Hugo Wolf's Italian Songbook with Damrau and Kaufmann

Forty-six songs, one after another in the space of 76.5 minutes takes a lot of digesting and I venture rarely into Hugo Wolf's Italian Songbook. I grew up with the recording by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, two singers I have never much cared for. I also have a recording by Fischer-Dieskau and Irmgard Seefried. I invested somewhat reluctantly in a third recording because the singers are Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann, both of whose voices I like very much.

Well, Damrau and Kaufmann easily take first prize as does their pianist, Helmut Deutsch. A lovely performance of the forty-six songs. It's a live recording, with the singers somewhat distant; when Kaufmann sings softly, it is sometimes difficult to hear that he is singing, let along what he is singing about, for example in the lovely opening of Nun lass uns Frieden schließen. However, for Wolf's Italian Songbook: it's Kaufmann and Damrau, with Deutsch. I doubt whether this recording will be bettered for many, many decades.

Three Young Women Violinists

It used to be said that when Jews left Russia, each of them carried a violin case. Move on a few decades, and it is now young women who carry the violin cases. After enthusing over Sueye Park (Korea) I am now enthusing over Francesca Dego (Italy) and Veriko Tchumburidze (Turkey). Ms Dego plays the first Paganini violin concerto; Ms Tchumburdize plays Bruch's genial Scottish Fantasy.

This is a devastatingly accurate performance of the Paganini, even down to truly superb left-hand pizzicati. And the accompanying Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under Daniele Rustioni even manages to sound like the Italian opera orchestra Paganini would have expected. I had never come across Ms Dego before a friend sent me this CD. I am considerably impressed.

Ms Tchumburdize has to be my favourite Turkish violinist. She seems to have won every violin contest that she has ever entered. The performance of the Bruch is affectionate and mellow. The work was a Heifetz speciality, and those used to his tempi may find Ms Tchumburdize's opening movement a bit leisurely. She does, however, have the technique and concentration to bring it off.

So three pretty devastating young women – and there are a lot more of them around today!

Emmanuelle Haïm in Handel Cantatas

I like Emmanuelle Haïm and her Concert d'Astrée. I like Handel's music, and I like the soprano Sabine Devieilhe. So I was first in line for a double CD from them all featuring three Handel cantatas, plus the trio sonata in B minor, with its lovely largo third movement. The 53 minute cantata Aminta e Fillide, with its plethora of favourite Handel tunes, comes on the first CD. The second CD sees the cantata Armida abbandonata, the cantata La Lucrezia, plus the trio sonata. A newcomer, the mezzo-soprano Lea Desandre, joins Devieilhe in Aminta, and she also sings alone in Lucrezia.

Haïm seems to like highly theatrical music, which is what we have here as Handel plunges in with his usual relish to abandoned females. Much of the music is very theatrical, and Haïm and her team relish the dramatics. Haïm seems to favour Handel over Bach (I know only of her recording of Bach's Magnificat), and maybe she has a point in playing to her strengths; Handel cantatas probably better suit her temperament, than Bach cantatas. Sabine Devieilhe is superb, as usual, and the new mezzo-soprano does really well; Haïm appears usually to favour mezzos over male altos or counter-tenors (don't we all).

Any Beckmesser criticisms? Racking my brains, I can say that some of the added ornamentation in the da capo soprano parts sounds a bit contrived and fussy. It's probably accepted period practice, but I prefer it to be discreet rather than sounding contrived; Haïm and Handel may not agree with me. Anyway, the combination of Handel, Haïm and Devieilhe sees me on auto-buy.

