Briefly Noted: Albert Roussel's...operetta?

A. Roussel, Le Testament de la Tante Caroline, M. Lenormand, M. Gomar, L. Komitès, Orchestre des Frivolités Parisiennes, D. Corlay (released on March 1, 2022) Naxos 8.660479 | 78'56"

How many delightful surprises are left in the oeuvre of Albert Roussel? The chances to hear the French composer's music in live performance remain sadly limited: we have written warmly of his opera-ballet Padmâvatî and his marvelous score Le Festin de l'Araignée, both performed by the National Symphony Orchestra in recent years. Because he had both a conservative education in historical counterpoint at the Schola Cantorum and an interest in jazz and Asian music, his music tends to be erudite and unclassifiable.

Among the least expected works of Roussel is a rather absurd operetta, Le Testament de la Tante Caroline, premiered the Czech Republic in 1936 and then at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1937. The composer died a few months later, but in 1964, at the request of Roussel's widow, the librettist cut it from its three-act original form to a compact single act. Marcel Mihalovici adapted the music for this revised version, in some ways a response to critics who had found the composer had trouble "adapting himself to simplicity."

Benjamin El Arbi and Mathieu Franot founded Les Frivolités Parisiennes in 2012, with the goal of reviving lesser-known light French musical comedies. This disc is the world premiere recording of the one-act version of Tante Caroline, made from a live performance in June 2019, at the L'Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet in Paris. The titular aunt of the venal family in this farce was, somewhat scandalously, a prostitute. She apparently enjoyed much success in her chosen career, as she amassed an impressive fortune.

Now that she is dead her three greedy nieces, who normally keep their distance out of propriety, show up hoping to inherit. Tante Caroline's will stipulates that the wealth will pass to the child of whichever childless niece can produce an heir within a year. Much of the middle nonsense is cut, leading to the conclusion, in which one niece is reunited with her illegitimate son, whom she gave up before taking religious vows. To everyone's surprise, the young man now serves as Tante Caroline's chauffeur, and the old lady has the last laugh.

The orchestra sparkles under the baton of Dylan Corlay, with a capable cast of singer-actors. Bass-baritone Till Fechner excels in both vocal and spoken patter as the lawyer, Maitre Corbeau, and Marie Perbost displays a limpid light soprano as Lucine, Tante Caroline's maid, especially in the pleasant little aria "Mlle Irene d'Anjou." Sadly there is no libretto included with this recording, and none to be found online, making this mostly of interest to francophone listeners. The Bibliothèque nationale de France has made available a portfolio of newspaper clippings about the work.

Briefly Noted: Parfenov's Goldberg Riff

Bach, Goldberg Variations / Parfenov, New Goldberg Variations, A. Parfenov (released on July 19, 2019) Naxos 8.551399 | 79'50"

André Parfenov, born in Kaliningrad in 1972, is in the line of composer-pianists that includes Lera Auerbach, among others. The Russian-born composer resettled in Germany, where he has been working at the Theater in Mönchengladbach/Krefeld, including a collaboration creating original ballet scores for the choreographies of Robert North. This new recording combines his performance of Bach's Goldberg Variations with his own New Goldberg Variations, a set of reactions to the famous Bach work.

Parfenov's Bach is somewhat rough-hewn, with plenty of sustaining pedal and rubato. The playing is heavy-handed, meaning both a deficit in terms of refinement and some striking differentiation of polyphonic voices in the canons and double-keyboard variations. The "Quodlibet" is quite striking in this regard, with the popular song fragments popping out of the texture in unexpected ways. Both performances fit in the space of a single disc in part because Parfenov eschews the repeats, meaning that ornamentation is limited.

In his composer's note, printed only in German, Parfenov makes a point of discussing the polyphonic dimensions of Bach's work. This element permeates his tribute variations as well, which often dwell on contrapuntal expansion, as in his version of the aria with an imitation of the melody at the fifth added like a ghostly echo. Other variations create otherworldly effects, like the harp-strumming washes of sound produced directly on the piano strings in the Introduction. Further highlights include the Debussy-like moto perpetuo of the "Tonale arpeggio" variation, the Bartók barbarism of the "Quarten," and the clanging bells of "Overture: Kirchenglocken." Stylistically, Parfenov veers among various poles, from tonality to jazz to atonality and back again.

Briefly Noted: No. 9, No. 9, No. 9...

Monteverdi, Madrigals, Book 9 / Scherzi Musicali, Delitiæ Musicæ, M. Longhini (released on March 8, 2019) Naxos 8.555318 | 74'37"

We noted the first part of Marco Longhini's complete recording of the madrigals of Claudio Monteverdi over a decade ago. That project has finally come to its conclusion with this final volume, recorded in 2006 but oddly only made available now. Longhini's cycle is unusual in that he leads an all-male vocal ensemble, with excellent support from a small consort of instruments. The results may not be perfect musically, but the effect is quite charming to the ear.

Longhini's edition of these last madrigals, as well as the sometimes madrigal-like "jests" of the collection called Scherzi musicali, thus had to accommodate the range of male voices. Countertenor Alessandro Carmignani has to reach to the top of his range (at least up to E, for example in Bel pastor, or Handsome Shepherd, whose fair eyes) and bass Walter Testolin down to the basement of his. All six men are versatile and skilled in adding daring ornaments to their lines, including in elaborate scales.

