John Williams: Guitar Recital—Paganini, Scarlatti, Giulani and Villa-Lobos

When discovering classical music more than 35 years ago, this Sony Essential Classics was an early favorite and John Williams (not to be confused with well-known film composer) demonstrates his utter mastery of classical guitar with this compilation of recordings made from 1965 to 1976 and released in 1996.

These interpretations of works dating back to Domenico Scarlatti ad up to Hector Villa-Lobos are impeccably performed, beautifully recorded and remastered, but the liner notes by Jackson Braider observe that "the guitar was like a spinster aunt in a Jane Austen novel—a presence of sorts, but not one to be reckoned with.  

This was because, as volume became more predominant, the instrument could not satisfy the demand and so it became "something of an afterthought, when it was thought of at all.  Key to its revival was Andrés Segovia, the Spanish master, whose use of the guitar was, Braider notes, a kind of antidote to the massive symphonic sounds of Wagner, Mahler, Bruckner and others, so that it "offered listeners a sonic respite after all that noise.

  Segovia not only transcribed works from established composers, as is the case with these recordings, but also encouraged new compositions, though it was pointed out that the relentless attention to solo guitar recitals and recordings, with ensemble work not part of his approach.  From the 1950s, however, the efforts of Williams, Julian Bream and others challenged that orthodoxy.  

Braider described the "strange and sometimes sorrowful history of the guitar," though he notes that Paganini was a virtuoso on the instrument, though best known for playing and composing for the violin.  As for Scarlatti, while not a performer of or composer for the instrument, Italy was a guitar-playing country and some of the composer's works contained writing for the harpsichord that were guitaristic.  With respect to Giulani and, especially, Villa-Lobos, they were master players who wrote for the instrument.

For this blogger, this album was played frequently upon its release and purchase three decades ago and, though it has been many years since, returning to it brings back all of the enjoyment and appreciation for Williams' mastery and the composers' excellence.

Pauline Oliveros: Lion's Eye/Lion's Tale

From the mid-1960s, composer Pauline Oliveros employed a variety of means to develop her concept of Deep Listening, including innovative uses of electronics, works based on gamelan music from Southeast Asia, drawing from atmospheres in unusual recording locations and much more.  In the last half of the 1980s, she created music from gamelan influences, including the two pieces for this recording released in 2006.

This blogger's first experience with gamelan was about 35 years ago through one of the many amazing recordings from the Nonesuch Explorer series and the effect on hearing this amazing music was powerful and immediate.  The hypnotic effects of percussion, chanting and singing and the instruments was just phenomenal and it was great to later see how classical composers like Lou Harrison and King Crimson guitarist and songwriter Robert Fripp adapted it to their work.

Oliveros, in the liners for this excellent recording, observed that "in Gamelan music the interlocking elements of traditional forms create a colorful, shimmering global sound.  The color shifts in beautiful and subtle ways with many instruments playing the same melody, but with a variety of ornamentation and punctuation peculiar to each instrument."

The 46-minute "Lion's Eye for Gamelan," dating to the mid-1980s and recorded with The Berkeley Gamelan Ensemble, finds Oliveros writing the orchestration so that the instruments are clearly heard, which distinguishes it from traditional performance.  Another notable element is that while higher pitched instruments are played faster or lower ones slower in gamlan, Oliveros used a computer-controlled sampler to sustain notes for up to a minute or longer, as well as having some at speeds as fast as 1,800 beats per minute.  The intent was to create an environment in which those rhythms might sound like waves.

Oliveros added that the piece could be played with a gamelan ensemble or with a sampler and music programming language called HMSL (Hierarchical Music Specification Language), which creates changing patterns every 30-beat measure, with the tempo going as fast as 72 beats per measure.  For the album, Carter Scholz of the Berkeley Gamelan wrote and performed the sampled portion.  "Lion's Tale for Sampler" was created four years later and involves speeds of up to 1,800 bpm with intricate patterning of polymetrics and polyrhythms and Oliveros added that it could be reprogrammed in new versions, as well as one in the MIDI format for keyboardists.

While computers and electronics are utilized heavily on this record, they work beautifully with the gamelan style and structure, enhancing its deeply immersive and spiritual character and truly reflecting Oliveros' concept of Deep Listening.