Antje Weithaas in Beethoven. Capuçon and Caussé in Mozart

I am frequently amazed at the recorded quality of much music broadcast and available over the Internet; in particular, broadcast engineers often reveal a great talent for recording balance. Two new concerts recently gave me special delight. From Leipzig on 10^th February, Antje Weithaas gave a superb performance of the Beethoven violin concerto, excellently backed by the MDR Sinfonieorchester Leipzig under the young Klaus Mäkelä. For a change, the orchestra made a real contribution to the proceedings, and this became genuinely a concerto for violin and orchestra, helped by exemplary balance and recording quality. Ms Weithaas has a slender tone that may not be ideal in Bruch or Brahms, but was admirable in the filigree arabesques that characterise so much of the Beethoven concerto solo part. I was not enthralled with her choice of cadenzas – Busoni in the first movement? After Beethoven's day, pretty well all composers preferred to write out their own cadenzas to prevent show-off soloists from going on and on and trying to make their own contribution. However, all in all this performance, from the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, pleased me greatly with its soloist, tempi, orchestral contribution, and recorded quality and balance.

On to a second concert, this time from a church near Gstaad in Switzerland on 26^th January where Renaud Capuçon and Gérard Caussé were the perfect combination in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. What a perfectly matched pair, and the recorded balance between the two was again demonstration class. The small band (Les Siècles) was conducted by François-Xavier Roth. Two minor flaws were the sound of the full band in a church acoustic, where the sound sometimes tended towards cavernous, plus a lot of noise that sounded like the Swiss army on the march, on occasions. However, all in all a perfect rendition of Mozart's miraculous score, and good sound. Commercial recording companies have some pretty tough competition nowadays.

Pavel Sporcl, the Gypsy Way, and the Civitas Ensemble

I have never liked commercial “popular” music, nor musicals or operetta. I do, however, like good folk music, including “gypsy” music from Central Europe, klezmer music, some traditional jazz, and much folk music from Kentucky and Tennessee, with singers such as Gillian Welch. The highly talented Czech violinist, Pavel Sporcl, has made something of a speciality of the gypsy music of Central Europe, with his band the Gypsy Way. “Gypsy” here embraces much of the traditional folk music emanating particularly from Hungary and Romania where folk, klezmer and gypsy have all overlapped over the centuries.

On a new double CD set called Alla Zingarese, Sporcl and his band go through their paces and the result is exhilarating and highly addictive listening. To my ears, it all sounds thoroughly “gypsy”. On the flip-side (as one used to say) the second CD is given over to a Chicago group Civitas Ensemble, headed by Yuan-Qing Yu from Shanghai, who is also the deputy leader of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The group features Ms Yu on the violin, a cellist, a clarinettist and a pianist; they join the Gypsy Way on the first CD side. Their six tracks are not really zingarese, but more music influenced by Central European folk music, such as Liszt's C sharp minor Hungarian Rhapsody played as a piano solo by Winston Choi, or an effective arrangement of Enescu's Romanian Rhapsody No.1 by Cliff Colinot. Most of the Civitas tracks feature mainly one solo instrument (the talented Ms Yu opens the proceedings with a five minute solo violin piece by Sylvie Bodorova). All enjoyable but, for my taste, lacking the authentic gypsy zing of Sporcl and his Gypsy Way group. I did not take to Lukas Sommer's Cigi-Civi, but no one writes contemporary music to appeal to me, and the piece only lasts for 3:47.

Most of the pieces on the Sporcl tracks are arrangements; nothing wrong with that and even, in the arrangement of Sarasate's evergreen Zigeunerweisen arranged by Lukas Sommer, the small group accompanying Sporcl's fireworks is probably more enjoyable and appropriate than the traditional piano or orchestra accompaniment. The 88 minutes on these two CDs go past quickly and gave me a great deal of enjoyment.

Volume 8 of Naxos Fritz Kreisler recordings

“Some wonderful playing, but some pretty rubbishy music”. So remarked an assistant at Blackwell's Music Shop in Oxford where I was buying a Strad box of three LPs of Kreisler recordings, many decades ago. I thought of the young man again today listening to Volume 8 of Naxos' complete Fritz Kreisler recordings. 24 tracks, all with wonderful playing, and some of pretty rubbishy music.

You will search in vain for recordings of Jascha Heifetz playing Kreisler pieces, bar a handful. Heifetz, a big fan of Kreisler all his life, knew he could never get near Kreisler on his own turf; listening to Kreisler playing his Liebesleid and Liebesfreud back in 1926, you realise that no one in the intervening 93 years has come anywhere near Kreisler in these pieces, with his subtle rubato and sense of Viennese bonhomie.

