Classical Music – Page 18 – musicophilesblog – From Keith Jarrett to Johannes Brahms

A Follow-Up on Grieg’s Piano Concerto – Andsnes Still Wins

Disques en lice

I’ve mentioned several times that Swiss radio has two great shows, one in German, one in French, that both have the same approach, select 5-6 versions of a classical work, get 2-3 experts and a moderator in a radio studio, and have the experts compare these versions blindly. The German version is called Diskothek im Zwei, the French version is called Disques en lice.

I follow both regularly. I often don’t agree with the invited experts, but it is a really nice challenge to see if you listen to the same music without knowing who’s playing, you still like it (or maybe like it less if you’re not aware one of your heros is playing).

A similar concept exists with wine (my other passion), and unlike my wife who has a much better nose, I’m only average at blind tastings. Luckily, I usually do better with music.

Grieg’s piano concerto

I’ve already written about Grieg’s piano concerto previously in this post about Javier Perianes recent recording. There I mentioned that my all time favorite is the version with Leif-Ove Andsnes.

I’m a big Andsnes fan boy, as also documented in my recent commentary about his Beethoven concertos here. So I was really hoping that Disques en lice would include his version, as I wanted to ensure that I still like the version when actually I don’t know it’s him. Luckily for me they did (link to the show here).

Let me brag a little here (sorry!), but I recognized his version blindly in all three movements, and am still as enthusiastic about it as before! I really don’t know how one could do this concerto any better than Andsnes and Jansons.

The competition included:

The very recent Vadym Kholodenko recording on Harmonia Mundi with the Norjan Radion Orkesteri. Well, overall I kind of liked the version but must agree with the experts that the orchestra just isn’t the same level than the others, so this got kicked out after the first round (3 stars)
Nikolai Lugansky with Kent Nagano and the DSO Berlin: well, ok, but nothing special. Also got voted out rather rapidly, fine by me (3 stars)

The three versions that made it to the final round (3rd movement) are Andsnes, and these two:

Nelson Freire, Rudolf Kempe, with the Munich Philharmonic. Interesting version, the still very young Freire has tons of energy here. Unfortunately I liked the orchestral playing quite a bit less (4 stars overall). Nevertheless, this version convinced one of the three commenting experts

Radu Lupu, André Previn, London Symphony. This version won for the two other experts. Well, I get what they like, Lupu is obviously doing an outstanding job, and the way they play the 2nd movement is out of this world! Unfortunately, overall this version is just a tad too slow for me, losing too much energy in the process especially in the first movement (still 4 stars though).

Therefore, Andsnes remains my hero for Grieg, and I reconfirm my 5 stars for this album!

The Perianes version from my last post was played at the beginning of the show unfortunately “hors concours”, I still like this recording a lot

And the Moog recording I commented about last time I’ve seen reviewed twice now. Gramophone really loved it, Classica in the latest issue only give it 3 star, in line with my rating.

Two Recent Releases I Really Don’t Like

What “Not Good” Looks Like

I’ve been writing a lot about albums I really like, just witness the number of 4 and 5 star reviews (you can click on the link on the side bar, categories to find them) I’ve recently written (for more information about my personal rating scale, see here)

However, for this site to be useful to anybody, I strongly believe I also need to write about stuff I don’t like that much, so you can check if your taste really agrees with mine.

Too many reviewers seem to have their rating scale only between 4 and 5. How do you really separate the good from the bad this way? Obviously, a big part of this is just selection bias.

I assume, professional reviewers are not too much unlike me and much more prefer to write about stuff they like vs. stuff they don’t like. Same has happened on my site so far, with few exceptions.

My two main sources of classical reviews, Gramophone (UK) and Classica (FR) don’t shy away from low ratings, that’s what I like about them. Gramophone doesn’t use a rating scale beyond the Editor’s Choice, but you can clearly read from the text whether they are enthusiastic or not.

