue for piano and strings, and Grand Fantasia and Toccata. The magnificent Cello Concerto was Finzi’s last work, and it shows him operating at his full powers. This is a passionate work that seems to be searching the darkness that Finzi knew would soon enfold him. He began work on it after he learned of the incurable illness that would end his life at age 55. As powerfully disturbing as the opening allegro is, the very touching andante quieto shows that Finzi could still recollect the gentle pastoralism that was his hallmark. The beautiful performance by the Northern Sinfonia, under Howard Griffiths, with cellist Tim Hugh, makes this bargain disc a steal.
In the November 2001 issue, I dedicated my column to the marvelously eccentric music of Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt (1908-1981). I recommended a new BIS CD of the first two of his suites from A Hundred Hardanger Tunes. Naxos has now added to its wonderful recording of Tviett’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 5, which I also highly recommended, its own issue of two suites of the Hardanger Tunes, played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, under Bjarte Engeset. Naxos replicates BIS by offering Suite No. 1 but premieres the first complete recording of Suite No. 4 (Wedding Suite), making this a mandatory purchase for anyone entranced by this highly colorful form of musical haiku drawn from Norwegian folk music.
I have written several Crisis articles on English composer Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986). Last year was the centennial of his birth, and it brought forth a half-dozen new releases of his chamber and choral music. First, go buy all eleven symphonies on the Chandos label, for Rubbra was primarily a symphonist. Then dive into these newer offerings which reveal that, even in his chamber works, he remained a symphonist in his thought processes.
Three violin sonatas (CDLX 7101) and several works for piano trio (CDLX 7106) are available on Dutton Digital, which has also released a charming CD of Rubbra’s complete piano music (CDLX 7112). Chandos followed up its symphonic cycle with recording premieres of Song of the Soul (with text from St. John of the Cross), Veni Creator Spiritus, and Advent Cantata: Natum Maria Virgine, performed by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Chorus and the City of London Sinfonia, under Richard Hickox. This CD also contains Rubbra’s setting of Gerald Manley Hopkins’s poem, “Pied Beauty,” called by Rubbra Inscape. A mandatory purchase for all Rubbrians.
Not only time but space is finite. And with only 10 percent of the music I meant to cover in this article, I have just run out of it. There is always February, at which point I will be even further behind on new releases. But what would “being ahead” mean? I enjoy the surfeit. I wish you could.