Gustav Mahler: Symphony #5

Another run in the last couple of days through the ten symphonies composed by the great Gustav Mahler and performed by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Klaus Tennstedt was a treat, especially during these increasingly chaotic, unstable and troubled times.  An EMI boxset collects these works, albeit broken up in some instances, into an 11-CD set.

These lengthy, massive works are, for this listener, highly immersive, seductive sound environments that, for the occasional heavy intensity and bombast, also have sublime quiet passages and sections with achingly beautiful melodies that belie all that is troubled in our world.  The complexity, ingenuity and innovation of Mahler is on full display in the Fifth Symphony.

The piece is justly celebrated for its fourth movement, the Adagietto, with one of the most famous of melodies in all of classical music.  Mahler worked on the symphony in 1901-1902, including during a period of recovery from a hemorrhage that nearly killed him, in a hut at a newly completed cottage in southern Austria.  Yet, the entirety of the piece is striking and memorable, from the funereal and stately first movement led off by a trumpet fanfare to the power and intensity of the second, the strength of the third and the rondo that marks the finale.

Again, there is not enough knowledge of the technical points of music for this blogger to try to weigh in on the value of the Fifth Symphony from that standpoint.  Fortunately, we have liner notes and Kenneth Dommett provides a useful quote from the composer's wife, Alma, also a composer as well as a writer and who commented "I heard in it the relation of adult man to everything that lives, heard him cry to mankind out of his loneliness, cry to man, to home, to God, saw him lying prostrate, heard him laugh his defiance and felt his clam triumph."  Dommett summarizes the movements, noting the keys, but also the feelings expressed from cries of distress to outrage to affirmation of life to triumph.

Naturally, an untutored listener doesn't need to know the structure, the keys or how color and texture are established.  The sheer range of emotion, as well as the use of the full resources of an orchestra with its huge sound but also the lighter touches found everywhere in Mahler's symphonies, are thrilling and the brilliant performance by Tennstedt and the London ensemble pulls you into this deep, rich and rewarding musical experience, a badly needed tonic just now.

Joan Tower: Chamber and Solo Works

This recording, another excellent release by Composers Recordings Incorporated (CRI), which existed for about a half century from 1954 to 2003 to promote the work of modern classical music composers, is a great compendium of the work of Joan Tower (b. 1938), who is still with us and whose most recent performed piece was from about five years ago.

The album includes eight recordings spanning almost a decade from 1972 to 1981 and featuring the Da Capo Chamber Players, which the composer/pianist helped form in 1969 and which is still active, and the sextet Collage, as well as three soloists from the ensembles, clarinetist Laura Flax, violinist Joel Smirnoff and flautist Patricia Spencer, this latter still with Da Capo.  Tower performs with Da Capo on three pieces, "Amazon" and the two "Breakfast Rhythms."

Tower wrote in the liners that she was inspired by Stravinsky's ballet Petroushka and captivated by paired figure skating for "Petroushskates" and she noted that "the figure skating pairs became a whole company o skaters," or musicians, for what she calls "a sort of musical carnival on ice."  For "Wings," the composer envisioned a falcon soaring high in the sky without much movement before "the bird goes into elaborate flight patterns that loop around, diving downwards, gaining tremendous speeds."

The composer spent part of her childhood in Bolivia and credits her learning of that nation's music and playing percussion there for much of her approach to rhythm.  For "Amazon," the great South American river, with its "consistent background flow" and change in width and speed is reflected in the variations of the work, of which there is an orchestra version II.  "Platinum Spirals" is dedicated to her father, who as a  geologist and mineral engineer and the piece draws on platinum's flexibility and malleability in its score for the violin.

The instrumentation in "Breakfast Rhythms" and "Noon Dance" are the same and the second follows the other, with the second a comment on the ties between dance and chamber music, especially in following and leading.  The first was motivated by Beethoven's approach to contrasts in rhythm and texture, with an emphasis on patterns of pitch in the harmonies and melodies, as well as a focus on how the clarinet's "lyrical passages . . . lend at-home and away-from-home feelings."

Spencer's flute is spotlighted in "Hexachords," the title referring to the harmonic components of "a six-note unordered chromatic collection of pitches" where vibrato and rhythm in different registers "creates a counterpoint of tunes" to hold the listener's attention through five sections that Tower says "are most easily differentiated by a sense of either going nowhere or staying somewhere."  

