More favorite new releases from what was an exceptional year for new releases in the “classical”/art music world. Part 1 featured mostly 21st Century compositions from living women composers, many of whom employ electonics; Part 2 is 100% 20th Century. I am clearly partial to music written for strings and/or piano. I wouldn’t program a radio block this string heavy, but a Year-in-Review gives me license to ill. Again, this is not intended as a definitive “Best of” or anything, as I’ve got a few dozen LPs I downloaded last year that I’ve yet to open. But these are all very highly recommended…
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0:01:17
Galina Ustvolskaya: Duet; II. Very rhythmical beat (fugato)
from Ustvolskaya: Complete Works for Violin and Piano [Divine Arts]
Natalia Andreeva & Evgeny Sorkin
2019 marked the centennial of Ustvolskaya’s birth. There were very few releases that I’m aware of to honor the birthday – three that I counted. I suppose that’s because Ustvolskaya wrote relatively little in the way of great work, but it was kind of a drag nonetheless. I will say it was very disappointing that no label chose to put out a set of her symphonies, because the only versions I can find are on Youtube; there are none in print that I’m aware of. To matters at hand: The two works Ustvolskay wrote for violin and piano (c’est tout) represent her at her finest, stark and violent, and parallel universe-y. Andreeva is a Russian specialist in Ustvolskaya’s piano works, and thank god for her. These pieces are on a Patricia Kopatchinskaya ECM New Series release, but the interpretations are different enough that Ustvolskaya fans (and whoever isn’t should leave now) would want both, as both are excellent and beautifully recorded.
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0:06:34
Dick Kattenburg: Trio a Cordes
from Silenced Voices [Cedille]
Black Oak Ensemble
This is a program of string trios by mid-century Central European Jewish composers. The title refers to the fact that, of the six composers included, five were murdered by the Nazis. Three of the murdered – Gideon Klein, Sandor Kuti and Hans Krasa – are (relatively) known quantities at this point, thanks to the efforts of the many ensembles who’ve honored their legacies in recent years. The other two – Dick Kattenburg and Paul Hermann – I was unfamiliar with and am very happy to have met. The sixth, Giza Frid, survived the war as a member of the Dutch resistance and lived a long life; this release presents, somehow, the world premiere recording of his outstanding string trio, his Opus 1. The string trio repertoire is not particularly large and for whatever reason it seems like most of the good stuff was composed by Jewish composers hounded by the Nazis. Fans of Bartok and Kodaly’s chamber music will find a lot to like here. The Black Oak Ensemble is three outstanding young Chicago-based musicians who have made the point, definitively: fascism kills beauty. It’s an easy point to make, and it can not be made often enough.
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0:11:51
Grace Williams: Violin Sonata
from Grace Williams: Chamber Music [Naxos]
Madeline Mitchell (v) w/ Konstantin Lapshin (p)
The Welsh composer Grace Williams (1906-1977) was a friend and contemporary of Benjamin Britten’s, and a student of Vaughan Williams and Egon Wellesz. She wrote this violin sonata in her mid-twenties and revised it 8 years later. It is brilliant from the get-go, and as with Rebecca Clarke’s viola sonata from roughly the same era, you are made to realize women really were second-class citizens in the classical music world 90 years ago. Like the Clarke sonata, this is inarguably brilliant. It should be repertoire (which seems to have happened to the Clarke sonata). If it took the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the U.K. to get this out, so be it, but I hope people are working on getting more of Grace Williams’s music out ASAP.
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0:30:22
Karl Amadeus Hartmann: Concerto funebre; III. Allegro di molto
from 1939: Violin Concertos by Hartmann, Walton and Bartok [Solo Musica]
Fabiola Kim w/ w/ Kevin John Ehusei: Munich SO
1939 is a two-CD set. There’s probably enough room on disc 2 for another violin concerto but I don’t think there’s another that would fit with such glorified company as the three here. Kim’s an American who lays into three essential pieces – Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Concerto Funebre, William Walton’s Concerto in B minor and Bartok’s late, second concerto – with an intensity and a polish that makes this release a great way to get fantastic versions of all three. 1939 was the year Europe descended into maelstrom, of course, the year the curtain of Hitler’s lies and duplicity fell to reveal his true, genocidal intentions. These composers knew what was going on; Hartmann, in fact, lived through Nazi Germany, an “internal exile.” Eighty years on, it would seem Kim is making a statement with this program.
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0:38:48
Wolfgang Rihm: Zwiesprache (1999) II. Paul Sacher In Memorium &
IV. Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht In Memorium
from Elusive Affinity [ECM New Series]
Anna Gourari
The Russian pianist Gourari has chosen a brilliant program for her third ECM New Series release. Out-of-the-way pieces by Schnittke, Kancheli (RIP), Rodion Shchedrin, Part, and Rihm, framed by two movements from Bach-transcribed concertos.
