‘Straus’
Yuja Wang, piano; Yo-Yo Ma, cello; Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra; Boston Symphony Orchestra; Andris Nelsons, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)
This anthology of Strauss’s orchestral works is the first evidence of the much-discussed alliance Andris Nelsons forged between his orchestras in Boston and Leipzig, an innovative approach to overtime that failed to deliver much in the concert hall. Unfortunately, these seven discs don’t amount to much either – at least interpretatively.
That’s not to say the set is unpleasant. Far from it: if you only see Strauss as a composer to enjoy, then Nelsons is your man. The sheer mass and detail of the sound he delivers is astonishing and often hard to resist, although it’s sad to hear that two orchestras that once had strikingly different timbres now seem almost indistinguishable (apart from a speck darkness in the superior Leipzig strings and a piercing brilliance in the Boston brass).
But the sort of conductors Nelsons is sometimes thought of as the successor to—say Herbert von Karajan or Rudolf Kempe—knew Strauss was more than just opulence. Nelsons knew this once too. He recorded many of these works with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra about ten years ago, and those records were full of bite, suspense and drama. The new ones are slacker, slacker, with long periods of strangely introspective, even aimless conducting. Try the sunset from “An Alpine Symphony” or the fantasy of “Die Frau Ohne Schatten” or “Don Juan” – more of a Falstaff here, but without the jokes.
It’s clearly Nelson’s mature take on Strauss, and fair enough. Yet it is not a view that does the composer much justice. DAVID ALLEN
‘Belladonna’
Mary Halvorson, guitar; Mivos Quartet (Nonesuch)
Like her teacher Anthony Braxton, composer and improvisational guitarist Mary Halvorson prefers not to talk about genre categories. (“I like being able to operate in the intermediate areas,” she told a recent interviewer.) But with an album of string quartet music as strong as this one, she deserves as much fame in the classical field as she keeps in the jazz community. .
The five works on ‘Belladonna’ contain through-composed parts for the Mivos Quartet — a group that also excelled in the music of jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire — and show Halvorson’s keen ear for the slightly bent earwig. “Nodding Yellow” opens with lines for cello taking off unpredictably. But the central gesture is clear enough that later variations on the pattern help keep the piece united. Meanwhile, her judgment as a bandleader and arranger is evident in her own playing, including improvisation; short, precise hockets between her guitar and the quartet provide a sense of launch during “Flying Song”.
In that and other work, Halvorson contributes a number of feverish solos. (Her use of a pitch-shifting pedal effect is reliably exciting.) But during some pieces she chooses to decorate the underlying quartet music with delicacy, as on ‘Moonburn’. And her range shows no signs of shrinking: The Mivos players also appear on half of “Amaryllis,” a simultaneous release album that otherwise features a more swinging, jazz-oriented ensemble. SETH COLTER WALLS
Bach: The Complete Cello Suites
Bruno Philippe (Harmonia Mundi)
Not yet 30, cellist Bruno Philippe has in recent years – with elegant understatement and a serene tone – recorded music by Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Myaskovsky, Brahms and Schumann. I first met him in March, with the Jupiter ensemble, when he was gentle in the fireworks of the finale of a Vivaldi concert. And he has now been pushed further back in time, releasing his interpretation of the pinnacle of the Baroque cello: Bach’s six suites for the instrument.
Philippe’s sound, soft even on metal strings, is more like the gut he uses here. His Bach is ingenious and airy, light but not too fast, with subtle, stylish decorations in a few repetitions. Dark moods are prevented from becoming too gloomy; his Sarabandes are not milked for melancholy.
The last three suites show him at his best. He embraces the knots of the Prelude of the Fourth and breathes audibly as the Sarabande quietly builds intensity. There is a dash in the first Bourée that follows, and the second is fleshy and then suddenly delicate. The Allemande of the Fifth Suite is sensual, the Courante robust; the deceptively simple Sarabande has an elongated legato flow, before a bursting Gavotte and the lingering energy of the Gigue. Philippe accompanies the Prelude of the Sixth Suite through a series of emotions, from sunrise to sunset, before delivering a sweeping Allemande, a painful Sarabande and – in a striking conclusion for a mood-lifting recording – a glittering Gigue. ZACHARY WOOLFE
Le Monde Selon George Antheil
Patricia Kopatchinskaya, violin; Joonas Ahonen, piano (Alpha)
George Antheil (1900-59) was a technophile, self-confessed bad boy of music; regardless of whether that’s true, he didn’t like his way into canon. Here, however, this American composer receives a tribute that places him in a line of innovators from Beethoven to the mid-20th century – traced by the daredevil violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and an eager partner in the pianist Joonas Ahonen.
The French title – “The World According to George Antheil,” in English – is a nod to his years in Paris, when the album’s Sonata No. 1 for violin and piano was written, and when he was in the company of celebrities like Ezra. Pound, Jean Cocteau and, for an argument, Stravinsky. Antheil would perform his works alongside, say, something from a century earlier, and Kopatchinskaja and Ahonen do the same by programming Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor. It is a fiery and freely interpreted account, reminiscent of the fearless, unpredictable and sometimes unwieldy recordings of Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich from the 1990s.
Like the Beethoven, the Antheil is in four movements, but it combines traditional form with a thoroughly modern sound, which in this reading buzzes with percussive and metallic timbres at breakneck speed. Looking beyond Antheil’s generation, the album also features pieces by Morton Feldman and a nocturne by John Cage, works that subtly recall the sonatas but also stand alone as studies in sound-making and extremity-of power and softness, of overtone-rich plains. Performed with a discipline bordering on mechanical, they couldn’t fit better in a world, according to George. JOSHUA BARONE
Schoeck: ‘Elegy’
Christian Gerhaher, baritone; Basel Chamber Orchestra; Heinz Holliger, conductor (Sony)
Othmar Schoeck wrote his first song cycle, ‘Elegie’, in the early 1920s, as modernism overtook post-romanticism and his torrid relationship with pianist Mary de Senger was overhauled. Chris Walton’s biography of the Swiss composer describes a charismatic bohemian and feverish but capricious lover who railed against atonality and the bourgeois institution of marriage, flirting with both. Like Schubert’s “Winterreise”, “Elegie” has 24 songs, sources of melody and a theme of amorous abandonment. But Schoeck’s work, for baritone and chamber orchestra, derives its strength from a finely tuned mastery of instrumental color.
In a new recording with the Basel Chamber Orchestra and conductor Heinz Holliger, Christian Gerhaher, a Schoeck champion, plays his luscious baritone in declamatory lines and overarching phrases, reaching effortlessly for clear high notes. His voice frightensly fades into rest without deceiving the full values of the notes.
Impermanence dominates: a string or woodwind instrument, sometimes doubling the vocal line, sighs and disappears against a stark orchestral landscape. Many songs hover around two minutes and fade quickly like lilacs in a vase – fragrant, blooming, short-lived. Gerhaher and the players liberate the listener from these minor deaths in the last and longest track, “Der Einsame”, which sustains its delicately spun lines in soft A major and makes peace with loneliness. OUSSAMA ZAHR
