Dargomyzhsky, Rusalka, Vladimir Fedoseyev

None but the most pronounced of Russophiles here in the States are likely to know composer Alexander Dargomyzhsky (1813-1869) and his opera Rusalka (Brilliant Classics 2CD 94718). That is now easily remedied with the release of a budget-priced 2-CD of the opera with Vladimir Fedoseyev conducting the Grand Choir of the USSR Radio and TV and the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio. Judging from its provence this must have been a Melodiya boxed set at one point. The soloists are Alexander Vedernikov, Natalia Mikhailova, Konstantin Pluzhnikov and Galina Pisarenko. The bass of Vedernikov as the Miller is especially good. Chaliapin he is not quite but he is nonetheless wonderful in his dramatically expressive portrayal.

The libretto is based on a poem by Pushkin. It's all about the love between a Prince and a Miller's daughter, which in the class system of the time could not be. The Prince marries another more suited to his station, regrets it and in the end drowns in his attempt to find his beloved who has turned to a mermaid.

The Brilliant set does not include a full libretto, which is a shame, but the music is so good that one overlooks it after a spin or two. Dargomyzhsky is a cross between a kind of Russian Rossini and a precursor to Mussorgsky in the lyrical and melodic memorability of the music and its sometimes folksy quality.

The performances excellent, the sound very good and the music a real find for those like me who had not heard the opera previously. If you follow the history of the Russian classical style this one is hands-down a must.

Perceptions: Points of View for Small Ensemble

Modern chamber music is something that tends to please by most being itself. Partially because of the way larger ensemble concert situations favor the peppering of modern works throughout the course of a subscription season, whereas chamber ensembles can assume a more discerning audience and may offer the modern in more concentrated form, modern chamber music works can tend to cluster together in larger blocks in the concert situation. That is just an impression, but I do believe the chamber music audience has more committed listeners as their average gathering, so programmers-ensembles can assume they will be more exploratory by nature, more open to the new.

And with that in mind the modern chamber anthology Perceptions: Points of View for Small Ensemble (Navona 5909) can be understood as appealing to such an audience by giving them a goodly portion of the new. In it we hear six works by six less-known but none-the-less competent composers. Each has a modern or a post-modern point of view of their own and brings it out in creative ways.

Kevin McCarter's work, "Above the Clouds" for violin and piano, has a rhapsodic tonal quality that is enchanting. The other composers either stay in an expanded tonality/ modern zone or flirt with post-modern tonality and engage it as a contrast to the more expanded style. Understandably the shadings of sound color tend to be more pastel and brilliant than charcoal grey, fitting the style.

The others represented and their works are: Kyle Peter Rotolo and his String Quartet No. 1 "Macchiato", Quinn Dizon's "Awakening" for violin, viola, cello and piano, Amelia S. Kaplan's "Insolence" for violin and piano, Jason Barabba's "Rhetorical Devices" for violin and piano, and Thomas L. Read's "Capricci" for classical guitar and string quartet.

The totality of the anthology and the diverse group of composers go together certainly in their well-crafted, adventuresome approaches. None of the works are quite avant garde so much as they build inside a tradition of modern 20th century American music, never overtly conservative nor overtly groundbreaking so much as concerned with expression, dynamics, and a lingering lyrical quality at times.

In the end we get a very engaging program of music that does not condescend and reveals itself with a proper number of listens. It's all quite good and the performances live up to the promise of the compositions. Recommended.

Tchaikovsky, Ellington/Strayhorn, Nutcracker Suites, Harmonie Ensemble, New York, Steven Richman

When I was but a lad, with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head (well actually, no, even in my halcyon days sugar plums were not in the picture. I've never seen one, then or now. . .) my dad had an LP of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, a budget version with a less-than-stellar performance, but good enough to get the music across. It was at that point the only classical record my parents both liked and it found its way onto the hi-fi that was my dad's delight, and mine, too.