In a way, given the masculine viewpoint in the texts of these pieces, even when written in a woman's voice, the all-male voicing seems apt. The instrumental playing is, if anything, even better, starting with a sinfonia by Biagio Marini that opens the disc. Two violins are including not that frequently, but the continuo realization, divided among harpsichord, organ, theorbo, and Baroque guitar, adds considerable variety. Longhini's direction focuses on rhythmic vivacity and clarity of polyphonic imitation, making for many dancing delights.

Briefly Noted: Slatkin's Copland ballet cycle

A. Copland, Complete Ballet Scores, Vol. 3, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, L. Slatkin (released on March 8, 2019) Naxos 8.559862 | 62'49-"

Aaron Copland composed music for six ballets, although only three have been widely performed and recorded. Conductor Leonard Slatkin has taken a special interest in this side of Copland's oeuvre. After leaving the National Symphony Orchestra, where his tenure had mixed results, Slatkin went on to an institution-rejuvenating stint with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Among several admirable projects was a complete survey of the Copland ballet scores, all in their comprehensive versions, a series of performances captured on disc for the Naxos label. This third and final installment pairs the well-known Billy the Kid, from 1938, with the first ballet Copland composed, the curious, pleasing Grohg.

The composer's three most popular ballets -- Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, and Billy the Kid -- all share the signature Copland sound, somewhat saccharine Americana influenced by folk music and redolent of a mythologizing view of this country's history. The earlier Grohg, on the other hand, is something altogether different. Copland began it in 1922, at the suggestion of Nadia Boulanger, with whom he was studying in France for much of that decade. A chance encounter with Friedrich Murnau's horror film Nosferatu that year led Copland and his friend, the writer Harold Clurman, to create a scenario about a necromancer for the ballet. A monstrous creature, Grohg falls in love with people who have just died -- an adolescent, an opium addict, a prostitute. He revives their corpses with his magic, only to be rejected by them. The mind boggles at what a choreographer like Alexei Ratmansky could do with this ballet.

Vol. 1 Vol. 2

As Copland wrote of the piece's composition, "This ballet became the most ambitious undertaking of my Paris years: I had no choreographer, commission or contact with a major ballet company." It was essentially a massive graduate thesis project, and as such was left unpublished. The music shows Copland soaking up the atmosphere of 1920s Paris, a city that had just heard the premieres of Stravinsky's ground-breaking ballets and Debussy's Jeux. "There was a taste for the bizarre at the time," Copland continued, "and if Grohg sounds morbid and excessive, the music was meant to be fantastic rather than ghastly. Also, the need for gruesome effects gave me an excuse for ‘modern’ rhythms and dissonances. Until Grohg, I had written only short piano pieces using jazz-derived rhythms."

Slatkin's is not the first recording of Grohg, an honor that goes to the Cleveland Orchestra under the late Oliver Knussen. (Knussen also conducted the first recording of another rare Copland ballet, Hear Ye! Hear Ye!, with the London Sinfonietta, offered on the same disc.) Slatkin and the DSO give a technicolor rendition of this unusual score, as well as an elegiac performance of the more familiar Billy the Kid. All three discs are both an affordable way for a collector to acquire all of Copland's ballet scores, as well as a testament to the fine partnership of Slatkin and the DSO, an orchestra that has revived along with its city, now that Slatkin has stepped back to take the position of Music Director Laureate.

CD Review: Joan Tower String Quartets

J. Tower, String Quartets 3-5 / Dumbarton Quintet, Daedalus Quartet, Miami String Quartet, B. McMillen (released on April 8, 2016) Naxos 8.559795 | 63'40"

Charles T. Downey, Joan Tower, String Quartets (Washington Post, July 1)

In 2009, Joan Tower presided over a somewhat disappointing performance of her own chamber music here in Washington, during the Kennedy Center’s CrossCurrents Festival. Two of the works on that program, the third string quartet (“Incandescent”) and the “Dumbarton Quintet,” have been recorded for the first time on a recent Naxos release, along with the American composer’s two most recent string quartets, No. 4 (“Angels”) and No. 5 (“White Water”), from 2008 and 2012, respectively.

Two prominent quartets have presented Tower’s music in the best light, beginning with the Miami String Quartet, which recorded the third and fourth quartets. The third quartet, commissioned for a new concert hall at Bard College, creates the sense of heat through many repeated-note motifs, small cells that are repeated and passed around the four instruments many times. The four players have communicated the intensity Tower wanted, including in three cadenzas for violin, viola and cello, but the composer’s hammering of the same motifs grows tiresome with repeated listening.

The fourth quartet, dedicated to the “angels” who helped Tower’s brother recover from a stroke, opens the same way, with an oscillating motif presented in alternate sections with more keening material in longer note values, often with glissandi. Tower has traced this focus on percussive, obsessive rhythm to her childhood in South America and her love of Stravinsky, and the use of brief rhythmically charged motifs is a tribute to one of her favorite composers, Beethoven. As the glissandi grow more and more frenetic, the piece comes suddenly to a close on a shining E major chord.