A peculiarity of the American music scene in the earlier decades of the last century is that violinists such as Kreisler, Elman and Heifetz were often recorded in “crossover” music of popular tunes. So on Volume 8 we find Kreisler lavishing his talents on pieces such as Lemare's “Moonlight and Roses”, or Elwyn Owen's “Invocation” and Irving Berlin's “Blue Skies”. Over in Europe, one cannot imagine violinists such as Oistrakh, Kogan, Adolf Busch, Kulenkampff, Schneiderhan, Prihoda or Thibaud turning to "popular" pieces.

Volume 8 makes one appreciate the advances that have been made in audio restoration over the past 90 years. The transfers here (by Ward Marston) are truly state-of-the-art and few allowances need to be made for the 90 year old sound. I love basking in the sound of Kreisler playing the violin and here, at the age of 51 and 52, he was still in very fine form. That rubato, that staccato, those double-stops like no one else plays them. Thank you, Naxos, for all eight volumes.

Thumbs Down for Schumann Lieder Box

Lured by a cheap price, and nostalgia for many of the recordings I listened to in my teens, I bought a box of four CDs of Lieder by Schumann, recorded by various artists during the 1940s and 50s. At last, I recovered Gérard Souzay in the Dichterliebe, a 1953 recording that I once owned on a second-hand LP in the 1950s. And Fischer-Dieskau – never my favourite singer – with the Opus 39 Liederkreis (1954) that I used to play on an old 10 inch LP.

The set also includes Irmgard Seefried in the Frauenliebe und Leben cycle (1957), a work I am not fond of because of its – to me – mawkish and outdated view of a woman's life.

“Lieder und Zyklen” is translated into sort-of English as “Art Songs and Cycles”. I am not sure what has happened to the English language, but Schumann wrote “Lieder” (which are songs, in English). Gustav Mahler's “Das Lied von der Erde” is usually rendered into English as “The Song of the Earth” (not the “Art Song of the Earth”). Perhaps the addition of “art” to “song” is so not to confuse teenage Americans, who seem to call everything a “song”; even Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, or Bach's Mass in B minor. Anyway, for teenage Americans: these are songs (Lieder, in German) sung in German. No translations are included, so either you understand 19^th German perfectly, or you rest blissfully ignorant as to what is being sung. I am not dogmatic about understanding what is being sung (particularly when it comes to 18^th century music), but 19^th century German Lieder, and French mélodies, are slightly different kettles of fish and we need to know what the songs are about. I know the Dichterliebe and the two Liederkreis, plus Frauenliebe und Leben well enough not to need a libretto, and I also know many of the Goethe Mignon settings well enough. But the other 30 or so ….

Those selling recordings of German Lieder, or French mélodies (or even “art songs”) should make it very plain if no libretto is included. Otherwise, for pretty well everyone, it's a bit like buying a car without an engine. Other singers include Peter Anders and Emmi Leisner, mainly from the 1940s. What they are singing about, I have no clue. Not a good buy (a German company called Membran Music). Fine transfers, however.

Arseny Tarasevich-Nikolaev

Whatever one's view of Russians — positive, or negative — they obviously produce streams of truly excellent composers, violinists, and pianists. The latest Russian pianist to grace my CD player is Arseny Tarasevich-Nikolaev, who turns out to be the grandson of the late Tatiana Nikolaeva. He plays an all-Russan programme of Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Scriabin, Medtner, Tchaikovsky; and two concert études composed by his grandmother. A nice touch.

There is some breathtaking pianism on this CD. Rachmaninov's familiar moments musicaux reveal Arseny to be a highly sensitive pianist, with lashings of Russian “dreamy” interpretations. Some slow pieces are too slow? Maybe, but he has the technique and the concentration to bring them off. This is a CD I'll keep close to hand. Highly recommended to lovers of great pianism and Russian music.