The complexity of Tower's writing is both modern and, as another part of the notes suggest, still has "an accessible, tangible quality."  This listener is hardly well-tutored on the finer points of music, but it seems that the way she develops and works with harmony and rhythm and especially how she uses color with the instruments in the ensemble amply provides this quality.  This is compelling and immersive music that never fails to hold the attention and is beautifully played and well-recorded.

Henryk Górecki: Miserere

Miserere means "have mercy" and, in these particularly troubled times of war, sectional strife, deportations, political assassinations, searing heatwaves as our planet warms, and much else, this recording of Henryk Górecki's choral masterpiece of that name seems particularly timely.  The work was composed nearly 45 years ago in response to a militia's violence against a Polish union during the Solidarity movement that began in 1980 and helped lead to the transfer of power from the Soviet-backed Communist government there nine years later.

As the liner notes observe, Górecki usually avoided political and social commentary in his work, but he quickly wrote the piece with a simple five-word text: "Lord our God, have mercy on us."  Because of conditions in Poland, the work was not performed until 1987.  It is also noted that the "architectural procedure" of "Miserere" is "very close to the canon at the beginning of [his] Third Symphony," which  was first performed in 1977 and became a worldwide sensation fifteen years later when Elektra Nonesuch, which issued this recording, released a version that sold more than a million copies.

This blogger attended a live performance of the Third Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl in 1993 and it was a powerful experience.  This would almost certainly be the same for "Miserere," which the notes state "demands concentration and thoughtful consideration" because it "is a heartfelt plea for peace and understanding from a composer who believes in the values of personal individuality and compassionate responsibility."

There are three other choral pieces on this 1994 recording, including Górecki's first unaccompanied choral work, "Euntes ibant et flebantm" with quotations from Psalms; "Wislo Moda, Wislo Szara," which is about the great Vistula River; and "Szeroka woda," also based on well-known Polish folk songs.  These flow naturally with "Miserere" in terms of the composer's fondness for slower tempos, modal approaches and deep interest in textures that included sustained notes.  The Chicago Symphony and Chicago Lyric Opera choruses and, for the Vistula work, the Lira Chamber Chorus, perform with great beauty and sensitivity and this recording has been playing a lot these days as more compassion and mercy are badly needed, for people and for our planet.

Jennifer Higdon: All Things Majestic/Viola Concerto/Oboe Concerto

Despite having a Pulitzer Prize and Grammy, the Brooklyn-native composer Jennifer Higdon, who grew up near Atlanta and in eastern Tennessee, is relatively unknown, but her work is very rich harmonically, strong and forward rhythmically and deeply melodious.  The Viola Concerto was commissioned by the Library of Congress and Higdon made a point of writing a score that was lighter and brighter than most works for that instrument, while she also made the first movement slow, contrary to typical practice, and then increasing the tempo over the final two.

For the Oboe Concerto, the composer emphasized the lyrical nature of the instrument and its pairing with other instruments in the orchestra and Higdon, in the liner notes, observed that "I have always through of the oboe as being a most majestic instrument" and she was happy to focus on "its beauty and grace" in the piece commissioned by the Minnesota Commissioning Club.

All Things Majestic as commissioned by the Grand Teton Music Festival for its 50th anniversary and the setting at Jackson Hole, Wyoming provided more than enough inspiration for the work, which also promoted "the majesty of all our parks."  Higdon thought of each of the movements as reflective of "a musical postcard" evoking the natural wonders of mountains, lakes, rivers and the "cathedral" effect of park environments.  Given our current political climate, it is a shame that is not shared enough by those in positions of power.

Roberto Díaz, a longtime collaborator of the composer, shines in the viola piece and James Button fully evokes the qualities of the oboe, while the Nashville Symphony, led by Giancarlo Guerrero, performs beautifully in this 2016 recording released the next year by Naxos.  Higdon's work was a chance discovery, as is often the case, and a very rewarding one.

Alexander Scriabin: Mazurkas (Complete)

Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) was one of the many remarkable Russian musicians and composers of the late 19th and early 20th century, creating, as the empire was in rapid decline and revolution in the near future, some of the greatest music of the era.  He was the son of a pianist and became a virtuoso on the instrument receiving, just barely past his teens, the Gold Medal, the highest honor of the famed Moscow Conservatory.

