Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire / Pascal Rophé MICHAEL JARRELL Émergences-Résurgences - 4 Eindrücke - ...Le ciel, tout à l'heure encore si limpide...

 

ORCHESTRAL WORKS

 

Tabea Zimmermann / Javier Perianes CANTILENA

                                                                    CANTILENA

Arcanto Quartett QUATUORS À CORDES

Admirers of the Arcanto Quartet will lap this disc up, and it deserves to be a spur to anybody who has not yet been alerted to this ensemble’s expertise, panache and interpretative perception. Previous discs of Brahms and Bartók have shown how the players, while possessing personalities of their own, coalesce and strike sparks off one another, instinctively sensing opportunities for crisp, collaborative counterpoint, for quick reactions, for rich, lyrical togetherness and for poetic eloquence as well. On this disc the landmark French quartets of Debussy and Ravel are combined with a later-20th-century classic by Henri Dutilleux, his Ainsi la nuit, completed in 1976. The playing throughout is masterly, and also thoroughly involving in terms of both technique and expressiveness.

The interpretation of the Debussy Quartet has sinew and propulsion, with that apt shading of dynamics and subtlety of nuance that have become hallmarks of the Arcanto’s distinctive and distinguished style. Delicacy and fluency are equally embraced in this commanding performance, as they are in the Ravel, where colouristic finesse is allied to clarity of articulation, sharp definition of thematic ideas and a warmth and energy in the overall characterisation of the music. With its broad outlook on the quartet repertoire, the Arcanto bring no less imagination to Dutilleux’s Ainsi la nuit, in which the short, epigrammatic miniatures that go to make up this seven-movement piece are played not only with complete control of the practical aspects but also with a gripping immediacy, personality and kaleidoscope of fascinating detail. (Gramophone)

Arcanto Quartett / Jörg Widmann WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART Clarinet Quintet - String Quartet K.421

If you want a recording of Mozart’s Quintet on a conventional clarinet, Jörg Widmann and the Arcanto Quartet are up there with the best. Using a basset clarinet, with its treacly extra low notes, Romain Guyot or Matthew Hunt (with Ensemble 360) bring more Papageno-ish fun to the finale. But few performances I know rival Widmann and the Arcanto for mingled refinement, imagination and sensitive give and take.

In the first two movements the players balance autumnal lyricism with more than a hint of period-style astringency. Tempi – not least in the flowing Larghetto – are on the brisk side, textures crisp and lucid, with sparing string vibrato, dynamic contrasts unusually wide. In the Minuet’s second Trio, Widmann creates two distinct characters, yodelling blithely, then digging with a vengeance into his deep, chalumeau arpeggios. The whole performance combines illuminating detail with an unerring sense of the music’s larger shapes, whether in the mounting harmonic tension of the first movement’s development or the floating serenity of the Larghetto, clarinet and first violin locked in tender colloquy.

On their own, the Arcanto, lean and sinewy of tone, are no less eloquent in the D minor Quartet. In the opening Allegro they stress the music’s elegiac fatalism rather than its agitation. Rarely will you hear such intense pianissimo playing in the mysterious – and still shocking – remote modulations at the start of the development. Here and elsewhere their response to mood and colour is matched by their care for balance and contrapuntal clarity. Perhaps the Arcanto’s rubato in the Minuet’s serenading Trio totters on the edge of winsomeness. But their vivid characterisation of the finale’s variations, from the truculent cross-rhythms of No 2 to the chaste tenderness of the D major variation, sets the seal on a desirable Mozart coupling, recorded in an aptly intimate acoustic. (Richard Wigmore / Gramophone)

Mischa Maisky / Berliner Philharmoniker / Zubin Mehta DVORÁK Cello Concerto RICHARD STRAUSS Don Quixote

These performances were recorded in front of an audience in Berlin's Philharmonie during December 2002. Maisky has dedicated this disc to his old mentor, Gregor Piatigorsky, who died thirty years earlier. Piatigorsky, of course, was a master in this repertoire, and his recordings of it endure even today. Maisky is a fine cellist, but it is less likely that these readings will stand the test of time the way that Piatigorsky's have.