And Classica really doesn’t shy away from using 1 stars, given the two examples below. And unfortunately, I wholeheartedly agree with their assessment.

Dudamel, Barenboim and Brahms

Classical uses a 4 star plus “Choc” scale, which equals about my 5 star system. However, in their most recent October issue, I’ve seen a new rating of a hollow star which I had never noticed before, for this recent DG release of Barenboim for once back at the piano, with the young superstar Dudamel. Unfortunately, I must agree with Classica here. I really cannot find any positive element to these recordings of the two concertos that I love so much (how weird I haven’t mentioned them yet on the blog).

Honestly, 1 min into the opening of the first piano concerto I had enough; there was nothing at all of the drama and desperation that so much impressed me when I heard this first at the age of 17. I know Dudamel has many fans, but I have yet to hear a recording of him that I really like (admittedly, I’ve only heard a few). And when Barenboim comes in, it doesn’t get any better. I’m really thankful for streaming these days that let’s you listen to recordings without having to buy them, I’d really have major regrets for this one.

My rating: 2 stars (1 star for me really means un-listenable, and Brahms will always be Brahms, even if butchered like here).

For the Brahms concertos, you have many good alternatives, from pretty much every recording that Georges Szell ever made of them (be it Fleischer, Curzon, or Serkin), to Chailly with Freire for a more contemporary one.

Arabella Steinbacher Plays Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky

Here’s another disappointment: Arabella Steinbacher is a truly great violin player. However, from the opening moments of the Mendelssohn I knew something was very wrong. A very sweet tone with a lot of vibrato, but very little energy behind it.

And in comes the orchestra (let me open a little parenthesis here for fun: Mendelssohn is one of the very few orchestras that starts with the soloist, not with the orchestra, there’s an urban legend that a violinist player was relaxed at the beginning of the concert, assuming he’ll have to play Beethoven. The conductor gives him signal after signal, but the violinist doesn’t get it. Finally, the conductor desperately starts, the violinist after the first second realizes his mistake and raises up the violin literally last-minute. Parenthesis closed. If somebody has a source that this has really happened, please let me know) and it really doesn’t get any better.

The Tchaikovsky is equally uninteresting unfortunately.

Classica agrees with me, giving this recording a rather brutal 1 star and talking about a “lack of engagement” which nicely summarizes my feelings as well.

My rating: 2 stars (again, 1 star would be too brutal, I can listen to this, I just don’t want to).

Excellent alternatives are Janine Jansen on Decca for the Mendelssohn , and Julia Fischer for the Tchaikovsky (like the Steinbacher, on Pentatone).

Gramophone’s Artist of the Year, Paavo Järvi, and his Beethoven Symphony no. 4

Paavo Järvi

Maestro Paavo Järvi just got voted Artist of the Year as part of the yearly Gramophone Awards.

As much as I wasn’t totally in agreement with some of Gramophone’s other choices (see my comment here), I fully agree with this readers choice, in fact, I also voted for him.

The son of Neeme (see my review of his Tchaikovsky here) and brother of Kristjan, certainly comes from a very musical family. He’s been recording with a number of orchestras, in Frankfurt, Bremen, Paris and elsewhere, and is producing an enormous amount of recordings. In spite of this quantity, his quality has been consistently very high.

Beethoven’s symphonies

I just noticed I hadn’t written a single post on Beethoven’s symphonies yet. In a way, they are the summit of classical music, that all other composers after him looked up to, and have been recorded and played thousands of times.

So if you still bother to record them in the 21st century, you better have a good reason. And interestingly enough, it is often smaller or lesser known orchestras that really offer a fresh view on things, e.g. Osmo Vänskä’s cycle with the Minnesota Orchestra, or the young Kammerphilharmonie Bremen with Paavo Järvi here. Berlin, Vienna, and NY, you better be on your toes (and Berlin certainly did a smart and creative choice with Petrenko).