Whisky, Haydn, Mozart, Handel's Cantatas

I listened to nine string quartets by Haydn, played by the Takacs Quartet, and the Goldmund Quartet. Very fine indeed. I then listened to the six string quartets that Mozart dedicated to Haydn (played by the Hagen Quartett). It was like going from Grant's blended whisky (my favourite blend) to a 12-year old Caol Ila malt (my favourite single malt). Mozart's music is on a different plane from Haydn's. Nothing wrong with Josef Haydn; it's just that Mozart's music is so much more sophisticated, complex, and subtle and juxtaposing the two composers with their better quartets just points up the difference.

No such whisky contrast going from J.S. Bach to Georg Handel. I have just embarked on listening to the cantatas and duets that Handel wrote in Italy when he was in his very early twenties. Bach is Caol Ila; Handel a 15-year old Laphroaigh (to continue the whisky metaphors). They are very different in taste, but equal in quality. Handel had a gift all his life of being able to surround himself with highly gifted instrumentalists and singers: violinists, bassoonists, cellists, oboists, or whatever. He himself was a master on any keyboard (like Bach). Fabio Bonizzoni and his group La Risonanza, often together with the superb soprano Roberta Invernezzi, produced seven CDs of Handel's Italian cantatas, plus an eighth CD with the Italian duets. It's a magnificent collection for Handel lovers. (Glossa).

The works often need highly talented solo instrumentalists, plus first-rate singers, which makes most of them unsuitable for amateur performances. Be it the highly virtuoso violin solos in Il Delirio Amoroso (Cardinal Pamphili), written probably for a band headed by Arcangelo Corelli, or the virtuoso soprano needed for Tra le Fiamme (Pamphili, again) the 22 year old Handel displays amazing compositional powers. For Handel lovers, it is always interesting to meet familiar tunes or themes that he was to re-use throughout his life, albeit in new garbs to match changing players or singer circumstances. Either Handel travelled with huge trunks containing manuscripts, or he had a quill pen with many terabytes of extended memory.

I often bemoan the fact that pretty well all the CDs in my collection are listened to only once, or rarely thereafter. This does not hold true for the cantatas of Bach, or Handel; they are often spinning on my CD player.

"New Music"

Had I been alive and listening to music over two or three centuries ago, I would have been demanding: “New music! Not re-plays of the old stuff that I know already.” So Messrs. Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert et al scribbled away writing new music every week, or month, or quarter. Just to satisfy the listening public's demand for “new music”. Fast-forward to the twenty-first century: Listeners and players regard “new music” on a programme as a child regards a spoonful of honey after a horrid medicine. Graduates of music academies (including many well-known music critics) extol the virtues of “new music”. Just as, to prove their modern credentials, they extol the virtues of great women composers (on shaky evidence). And, at the extreme critical wing; black women composers of new music.

Being not a composer, nor black, nor a woman, I can speak without prejudice. I like good music be it played or composed by French, German, Jewish, Russian, British, Scandinavian, Chinese, Japanese, Czech, Polish, Romanian, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox .. the list goes on. Great music does not know sex, race, or nationality. Or time period. In the archives, there are kilos of music composed over the past three or four centuries, most of it rarely if ever played, and rarely if ever listened to. Do we really need “new music”? In my local supermarket, there is a complete aisle devoted to breakfast cereals. And almost another aisle devoted to different yoghurts. Do we really need yet another new yogurt, or breakfast cereal? Surely: enough is enough. Show me a piece of new music that is still being played and enjoyed after many decades, and I'll be mildly interested. Shostakovitch, Prokofiev, Khachaturian and Benjamin Britten — plus maybe just a few others — make the cut, but not many do. And after a lifetime of listening to music, there are still reams and reams that I have never heard. Josef Haydn wrote 68 string quartets; I've only heard a dozen or so, and know only a few well. Not to mention Domenico Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas. Or Donizetti's alleged 70+ operas. I sense we “need” new music like we “need” a new breakfast cereal.