It was a part of the holiday record rotation around the house, and I sure fell under its spell. By the time I was somewhere in mid-adolescence my friend brought over a copy of the Duke Ellington organization doing the Ellington/Strayhorn version of the Suite. That sure sounded good to me, too.

Steven Richman and the Harmonie Ensemble/New York had a great idea to do both versions and put in onto one CD (Harmonia Mundi 907493). And so there's the release out there this season for the first time and I've been listening.

It's very good on both counts. The classical, original orchestral version is performed with plenty of spirit and pep, as good a version as you'd ask for. And the Ellington/Strayhorn version has an authentic ring to it. The band and soloists are totally into the late '50s Duke style and give it all they've got.

Now of course the original Duke version has the edge over this performance. Surprisingly though Richman comes very close.

Of course the advantage with this release is that you get both versions in totally idiomatic renditions. So I don't think you need hesitate if this combination sounds good to you. I will certainly be playing it over the holidays and, if the fates are kind, in holiday seasons to come. So Season's Greetings to you all!!

Joy to the World, An American Christmas, Harry Christophers, Handel and Haydn Society

Those who came across from Europe to America brought their Christmas carols with them. In the years that followed composers and hymnists created others. It is to this body of tradition that Harry Christophers and the choir of the Handel and Haydn Society turn on Joy to the World, An American Christmas (Coro 16117). It is quite fitting given that the Society celebrates its 200th anniversary this year.

The s-a-t-b choir has been a part of American celebrations as far back as you care to go. The US doesn't have boy choirs much, like England and Vienna. But the acapella mixed choir is a staple of Christmas carols here. When I was a kid the Robert Shaw Chorale had a best-selling album that mixed the more obscure older songs with the standard fare.

Christophers and the Society certainly come through with beautiful sonics that remind me of the Shaw disk, actually surpass it since the technology is more up to the task today and the choir is an excellent one. Christophers savors each with often leisurely tempos that invite reflection. The choice of carols is especially fine, giving us the all-familiar in the title song and "Carol of the Bells". But then the very venerable and/or sometimes lesser-known carols get plenty of attention. There's one by Charles Ives, Holst's "In the bleak midwinter", two versions of "In dulci jubilo", the alternate Protestant American melody to "O little Town of Bethlehem" as well as the traditional one, the old folk song "I Wonder as I Wander", and so forth.

There is enough of the more obscure with the familiar that it gives you the full tradition without stinting, something your ears can grow into over time. The choir sounds ravishing.

It can be a fulcrum point for holiday reveries, to give you a feeling of time both passing and never passing. Highly recommended.

Niels W. Gade, Piano Works, Christina Bjorkoe

There are composers that at least Stateside many have heard little of. We don't always have the chance to hear them. They are names whose music remains hidden to us unless we take the trouble to search out the releases. Niels W. Gade (1817-1890), Danish romantic, would qualify as one of them. In his lifetime he was well admired by the likes of such luminaries as Mendelssohn and the Schumanns. He is a musical voice that's surely worth our scrutiny. But not often heard here these days.

Christina Bjorkoe has recently released a disk of his solo Piano Works (CPO 777 628-2) that helps us flesh out the composer's more intimate side. (There are also symphonies, concertos and etc., but another time for that.) The disk contains beautifully sympathetic performances of two major Gade works, his "Piano Sonata" op. 28 and the "Aquarellen" opp. 19 & 57. The latter come to us in the form of 15 short movements written over a number of years.

Both works have a singingly inventive quality that sparkles with originality and warmth. Ms. Bjorkoe brings to the music a pristine touch, excellent technique and a sense of phrasing that teases out the lyrical clarity in all its complexity.

These are piano works as fine as virtually anything written in the era. And we have a chance to hear them now with performances that shine with the sunlight they contain in abundance. Listen to this one by all means!