The Daedalus Quartet, formed in 2000, has recorded the fifth quartet, which also features glissandi as an important motivic element, evocative of flowing water, as Tower put it. In its original formation, the group won first prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition, and since taking on two members a few years ago, it has continued to specialize in contemporary music. Tower’s music sounds more compelling, more animated, but also more balanced in this group’s hands, including in the “Dumbarton Quintet,” joined by Blair McMillen, who has succeeded Tower as pianist with her ensemble, the Da Capo Chamber Players. Commissioned by the Dumbarton Oaks Foundation in 2003, the work is an example of Tower’s focus on unison textures, which permeate the writing, including for piano alone. More extended harmonic structures are reminiscent of Messiaen, another of Tower’s favorite composers.

Briefly Noted: Ana Sokolović's Imaginary Folklore

A. Sokolović, Folklore Imaginaire, Ensemble Transmission (released on March 11, 2016) Naxos 8.573304 | 58'08"

Serbian-born composer Ana Sokolović, who resides in Montréal, is the creator of Svadba, one of the most engrossing new operas of the past decade. I reviewed the work, a tour de force for six women's voices and a few sparingly used percussion instruments, at Philadelphia Opera in 2013, and it continues to rack up productions, most recently this past April in San Francisco. (You can still watch the production of Svadba recorded at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.) The harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic invention of Svadba had me convinced that Sokolović, now in her 40s, was a new voice to keep my ear on, but precious little by her has come my way since then, except on the always useful YouTube.

Ensemble Transmission, a contemporary music collective based in Montréal, has finally broken the drought with a new disc of Sokolović's music, including three pieces recorded here for the first time. Except for a couple of pieces from the 1990s, which have been revised in later versions, most of the repertory included for these tracks, laid down in the Chapelle historique du Bon-Pasteur in Montréal, dates from the last decade or so. Vez, a piece for unaccompanied cello, combines sounds inspired by Serbian folk music with a rock-like rhythmic drive. Rhythm — the complex but still comprehensible rhythm of central European folk music — is the glue that holds much of Sokolović's music together and keeps one's interest. Portrait parle is a set of movements for piano trio, evoking an early 20th-century chart with descriptions given to French police officers to help identify suspects by various parts of the human body and appearance. It, too, is powered by pulsating sounds of a dizzying range, from recognizable to utterly mysterious.

The Trois Etudes for piano are action-packed miniatures, given acidic edge by the group's pianist, Brigitte Poulin, while Guy Pelletier draws forth atmospheric sounds from the bass flute in the evocative duet with piano Un bouquet de brume. Less effective is Mesh, an extended study for E-flat clarinet, which along with Vez shows that Sokolović's gifts are most pronounced in ensemble compositions. Along with Portrait parle, the other piece for larger ensemble, Ciaccona, performed here in the arrangement Sokolović created for Ensemble Transmission, generates the most consistent interest.

CD Review: Mayr's 'Saffo'

J.S. Mayr, Saffo, A.L. Brown, J. Yun, Bavarian State Opera Chorus, Simon Mayr Chorus, Concerto de Bassus, F. Hauk (released on January 8, 2016) Naxos 8.660367-68 | 121'24"

Charles T. Downey, CD Reviews: Johann Simon Mayr
Washington Post, May 27

Johann Simon Mayr (1763-1845) composed more than 70 operas, which early music specialists are now rediscovering and recording. Born in Bavaria, Mayr composed his first attempt at opera, “Saffo ossia I riti d’Apollo Leucadio,” in 1794 for the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.

Mayr settled in Bergamo in 1802, studying with the music director of the city’s cathedral, whom he would eventually succeed. He remained there the rest of his life, composing a copious amount of church music but also symphonies, chamber music and operas. Mayr is perhaps best remembered for having plucked a young boy named Gaetano Donizetti from obscurity in his adopted city to become one of his students.

“Saffo’s” libretto by Antonio Simeone Sografi embroiders on the story, almost certainly invented, of the death of Sappho, the renowned poet of ancient Lesbos. In love with a hunter named Phaon, who is mourning the death of his wife, Sappho goes to Cape Leucadia to visit the temple to Leucadian Apollo. From high on the white cliffs, those accused of crimes were sometimes made to leap into the sea 200 feet below, as a way to prove themselves innocent or cleanse themselves of burning passion, if they survived.

Andrea Lauren Brown, a soprano from Wilmington, Del., brings a strong mixture of vocal colors to the demanding role. There is occasional stridency at the top of her voice, but Brown excels in slow arias such as “Soave, dolce, cara è la morte” (death is gentle, sweet, and dear) in Act II. The role of Phaon, created for castrato Girolamo Crescentini, here is performed beautifully by the Korean soprano Jaewon Yun.

The mezzo-soprano Marie Sande Papenmeyer brings a solid chest voice to the role of Apollo’s consecrated prophetess, the Pythia, at the center of an agitated prophecy scene in Act II, while soprano Katharina Ruckgaber and tenor Daniel Preis have fine supporting turns as friends of Sappho.

Franz Hauk plays the harpsichord for recitatives and conducts the instrumentalists of the Concerto de Bassus, an ensemble devoted to the resurrection of Mayr’s works, joined by the Simon Mayr Chorus and members of the Bavarian State Opera Chorus.

The singular nature of this world premiere recording excuses its few shortcomings, including tenor Markus Schäfer, too often shy of the mark in terms of intonation as Sappho’s fellow poet Alcaeus of Mytilene.

