Saturday 30 January 2021

Beethoven's Violin Concerto -- and Antje Weithaas

Ludwig van Beethoven's one and only concerto for violin and orchestra is something of a strange beast. Written in 1806, it is stranded between classical, 18th century concertos, and the romantic, 19th century. Beethoven was not a violinist, and his concerto is very much for violin and orchestra. It can be played as a left-over from the 18th century, or as a precursor of the 19th. For me, it makes sense as a concerto written in 1799 + 7, which may be why I almost always prefer it played by classical German violinists such as: Erich Röhn, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Georg Kulenkampff, Adolf Busch, Katrin Scholz ... and a few others among the 87 on my shelf.

I currently have 87 recordings of the concerto, having evicted many. Violinists on my shelves begin, alphabetically, with Kristof Barati, and end with Frank Peter Zimmermann. Today I listened to it played by Antje Weithaas, a classical German violinist, if ever there were one. The Sinfonieorchester Leipzig was conducted by Klaus Mäkelä, and the performance (off-air) took place in the Leipzig Gewandhaus on 10th February 2019. The first movement was played as a true allegro (ma non troppo). The balance between violin and orchestra was excellent, and this was a concerto for violin and orchestra (such as the one with Erich Röhn and the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Furtwängler). All kudos to Mäkelä and the Leipzigers. The performance would have earned my three stars, were it not for the cadenzas throughout (including the first movement). After Beethoven, composers learned to supervise cadenzas (Mendelssohn with David, Brahms with Joachim, Khachaturian and Shostakovich with Oistrakh). Beethoven left no violin cadenzas, so we are at the mercy of fashion, novelty, and notoriety. If I had the energy, I'd re-burn the Weithaas CD to put the cadenzas on separate tracks so I could press “skip” each time.


Tuesday 19 January 2021

Andras Schiff: "Music Comes Out Of Silence"

Books about music by eminent musicians are rare. Books about music are usually written by amateurs, journalists, critics, or academic musicologists. A refreshing glass of water from an eminent musician is the book “Music comes out of Silence” by the Hungarian pianist Andras Schiff. Schiff is a celebrated pianist, but I know his playing only from a recording in a Brahms piano quintet (with the Takacs Quartet). No views on his playing, but I loved his book and find it engrossing reading. Excellent ideas on cadenzas, “original instruments”, pianos versus harpsichords and clavichords. On most pages he has me nodding in agreement. The book is interspersed, interestingly, with his views on modern Hungarian politics, and on growing up in a Jewish community in Hungary during the 1950s and 60s, and in the communist state for many years thereafter.

Schiff, born in Budapest in 1953, is roughly of my generation (albeit a decade or so younger) so we share many of the same experiences and views as to conductors and instrumentalists. Schiff is a devotee, above all, of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert (with a few oddities such as Schumann, Mendelssohn and Bartok). His views are stimulating and thoughtful and we usually agree: “does anyone really enjoy 75 minutes of harpsichord playing?” when discussing Bach's Goldberg Variations. Many of his youthful heroes such as the Busch String Quartet, and Otto Klemperer, are also my youthful heroes, and I was interested to read that he, like me, grew up in the 1950s with a 78 rpm set of the Mendelssohn violin concerto played by Yehudi Menuhin (with George Enescu conducting). Halfway through reading his book, I looked out Edwin Fischer's recording of Bach's 48 Preludes & Fugues, and they will be next in my CD player. Interesting books get you thinking and reminiscing. My interest piqued by Schiff's thoughts on Bach's Goldberg Variation, I have ordered a CD of the work recorded by him and I'll see how it checks out against my current favourite (Beatrice Rana). Reading between the lines, I sense that Schiff and I agree on thumbs down concerning Glenn Gould in the Goldbergs. We both appear to agree, however, on the absolute pre-eminence of Johann Sebastian Bach. He is a little more pro-Beethoven than I am, but that may be down to him being a pianist. We both agree on Mozart and Schubert though, again as a pianist, Georg Frideric Händel does not get much space in Schiff's reminiscing, and we have to disagree on Bela Bartok (but Schiff is a Hungarian, after all). He appears to be a less enamoured of the music of Rachmaninov and Shostakovich than I am, but maybe again that's because he is Hungarian and they were Russians.

As I started off by saying: stimulating and thoughtful books by practising musicians are rare. “Music comes out of Silence” by Andras Schiff is a laudable exception and makes stimulating reading for music lovers, as well as for pianists and keyboard players.


Saturday 16 January 2021

Sandrine Piau in Handel: "Between Heaven and Earth"

My long-serving Marantz CD Player went kaput when the CD tray refused consistently to open, and I was left during lockdown with around 1000 CDs and no means of listening to them. Utter frustration. Ebay supplied a replacement Marantz within two days; removing the old player, and installing the new, was easy but both needed me to lie on the floor on my stomach: and then to get to my feet again afterwards. Easy when you are 18 years old; perilous when you are 80.

 I celebrated the new player with Handel; a superb CD titled “Between Heaven and Earth”, with arias and recitatives in English sung by the wonderful honeyed soprano of Sandrine Piau, one of my all-time favourite singers. The Accademia Bizanta supplied the accompaniments, with some orchestral interludes. Excellent recording by Naïve. Gold-standard music for 77 minutes, with wonderful melodies, wonderful singing, and excellent instrumentalists. Handel's music is still going strong after some 220 years, and deservedly so.

 

Wednesday 6 January 2021

Stars of 2020

I became interested in “classical” music at the age of around 10 years old, coming from a musical family. Since then, I have listened to music for around 70 years and now have a current collection of around 1,000 CDs, replacing my previous collection of hundreds of LPs. Most of my listening is to recordings of the past, favourites over many decades, such as the Busch Quartet from the 1930s. But, occasionally, a new classic pops up on my personal radar. My two classics from 2020 were:

Vikingur Olafsson playing short pieces, preludes and fugues by Bach. And Olaffson playing an imaginative selection of short pieces by Rameau and Debussy.

Renaud Capuçon with Bertrand Chamayou and Edgar Moreau in chamber music and sonatas by Saint-Saëns.

Three CDs that have given me immense pleasure, and are never filed away on my shelves with the other 1,000.