Later, he taught at the institution for several years before leaving to focus solely on writing and performing, including spending six years in western Europe and touring America in 1906.  He became fascinated by mystic teachings and abandoned religion to delve deeply into esoteric philosophy.  While Scriabin wrote a few symphonies, a pair of tone poems and some other pieces, he is best know for composing more than 200 works for the piano.

He wrote 23 mazurkas, the name coming from a fast-tempo Polish folk dance genre, and these date from 1888 to 1903 and these are redolent with beautiful melodies, strong emotion and, even as the liner notes that the young composer was under the spell of Frederic Chopin and Robert Schumann, it adds that there is a distinctive characteristic of "poetic improvisation, full of magic and charm" and that, as the pieces became more complex and with greater feeling and atmosphere, Scriabin demonstrated the marks of a mature creator.

The pianist for this 1995 recording issued four years later by Naxos is Beatrice Long, a Taiwanese artist who teaches at the Brooklyn Conservatory for the campus there of the City University of New York, and her excellent playing is beautifully recorded.  Her rendering of these amazing short pieces has lately been a tonic for tense and troubled times and anyone seeking such a balm could benefit from listening to this excellent recording.

Gloria Coates: String Quartet No. 9/Sonata for Violin Solo/Lyric Suite for Piano Trio

The great composer Gloria Coates died in Germany two months ago and we've lost another giant of contemporary classical music, whose work is deceptively simply, compelling and powerful.  An enthusiast of glissando, the sliding between two notes up or down a scale, as well as a sparse though dramatic use of tone clusters and overtones, Coates created a large set of symphonies, as well as many smaller ensemble pieces that stretches time and draws you into sound worlds that are distinctive and highly immersive.

Beautifully performed by the Kreutzer Quartet with Roderick Chadwick on the piano for the lyric suite, this Naxos release features the two-movement ninth string quartet, spanning 25 minutes and rich with contemplation and evocative in its emotional depth.  Following is the 13-minute violin solo sonata in four short movements, which also maintains a deliberate pace and weight of the simple yet intense dissonance.  Lastly, there is the 25-minute lyric suite, in which piano provides a dramatic change in texture and melodic expression that both contrast and complement the woodwind instruments.

A great American composer who spent more than a half-century in Berlin, Coates built an impressive canon of diverse works, though best known for her 15 symphonies, that set her apart as a master of economy and emotive expression.  She left an amazing musical legacy, which, hopefully, will be more recognized as time goes on.

Iannis Xenakis: Chamber Music, 1955-1990

Of Greek ancestry, born in Romania, a resistance fighter in Greece who suffered a terrible injury to his face including the loss of an eye and an exile in France for over a half-century from the late 1940s until his death in 2001, Iannis Xenakis first became an architect working under the renowned Le Corbusier.  It was not until he was in his Thirties that Xenakis became a composer and, when he did, he shook the so-called classical (serious) music world with his emphasis on mathematical modeling (not unlike Harry Partch and his monophony, Xenakis hearkened back to ancient Greek mathematical musical concepts from the likes of Pythagoras) and computer programming to create some of the most challenging and startling pieces one will ever hear.  His "stochastic" approach involves, perhaps not unlike John Cage's use of the I-Ching, choosing notes randomly through the programming by computer.

For a listener, that challenge includes letting go of the idea that melody is essential to hearing music and for this untutored fan, the key is to take the advice of jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler and his trumpeter brother Donald and try to follow the sound not the notes, while also observing the absolute foundation of music conveyed by Edgard Varése, who suggested that it is simply "organized sound."

This double-disc set issued in 1991 by the German public broadcasting entity, WDR, provides almost all of the composer's smaller ensemble work, and it is beautifully played by the Arditti String Quartet, formed by violinist Irvine Arditti and devoted to modern music as it approaches its 50th anniversary next year, and the late pianist Claude Helffer, also a resistance fighter in his native France during the war.  Notes by Harry Halbreich explain Xenakis' approaches to music and math, the stochastic method of composition and explanations of the fifteen pieces.