In love with Sappho himself, Alcaeus tries to stop her from making the Leucadian leap but ultimately steps aside in favor of Phaon, who comes to his senses and brings Sappho back from the edge of disaster.

CD Review: Slatkin's Ravel Double-Bill

Ravel, L'heure espagnole / Don Quichotte à Dulcinée, L. Lombardo, I. Druet, F. Antoun, Orchestre National de Lyon, L. Slatkin (released on February 12, 2016) Naxos 8.660337 | 55'40"

Charles T. Downey, CD reviews: Slatkin turns to France
Washington Post, April 15

When Leonard Slatkin’s tenure at the National Symphony Orchestra came to an end in 2008, he became music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra; in 2011-12, he also assumed the leadership position at the Orchestre National de Lyon. Almost immediately, he inaugurated a series of live recordings with his French ensemble, focused on music by French composers, for the Naxos label. The latest discs in his Ravel set are devoted to the composer’s two one-act operas, most recently his charming but rarely heard 1911 comedy “L’heure espagnole.”

The rich-toned mezzo-soprano Isabelle Druet is a seductive, sometimes acidic Concepción, the cheating wife of the clockmaker Torquemada, played by the light-voiced tenor Luca Lombardo. She schemes with Don Iñigo Gomez, sung with oily smoothness by the bass Nicolas Courjal, to get her husband the job of winding the municipal clocks, which gets him out of the house regularly...

[Continue reading]

CD Review: Divine Redeemer

Divine Redeemer (music by Bach, Franck, Gounod, Reger, et al.), C. Brewer, P. Jacobs (released on September 11, 2015) Naxos 8.573524 | 61'22"

Charles T. Downey, Divine Redeemer: Christine Brewer, Paul Jacobs
Washington Post, February 3

A new album of Christian devotional pieces by a major opera singer, while part of a long tradition, might turn off some listeners. On her new disc, “Divine Redeemer,” the celebrated soprano Christine Brewer, together with the equally celebrated organist Paul Jacobs, moves beyond cliche with a varied selection of music that she approaches with a sincerity that reflects her start singing in church in her Illinois home town.

There are only a couple of pieces that might set off chestnut alarms. César Franck’s “Panis angelicus” is offered, thankfully, in a version closer to its original form, in the “Messe à 3 voix,” than the schmaltzy arrangements with oohing chorus often heard now. Jacobs plays the organ arrangement in a way that recalls Franck’s original scoring for cello, harp, and organ, with the cello melody on a solo stop and the closing arpeggios rendered in a harp-like way... [Continue reading]

Divine Redeemer (music by Bach, Franck, Gounod, Reger, et al.)
Christine Brewer (soprano) and Paul Jacobs (organ)

Briefly Noted: Sibelius and the Theater, Vol. 1

Sibelius, Incidental Music, Vol. 1, P. Pajala, W. Torikka, Turku Philharmonic, L. Segerstam (released on June 9, 2015) Naxos 8.573299 | 72'50" [Vol. 2 | Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6]

So here we are at last, at the first of the series of six discs devoted to Sibelius's music for the theater, recorded by Leif Segerstam and the Turku Philharmonic. (Presumably, a seventh disc will eventually appear with Stormen, the incidental music for The Tempest, the only score not covered so far, first recorded in its complete form by Osmo Vänskä and the Lahti Philharmonic in 1992.) The first volume includes Sibelius's first work of incidental music, composed for King Christian II by Swedish playwright Adolf Paul in 1898. The eponymous 16th-century ruler of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden had a common Dutch girl, Dyveke Sigbritsdatter, as his mistress, for which he is remembered as much as for his part in the Stockholm Bloodbath, the massacre of Swedish nobles who opposed him. The popular suite Sibelius arranged has only five of the seven pieces that Sibelius composed for the play.

The Elegy movement, which served as the gloomy overture to the play, is a consummate example of lush writing for five-part strings, replete with intense, Wagnerian appoggiaturas and dissonant harmony. The bubbly wind-heavy Musette was played by street musicians outside Dyveke's window as the character danced inside, while the Menuetto, played as an introduction to the court scene in the third act, has melodic turns that remind me humorously of Jingle Bells. Baritone Waltteri Torikka, a fine singer, is perhaps too stentorian in the Song of the Cross-Spider, sung by a jester who mocks the imprisoned king in his cell, referring to Dyveke as the spider. The last three pieces (Nocturne, Serenade, and Ballade), added to the score the summer after the play's premiere, have the feel of more symphonic movements that stand quite well on their own.

Just as gorgeous is the score Sibelius composed for Kuolema (Death), a play by Arvid Järnefelt, brother of Sibelius's wife, Aino, premiered at the National Theater in Helsinki in 1903. Heard here in its original form -- played from the composer's manuscript score -- it opened with the famous Valse Triste, during which Death appears to the sick mother of the main character, Paavali, as her dead husband. They dance together, and in the morning she is dead. Paavali's song to the cold, sung as he enters a witch's house in Act II, is no more flattering to Torikka, although Sibelius's settings of translations of two Shakespeare lyrics work better for his voice. Pia Pajola, Segerstam's go-to soprano in this cycle, is quite affecting in the song sung by the mysterious woman who becomes Paavali's wife, to whom a child is brought by the cranes in the lovely movement titled The Cranes, again with luscious string writing. Segerstam opens the disc with the Overture in A minor, premiered in 1902 on the same concert with the composer's second symphony but never approved by him for publication. It opens with a brilliant brass fanfare, transitions into a sort of Galop that is less memorable but fun, and returns triumphantly to that mysterious brass material.