In Praise of Handel

Currently, I am alternating reading a book by Jane Glover on “Handel in London” with listening to Handel's London operas (at the moment, it is Giulio Cesare with Marc Minkowski directing and Magdalena Kozena and Anne Sofie von Otter in the cast). Current fashion places Bach, Mozart and Beethoven on the triumvirate pedestal. Mozart and Beethoven (and probably Bach, also) had an extremely high regard for Handel, with good reason; Handel was an instinctive genius composer. His first London opera, Rinaldo (highest quality) was composed from scratch in two weeks, a few days after his arrival in England. It is next on my listening list. Top-class music poured out of Handel, as it poured out of Mozart and Schubert.

Unfortunately for us (and perhaps for his ultimate popularity) Handel wrote mainly just large vocal and choral works — around 42 operas, 120 cantatas, and 29 oratorios. Unlike Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, he wrote comparatively little in the way of significant instrumental or chamber music and he has no equivalent of Mozart's “Haydn” string quartets, or Bach's Goldberg Variations to ensure his continuing exposure in recital and concert halls. No great matter; in his chosen repertoire, he was king, and I shall never, ever grow tired of listening to Handel's music.

Sueye Park's recital

Fritz Kreisler was born in 1875 and for almost all of his long life he was a much-loved major violinist. His sound was highly individual, and when he played short pieces (or “encore pieces”) he played with simplicity, and from the heart. This endeared him to his listeners (and still does when one listens to his recordings from the earliest times until the early 1930s). No one played short pieces as entrancingly as Kreisler; not even Heifetz or Milstein. When Kreisler played something like his tambourin chinois, his heart took over and the head took a rest.

I recently greatly admired the young Korean violinist, Sueye Park when she played Paganini's 24 capricci, so I bought her new CD on which she plays 13 well-known and well-worn encore pieces. 12 of the 13 are pretty well standard fare, with just Edwin Grasse's Wellenspiel being less well-known. A pity Ms Park did not intersperse her selection with a few less heard items by the likes of Hubay, Vieuxtemps, Ysaÿe, Fibich, Drdla, Ries, et al. One can have just too many renditions of de Falla's Danse Espagnole.

Ms Park does include a work I really dislike: Heinrich Ernst's variations on the Last Rose of Summer (as I also dislike his Erlkönig arrangement). Virtuoso violin playing is one thing, but it should also remain musical. Playing a tune in double-stopped harmonics whilst plucking the accompaniment with the left earlobe might (for all I know) be possible; the result would be technically outstanding, but the musical value absolutely zero. Both Paganini and Ernst revelled in writing passages that involve long stretches of double-stopped harmonics, but the result, for the musical listener, is mere tedium, and “Bravo, the chimpanzee!” if the soloist succeeds in jumping the hurdle.

Ms Park is technically superb, and also a highly intelligent musician. She does, however, tend to play from the head rather than the heart, so the overall effect is very different from that left by Kreisler, for example. She also occasionally has a habit of emphasising the first beat in the bar, which distracts, for example, in her playing of Rachmaninov's Vocalise; where is simplicity in this lyrical piece? Viz also Dvorak / Kreisler's Songs my Mother Taught me. Ms Park is superb in virtuoso pieces, but a little less in her element where simple melodic playing is called for. Her rendition of Rachmaninov's Vocalise has nowhere near the singing simplicity of Heifetz, Milstein or Lisa Batiashvili.

All of which is a bit Beckmesser, since Ms Park does play superbly, and BIS does its usual exemplary job with recording and balance. I'll continue to look out for new recitals or recordings from Sueye Park. Maybe in 20 years time if she plays these pieces again, she can give her head a rest and throw away the music stand, and just play from the heart.

Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio with Gilels, Kogan, and Rostropovich

In my humble opinion, there were just two really great piano trio combinations in the twentieth century: Cortot, Thibaud, and Casals. And Gilels, Kogan, and Rostropovich. All six musicians were absolutely superb. Both trios broke up mainly because of disputing cellists, Casals objecting to his colleagues because of second world war politics, Rostropovich rowing with Kogan and then, later, becoming an émigré to the West in search of money. While they lasted, however, the two quite disparate trios were world-beaters.

