Eugene Ysaye, Portraits, Six Sonatas for Solo Violin, Sharon Park

Eugene Ysaye (1858-1931) was during his lifetime one of the most acclaimed violin virtuosos alive, known by many as the "king of the violin". He also composed works to showcase his virtuosity. The Six Sonatas for Violin Solo, Op. 27 (1923) is one of the most demanding and beautiful of his works. Violinist Sharon Parks brings us a detailed and impassioned reading of all six on Portraits (MSR Classics 1631).

The demanding and bravura music is basically an embodiment of the expressive romantic solo violin tradition that goes especially back to Paganini but shows the sure hand and originality of Ysaye. Unlike Reger's solo violin work it does not often directly show roots in Bach, although there is a genetic relation, an occasional quotation and a general spirit that goes back to Johann. The sonatas do also generate more extroverted declamations in the manner of concerted cadenzas typical of the showcase works of the 19th century. Nonetheless the sonatas were initially inspired by hearing Joseph Szigeti play Bach's Unaccompanied Sonatas.

There is a supreme seriousness of purpose that evinces much more than technical feats. It is superior violin virtuosity that never short shrifts content. Each sonata is dedicated to a violin virtuoso of Ysaye's day and in part reflects a response to each violinist's way of playing. So there is one sonata each dedicated to Szigeti, Jacques Thibaud, Georges Enescu, Fritz Kreisler, Mathieu Crickboom and Manuel Quiroga.

Sharon Park meets the challenge of this set in the most musical ways, showing a polish and a substantial dash of flamboyance very suitable to the music. It is for her a definite triumph.

I for one am very glad to have her readings. If serves as a sort of definitive view of these important works.

Felix Hell, Heroic Proportions, Organ Music of Bach, Franck, Barber, Stewart and Willan

Those who appreciate the organ music repertoire will find Felix Hell's Heroic Proportions (MSR Classics 1542) of interest. It is a wide-ranging selection of works spanning wide period and style sets, with as the title suggests a heroic organistic flourish at the forefront much of the time.

The common link throughout is the fine artistry of Felix Hell. He gives each work a detailed and very worthwhile reading.

The Bach "'St. Anne' Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major" has the stately seriousness of purpose one might expect. And the Franck "Piece Heroic" (1878) brings an epic, determined dimension into play.

William Strickland's organ arrangement of Samuel Barber's beautifully melancholy "Adagio" translates the string parts to organ with dramatic intelligence. It must be heard closely, however, as its subtlety demands your attention.

Lastly we have two lesser known works , the World Premier Recording of Eric R. Stewart's "Sonetto" (2012) and Healey Willan's "Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue" (1916). The Stewart work has modern fireworks and heroic dash. The same can be said for the Willan, with the nearly 100 years between the two works a factor the ear can recognize without trouble.

And so Felix Hell brings us a substantial recital that all organ enthusiasts will appreciate.

Ernst Krenek, Complete Piano Concertos, Volume Two

A composer as long lived (1900-1991) and as productive as Ernst Krenek may in the end suffer neglect in the years following his death. And then as time moves on he may happily be subject to re-evaluation. The positive sign of that is in a welcome survey of his Complete Piano Concertos, of which today I report in on Volume Two (Toccata 0392). It is a finely honed interpretation of four of the seven works that make up the total, featuring Mikhail Korzhev and Eric Huebner on pianos, additional soloists as needed, and the English Symphony Orchestra under Kenneth Woods.

Krenek was one of the master high modernists of last century, but perhaps more recognized as a cutting-edge force in the earlier days of his career. Blame that no doubt on the upheavals in Europe beginning in the thirties, leading to unspeakable degeneration and savagery in the years following. Three of the concerted works in the volume stem from 1950-51; the other is from 1940. All are finely wrought masterworks that combine a personal approach to serialism and non-serial elements, the latter of a characteristic and local thematic sort.

The "Piano Concerto No. 4, Op. 123" (1950), in first recording incredibly enough, has a remarkable balance between piano assertions and orchestral weight. The far reaches of modern harmonic possibilities prevail, yet the orchestrational and expressive structures bring forth a highly accessible discursive fluidity.

The "Concerto for Two Pianos, Op. 127" (1951) alternates a dramatically thickened density at times, thanks to the two-pronged solo possibilities, with quieter luminescences that evoke a sort of hushed twilight feel.This is another most welcome first recording.