Intense and complex as Xenakis' music can be, one of the great virtues of this set is that it provides a good deal of variety as there are the string quartet, including with piano, and string trio pieces, but also solo works for piano, violoncello, viola, and violin.  Even if there are complicated processes like "arborescenses," dealing with melody in a new way; the "sieve," or a mathematical way to select notes from a random selection through computer programming; as well as using "non-octave scales," where scales repeat beyond an octave, letting the sound take you into a world of incredible dynamic range and deep exploration of pitch can be very rewarding and a true ear-opening experience.

Felix Mendelssohn: Complete Piano Music

Why the great Felix Mendelssohn has not been featured here before is an unfortunate oversight because, despite his tragically brief life, he amassed an incredible body of work, so we'll make up for lost time by highlighting this amazing six-disc box set issued by the remarkable Nimbus Records comprising all of the music written for piano by this sublime composer.

Performed by the brilliant Martin Jones, who has recorded an enormous amount for the label, the recordings entail over six hours and it has never been a problem to sit down for a work day at the computer and listen to this uniformly excellent music all the way through or over a couple of days.  Especially during these troubled times, when a respite is often needed to refresh the mind, listening to Mendelssohn's diverse array of piano works is a necessary and appreciated balm.

More impressive is that much of this work was done while the composer was a teen, including his sonatas, which as the liners note, hardly sound like they were juvenile works.  The beautiful preludes and fugues were produced during his late teens through late twenties.  At twenty, Mendelssohn visited Wales and three fantasies came out of that, including a remarkble one in F-sharp minor.

His best known piano pieces include the Rondo Capriccioso, the Variations Sérieuses, and the Songs Without Words, the latter intended for those to play at home in their parlor and often thought of as "piano fodder for the multitude," but highly popular when performing music was common in many households long before, of course, the phonograph, radio and television.  "Sweet Remembrance," the first of those songs without words, has great personal meaning as it was the march used for my own wedding nearly a quarter century ago.

Gabriel Fauré: Requiem and Other Choral Music

During the challenging times of the pandemic lockdown, there were a variety of ways to musically manage the difficulties.  Sometimes it was hearing great jazz, like the always inspiring Love Supreme by John Coltrane, or the transportive Hindustani ragas of India, or the impressive return of Cabaret Voltaire through the recently released Shadow of Fear album.  Music is mood, so whatever it took to make the day a little better was what was heard.

A number of times during the last fourteen or so months, another unexpected (or was it?) source of sounds was Gabriel Fauré's Requiem presented, along with other religious choral music and the "Cantique de Jean Racine," in this Collegium Records release by The Cambridge Singers and members of the City of London Sinfonia.  This musical form, of course, is the form a Roman Catholic mass for the eternal peaceful rest of the dead, but there is a core element of hope for the repose of the soul.  So, while not necessarily uplifting in sound, a requiem is fundamentally positive in intent.

Unlike other requia this listener has heard, particularly that of Mozart, who was working on it when he died, or that from Verdi, both of which include powerful passages with intense dynamic and drama to stir the audience, Fauré maintains a generally even keel emotionally.  There is still power and a low-key intensity to the music and choral work, as well as a great deal of beauty to accompany the pathos.

Obviously, the death toll from the pandemic is staggering and, sadly, was largely avoidable.  While it wasn't as if this was in mind each time and all the way through the repeated listenings of this sublime piece, listening to Fauré's Requiem is, whatever we believe happens to us after we shift off this mortal coil, a way to remember those who have departed.

Works of Johann Sebastian Bach, Volume 2: The Smithsonian Collection of Recordings

It is hard to overestimate the effect Johann Sebastian Bach had on the shaping of so-called "classical music," though in his lifetime (1685-1750) he was known as a master on the harpsichord and organ and as a builder of the latter.  As a composer, however, he was all but unknown, a status that, remarkably, did not change until the onset of the nineteenth century, even as he was acknowledged by such masters as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to have had a profound influence on their development.  The other pervasive legacy left by Bach is equal temperament as best laid out in his The Well-Tempered Clavier works for keyboard.  Even though his tuning system is not reflective of the natural harmonics generated by the vibrations of strings, the tempered scales became and remain standardized and allow for considerable freedom in transposing keys on an instrument like the piano which has a fixed pitch orientation, despite attempts by some, including the remarkable Harry Partch, to convince the world otherwise. 