I have long loved the 1952 recording made by Gilels, Kogan, and Rostropovich of Tchaikovsky's A minor piano trio, opus 50. The trio with one of Tchaikovsky's haunting melodies. I have the recording in various transfers, but have just acquired one more; highly satisfactory. The three friends (as they then were) play like three Russian angels. All three, I recollect, lived in the same prestige apartment building in Moscow; Kogan married Gilel's sister Elizabeta, herself an eminent violinist. For a Russian recording of 1952, the result is excellent. Perhaps the piano sounds a little tinny, but the strings make angelic sounds and the balance is absolutely fine – no mean feat in a piano trio where, all too often, the powerful piano and the gruff cello overpower the more slender violin. Not so here.

This newly-acquired transfer comes from Diapason (“les indispensables”) and includes Tchaikovsky's third string quartet, recorded by the Borodin Quartet, also in 1952. It is the best transfer so far, in my collection of Tchaikovsky's Trio. To complete my great joy at re-possessing this all-time classic, the CD cost me just €1.46 ordered from Amazon (France) and delivered from Germany at low-cost postage. There never were such times for music lovers.

Otto Klemperer in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony

When it comes to Beethoven symphonies, I am choosy. I like the 3^rd, 6^th, and 7^th. Also the first three movements of the 9^th, but I turn off at the bombastic finale. Otherwise for me, Ludwig van Beethoven is the string quartets, the sonatas for piano and violin, and many of the 32 piano sonatas.

By chance, I listened today to the 6^th symphony, in a recording from 1951 (Vox XPV 1068, in origin) sent to me long ago by a very good Dutch friend. The orchestra was the Vienna Philharmonic (labelled as the "Vienna Symphony Orchestra", possibly for contractual reasons). The conductor was Otto Klemperer. For the sound of that vintage, I feared the worst, but I was pleasantly surprised. The warm, silky sound of the Vienna Philharmonic came over loud and clear.

Otto Klemperer (born in Breslau, Germany, in 1885. Died in Zürich, Switzerland in 1973) was, arguably, the last of the great conductors of the central German repertoire (Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, Mahler). He, with Wilhem Furtwängler – with whom Klemperer refused to speak after 1945 – were probably the last two great conductors of that music, at that era. Now, we have Robin Ticcati, Gustavo Dudamel, or Daniel Barenboim. As a German Jew, Klemperer had an increasingly miserable life in Germany after 1930. As a staunch left-winger, he had an increasingly miserable life in America after 1940, culminating in the Americans refusing to re-issue his passport to enable him to travel internationally; he was saved (ironically) by the Germans who re-issued his German passport, freeing Klemperer – I don't recall him ever going back to America thereafter.

Whatever the racial affiliations and the politics. My two favourite recordings of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony are Furtwängler with the Vienna Philharmonic (1952) and Klemperer with the Vienna Philharmonic (1951). There is something about the Vienna Philharmonic in the early 1950s, with a very special and distinctive warm, seductive sound. And with Wilhelm Furtwängler, and Otto Klemperer. We can note in passing that Klemperer in 1951 was noticeably faster in the Pastoral than in later recordings, particularly in the Landleute third movement. We can also note that Klemperer's preference for having his woodwind to the fore pays excellent dividends in the Pastoral. This is a recording I had overlooked for many years (like so many on my shelves, alas). I shall overlook it no more.

Jan Dismas Zelenka

In Europe, the turn of the century from the 17^th to the 18^th saw hordes of highly talented composers of music scribbling away frantically, mainly to satisfy church and court employers. Amongst the scribblers were Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel, Antonio Vivaldi and, for a brief time, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. These four produced music of astonishing quality that still lives on today. Contemporaneously, in the depths of deepest Bohemia, Jan Zelenka was scribbling away, mainly at church music, with no less than twenty surviving masses. A generous friend sent me a recording that includes his 40 minute Missa Sancti Josephi.