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0:46:48
Bernd Alois Zimmermann: “Photoptosis”
from Zimmermann: Die Soldtaen, etc. [Ondine]
Hannu Lintu: Finnish Radio SO
Zimmermann (1918-1970) spent two years in the Wermarcht before he was discharged on account of a skin disease. I hope he didn’t have to shoot any Polish children in the back of the head. It seems unlikely based on his music, which is somber and abstract but has a lively pulse. Photoptosis is the name of a degenerative eye condition Zimmermann suffered from. He was terrified of blindness, which likely was part of his decision to commit suicide in 1970. Suicide is awful to contemplate, however preferable it may be to other ways of dying. Very few great artists commit suicide. Van Gogh was one. Zimmermann was another.
This piece and everything I’ve heard by him is great. Unfortunately his most famous work is an opera, Die Soldaten, which in the minds of many stands alongside Berg’s Wozzeck in terms of 20th C. German operas. I say “unfortunately” because I can’t do the opera thing unless I see it. Speaking of which, the Metropolitan Opera’s live broadcast of Berg’s Wozzeck (about a soldier returning from WWI with PTSD who is treated like a dog and murders his wife and commits suicide) is coming up in February. There are two movie theaters in my town that will present the broadcast. I’m going. You should think about it.
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1:00:52
Dmitri Shostakovich: Adagio from The Limpid Stream (1934-35)
from Mischa & LIly Maisky: 20th C. Classics [Deutsche Grammophon]
Mischa (cello( and Lily (piano) Maisky
A dad-daughter duo. Frequent Gidon Kremer cohort Mischa and Lily, a concert pianist in her own right, follow up their DG release Adagietto with a stellar program and very close and resonant sound. A roster of genius composers (Britten, Webern, Messaien, etc.) with pieces both familiar and – like this movement from a pre-Lady Macbeth ballet suite – not.
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1:07:34
Allan Pettersson: Violin Concerto No. 2; I & II
from Allan Pettersson: Violin Concerto/Symphony 17 [BIS]
Ulf Wallin w/ Christian Lindberg: Norrkoping SO
Pettersson, a Swede, was a person I very much admire and, to a significant extent, identify with. (Read his story. Then hear his symphonies.) The recording of this violin concerto – which undeniably ranks among the century’s greats, no matter how few know it – is so excellent that this is a lifelong keeper, however long that may be. By “great,” I mean monumental, Shostakovich and Schnittke great, with all that implies: an almost impossible torrent of strange ideas while still melodically riveting. The first two movements rage (herein), as Pettersson fans are accustomed to. The third and fourth, inversely, are like an enhanced reality Nordic Romantic concerto, ever-so-slightly warped and rife with the sorts of ethereal, melancholic beauty Schnittke and Shostakovich were wont to drop. Sibelius on microdose mushrooms? Overwhelming is the first word that comes to mind, at least when I’m… enhanced. It’s got a 400-page novel’s-worth of stuff going on. It’s almost an hour long, and it would take 30 listens for me to “know it” even in the non-technical sense I mean it.
(P.S. The fragment of Pettersson’s unfinished 17th symphony is NOT a throwaway. Only a half-assed reviewer would call the 7:00 minute chunk “filler.” Anything Petterrson left, unfinished or not, warrants serious listening.)
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1:37:43
Maurice Ravel: Sonata for Violin and Cello, M. 73; I. Allegro
from Eisler/Ravel/Widmann Duos [Delos]
Ilya Gringolts (v) & Dmitry Kouzov (c)
This is one I’m grateful to have stumbled across. I was not familiar with the Ravel duet, and I was not familiar with Hanns Eisler (1898-1962) or Jorg Widmann (1973- ) at all. The Eisler and Widmann pieces suggest two more paths to wander down… Gringolts and Kouzov are wisened Russian masters and this program is an obvious labor of love.
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1:43:26
Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Piano Trio in A minor op. 24 3. Poem. Moderato
from Weinberg: Piano Trio & Three Pieces for violin and viola [DG]
Gidon Kremer (v), Giedre Dirvanauskaite (c), Yulianna Avdeeva (p)
This is one that just by a glance at the cover is worth getting. Weinberg was Shostakovich’s good friend and – just maybe – an equally accomplished musical genius. (It becomes clear with further listening that Shostakovich’s adaptation of Hebrew folk musical strains had to have been influenced by his friendship with Weinberg, a Polish Jew whose immediate family was murdered by the Nazis.) Gidon Kremer continues his mission of ushering Weinberg into the upper strata of 20th C. composers where he belongs, joined here by the Lithuanian Dirvanauskaite (who appeared on Dobrinka Tabakova’s essential String Paths ECM release) and . (I often wonder, Coulkd anyone have a better life at 70 than Gidon Kremer? To which I often reply, no.) The piano trio is the main course on this one; the three pieces for violin and piano are very early works, before Weinberg had studied composition.
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1:53:34
Grażyna Bacewicz: Piano Sonata No. 2; II. Largo & III. Toccata
from Bacewicz: Piano Music [Piano Classics]
Morta Grigaliūnaitė
Another project to right a wrong – in this case, the relative neglect of a great composer. Bacewicz (1909-1969) was a virtuoso violinist and pianist as well as a prolific composer. Grigaliūnaitė is a younger Lithuanian – Bacewicz was Lithuanian on her mother’s side, Polish on her father’s – who made her concert debut at 12 by invitation of none other than Rostropovich.
Concentration Camp 