This five-disc set, the second volume, issued as the "Smithsonian Collection of Recordings" provides a taste of the remarkable diversity of Bach's composing during the first half of the 18th century.  The solemn, stately, dramatic and highly affecting "St. John Passion" concerning John's version of the crucifixion of Christ, was written in the 1720s and are performed, either on period instruments or modern ones modeled after them, by the Smithsonian Chamber Players and Chorus, recorded in the Renwick art gallery at the Smithsonian in March 1989.  A beautifully and richly composed set of three sonatas and three partitas for violin were composed just prior to the "St. John Passion" and was performed by Jaap Schröder in the Oltingen, Switzerland church in the mid-80s.  Lastly, there are two concertos and an overture on harpsichord, where the counterpoint comes across more strongly than on a fortepiano, which did not displace the former in superiority until later, recorded by James Weaver on a contemporary instrument based on a 1730s harpsichord, exactly 33 years ago at the National Museum of American History.  These are excellent recordings reflective of the diversity of a towering seminal figure in European music and, with a new lockdown in place here, this music provides some relief from renewed restrictions.

Antonio Vivaldi: Violin Concertos, Volume 2

During these trying times, it has often been important to listen to music that is melodic, harmonically rich, and, frankly, uplifting and relaxing (though, at other times, turbulent and roiling music is what is wanted!)  Often, baroque music, whether it be Bach, Handel, Monteverdi, or any number of other great composers of that era, is a tonic and balm to help maintain a positive mood in the face of so many trials and tribulations.  Today's featured recordings fit the bill to a T, these being the five-disc set comprising the second volume of violin concertos recorded by the Israel Chamber Orchestra conducted by Shlomo Mintz and reissued by Nimbus Records in 2009 from an early 90s release by MusicMasters.

The so-called Red Priest, Vivaldi (1678-1741) was a violin maestro as well as a master composer and these pieces are really a pleasure to hear.  They are often laden with emotion, including with contemplative as well as uplifting elements, filled with gorgeous melodies, and with tight and unified harmonies.  The playing of the chamber orchestra, formed in 1965 and led for a few years by Mintz, is excellent.  I've run through the entire set of five hours a few times lately because this music really is a great way to help navigate the troubled waters in our uncertain world.

Franz Schubert: Piano Trios D.929 and D.897

The tragically short-lived composer Franz Schubert left behind a remarkable body of work in so compressed a span, including eight symphonies and the amazing unfinished ninth, lieder or songs of significant number and import, and a great many works for small ensembles.

This Naxos release from the late 1980s is a masterful recording by the Stuttgart Piano Trio, comprised of violinist Rainer Kusmaul, cellist Claus Kannglesser, and pianist Monika Leonhard, of two of the master's piano trios, the E-flat and the Nocturne.

The former is a stunning evocation of the form, spanning over 45 minutes through four movements.  It displays beautiful melodicism, exquisite harmonies, powerful dynamics and superb playing.  Composed in late 1827 for a friend's engagement and performed early the next year and then publicly in March, the trio is one of the few works the composer heard played during his brief life.

One observer notes that second movement of this piece was used in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon and that the auteur noted that the trio "has just the right restrained balance between the tragic and the romantic.  This could be said probably of much of Schubert's music as he bridged the eras of, say, Beethoven and Liszt.

The Nocturne was evidently a discarded draft of the andante second movement that Kubrick used and, even as an outtake of sorts, it is still a gorgeous piece of music.  There is much dramatic interplay, quiet passages of deep emotion, virtuosic flutterings of notes on the piano that are noteworthy, and an overall synchronicity of the three instruments that make this single movement a fascinating complement to the massive and memorable E Flat Major trio.

Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 5

What a remarkable story with Anton Bruckner, who may be one of the best classical composers you've never heard of.  Bruckner (1824-1896) wrote eight symphonies and an unfinished one that are some of the most powerful, creative of the genre, massive works that, like those of Mahler and the operatic works of Bruckner's idol, Wagner, were the epitome of the monumental orchestral piece.

Bruckner came from northern Austria and, when he went to Vienna, the epicenter of so-called "serious music," he was ridiculed for his country appearance and manners.  Moreover, the gentle and sensitive composer was convinced by friends that he needed to be more like Wagner and urged him to revise his works to the detriment of the originals.

This was especially true for the first four of his symphonies, though Georg Tintner, the conductor who recorded all the symphonies with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra for Naxos, observed that, with the fourth, the revisions helped, whereas, with the first, these degraded the original, which was much superior. 

