Weill-Ibert-Berg, Baton Rouge Symphony Chamber Players

When three works work so well together that their inclusion on a single album gives one a kind of encapsulation of a style-period, then that CD is worthwhile for that very reason, if not others as well. That's how I feel about the disk set Weill-Ibert-Berg (Sono Luminus 92161). As with many Sono Luminus releases, this one has a regular CD for two-channel mixes and a Blue-ray disk for the 5:1 versions.

Each work is scored for chamber orchestra and soloists. Each is a gem of early modernism. They are Kurt Weill's "Concerto for Violin and Wind Orchestra, op. 12," Jacques Ibert's "Concerto for Cello and 10 Wind Instruments," and Alban Berg's "Chamber Concerto for Piano, Violin and 13 Wind Instruments." Timothy Muffitt conducts the Baton Rouge Symphony Chamber Players for these performances. The soloists are John Gilbert on the violin, Dmitri Shteinberg on piano, and George Work on cello.

I'll admit I've heard more rousing versions of the Berg, though in some older recordings that may not even be available at this point. But on the whole these are well defined, well recorded versions of works that go together excellently. They each have an almost ecstatically liberated feeling to them, as composers of that era took advantage of the new modernist ethos and the increased expressive freedom. And the three composers were important practitioners in the new style. The Berg is a masterpiece, the Weill belongs in in its company and the Ibert is quite worthy as well. All keep each other's company like three old friends enjoying an evening together, so sympatico with one another that the conversation flows pointedly forward with a good deal of impactful content and real style and grace.

The performances are spirited and well paced. There may be others available that have a slight edge, but the grouping together of the three on one disk makes for a most satisfying listen. I was unable to audition the 5:1 versions as I do not have Blue-ray capability, but I can well imagine that they add significantly to the aural staging of the music. In any event the stereo version has excellent sonics in itself.

Denes Varjon, Precipitando, Three Late-Romantic Early-Modern Solo Piano Works

Pianist Denes Varjon's Precipitando (ECM NEW Series B0016486-02) covers three solo piano works from the period beginning in 1852-53 (Franz Liszt's Piano Sonata in B minor), ahead to the early work by Alban Berg, Sonata, Op. 1 from 1907-8, and through to 1912 and Leos Janacek's In the Mists.

Varjon throws into relief the influence Liszt casts over these two early modernists at the outset of the 20th century--by programming the three together, and by bringing out the advanced and the romantic qualities of the Liszt sonata and doing ths same with the Berg and Janacek works.

All three are handled with spirit and passion. The Janacek certainly sounds more Lisztian than in some of the performances I've heard, and the Berg seems so as well (perhaps as much by being in the context of the others as in its treatment by Varjon).

In the process of listening to this disk you begin to rethink the lineages of the works though the magnetic pull of Varjon's commanding performance of Liszt's sonata. It is masterful. At the same time his heightening of the passionate late romanticism latent or overtly present in the Berg and Janacek gives you a new way to think about the music.

So in that way alone this is an important recording. Commanding Liszt, superlatively empassioned early Berg, and the half-way to modernist Janacek work. There should be no one standard of performance. Varjon's special way with all three works certainly deserves to stand alongside the very best. The recording would have had a slightly different effect if Varjon had ended with a few of the last Liszt piano works, which in other ways point forward. But that is another aspect of the overall trajectory of all three composers. This program not only makes you appreciate, it makes you think. The end was a beginning. The new emerges from the ashes of the old, the old has inherent within it the seeds of the new, the new partakes directly of the old to nourish itself and become the new that is inherent within it. That's something.

Isabelle Faust, Berg/Beethoven Violin Concertos, Claudio Abbado, Orchestra Mozart

Isabelle Faust brings something to the violin concerto repertoire that cannot really be taught--a restrained passion and dreamy quality to her playing, along with a ravishing tone. In a few days her recording of the Berg and Beethoven Concertos (Harmonia Mundi) will be released, accompanied by the Orchestra Mozart under the baton of the estimable Claudio Abbado.

The Berg Concerto has the quality of wistful sorrow and a poetic remembrance of loss, of things past (its subtitle is "On the Death of An Angel" and it was dedicated to the memory of a young lady Berg knew, stricken and taken from the world at an early age). Ms. Faust and Maestro Abbado bring out those qualities superbly with a kind of liquidity and flow to the performance I can't recall ever hearing so affectively handled. It is a most moving performance, one of the very best I have heard.

Beethoven's concerto of course has another series of moods which Faust and Abbado handle nicely. Isabelle comes through with a more bravura version of her sweetness of tone, and Abaddo and Orchestra Mozart give us all the nuances of this masterwork in all the right places.

All I can say is "Bravo!" An excellent recording in excellent sound. The Berg is stunning. The Beethoven uplifting and upbeat.