Maurice Ravel, Complete Works for Solo Piano, Hakon Austbo

If you are reading this I suspect you already know that Ravel's Complete Works for Solo Piano is one of the extraordinary treasures of the Twentieth Century. In the hands of pianist Hakon Austbo (SIMAX Classics PSC 1366 2-CDs) vibrant new life gets a fresh breath into things, which matters a great deal for those who have heard a good many versions of this music. But then too anyone who is a novice would gain an excellent introduction with this as well.

It has struck me for a long while how the music itself is as a whole nearly infinitely malleable and so subject to a pretty broad spectrum of readings. My first set of Ravel piano was on three LPs. It was remarkably straightforward though I had no idea if it was or not. My mother was so enthralled by it all that she played the records a nearly infinite number of times. So it is in her honor today that I return to this wonderful music. It is a supreme test of the music's excellence that she could have played the music so many times in my presence and yet I still retain a great love for it all.

This Hakon Austbo reading has superlative interpretive acumen oozing from its musical pores, if you will pardon my wordy exuberance. It may always feel like spring with this music, but in the hands of Hakon's it is a most lovely spring morning and all is right with the world.

Hakon with the opening "Gaspard de la Nuit" shows us part of what he is about. By sometimes resorting to a contemplative rubato he brings ever more to us the Modernist abstract element at play. Then too always Ravel is the supreme colorist in his piano music and Austbo lets us feel it with a splash and dash of the utmost poetic taste I suppose you might say?

The technique is wholly there. Yet it never calls attention to itself so much as it is harnessed, it is used to coax the maximum of poetry from the keys. The "Miroirs" gets a kind of crystalline prismatic chiming such as we who already know the beauty of the work especially appreciate. And for something that demands a sort of regularly paced reading, the "Pavane Pour une Infante Defunte" shimmers and shines within its rhythmic "case" in ravishing ways.

I must say there is a consistent sensitivity of touch and a flourish of artful phrasing throughout the whole of this program, from the "Sonatine" and its expressive thrust to the deeply flowing "Le Tombeau de Couperin." This is one of the finest Ravel sets I have yet to hear and I do very much recommend it as a supplement, a ready addition of excellence in readings for those who have heard a great deal of the Ravel interpretive wash over the years. Or for that matter it is a fine start for those that know next to nothing about these things. Either way you are getting some wonderful piano mastery in a very well produced audio presentation.

I suggest you check this one out if you find yourself attracted to the idea of it all! I doubt you'll be disappointed. I am myself very glad to have this on hand to return to.

Bach, Hlif Sigurjonsdottir, Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin

I never tire of Johann Sebastian Bach, especially much of the solo repertoire. Of course that does not mean I automatically love every version that comes out. But the new 2-CD performances of Danish-Icelandic violinist Hlif Sigurjonsdottir doing his Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (MSR Classics 1605) hits a nerve with me.

Of course the beauty of the music bears more than one interpretation, and I find that Ms. Sigurjonsdottir's way with the music adds a fresh dimension. Part of that undoubtedly has to do with her mentors, Bjorn Olafsson (who in turn studied with Adolph Busch) and Gerald Beal (who studied with Heifetz). They immersed her in these Bach works from an early age (in Olafsson's case) and went over the works with her in detail (in both cases) so that by the time she was a fully formed violin virtuoso she had absorbed and furthered a performance tradition  (or two)  that comes through strikingly on these recordings.

Hlif does not give us a rigorously baroque reading. She does not fill her phrases with a lot of ornamentation. Yet this is not an overly rubato-drenched romantic reading either. It IS a lovely and very lyrical reading that has more ecstatic expressiveness than I've heard elsewhere, a kind of steady-state expression of the joy of Bach's genius.

Her tone is full without being vibrato heavy. There is a luminousness in her sound that suits the music quite well.

