Cyber Classical #60

Show no. 60
January 20, 2008
(Revised 1/23)


Glenn Branca. Symphony No. 8 (first movement)
The Glenn Branca Ensemble, con. G. Branca (Blast First)

My first exposure to this iconic figure. It's sufficiently hard to get his music on disc that I grabbed this at the DePaul library the minute I saw it. Ok, so that's what it's all about, is it? It's a bridge to the rock kids. Guitar based, relentlessly rhythmed and amplified. And it was a real experience -- much more to be there I'm sure, and I'd go in a minute. A welcome new wrinkle to our program.

György Ligeti. Trois Bagatelles for David Tudor.
Fredrik Ullén, piano. (BIS)

Bryant picked this for fellow critic Stephen Marc Beaudoin. We wuz bamboozeled! Should have noticed the dedication to David Tudor, which might have wakened associations with Cage, which might have made us wary but no, we put it on and actually thought we had a defective CD and dead air, so we panicked and pulled it off...and it was simply a witty modernist position being taken by Ligeti, consisting of a single piano note and its endless decay. At Cyber Classical at least you will get the truth even if it reflects against us...


Anton Arensky. Symphony No. 1 in B Minor, Op. 4.
USSR Symphony Orchestra; Yevgeny Svetlanov, con.
(VOX)

Our only 19th century item today. Bold, rich, and sounding
at times like Tchaikovsky at times like Rimsky-Korsakoff. His chamber music is well liked by some.

Arvo Part. Cello Concerto "Pro et contra."
Bamberg Sym; Neeme Jarvi, con. (BIS)

This was a "Guess This" item for Bryant. Part acting up. Very appropriate that the CD did too! He guessed it after several strong hints -- "west of Russia""...etc.
That magnificent Estonian Neeme Jarvi conducted with vigor.

York Bowen. Sonata in E minor for Violin & Piano, op. 112
Endymion Ensemble (Epoch)

Wow, a whole new composer to sample...this was music suitable for a matinee with the Queen Mother, and I'm not being patronising, I'm simply placing it in its time and place. I believe he's got an interesting Violin Concerto which has been compared to Glazunov's.

Henry Cowell. Symphony No. 15 (Thesis)
The Louisville Orchestra (Robert S. Whitney
& Jorge Mester, conductors) (first edition)

A late and somewhat academic piece with still lots of that great American gruffness and orchestral spunk. Recommended.

Debussy. Preludes, Book II.
Jorge Federico Osorio, piano. (Cedille)

Cedille goes on its unconcerned way just releasing the CDs it wants to and getting lots of positive reviews. They seem to have a business plan in place which insulates them from the tumbling market for CDs, or else they have another source of income.

Philip Glass. Symphony No. 5 (Selections)
Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra; Dennis Russell Davies, con.
(Nonesuch)

I finally got to audition this 2-CD Nonesuch box before the show and I was immediately taken with this vocal extravaganza written for the Millenium. I think it is first class Glass. I loved the text, the chorus, the soloists and the conducting. As for Glass' music, there will have to be some winnowing pretty darn soon!

Dr Atomic in Chicago

For me there was a disconnect between what I was hearing and what I was seeing. The music of Adams was rich, inventive and full of foreboding. The choral sections were particularly strong and well-sung. I thought the sound design was involving and even the anti-climactic ending was satisfying to me. The baritone (almost a tenor at times) of Gerald Finley was always in the right place, and his performance of Donne's tortured poetry, standing in front of the curtained bomb, was riveting. Good singing from the rest of the cast as well, especially from soprano Jessica Rivera as Kitty.

The work however failed to cohere for me. The staging was great in spots but studded with arbitrary and overly fussy elements. I was not impressed with the balletic bits, which reminded me more of Sharks and Jets (old in their time), and seemed to be deployed to give some needed physicality to a static script.

The libretto was the problem, and what was happening on the stage was too often uninteresting in spite of the profundity of the issues. It seems as if Peter Sellars the stage director couldn't tell Peter Sellars the librettist when enough was enough...A good example was in the lengthy bedroom scene in Act I. But there was so much good music and such a core of drama (can we say Apocalypsis) underlying it all that it's hard to be too hard on the thing. It's just that this opera will not be on any top ten of mine any time soon.

CYBER CLASSICAL PROGRAM #59

SUNDAY, JAN. 13, 2008

I call this session the “Kleist session.” read to the end to find out why….

Glazunov. Symphony 6.
Russian State Symphony Orchestra. Valeri Polyansky, con. (Chandos)
A composer who always delivers value…this symphony is full of orchestral variety and rewards the listener with a journey through the landscape of late Romanticism. Annotators call him imitative of Tchaikovsky and Wagner, and I guess he stood on their shoulders, but his work is much less fraught with emotion, more extroverted; it just flows naturally. I always look forward to hearing his music, and will be playing more in the future. The Chandos recording is a bit tinny sounding, but a good idiomatic performance.

Bright Sheng. "China Dreams"
Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
Samuel Wong (Naxos)
Bright Sheng seems to have made all the right moves in his varied musical career. Bryant noticed that each movement of this work was dedicated to a different conductor and his biography reads like a grant proposal. All of which would be irrelevant if the music was more engaging. It is fluent, a kind of Chinese flavored take on Gershwin, Copland, Respighi and other western composers, but I really was not feeling any compulsion to pay it much attention.