Briefly Noted: Writing on the Wall

Sibelius, Music for the Theater, Vol. 2, Turku Philharmonic, L. Segerstam (released on July 10, 2015) Naxos 8.573300 | 63'01" [Vol. 3 | Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6]

Sibelius actually composed the incidental music for Belshazzar's Feast after that for Pelléas et Mélisande, under review yesterday. The formula for Leif Segerstam's definitive collection of discs devoted to Sibelius's theatrical music has generally focused each volume on a major work of incidental music, rounded out with little pieces that may or not have had their genesis in the theater.

The centerpiece here is the incidental music for Belshazzar's Feast, a play by Sibelius's friend Hjalmar Procopé for the Swedish Theater in Helsinki, produced in 1906. The story follows Leschanah, a Jewish woman sent to assassinate Belshazzar, king of Babylon. The best numbers are early in the score, especially a lovely flute solo with delectable harmony in the prelude ("Nocturno") for Act II, as Leschanah listens to the royal palace at night, seduced by the king's power. Soprano Pia Pajala sings the mournful Song of the Jewish Girl, a paraphrase of Psalm 137 in a way similar to Verdi's chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Nabucco. Less memorable is the dance music to accompany Leschanah's attempt to displace the king's favorite slave girl, Khadra.

The disc opens with a barn-storming overture that is a fun listen, paired here with a Scène de ballet, both of which Sibelius drafted in 1891 as movements for an aborted attempt at a first symphony. (This makes for a fascinating comparison with his actual first symphony, finished in 1899 and revised in 1900.) The dance especially has a sort of eastern flavor in its melodic nuances and percussion choices, which make suitable companions for Belshazzar's Feast. Sounding more like the Sibelius we all think we know is a short "Wedding March" (not really what it sounds like), composed for Adolf Paul's play Die Sprache der Vögel in 1911. Segerstam rounds out this volume with a couple of other short processional pieces. The most curious of them is a "Processional," first composed in the 1920s for Finland's new Masonic Lodge, where Sibelius was a member.

Briefly Noted: 'Pélleas' and More

Sibelius, Music for the Theater, Vol. 3, Turku Philharmonic, L. Segerstam (released on August 14, 2015) Naxos 8.573301 | 57'49" [Vol. 4 | Vol. 5 | Vol. 6]

Sibelius's score for Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande is likely his most famous work of incidental music. It is heard most often, though, in the suite version, as when Leonidas Kavakos conducted it with the National Symphony Orchestra earlier this year. The suite has almost all of the music Sibelius wrote for the play, shortly after his move to Järvenpää in 1904, in a Swedish translation by Bertel Gripenberg premiered at Helsinki's Swedish Theater in 1905. Segerstam instead performs the original score, including the sixth number missing from the suite, Mélisande’s song in Scene 2 ("De trenne blinda systrar" [The Three Blind Sisters]), sung here by soprano Pia Pajala.

As noted before, this is a mesmerizing score, with poignant English horn solos (the instrument representing Mélisande in the score) and unsettled orchestral effects that capture the disturbing quality of life in Allemonde, which appears normal but is anything but -- a score that all film composers should study closely. The third number, for the fourth scene in Act I, is set at the sea's edge, with a tidal motif in the muted strings, alternating between two dominant seventh chords with roots a tritone apart (B-flat and E) over a pedal point on D (the section is nominally in D minor, although a cadence in that key never materializes). Periodically, Sibelius creates a shivering effect for the cold winds that come from the sea, combining a roll on the bass drum (played with timpani mallets), a low-set run in the first violins, and a tremolo played near the bridge by the double basses. Segerstam and his musicians capture this effect with spine-tingling subtlety, and there are many others one could mention.



Of the other five pieces that round out this volume, only one, Musik zu einer Szene, was intended to accompany a theatrical scene, a piece quite redolent of Tchaikovsky and that Sibelius later made into a version for piano. Two waltzes and a little Romantic piece are later orchestrations of piano works or otherwise not of great interest. Pajala is joined by mezzo-soprano Sari Nordqvist for Autrefois, a setting for two voices and orchestra of a poem by Hjalmar Procopé in the same Symbolist fairy-tale vein as Maeterlinck.

Briefly Noted: More of Sibelius's Theater Music

Sibelius, Incidental Music, Vol. 4, Turku Philharmonic, L. Segerstam (released on September 11, 2015) Naxos 8.573340 | 72'50" [Vol. 5 | Vol. 6]

Last Tuesday a massed choir of Finns marked the 150th birthday of Jean Sibelius by singing his choral version of the Finlandia hymn in Helsinki's Senate Square (video embedded below). My delectation of Leif Segerstam's ongoing cycle of Sibelius's music for the theater, with the Turku Philharmonic, continues with the fourth volume, released in September.

In the midst of World War I, the Finnish National Theater commissioned incidental music from Sibelius to accompany Jedermann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal's adaptation of The Somonyng of Everyman, the 15th-century morality play. Sibelius held this score, premiered in 1916, in high esteem, but because he never made a suite arrangement of it (other than three sections arranged for piano), it is less often heard in performance. Sibelius maintained, in subsequent performances of the score with the play, that the music had to be matched exactly with the lines spoken by the actors, phrase for phrase. (Von Hoffmannsthal's play is still performed every summer at the Salzburg Festival, on the steps of the city's cathedral, but not with Sibelius's score, as far as I know.)