As the listener segues to the "Double Concerto for Violin and Piano, Op. 124" (1950) she or he finds a different balance of expression made possible by the two emotional and aural dimensions available via the two solo instruments. An elaborate three-way dialog between violin, piano and orchestra acts as a brilliantly transparent window into a sonic landscape that moves continually between the three poles of musical discourse. This third and final first recording of the volume once again alerts us to how fully mid-century Krenek was in control of the expressive spectrum available in the concerted form.

The final, brief "Little Concerto for Piano and Organ, Op. 88" (1940) unveils yet another sonic brilliance, with piano and organ fleshing out a tandem singularity that expresses much in the most compact ways.

In sum this volume is a treasure of Krenek at a mid-century peak. The music is invariably excellent and moving. That so much of it is virtually unknown today is all the more reason to obtain this volume and listen deeply to it.

Highly recommended!

Julius Rontgen, Symphonies 9 & 21, Serenade, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt, David Porcelijn

The human animal is imitative. From infancy on, we learn to mimic the humans around us. And in every adolescent there is the world of imagination and creative singularity. Composers who are worth their salt manage to imitate and then enter a personal world of their own making. Julius Rontgen (1855-1932), a Netherlandish symphonist, does not enjoy a wide currency in today's concert world. Yet judging by the recent recording of his Symphonies 9 & 21 and his Serenade (CPO 777 120-2) he stands out as one who has worked through imitation and found a way to be original, at least sometimes.

The Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester Frankfurt under conductor David Porcelijn bring to us careful and nuanced readings of the three scores.

The "Semmering Serenade" is the earliest representative work, hailing from 1902. It marked his late entrance into large scale orchestral composition, though several youthful symphonies were under his belt by 1875. Apparently he destroyed them sometime after. The "Serenade" has some beautifully alive, long lined lyric melodics.

The "Symphony No. 9 'Bitonal'" (1930) has an elusive way about it. It does not exactly sound "modern," and indeed Rontgen did not find that the modern ways of his time suited his own sensibilities. Instead a kind of feelingful inspiration was his approach. There is a residue of romanticism to be heard here and elsewhere, but like Grieg and Sibelius it was but an idiom to allow inventiveness free reign. The "Bitonal" Symphony oscillates between centers. It is more a continual modulation between key polarities than a simultaneity of two keys at once as in Milhaud. Rontgen's bitonality is a linear trajectory between two key centers. Never does the bitonal twain meet. The mysterious and the characteristic are more at the forefront than a sort of tonal assault. Sometimes it feels like a continual developmental section of sonata form and a transition that does not transit in the end. Nothing wrong with that, really. It is fascinating music.

The "Symphony No. 22" has much charm and an orchestrational luminescence which somehow channels Brahms and Mendelssohn into the 20th century. In this Rontgen asserts himself as a consummate craftsman of neo-romantic pastoral pasturization? Yes. A man out of his time, no doubt, but if we forget that it does not matter.

Interesting and well-fashioned symphonics. And for that there is much pleasure to be had.

Lou Harrison, Violin Concerto and More, Tim Fain, PostClassical Ensemble

Lou Harrison belongs to that stubborn, iconoclastic Yankee school of last century that began with Ives and Ruggles and continued with Harry Partch, Cage, Henry Cowell, Henry Brant and Harrison himself. Harrison refused tamely to submit to the requirements of "Western" modern classical as defined in his lifetime. He was one of the more dramatically effective and inventive proponents of an "East-Meets-West" eclectic originality.

We hear this all very clearly on a well-realized three-work anthology. Violinist Tim Fain, pianist Michael Boriskin and the PostClassic Ensemble under Angel Gil-Ordonez bring to us a well finessed reading of Violin Concerto, Grand Duo and Double Music (with John Cage) (Naxos 8.559825).

Fain has the right combination of rhapsodic projection and modern sonar facticity. The same might be said in pianistic terms for Michael Boriskin. The PostClassical Ensemble handles the various percussive and chamber requirements of the composer with a bit of dash and aplomb.

These are all nicely representative of Harrison at his finest. The Grand Duo (1988) is perhaps the lesser known of the three works and in some ways it brings us a Harrison slightly more integrated into Western classical tradition. That is, on the surface. Listen to the subtle interweaving of violin and piano parts and you will recognize something of the Harrison world expansiveness. It all takes place though in a more quietly underscored expressive way.

On the other hand the Violin Concerto (1940-1959) uses a percussion chamber group to suggest the more exotic allusions to gamelon and other non-Western music, which the violin in turn takes on with acute extroversion and seamless expressivity.