Deutsche Welle has published an excellent documentary on Paavo’s work with the Kammerphilharmonie, which can be found on Youtube (see part 1 at the end of this post).

Symphony no. 4 and 7

Why of all the albums did I pick symphonies no. 4 and 7?

Not not for my beloved symphony no. 7 (my preferred Beethoven symphony). But unfortunately, for this symphony, the definite recording has already been done some time ago, and while Järvi does an excellent job here, he cannot beat the legendary Kleiber version.

However, where I really think Järvi does a small miracle is symphony no. 4.

This symphony overall reminds me way to much of Haydn, and sorry to all Haydn fans, but his symphonies just don’t grab my attention enough (disclaimer: his string quartets and cello concertos are a different story. And I’m watching closely the Haydn 2032 project of Giovanni Antonini, that may eventually change my mind about the symphonies).

Big blocks of b-flat major orchestral tuttis all over the place, it is in a very unfortunate place between the monsters of the Eroica and the 5th, kind of the ugly step-child of Beethoven symphonies (the only one I like even less is the 8th).

Now what does Järvi do with this? Two words come to mind: Energy and transparency. This is not a recording that sounds like “Papa Haydn”. This is a recording that will have you sit on the edge of your seat all of the time, eagerly waiting what comes next. There is no moment to breathe, no moment to relax, it is tension, but a very positive one, all the time. This is exactly how this should be played!

Obviously, you can safely check out all other symphonies of the Beethoven cycle as well, you’ll never be disappointed by Järvi and the Kammerphilharmonie.

My rating: 5 stars

As promised above, part 1 of the documentary about Järvi’s Beethoven, you’ll find the three other parts on Youtube as well.

My Favorite Bruckner – Günter Wand’s Late Recordings With The Berlin Philharmonic

Anton Bruckner

Pretty much at the same time, around the end of high school, my two favorite composers were Brahms and Bruckner. As you can see, one survived and made it to the subtitle of my blog.

The other one, good old Anton, I listen too much less regularly these days. I still love mainly symphonies no. 4 and 7, but overall the broad romanticism and huge mountains of symphony blocks appeal less to me than they did at back then. Probably for similar reasons, I really still don’t appreciate Wagner that much, with some rare exceptions.

In parallel my taste moved backwards in time from the late romantic area to really appreciating Mozart and Bach. When I was really young I thought of Mozart as “too light”, and Bach as “could be composed by a computer, like painting by numbers”, Ah, the stupid arrogance of teenagers.

Anyhow, back to Bruckner. I still like him, even if I listen to his works only occasionally.

But if I do, it is usually with this box:

Anton Bruckner: Symphonies – Günter Wand – Berliner Philharmoniker

Günter Wand is one of those amazingly underrated conductors, and usually only well known by die-hard Bruckner fans. There is something special about Wand and Bruckner. To be fair, Wand has recorded the symphonies at least 3 times, from a very good cycle in Cologne in the seventies, to several recordings with the NDR Symphony Orchestra in Hamburg he lead for many years, to this one, where he got to lead the BPO for a selection of the symphonies.

I grew up on Wand’ reading with the NDR. I even had the pleasure of hearing him live twice, with Bruckner 4 and 8. So obviously I’m biased, and you should certainly also check out other Bruckner specialists like Eugen Jochum or good old Karajan (yes, you Karajan haters out there, his Bruckner is great. Mind you, I used to be a Karajan hater as well….).

I only got introduced to this set 3-4 years ago from a good friend of mine from high school, who attended some of the Wand concert with me. A I had kind of moved on from Bruckner, I simply stuck to my old CDs whenever I wanted to go back and hadn’t really looked in to new recordings for nearly 20 years.

So what do I like about this? Well, it’ best of two worlds, you get Günter Wand who knows Bruckner inside out, and really has a lot of insights to offer, and you get a world-class orchestra like the Berlin Philharmonic. The sound of the BPO is just perfect for Bruckner. As much as I like the NDR, they are obviously in a different league.