George Enescu, Ouverture de Concert, Op. 32, Symphony No. 3, Op. 21, Hannu Lintu, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra

Like many of my generation I first encountered the music of George Enescu (1881-1955) on Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin's ground-breaking original East Meets West in 1966. One side had Shankar compositions, the other a sonata for violin and piano by Enescu. From then on I was interested in whatever Enescu had done. I've picked some nice things up on my way through life but never the program just made available as performed by conductor Hannu Lintu and the Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, namely Enescu's Ouverture de Concert and his Symphony No. 3 (Ondine 1197-2).

This one brings us to an Enescu we (or rather I) knew little about--the later, evolved composer for orchestra. Both works have much to offer the attentive listener. The "Ouverture de concert sur des themes dans le caractere populaire roumain," op. 32, as the title makes clear, brings us to Romanian folk territory, but of course not in some unmediated way, but rather with all the compositional syntheses and developments one might expect from the composer. It is short, over all-too-soon within ten minutes.

We are compensated by the lengthy and accomplished "Symphony No. 3," op. 21. As the liner notes suggest clearly, Enescu experiments with musical structure by combining sonata form with endless transformations-variations on specific thematic elements. I don't suspect the ordinary listening ear picks up on this technique while experiencing the symphony as it unravels, unless one knows to watch for the developments, score-in-hand. But it is as a building that contains supports. You don't have to know where the supports are to appreciate the building's beauty. I didn't experience it in my listening anyway, except to feel like the music was springing from an endless font of invention. This I am sure was as the composer wished.

It is a work of a ravishing sort, not especially Romanian sounding as much as universally expressive, a heightened, well-woven, late romantic work of great character.

Hannu Lintu (who we encountered yesterday on his Ligeti disk) conducts the Tampere Philharmonic with excellent results for both works. Anyone with an interest in Romanian/Eastern European symphonists should not miss it. But it will sound well no matter what your background, I should think. This is a side of Enescu that should not be missed.

Ligeti, Violin Concerto, Lontano, Atmospheres, etc., Benjamin Schmid, Finnish Radio Symphony, Hannu Lintu

There are times when I realize that I have not paid enough attention to a particular composer. This is one of those times. Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006) was a significant voice in modern music. In part because for a while I listened to the principal Darmstadt School of composers of his era more than others, I unthinkingly passed him by for the most part.

Now listening to the four works in a new anthology by Hannu Lintu and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with Benjamin Schmid as violin soloist as called for (Ondine 1213-2), I am pleased yet startled. Startled because the music is so excellent and the performances riveting. And pleased for the same reason.

There are four symphonic works represented here, covering a long time span between 1961 and 1993. The Violin Concerto (1989-1993) is in many ways the centerpiece, a masterwork of sound color played with energy and grace by Schmid and the Danish congregation. Ligeti shows as elsewhere a thoroughgoing mastery of the forces available to him, creating a sustained landscape of sound color with an excellent sense of drama and impact. Ligeti makes the orchestra anew with a brilliant sense of how to create a sound-with-sound dialog between violin and large group. Schmid sounds perfect in the part.

And that's only the start, because equally enthralling and innovative are the other three works, "Lontano" (1967), "Atmospheres" (1961) and "San Francisco Polyphony" (1974). Like Xenakis and early Penderecki he seeks to create a music outside the tonal framework but also often outside the traditional line-building, note-specific ways we are taught to listen to orchestral or other classical music. This is about sound masses, soundscapes of contrasting colors and clusters, the effect of the whole as much as the impact of the parts. He was, now that we look back, one of the first soundscape artists and certainly one of the great ones.

This has the timbral contrasts of the electronic music of the era, yet it is all accomplished via acoustic real-time performance. The final effect contrasts with the electronic music of the times because these are acoustic instruments and so give out a different wave energy as Ligeti conceives it all. The flow from sound-station to sound-station is virtually breathtaking. It's not music that sounds (to me) jarring as much as it sounds otherworldly.

Lintu and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, with or without violinist Schmid, bring this music to life in the most sympathetic ways. Highly recommended.