Brahms "German Requiem" 4th mvmt "Wie lieblich sind Deine Wohnungen."
Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado (DG)
Bryant’s dedication to a fellow critic. Obviously discriminating…

Charles Ives "Symphony No. 2"
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, con. (RCA)
We don’t play Ives very often on Cyber Classical. This should be a staple item, and reminds me how good a conductor Ormandy was in repertoire not associated with him. I think he got better as he got older and the Philadelphia strings were just purrfect in those days.

Brahms. "Piano Quartet No. 3”
Rubinstein, p. Guarneri Quartet (RCA)
How amazing this recording is! Rubinstein at close to 80 and the youthful Guarneri breaking boundaries…

Harrison Birtwhistle. "Punch and Judy"
The London Sinfonietta, David Atherton. (Etcetera)
In another job I have noticed this recording being always in demand, and sadly it’s out of print. I don’t know what’s up with Etcetera; they’ve got the first SACD version of the Ring just out, so they’re in the game still, but a lot of their older classic titles have gone missing.

Which brings up the question of the SACD: are they staying or going? Are they good for all or good for nothing special? Do we really need them? Maybe they’re the last best improvement to the venerable CD before it becomes obsolete. Any other thoughts?

Othmar Schoeck "Elegie Op. 36" Various songs
Andreas Schmidt, baritone (cpo)
A composer I’ve liked before – in particular the Horn Concerto. This music is dark and melancholy, based on poems by Lenau about a lost love. Bryant pointed out Schoeck’s Opera Penthesilea based on the Kleist play. Next to read! Is there a recording of this in print?

Brings our time full circle as I had earlier copied a translation of the”Beggerwoman of Locarno“ for Bryant to try to hook him on Kleist. Here’s the ending, prefiguring Poe, who must have known about Kleist:

Overcome with horror and tired of life, the Marquis had taken a candle and set fire to the wooden paneling all around him. In vain, his wife sent people in to rescue the wretched man; he had already found his end in the most dreadful manner possible; and his white bones, gathered together by his people, still lie in that corner of the room from which he once ordered the beggarwoman of Locarno to stand up.

Cyber Classical Program #58

Sunday, January 6, 2008 9 - 12AM

WRDP. Radio.Depaul.edu

We start a new year; thoughts of the death of our show are far behind us lost in the swirling waters of our wake. We're like a transatlantic liner turned ghost ship, still plying the old route, even though we've been superceded, outmoded. and unnoticed for 2 years. Not many passengers on board, and they are all hollow-eyed and wraithlike, older than Eld, fixed on the past with relentless intensity.

And yet...
The vital pulse of the music brings a flush to pallid cheeks; how can this beauty not be young forever?

Here's what we played:

Jacques Offenbach: La Perichole
Regine Crespin, Alain Vanzo, Jules Bastin
Alain Lombard/ Strassbourg Phil. (Erato)

Starting the New Year and ending the Holiday Season with Operetta is a tradition worth keeping up. And this recording has so much to offer: three great voices and a vital flow of energy from start to finish. It dates from 1977, rather late for Crespin, but she is always an artist who inhabits the soul of whatever she sings, especially if it is French. And as for someone who is forever young, who but Offenbach?

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari: String Trio in B minor.
Deutsches Streichtrio (CPO)

Bryant picked this out from the DePaul library collection. It's an early work by a mostly unplayed late Bavarian-Italian musician which he pegged as more classical than he expected. I found it fluent and well-played. Another unknown gem from CPO.

Versailles: L'Ile Enchante
Capriccio Stravagante/Skip Sempe
(Alpha) Cuts 18-21.
Music by D'Anglebert, Lully and Marais.

A treasure trove from the wonderful Alpha catalogue, reflecting happier days at the ingrown court of Louis XIV. Skip Sempe plays D'Anglebert harpsichord music, a Marais sarabande calls to mind the great viol music of the time, and we hear Lully's incidental music to Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme before Strauss got ahold of it.

Beethoven: 6 Bagatelles, op.126, 7 Landlerische Tanze
Olli Mustonen (London).

LvB's last piano work; playful and full of contrast. Our "mystery piece"-- well-chosen by Bryant to mystify even this Beethoven lover...solid playing from Mustonen.

Einojuhani Rautavaara: Symphony 8 "The Journey"
Leif Segerstam, Helsinki Philharmonic (Ondine)

Our clear winner for this day's show! A dramatic deeply felt symphonic showpiece. I think the Chicago Symphony could take this one on with great success -- maybe Maestro Haitink would consider? Not that this performance isn't wonderful. Go buy it!

Reynaldo Hahn: Piano Quintet in F sharp minor
Chilingirian Quartet w/ Stephen Coombs, piano. (Hyperion)

Bryant, who is always up on the backstory of the music we play was surprised to learn that Hahn was Proust's lover and friend. He was also a consistantly interesting creator of gorgeous salon music, and Hyperion has brought us a masterpiece of the genre.

Werner Egk: Fearlessness and Goodwill
Fritz Wunderlich, tenor.
Bavarian Radio Orchestra/ Istvan Kertesz
(Orfeo) Recorded in 1966?

Two artists early gone in an Orffian oratorio. Great conducting and a peerless voice distinguish this old-fashioned piece from the composer Hitler declared a worthy successor to Wagner.

So it goes...until we bring you more discoveries next week.