Wand approaches the symphonies in a very clean way: there is no romantic overload, no sweet sugary drama, just illustrating the actually rather introvert struggle of an underrated, very catholic Austrian organ player with an inferiority complex that Anton Bruckner apparently was for most of his life.

(Bruckner experts, if I painted a wrong portrait taken mainly from reading too many booklets, please correct me!).

My rating: 5 stars (I notice I’m giving too many five stars recently. But I still think this is purely due to selection bias of me wanting to write about music I really like and not some kind of star inflation).

You can get it here (Qobuz).

P.S. David Hurvitz disagrees with me and thinks Wand’s Hamburg recordings are superior to the BPO ones. You may want to check them out too if you find them, e.g. in this box set. You never know, I may eventually return to my “roots” as well.

UPDATE Jan 29, 2016: In the Feb 2016 issue of Classica magazine, the reviewers compared blindly ten selected versions of Bruckner’s 9th. Günter Wand’s BPO version comes out on top! Here’s the comment: “The best possible version for discovering this work. Pure music, marked by the seal of infinity and eternity” (French sometimes have a certain way of getting very poetic with their language).

Brahms Latest Work: The Clarinet Sonatas by Coppola and Staier

I’ve said it before, I’m a big fan of Andreas Staier. His Diabelli-Variations are outstanding (see review here). Therefore, I was rather disappointed not to like his recent release of the Bach harpsichord concertos (see here). It appears now that most other reviewers don’t share my opinion by the way. I’m still not convinced unfortunately.

But from Bach, let’s move more than a century later.

I haven’t reviewed any Brahms album for a while, which is weird given that he appears in my blog title.

Brahms’ Clarinet Sonatas op. 120

I must admit I wasn’t historically a big fan of these sonatas, I found them not very accessible.

These sonatas, as well as the Clarinet quintet & trio, were triggered by Brahms meeting the famous clarinet player Richard Mühlfeld. But with Andreas Staier, I had to give them a go, so I went ahead and purchased this 2015 Harmonia Mundi album.

Andreas Staier plays a Steinway on this album, which could be considered somewhat unusual given that he is known for playing historical instruments. Well guess what, this Steinway actually is from 1875, apparently the type that Brahms really appreciated.

On clarinet, we get the Italian Lorenzo Coppola, who plays a 2001 reproduction of a historic clarinet which is very similar to the one Mühlfeld played.

So we’re getting really close to what Brahms could have listened to in his final years. And all over sudden, the full beauty of these late works really becomes apparent.

6 Klavierstücke op. 118

However, to me (with my piano background), the true highlight on this album are Staier’s version of the 6 piano pieces op. 118. Let me clarify first of all that I love Brahms late piano pieces from op. 116-119, and op. 118 is a particular favorite of mine.

And here, especially the second Intermezzo (track 6) is played more beautifully than on any of my other recordings (I’ll be writing about some of them soon). Staier uses tons of rubato, but it comes fully naturally. There is so much intensity in this playing that I’ve had them on constant repeats quite regularly recently. Or take the “Romanze”, truly romantic indeed.

As usual on Harmonia Mundi, this is well recorded.

My rating: 4 stars for the clarinet sonatas (rating my preference of the repertoire here, not the playing), 5 stars for the op. 118.

P.S. If you like op. 120, you should know that there is also a version of these sonatas replacing the clarinet by a viola. The well-known viola player Nils Mönkemeyer has just released an album on Sony playing these sonatas.

This album is really quite beautiful and also worth checking out.

You can download the Coppola/Staier here (Qobuz) or here (eclassical)

The Gramophone Awards Winners 2015

So, the cat is out of the bag.

Let’s see how my crystal ball did:

Baroque Instrumental

Let’s start with Baroque Instrumental: As I predicted here, David Watkin wins. Gramophone calls it a “definitive” recording, and I concur.

Unfortunately, this is where my Crystal Ball stops working, or to put it otherwise my taste is not aligned with the panel at Gramophone.