This is first-rate interpretation, singularly sensitive to all the nuances of the music while bringing out the sheer beauty of the parts. If you already have a version or two of these pieces, this will augment the pleasure of the music with another reading, one that is vivaciously modern. If you do not have the music, here's your perfect chance to get an excellent version. Bravo!

Bonifazio Graziani, Adae Oratorium, Filli Prodigi Oratorium & Five Motets, Consortium Carissimi, Garrick Comeaux

There is so much wonderful music from the late Renaissance-early Baroque period by masters more known to scholar-specialists than lay listeners that we should not be surprised that much has yet to see the light of day in recorded form. Today's disk of vocal gems by Bonifazio Graziani (1604-1674) (Naxos 8.573256) is a happy example of such things, Consortium Carissimi under director Garrick Comeaux doing the Adae Oratorium, Filli Prodigi Oratorium & Five Motets, all in first recordings.

The liturgical music situation in Rome around 1650 was lively and intense. Motets for vocalists and instruments were an important component of the Latin mass at the time and we hear five excellent examples here. The two Oratorios on the disk were slightly more ambitious works, longer and with a small choir in addition to the group of soloists. Both were likely performed during the Easter season as part of the Holy Year celebrations of 1650.

Graziani's music is excellently performed by Consortium Carissimi in period fashion, with very little vibrato. They are nicely seconded via the accompaniment of archlute, theorbo, viola da gamba, sackbut, harpsichord and/or organ depending on the work. The vocalists are top notch as are the instrumentalists. Graziani's music is beautifully crafted. It speaks to us eloquently.

Early music enthusiasts should not hesitate on this volume. It has everything going for it. Those who do not know the vocal music of the era well will no doubt respond readily too. It is a very beautiful recording!

Patrick Hawkins, Haydn and the English Lady, Piano Music by Haydn and Maria Hester Reynolds Park

Classic era solo piano music has a certain self-contained quality. It seems to reach a little less into the future and back into the past as compared with the flowering of romantic and even modern piano music. It occupies its modest world with undeniable charm and lightness of being. Or at least much of it seems to. That doesn't mean we should dismiss it or not get to know it, of course.

It helps sometimes to hear the music on a period instrument, in that the sound is less projective, more intimate, more in keeping with a performance less "stagey," with fewer people in attendance, sometimes just the pianist alone to hear it.

With this is mind let's take a look at new new disk of piano music from that era, one with some decided differences than standard. I refer to pianist Patrick Hawkins and his Haydn and the English Lady (Navona 5981). We have a selection of piano music by Haydn and the rather unknown composer Maria Hester Reynolds Park, as played on an 1831 William Geib Square piano.

The piano has a less reverberant tone as one might expect. Its tuning in the upper register seems less tempered than a modern instrument, and that may have something to do with its age. Once one gets used to that all flows together. The Haydn is a Sonata in D Major, and an Adagio and a Capriccio. They are played quite decently and serve to set off the music of the "English Lady," Ms. Park.

Maria Hester Reynolds Park (1760-1813) was of course a contemporary of Haydn (1732-1809). She was a pianist from aged 12 to 19 for the permanent orchestra in the Music Room at Oxford. She went on to teach privately to publish a number of her works during her lifetime. That is all we need to know for the moment, for the music is what is at hand. Our disk includes three of her piano sonatas, the one in E-Flat Major, Opus 4, No. 2; the F Major, Opus 4, No. 1; and the C Major, Opus 7. In addition there is a Waltz in E-Flat Major. That and the E-Flat Sonata come to us in first recordings.

We certainly gain a good view of Ms. Park from these performances. The themes are very appealing, the music well-crafted. She may not have the grandeur and profundity of Haydn, but how many come close to him in that era? A very few. She holds her own nonetheless.

Hearing the more familiar Haydn on the period piano gives you pause. He is not diminished by the intimacy of the instrument. The singing melodies still sing. The passagework has less presence though and so the thematics stand out all the more. The same might be said of the Park pieces, though I have never heard her music previously. She is no slouch. The hearing of her work is much to our benefit and this CD gives us a sort of in situ feel for her way, and for that matter Haydn's.