In his informative liner notes, Tintner observes that "the Fifth Symphony, the most intellectual of all Bruckner's works, is furthest removed from the seductive world of Wagner's harmony and orchestration."  The conductor also wonders why this and the Sixth Symphony were not subjected to endless revisions as was true for the others.  Yet, when it finally premiered just before Bruckner's death and nearly twenty years after it was composed, it was in a "discredited, reorchestrated and cut version."

Tintner's mission with his recording of all the Bruckner symphonies was to present them, as much as possible, as the composer intended.  This untutored ear takes in the very soft openings to some of the movements, such as the first, and then either sudden dramatic passages or build-ups to great intensity and passion, with powerful dynamics driving the music to heights that are among the finest symphonic statements encountered (albeit with limited knowledge).  Tintner does suggest that the phenomenal finale "is certainly one of the greatest" in the "symphonic literature."

These massive, intense symphonic works can go on for lengthy periods—this one stretching over 75 minutes—so they take a level of concentration and endurance from a listener and this one needs to be in the right mood to take these (including works like those of Mahler and Wagner) on, but they can be highly rewarding experiences.  Bruckner's Fifth, with some of the best known of his majestic melodies, delivers when that mood is there.

Ludwig von Beethoven: Early Years Through The Eroica

Sometimes it's necessary to tune out from a world that can be a little too much with its turmoils and traumas.  It seemed that way for a bit last week with the government shutdown, the battles between political figures, and, even though we needed it and I usually don't mind it in relatively small doses, a few gray rainy days.

So, listening to the six-disc Early Years Through the Eroica box set issued as part the Smithsonian Collection of Recordings in 1988 (when the Iran-Contra scandal was going on and now seems remote and quaint in comparison to the shenanigans now), was a real pleasure and a way to briefly escape today's scrapes.

Most interestingly, the recordings were made using original instruments. The three discs comprising the first six of Beethoven's seventeen string quartets are beautifully rendered by The Smithson String Quartet, with the two violins, viola and violoncello played on instruments ranging in construction from 1665 to 1748   Two sonatas for violoncello and fortepiano are rendered on a 1708 version of the former and an 1800 edition of the latter.  The Smithson Chamber Orchestra uses instruments for the first three of the master's symphonies, including the famed Third (the Eroica), that go back as far as the 17th century with some modern but based on historic instruments.

The instrument in which the differences between the older and newer versions most are noticeable is the fortepiano.  It has five octaves, rather than seven and one half, lighter, narrower keys and thinner hammers, and weighs under 200 pounds compared to nearly 1,000 for a modern grand.  So, the sound is lighter and thinner.  Some argue that's why advances were made with later pianos to improve the dynamics and range and are reason not to go back.  But, as with recordings made on harpsichords, what's interestng about hearing this set is you do get a fascinating glimpse into what audiences would have heard when these pieces were first performed.

Elliott Carter: 16 Compositions (2002-2009)

I finished recently a book on the music of the astounding Elliott Carter, whose work continues to amaze because of its complexity, richness, and wide range of expression.  The book was often a tough slog when it came to intricate and rigorous technical explanations of the construction of pieces and the often intimidating terminologies employed in musicology.  Still, what did come through for a total amateur was Carter's innovations in harmony, time and other structural elements, and most especially in his use of rhythm.

The book definitely made listening to Carter's work more worthwhile in trying to pick out where the composer employed his creativity and innovation.  An example of this is with 16 Compositions (2002-2009), another excellent issue in a series by Bridge Records, which produces great recordings by modern composers.  The 2010 double-disc surveys a wide range of symphonic, ensemble, solo and choral works in a period in which the composer was in his mid-90s to early 100s.

That's one of the many remarkable aspects about Carter in that he was very active making amazing music at a very advanced stage in life and doing so with all the exploratory creativity he displayed throughout his career.  In fact, he finished his last piece just three months before he died in late 2012, a few weeks shy of his 104th birthday.  So, this survey has a lot to enjoy, often in brief pieces, and featuring typically unusual instrumentation, like solo works for marimba and bassoon, along with more standard large and small group and solo types.