After an expansive opening, Sibelius creates some rather forgettable song and dance music that symbolizes the empty-headed pursuits of Everyman's life. When Death takes the scene, the score becomes much more interesting (tracks 12 to 17), with intertwined chromatic string lines seeming to separate Everyman from the dippy music that came before. The music underscores the lessons Everyman is forced to learn when he dies: nothing and no one he held dear in his life can help him now. Only Good Works and Faith agree to go with him on this final journey.

While not technically created for a theatrical production, two shorter instrumental scores are in keeping with the religious tone of the Jokamies (Everyman) score: Two Serious Melodies for violin and orchestra, op. 77, and In memoriam for orchestra, created after the composer underwent an operation on his throat and played again at Sibelius's funeral -- an apt tie-in to the story of Jedermann.

Briefly Noted: More of Segerstam's Sibelius

Sibelius, Incidental Music, Vol. 5, Turku Philharmonic, L. Segerstam (released on October 9, 2015) Naxos 8.573341 | 63'34"

The disc under review yesterday is the latest in a series devoted to Sibelius's music for the theater from Leif Segerstam and the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra. I have been working my way backwards through it -- currently it numbers six discs -- and it is all quite wonderful. Some of these pieces are better known than others, but many are tiny fragments one never hears.

Sibelius's best-known incidental music is likely that for Maeterlinck's Pelléas et Mélisande. The actress who played Mélisande in the performances when that music was premiered, Harriet Bosse, eventually married the Swedish playwright August Strindberg. When Strindberg wrote a play called Svanevit (Swanwhite) for her, she convinced him to commission the incidental music from Sibelius. Sibelius himself conducted the score, a horn call and thirteen short pieces, at the premiere production in 1908, at Helsinki's Swedish Theater, where there was a small ensemble of thirteen musicians. Since the play is in the same Symbolist vein as Maeterlinck's Pelléas, a fairy tale about a princess named Swanwhite, Sibelius's score has much the same feeling of gloom. Magical scenes receive delightful coloristic episodes in the music, like Swanwhite's enchanted harp that plays by itself. Segerstam uses the slightly expanded version of the score, revised by Sibelius after the play's premiere, included the organ part added to the last movement -- but not the suite version, with its other added instruments.

The other longer incidental score on this disc is for Mikael Lybeck's play Ödlan (The Lizard). Premiered in 1910, this play is also a Symbolist-tinged fairy tale, with a nobleman torn between the influence of his pure betrothed, Elisiv, and an evil woman named Adla, who is costumed in a lizard dress. The score is intensely beautiful, especially the second piece, which lasts over twenty minutes, although it is scored for small string orchestra (Sibelius specified that it could be played by only nine musicians). These longer scores are complemented by two short pieces intended to be played as musical narration to the recitation of poems: Ett ensamt skidspår (The Lonely Ski Trail), in the version for harp, narrator, and strings; and Grevinnans konterfej (The Countess's Portrait), for strings orchestra. Finnish actor Riko Eklundh reads the texts of Bertel Gripenberg and Zachris Topelius, both Finnish poets who wrote in Swedish.

Briefly Noted: Sibelius's 'Scaramouche'

Sibelius, Scaramouche (complete ballet), B. Goldstein, R. Ruottinen, Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, L.Segerstam (released on November 13, 2015) Naxos 8.573511 | 71'

One of my interests is lesser-known ballet scores of the 20th century, like those of Paul Hindemith and Debussy's Jeux. Sibelius composed the score of Scaramouche, his op. 71, as accompaniment to a tragic pantomime by Poul Knudsen. Begun in 1912, the work was not premiered until 1922, at Det Kongelige Teater in Copenhagen. The roles were performed by dancer-actors, although it was not a ballet in the classical sense (see some filmed excerpts): Knudsen even provided lines for the characters to speak, a change to the original plan of which Sibelius did not approve. The title character is a dwarf with a hunched back, and he plays a magical viola that hypnotizes a beautiful woman named Blondelaine, causing her to abandon her husband, Leilon, during an all-night party at Leilon's house in the country. When Blondelaine is freed from Scaramouche's power, she kills him with her husband's dagger. The dwarf's spirit, incarnated by the sound of his viola, accuses her from beyond the grave, and Blondelaine falls dead, causing Leilon to go mad.

The delightful score is for chamber orchestra, mostly woodwinds and strings, joined by four horns and piano, but Sibelius creates a wonderful tapestry of sound with these limited forces. In addition to the orchestra in the pit, groups of instruments perform on stage and behind the stage as well, including the piano supposedly played by Leilon in the final scene; a trumpet is heard off-stage in Act II, the post horn signaling that a coach is about to leave the house as the party winds down. The Finnish conductor and runaway symphonist Leif Segerstam leads members of his new band, the Turku Philharmonic, in what may be the most complete recorded version of the score to date, and a fine one besides. (Neeme Järvi's premiere recording of the work, for BIS with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, is several minutes shorter; Jussi Jalas made his own twenty-minute condensed version, which he recorded with the Hungarian State Symphony.) Here we get the music without the spoken lines indicated by Knudsen, and the results suggest that a savvy choreographer should make a ballet version of the piece. The score has turns both neoclassical and chillingly dissonant, with lots of scordatura-like chromaticism to evoke the devilish nature of Scaramouche, the evil musician.