Concerto

Let’s continue to Concerto.

Pires’ and Harding’s Beethoven wins. Well, as outlined here, this to me is a solid 4 star recording, but I’d have rather chosen both Weilerstein and Andsnes.

Chamber

I concur that the winning recording of the Pavel Haas Quartet is outstanding playing, it’s just the music that is less my cup of tea. But you really cannot blame the Pavel Haas quartet for that obviously.

Instrumental

Here I’m truly puzzled. I already wrote in my post that I wasn’t a particular fan of this album. How on earth this album could win over the magnificent albums of Levit and Grosvenor beats me.

Orchestral

One more comment on the Orchestral category, which I had kind of ignored as I’m not comfortable enough with Sibelius and Elgar to add value. Luckily, the only album that I actually know and like won:

This recording from the Lucerne festival is really Abbado at it’s best. I wasn’t a universal fan of his time in Berlin, but he’s done magnificent recordings both with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra he founded and also in Lucerne. He will be missed!

Gramophone Award Nominees – Baroque Instrumental – A Quick Note Before It’s Too Late

The list of nominees in the Baroque Instrumental category looked less attractive to me this year, already driven by the fact that I didn’t own any of the listed recordings. Plus the fact that the list contains 3x Vivaldi, who isn’t very high on my priority list.

But given that the winners will be formally announced tomorrow, I had a quick rather unprofessional scan, and let me pull out my crystal ball here on who should win in my humble rather biased opinion. Please take this with a huge grain of salt, it is based on rather limited listening and even more on gut feel than my previous posts here (instrumental), here (concerto), and here (chamber), where I actually spent some decent amount of time listening.

Too much Vivaldi

Just looking at the nominee list, without listening to the albums, I would have predicted Rachel Podger to win, as I usually love what she does. Based on the snippets I heard, she does well on the Vivaldi, too. But I don’t care enough about Vivaldi to actually buy this album.

Same goes for the two other candidates with Vivaldi albums, which I quickly streamed. I didn’t particularly like the Venice Golden Age album, although I usually like AKAMUS a lot. Maurice Steger’s flute concerto sounds ocasionally like Papageno on speed, but actually is quite a bit of fun. I may end up buying this eventually just for the good mood.

I only quickly skimmed the CPE Bach album of Rebecca Millers approach to the symphonies, but this is not repertoire I listen to a lot (CPEs keyboard concertos with Staier are much better), and what I heard didn’t motivate me to go much further.

I like Mahan Esfahani’s work elsewhere, but Hyperion is another label not allowing streaming, so I didn’t properly listen to this one either. I’m also much less familiar with Rameau overall, so anyhow I wouldn’t be a good judge. Probably worth checking out.

David Watkin

So let me get to the positive surprise of this lot: David Watkin’s Cello Suites on Resonus. I must admit that initially I kind of thought to myself “Seriously, another recording of the Cello Suites is all what we need” (note that I’ve recently praised Steven Isserlis excellent recording here).

I even had missed all the praise in the press this recording had previously received, probably due to the same biased thinking.

But then I started listening.

And honestly, I was very positively surprised, this version sounded incredibly “right” to me, intuitively exactly like it should have sounded. The historic cello he plays is probably part of it, I don’t know what it is, but if this recording doesn’t win in the category I’d be very surprised!

In less than 24h we’ll know more.

Disques en lice

Grieg’s piano concerto

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Dudamel, Barenboim and Brahms

Arabella Steinbacher Plays Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky

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Paavo Järvi

Beethoven’s symphonies

Symphony no. 4 and 7

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Anton Bruckner

Anton Bruckner: Symphonies – Günter Wand – Berliner Philharmoniker

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Brahms’ Clarinet Sonatas op. 120

6 Klavierstücke op. 118

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Baroque Instrumental

Concerto

Chamber

Instrumental

Orchestral

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Too much Vivaldi

David Watkin

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