The music is by an expert, with a surprising amount of frolicking and jollity (for a Mass). This is not “great” music on the scale of Bach's Mass in B minor, but it is immensely attractive and well written. I enjoyed it immensely, my enjoyment greatly increased by an excellent well-balanced recording (Carus-Verlag), four excellent soloists that include my much-admired Julia Lezhneva, she of the angelic soprano voice. Orchestra and Choir are from Stuttgart, and the efficient conductor is Frieder Bernius.

Zelenka grew up in a period when composers knew to keep musical numbers short and varied, otherwise the audience or congregation went to sleep, talked among themselves, or started a game of cards. So Zelenka's 39 minute Mass contains 13 different tracks, with the music well differentiated. He juggles his four soloists, one choir and one (large) orchestra like a real expert. I can't say I'm in the market for the other 19 Masses of Zelenka; but I'll certainly continue to enjoy this excellent recording and performance. Balancing the soloists, choir and orchestra cannot have been easy, but the Germans, in particular, appear to be highly skilled in that department.

Ginger Pork à la Bamboo Tree

This blog purports to deal with "Musicke & Food" but there is rarely any mention of food. So, nearing Christmas, here are details of my Number One dish for this week (with a nod towards the Bamboo Tree restaurant in Luang Prabang, who influenced my concept).

• pork fillet, cut into small pieces

• field or shitake mushrooms (cut small)

• root ginger (plentiful)

• Thai chillies, red and green

• green bell pepper

• salt, pepper

• olive oil suffused with chilli
  
• red Burgundy wine (to drink with the dish)
  
  Absolutely delicious! Melts in the mouth, tantalises the taste buds, and delights the intestines. Substitute lamb, beef, duck or chicken for the pork, if necessary, but stick with rich Burgundy wine.
  
  

Nemanja Radulovic and Khachaturian's Violin Concerto

Aram Khachaturian wrote his violin concerto in 1940 (a really bad time to launch a new work). It was quickly taken up by violinists, and sneered at by most Western critics because it was in D minor and had lots of catchy tunes, just when composers were supposed to be writing atonal serial music without a key signature or tune, or audience, in sight, and because Khachaturian was in the USSR, and thus a “Commie”. Music critics pre-date Mr Trump for bigotry. Violinists, however, loved it and still do, after nearly 80 years. And I have loved the concerto, for many, many decades.

I have 26 different recordings of the work, the earliest being Louis Kaufman in 1945, followed by David Oistrakh in 1946/47/65. Then Gerhard Taschner in 1947 and 1955. Then Leonid Kogan in 1951 and 1958. Then Julian Sitkovetsky in 1954 and 1956. Then Ruggiero Ricci in 1956. Then Mischa Elman — no less — in 1959, and Henryk Szeryng in 1964. The most recent recordings I have are by Julia Fischer (2004) and James Ehnes (2013). And Nemanja Radulovic (2018). If the critics sniff, violinists do not; with good reason.

Top of the list for me when I want to listen to Khachaturian's concerto are Julian Sitkovetsky in Romania with Niyazi conducting (1954) and Leonid Kogan in Boston with Pierre Monteux conducting (1958). Formidable competition for Mr Radulovic; how does he measure up?

Nemanja Radulovic is an immensely gifted violinist, hailing from Serbia. He looks a bit like Rasputin and records for the 21^st century version of Deutsche Grammophon, thus the liner booklet and publicity full of photos of Mr Radulovic, with poor old Khachaturian getting just a brief mention. Deutsche Grammophon is now just a “brand”, as the jargon would have it and bears little resemblance to the previous highly-respected German company.

Sitkovetsky, Kogan, and Oistrakh plunge headlong into Khachaturian's exotic music. Radulovic plunges headlong into highly-sophisticated virtuoso violin playing. The Borusan orchestra of Istanbul (ex- Constantinople) accompanies dutifully, but one wonders how Khachaturian, an Armenian, would have reacted to the idea of Turks playing his music. The massacre of around 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks is hardly ancient history. Whatever; the Turks don't play with too much feeling or enthusiasm compared, for example, with the Romanian radio orchestra under Niyazi for Sitkovetsky where, in the second movement, the Romanians swoon into the music. Listening to Radulovic is a bit like listening to Vladimir Horowitz; one admires the playing, whilst the music takes second place. Radulovic's playing in the finale is equal to any of his competitors; he is, after all, a super-virtuoso, and the finale is his best movement of the work.