Dip Your Ears, No. 204 (Schulhoff for String Quartet)

E.Schulhoff, SQ4ts Nos.1 & 2, 5 Pieces for SQ4t, Aviv Quartet Naxos

Schulhoff for String Quartet

The string quartets of Schulhoff’s are masterpieces, on par with the best of the 20^th century. If you look or listen beyond the first page of String Quartet No.1 (1924), inauspiciously black with notes and an unisono assault on the listener, things turn immediately to the charming, and then to unbridled fun. The viola friendly quartet features lots of sul ponticello whispering, there are slides, tickles and spider-feet, pizzicato picking, au talon bowing, and col legno knocking… in short: it’s a whole bag of fun and stomps around the block with gusto. I remember hearing the quartet live for the first time with the Dutch EnAccord Quartet and what a revelation that was! Much the same goes for the barn-burning razzmatazz Five Pieces for String Quartet, arguably his best work for string quartet.

The performances here are good and the sound is varying but decent, but the main reason to pick the Aviv Quartet’s renditions on Naxos are availability, economy, and convenience – having both quartets and the Five Pieces in one place. If Capriccio decides to reissue the Petersen Quartett recordings (which cover the complete works for String Quartet except for the Divertimento, plus the Violin Sonata, the Duo, and the Sextet), that will be the obvious first choice with neither sound- nor performance-qualms of any kind.

Follow @ClassicalCritic

Made possible by Listen Music Magazine.

National Orchestral Institute to Record for Naxos

J. Corigliano, Symphony No. 1 ("Of Rage and Remembrance"), National Symphony Orchestra, L. Slatkin (RCA Red Seal, 1996)

Charles T. Downey, National Festival Orchestra’s bright performance is a gift
Washington Post, June 15

The ambitions and hard work of the National Orchestral Institute, the training program for young musicians at the University of Maryland, continue to pay dividends. The concert of American music by this year’s National Festival Orchestra, heard Saturday night at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, was the first to be recorded in a new series for the Naxos label. Richard Freed, who writes the NOI program notes, made the suggestion to the leader of Naxos.

Guest conductor David Alan Miller, who has long championed the music of Michael Torke, opened with that composer’s “Bright Blue Music”... [Continue reading]

National Festival Orchestra
National Orchestral Institute
With David Alan Miller, conductor
Clarice Smith Center

NOI PREVIOUSLY:
2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011

Briefly Noted: Milhaud's 'L'Orestie'

D. Milhaud, L'Orestie d'Eschyle, T. Mumford, L. Phillips, B. Rae, University of Michigan Choirs and Symphony Orchestra, K. Kiesler (released on September 9, 2014) Naxos 8.660349-51 | 141'24"

One might think that the Oresteia, Aeschylus's trilogy of blood-soaked tragedies, would have been adapted as opera more often. I know of two complete settings, by Sergei Taneyev in Russian and by Washington composer Andrew Simpson in English. Darius Milhaud's electric and pulsating score, over two hours of it made from 1913 to 1923, is not a setting of the complete text. The first two parts, a small section of Agamemnon and a slightly larger portion of The Libation Bearers, were created as incidental music for a staging of the plays by Jean Cocteau. Milhaud made the third play, The Eumenides, into a complete opera, and this new recording from the University of Michigan School of Music brings together all three of the pieces, which trace developments in Milhaud's style. We do not get the chance to review Milhaud's music all that often, especially live. While the recent performance of his one-act opera Le pauvre matelot was a little underwhelming, the brutalist force of these three pieces is not to be missed.

The influence of Stravinsky is heard, especially in the little choral scene of Agamemnon, with its motoric melodic cells repeating over and over again. Much of the music sounds cut from the same cloth as Satie's Socrate, composed around the same period, but more daring sounds come into play in the second and third parts. Milhaud calls for a form of rhythmic speaking, pulsed by percussion, in the creepy Omens section of Les choéphores, something that might seem boring or weird but is riveting when realized. To capture the immortal sound of Athena's voice in Les euménides, Milhaud writes the part for three women singing simultaneously, performed memorably here by soprano Brenda Rae, mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford, and contralto Jennifer Lane. The performance is good, if not quite great, at its best in large textures.

Hindemith's Ballet Music

Of all the things one might associate with the name of Paul Hindemith (1895-1963), ballet is likely not the first thing that leaps to mind. Only one of his ballets remains somewhat well known, The Four Temperaments, commissioned by George Balanchine and premiered by New York City Ballet in 1946, and it remains in the repertory of NYCB and of Sarasota Ballet, among others. Before that work, Hindemith composed music for a couple of experimental ballets in Germany, beginning with the odd yet wonderful Triadisches Ballett (Stuttgart, 1922), a ground-breaking abstract ballet, set in visual and musical sets of three (thus, triadic ballet). As seen in the film made a few years after the premiere, the dancers performed in bulky, geometric costumes, designed by Oskar Schlemmer of the Bauhaus, that made them look like marionettes against brightly colored backdrops. The following year Hindemith composed a daring score for Der Dämon (Darmstadt, 1923), set to a disturbing scenario by Max Krell about a sadomasochistic demon that subjugates two sisters.