It's not because Maisky lacks his mentor's technical ability. The problem is with the interpretations. Maisky is willful, much as Leonard Bernstein was when he conducted the Dvořák with Maisky back in the 1980s, but without Bernstein's electric personality. In spite of it all, there's a reticence to Maisky's playing that is out of character with this music. This reticence is emphasized by Mehta's conducting, which is correct, but thick and not very interesting. It's as if Mehta is trying to remove the last possibility that some listeners might find these works vulgarly exciting. (If only Mehta would reclaim the passion he had access to in the 1960s and 70s!) The coda to the Dvořák's opening movement, for example, doesn't get anyone's adrenaline flowing, and the opening minutes of the finale, usually so compelling, are even more stolid. (For what its worth, Maisky comments that he has removed some of the "distortions" that have become part of this work's tradition since the very first performance.)

Don Quixote is even more problematic. Mehta dusts off every single orchestral detail with care, but in terms of emotion, he and Maisky draw an almost complete blank. The cellist doesn't succeed in painting a multifaceted portrait of the knight. Shorn of its humanism, as it is here, Don Quixote is not much more than a series of noisy but cleverly orchestrated episodes. (Raymond Tuttle)

Thomas Demenga / Hansheinz Schneeberger / Tabea Zimmermann JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH - SÁNDOR VERESS

Under Demenga’s bow, Bach’s Suite No. 1 for Solo Cello in G Major flickers with candlelit intimacy, honed like the wood from the instrument through which it emotes in that distinct and mineral tone. One imagines the room where it was first practiced, walls dancing in a quiet play of light and shadow: the player’s arched head, swinging hands, lithe fingers curling about the neck of the one who sings. As to the later suites, Demenga brings a unique mix of fluidity and rusticity to his sound, but above all pays attention to negative spaces in a way that any accomplished Bach interpreter must. We hear this in the pauses of the Courante and in the substantial attentions of the Sarabande, which he suffuses with a downright soulful air. And through the subtle dramatic shape he imparts to the Menuets he dances his way to a reflective brilliance in the Gigue.

With this perfect tetrahedron so thoughtfully folded before us, Veress’s 1935 Sonata for Violin may seem to break the symmetry. Yet the sonata, among Veress’s first published works, more importantly reveals an economy of notecraft on par with the Baroque master. Its slow-fast-slow structure betrays a more complex and organic geometry that begins with a jig of Bartókian proportions and seeps through the Adagio’s quicksand, only to rise again, grabbing the tail of gorgeous gypsy air into the fresh air of the final leap. Violinist Hansheinz Schneeberger, who made his ECM debut with Demenga on the latter’s first Bach pairing, plays this jewel with an intensity and focus familiar to anyone who enjoys Kim Kashkashian’s take on solo Hindemith. Despite the meager comparisons I’ve attempted to draw to other such composers, this music thrives with a forward-looking robustness all its own.

The light at the end of this tunnel comes in the form of Veress’s Sonata for Cello. Composed in Baltimore, the 1967 piece also takes a three-movement structure, this time marked “Dialogue,” “Monologue,” and “Epilogue,” which, as Holliger notes in an accompanying essay, takes us through an inner turmoil on the path toward self-liberation. For me, the most solitary movement is the Dialogue. Its dirge-like density betrays an ecstatic turmoil while keeping a hand cupped to the ear of some cherished and unrecoverable stillness. By contrast, the Monologue seems almost resolute as it traces fingers blindly through the ashes, from which the final movement rises in its own agitated way with assertion on the tongue. As a student of Veress, Holliger no doubt took on some of his mentor’s quirks, and the influence of said Epilogue rings clearly in Trema.

Violist Tabea Zimmermann joins the roster for the Trio for Violin, Viola and Cello, backing us into 1954. The 20-minute piece takes two movements, the first of which moves like molasses into a dulcet and spectral territory ahead of its time, while the second brings the patter of urgency to a journey of immense detail and brilliance.

Of this journey the lowly reviewer can make no definitive claims. Naysayers of the modern may make a delightful discovery or two along the way, even as they cling to Bach, while defenders of the twentieth century will immediately recognize that its music would be nowhere without him. Either way, I can only commend Demenga and ECM for an ongoing commitment to bring their programming alive with the benefits of (im)possibility. (ECM Reviews)