It is a charming disk. Thank you, Patrick Hawkins!

Isabelle Faust, Alexander Melnikov and Jean-Guihen Queyras, Beethoven, Piano Trios op.70 no.2 & op.97 "Archduke"

If you've lived long enough and listened long enough, music becomes filled with time and memory. There are two ways that can be the case. One is music that was in no way exceptional but brings to you in later hearing or in musical imagination the period of time as you experienced it. The second way is if the music is exceptional in itself, yet still has strong associations in time-memory for you.

To me the wonderful piano trios by Beethoven have ramifications of the latter sort. It was the early seventies, I was trying to play jazz but also had ambitions to be a composer of some sort--both were of equal importance so I had a practice, work and play routine that reflected all of it. And then, of course, I listened closely to various music. It was the days of the 3-record Vox Boxes, where you could expose yourself to all manner of chamber music in respectable performances, 3 records for $5.99. Now keep in mind the rent for my one-bedroom in Boston was $125 a month. So it was cheap only in a relative sense.

I found the Beethoven piano trios, complete in two Vox-Box volumes. I listened and was taken by the intricate three-way interplay and the wonderful lyric qualities that Beethoven was all about in many of these works. I had a girlfriend who was going to art school. We were on a kind of trial run in our relationship as was so often the case back then. She was over at my place and I was playing her some of the most lyric of the trios, gushing on about how great they were when all of a sudden, she gives me a look. I mean a look. It was sad and determined and puzzling all at the same time. What I found out later, thinking about it, was it meant "this guy is so crazy about this Beethoven that I couldn't imagine spending my life with him." Circumstances made that plain later and we parted. So the beautiful Beethoven trios call up this period to me, of loneliness, struggle to survive, and ill-fated relationships.

The music is so good, though, that the transcendence to a place outside of time is easily made. Especially if the performances are phenomenal. Looking back, those Vox Boxes had very decent performances and blend was the primary way of proceeding; none of the three stepped out with some kind of individuality.

At times the opposite is the case in the new recording of the last two trios I have before me today. As listed on the net or the catalogs it will probably read Piano Trios op.70 no.2 & op.97 "Archduke" (Harmonia Mundi 902125). Trios 6 & 7 in other words, written in 1808 and 1811, respectively.

The press materials remind me (us) that Beethoven's trios gave the violin and cello equal parity with the piano and Ludwig was the first to do so. Yes, that's in part what makes them so utterly fascinating to hear. And in the hands of three Harmonia Mundi star soloists as we have on this recording, that becomes increasingly important. Isabelle Faust is on violin, Alexander Melnikov on piano and Jean-Guihen Queyras on cello. Melnikov plays a period piano, which gives the three-way interplay even more of an equality--as the composer meant for it to sound.

Put all those factors together and set the players loose on these two very moving trios and you have something. With Faust, Melnikov and Queyras you have blending when it calls for it, but when somebody takes a lead or all three parts go in different directions contrapuntally, you have a marvelously stylized foregrounding effect. Certainly this isn't the first trio to have three heavyweights in it, but they are of our time also so the way they distinguish themselves is not by a sort of Gypsy pathos-bathos, the exaggerated gestures of neurotics, like some of the residual over-romanticists might have given out with last century. That has its place--but it is in the past, really. The post-Beethoven, pre-present. We get it. We don't need to be "harangued" by it. And in the present recording we are not.

It's not a cold-fish interpretation, mind you. It has plenty of warmth. Just rightly sufficient, not exaggerated so that you lose the structural togetherness of the passages.

Well, that is enough to give you an idea. Two of Beethoven's very best trios, showing phenomenal lyricism and ingenious part writing. Now I wont suggest you try this one on your potential partner as a litmus test, because you too might get one of those "weird looks" and find yourself very, very single! Or maybe this will cement the deal, so to say. Either way, don't blame the music, which is superlative, or the performances, which are phenomenal!