Hindemith, Nobilissima Visione (complete ballet), Seattle Symphony, G. Schwarz (released on July 8, 2014) Naxos 8.572763 | 58'24"

Around the same time as Hindemith finished his opera Mathis der Maler, he received a commission for a ballet from Léonide Massine, which eventually became Nobilissima Visione (London, 1938; with one subsequent performance at the Metropolitan Opera). Like Mathis, the ballet was inspired by art, in this case Giotto's frescoes on the life of St. Francis of Assisi in the Bardi Chapel, in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, which Hindemith visited in 1937. He suggested the life of St. Francis to Massine, who was hesitant but eventually accepted; though Massine ended up dancing the role of Francis, he ultimately decided that the score was not really a ballet. Hindemith made a three-movement suite of music excerpted from the ballet, which has had great success on concert programs, but this new disc by the Seattle Symphony and conductor Gerard Schwarz is the first recording of the complete ballet score.

The ballet sets many of the famous episodes from the life of the Poverello of Assisi, beginning with the saint's love of troubadour songs, for which Hindemith incorporates the 13th-century song Ce fut en mai (It was in May), weaving into later parts of the score. Working as a cloth seller for his father, he gives everything he has to a beggar in Assisi, and then pursues a career in the military. He has a vision of three women, representing Humility, Chastity, and Poverty, which causes his change of heart so that he loses all interest in his friends' feasting. He meditates on the message he receives from the icon crucifix in the church of San Damiano, in which Christ told Francis to rebuild his church, and convinces a wolf to stop attacking people in the town of Gubbio, here charming it by pretending to play a violin using two sticks. He celebrates his mystical marriage to Lady Poverty, and the work ends with a movement evoking the composition of the Canticle of the Animals, set as a passacaglia on a six-measure ground bass. Schwarz and his musicians turn in a fine reading of this fascinating score, paired with the Five Pieces for String Orchestra (op. 44/4), although it would be even better to see Massine's choreography with it.

Hindemith, Hérodiade (complete ballet), Inscape, R. Scerbo [digital only] (released on June 24, 2014) Dorian SL-D-97202 | 20'36"

After Hindemith emigrated to the United States, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge commissioned another ballet score from Hindemith, which became Hérodiade, premiered at the Library of Congress in 1944, with Martha Graham dancing the title role. (Get just a taste of Graham's performance as the mother of Salome in the video embedded below.) The score is closely based on Stéphane Mallarmé's dialogue poem, consisting largely of a conversation between Hérodiade and a nurse. Mallarmé labored on the poem for over thirty years but would never complete it. He was still working on the poem when Oscar Wilde published his play Salomé, an act widely criticized as a betrayal of Mallarmé, whose poem he knew. Hindemith scored the ballet for piano, string quintet, and wind quintet, using an unusual system of musical declamation for the instruments, in a way, to "speak" the words. Although the lines of the Mallarmé poem are spoken on top of the music in some performances, Inscape's version leaves the words out altogether, although they remain embedded in Hindemith's music and can still, in a sense, be "heard." While not perhaps a standout, this is a worthy follow-up to Inscape's debut CD last year.

Briefly Noted: Jonathan Dove Song Cycles

J. Dove, Song Cycles, C. Booth, P. Bardon, N. Spence, A. Matthews-Owen (released on August 12, 2014) Naxos 8.573080 | 70'40"

Jonathan Dove is an English composer, specializing in music for voices, with a side career making slimmed-down versions of large operas, most famously, Wagner's Ring Cycle. His music is not performed around here all that often, but we have admired his operas Flight and Tobias and the Angel. This new release brings together four of his song cycles, all previously unknown to me and all worth getting to know. Out of Winter (2003) sets poetry by the late tenor (and accomplished writer) Robert Tear, with themes of late-life regret and the insignificance of human life in the grand sweep of time. Britten-style tenor Nicky Spence, a young singer from Scotland, sings it with bittersweet sincerity. In Cut My Shadow (2011), to brutal poetry of Federico García Lorca translated into English by Gwynne Edwards, Dove uses an accompaniment that mimics the sound of strummed guitar and the rhythms of castanets. Mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon gives the cutting melodic line a bristling energy, sometimes a little too much, and Andrew Matthews-Owen provides sensitive support at the piano.

Ariel (1998) is the only one of these four cycles that is not receiving its first recording, with texts by Shakespeare drawn from The Tempest, both song texts and spoken lines. Soprano Claire Booth acquits herself well, with just a few signs of scratchy weakness along the way, with no piano to help cover, for the songs have no accompaniment. Dove includes some interesting effects, like the sound of whistling wind or the crash of waves on the shore (a "Shhhhh" noise made by the singer), which appears throughout the cycle, and a big, gulping breath before the line "I drink the air before me" in the last song. The voice bubbles along on its own, seeming to flit mindlessly from thought to unrelated thought, most mesmerizing in the third song, a vocalise on the vowel 'O', which casts a spell. All You Who Sleep Tonight (1996), also sung by Bardon, uses poetry by Vikram Seth, much of it witty epigrams in sing-songy quatrain form. Dove makes them into pleasing miniatures, with a substantial but not overpowering whiff of Broadway and a conclusion that is both tragic and reaffirming.