I am conscious of being a bit sniffy concerning Radulovic; not that he and his many fans will worry. My favourite musicians are those like Adolf Busch, Artur Grumiaux, Maria Pires, Clara Haskil, Wolfgang Scheiderhan, Igor Levit, who get inside the music and then play it from the heart. I am uneasy with “star” performers where the spotlight is focused on “me, me, me”. I'd probably have sniffed at Paganini had he been around in my lifetime. 'Sorry, Niccolò, but it just isn't my kind of thing'.

In Praise of Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach has been dead for 268 years, yet his music still lives on and, for most of that time, connoisseurs of fine music have always put Bach as Number One on the pedestal of great composers; there is no reason to suppose that this will change for the next 268 years. I first came across Bach and his music when I was around 10 years old (I grew up in a music-loving family). As I have related before in this blog, the very first concert I ever attended at the age of about thirteen was of Bach's Mass in B minor. Interrogating my catalogue of recorded music I possess, I find I have recordings of 1016 pieces of music by Bach, and I find that more and more of my listening — especially in the evening — is of Bach's music. Bach's output over the 65 years of his life was prodigious; the man scribbled away for almost all his life and all his time. There are few real peaks in his output; the Mass in B minor, the St John and St Matthew Passions certainly qualify as “peaks” but pretty well all the rest is just solid, great music be it for voices, solo instruments, or baroque bands.

I frequently ask myself what makes Bach so special, and the answer is usually somewhat complex. Here are a few ingredients for Bach's greatness:

There is always something going on, in Bach's music. “Too much counterpoint, and Protestant counterpoint, at that” Thomas Beecham is reputed to have growled. Bach loved counterpoint, he loved multi-layered music; in many instances, the “accompaniment” is even more interesting than the solo line, viz. many of the sections in the 200 or so cantatas. This makes listening to Bach interesting. His contemporaries, such as Handel and Vivaldi, did not go in much for counterpoint, which had gone out of fashion with much of polyphony. (This does not make Handel's and Vivaldi's music less interesting; it just points up one of Bach's Unique Selling Points).

Bach knew about the attention spans of his audience. Folk musicians, and American popular song writers, also know about attention spans, which is why individual songs or instrumental pieces usually last only around five minutes. Similarly, Bach — like other 18^th century composers — makes sure usually that no individual piece or section lasts longer than five or six minutes. The longer works, like the Passions and the Mass, are broken up into varying sections. It is true that variations such as the Goldberg Variations last much longer, but 30 or so variations within a 60 minute work contain a lot of variety. The Chaconne of the D minor partita for solo violin lasts around 13 minutes, but, again, a chaconne is a series of variations on a ground. Plenty of variety. As the centuries rolled on, music in the 19^th and 20^th centuries became more and more bloated – think of Mahler's 8^th Symphony, or Wagner's Tristan & Isolde. Folk and popular music escaped the bloat movement, luckily for their popular appeal.

Bach's music is never glib, showy or flashy. Pretty well everything is at a very high level, and even Bach under pressure and indulging in music-processing manages to be interesting.

Along with his fascinating counterpoint, Bach can often indulge in some pretty weird harmonies, as in the bass aria Ächzen und erbärmlich Weinen in the church cantata Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen. Listening to Bach's modulations and harmonic structures is a fascinating exercise in its own right. And, as John Eliot Gardiner has pointed out, so much of Bach's music — even the church music — incorporates dance rhythms of the early 18th century: gavottes, bourées, sarabandes, gigues, passpieds, sicilianos, etc. This gives Bach's music a constant air of rhythmic vitality and interest.

So: Interesting music. Fascinating music. Absorbing music. Music with a constantly varied rhythmic, sonic and harmonic structure. In my view, Johann Sebastian Bach fully deserves his gold medal in the musical Olympics. I am immensely happy to have been able to visit his grave, and the city where he was born, and the church where he was baptised. Bach!