Harrison and Cage's breakthrough percussion work Double Music (1941) makes a decided break with Western norms to create an analogic new music entranced with and entrancing the non-Western elements that make a clearing and at the same time give momentum to the idea of New Music for percussion ensemble, which at that time was a very new idea. The lines intermix and continually vary within and against themselves. This is a fabulous version that stands out among the many recorded. It is that for its most musical approach, the way every phrase presents itself with great tensile strength and the near ghost of a rubato that applies torque and makes it all "swing," if you'll pardon a borrowed jazz term.

All told the Naxos release brings to us seminal Harrison played with ideal sympathy, creative fervor alternating with expressive quietude. The Naxos price helps make this CD well nigh irresistible.

Tonu Korvitz, Moorland Elegies

Music that turns out as, or even more evocative than its title suggests leaves us transported, if all is right. That ends up how I feel about Tonu Korvits's Moorland Elegies (2015) (Ondine 1306-2). It is a nine-part work for mixed choir and string orchestra. The texts are poems by Emily Bronte. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra under Risto Joost give to the score all the potentially moody ambience that is inherent in its beautiful tone painting contents. It has some similarities with the ambiances of fellow Estonian Arvo Part. It partakes even more in a haunting after-modern impressionism so that it readily serves as a contemporary model of what can be done.

Korvits himself says of the work that it is a journey "into the darkest, most mysterious corners  of loneliness to where one doesn't dare peek twice." Composers are apt perhaps to wax hyperbolic about what a work purports to do. In this case though, it is almost an understatement. The eerie poetic revery builds sonic worlds that have the capacity to poetically transfix, and they do so without release. It is the sort of work that silence or any everyday sound you hear after the work has ended takes on the coloration of the music the remains in the active imagination. Moorland Elegies colors your world so thoroughly that for some time afterwards nothing seems to return to the crisp mundane everydayness that you normally operate within.

What can be said musically can rarely be said so well that there is no mistaking its content. Moorland Elegies does this in magical terms, where that which is concrete in its building blocks transforms into an ethereal presence and an ever-liquidian flow that refers back to long stretches of vegetative leveling, wind that states its disregard of human presence, and the totality of being utterly alone within such a world.

To say it eschews a romantic sentimentality is the case. It instead gives forth with an "after all, this is what remains" kind of dynamic finality. There is the mysterious ineffable quality of Ives' "The Unanswered Question." This work gives us the unquestionable answer. That in the end is the historically positioned subject at a point where all the hurly burly of past experience disappears into a haze of not-self.

There is singularity of purpose and rare totality of tonal imagery to be heard on this recording. To listen is to enter a world where we matter by disconnecting from the world outside of the desolate moor-scape and immersing ourselves fully in its facticity.

Nothing quite has this titanically fragile moodiness. It is a world that is post-pastoral, way beyond the nostalgia for a lost world, but rather a lost-in-the-world solitude. All is what it is, and that is regretful in its beauty. There is more I could say. The main thing is how the music stuns by an uncanny analogic juxtiposition of subject-text and tonal refractory magic.

Wow.

J.S. Bach, Inventions & Sinfonias, Karin Kei Nagano

Who "owns" Western Civilization? The answer is everybody. For the classical music canon, for example, anyone is encouraged to listen, anyone to perform, anyone to devote a life to it or just let it ornament their existence. That J.S.Bach is German is a fact. Germans look to him with pride, yet he belongs to the entire world. It is true in the end of all music.

That L.A. born pianist Karin Kei Nagano chooses to perform Bach's Inventions & Sinfonias (Analekta 2-8771) is wholly a part of the picture. She is a very talented artist, completely steeped in classical tradition and performance practices and yet she also gives us crisply poetic interpretive versions of these masterworks that inject her very own sensibility. This is how it should be.

If in my opening lines if I say the obvious it is only with a righteous indignation because of what local White Supremacists have been doing: attempting to hijack the world's cultural heritage to serve their own evil agenda. (Among other unspeakable things.) It will not stand.

So as it happens Bach's Inventions & Sinfonias (BWV 772-801) are gems of the highest order. Yet Bach simply wrote them for his family and students as a pedagogical device to enable them to gain fluency on the keyboard. In the process he created a set of contrapuntal works that mark his genius as surely as anything he ever wrote.

If you took classical piano lessons the chances are good that you learned them. If you did or did not matters little in the end, since Ms. Nagano plays them all with great interpretive sensitivity so that they all sing out in all their glory. She does not generally take things at a maddening clip. Instead she seeks to bring out each part with clarity and poetic poise.

Wonderful versions of wonderful music. Time and identity virtually cease to exist when listening.