George Crumb: Ghosts from Alhambra/Voices from a Forgotten World

George Crumb's remarkable music includes frequent references to Spain, including his fascination with the poems of the tragic Federico Garcia Lorca, and "Ghosts of Alhambra" is a seven-part suite composed in 2009 of remarkable interest based on Lorca's 1921 "Poem of the Deep Song" written for traditional flamenco performances held at the historic Alhambra.  This chamber work features a male baritone, a guitarist and a percussionist and the voice lends a sombre and forbidding aspect to the mysterious voicings of the guitar and an often rumbling of the percussion.

The "American Songbook" series by Crumb is not about standard pop fare, but an unusual look at a variety of pieces that reflect what the composer identifies as from all directions of the compass on the continent and incorporating native Indian themes, reimaginings of popular music pieces and other music reflecting the diversity of the United States.  The 2006 "Voices from a Forgotten World" turned out to be an added chapter to what was slated to be a four-part series and continued on to other parts.

There are ten pieces in this set, ranging from 1 1/2 to over 9 minutes and reflecting a great diversity of types of material.  There are two voices, a baritone and a mezzo-soprano with the instrumentation consisting of amplified piano and four percussionists employing a wide range of types.  Crumb subtitled these "A Cycle of American Songs from North and South, East and West" and there are pieces referencing native peoples, New England, Appalachia and the South, but they also reflect time periods from the 17th century to the first half of the 20th and themes varying from native concerns to labor to takes on Stephen Foster's "Beautiful Dreamer."

The songs in "Voices from a Forgotten World" also reflect myth, humor, pathos and other emotional ranges and, as is often Crumb's way, there is a great deal of foreboding and mystery to much of the cycle, while "Somebody Got Lost in a Storm" is jarring, intense and powerful with the percussion and piano reflecting the element of the storm in a dramatic fashion.

This album is the fifteenth in a series of the complete works of Crumb and Starobin's involvement is notable because, in 1981, he established the Bridge label which issued the recording.  He deserves kudos for his dedication to this great composer and issuing beautifully performed and recorded albums like this.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Magic Flute

It never gets old listening to the remarkable music of Mozart, especially because of the great variety of his output, the brilliance of his compositions, and the range of emotional, humorous and series content that can be found in his work.  Whether it involves string quartets, symphonies, operas or whatever other form, Mozart's music is uniformly mindboggling.

The Magic Flute was the master's last opera and was still running in performance at Vienna when Mozart died in 1791 at age 35.  The popularity of German magic operas was at a peak at the time and the composer worked with a theater manager and director to mount the story.

It involved a Queen of the Night enlisting a prince to rescue her daughter from a high priest, though it turned out that the priest was actually leading a respectable and honorable order and the queen was evil and trying to regain control of her daughter.  A simple man accompanying the prince fails in a series of trials during the quest but is compensated with the love of a woman.

Mozart's masterful melding of instrumentation, massing and use of harmony and melody, with the voices is, even for this amateur, something to behold.  Yet, the opera is well-known for its extraordinary difficulty for vocalists because of the challenging ranges required.  From the outset, The Magic Flute was a resounding success and the composer attending many performances, registering his pride in the reception, though his death soon followed.

This recording, made in June 1993 in Budapest by the Failoni Orcehstra, conducted by Michael Halász, and the Hungarian Festival Chorus, is beautifully recorded and performed and the Naxos Records release is a pleasure to listen to.

Franz Joseph Haydn: Symphonies Nos 1-20

A recent reading of a biography of the remarkable composer Charles Ives by the equally distinctive composer Henry Cowell and his wife Sidney, included some interesting perspectives by Ives about the "pretty music" made by composers of bygone eras.  This also came out in a reading several years ago of Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music.  In both cases, highly idiosyncratic composers seeking to exercise their creativity in breaking molds and expanding ideas outside traditional areas of melody, harmony and time offered pointed criticisms of "pretty music."

For this listener, music is usually about mood.  In other words, what do we feel like listening to today based on a number of factors?  Where Ives, Partch and many others felt the need to make a clean break, at least theoretically, from their precursors, there may be times for this blogger in which their music, say, Ives' "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" or Partch's "The Bewitched" sounds really appealing.

Then again, there are those times when "pretty music" is best suited for a certain frame of mind.  As often as we may have heard Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and other purveyors of "pretty music," those composers and their works just happen to fit a mood at a given time.

The reasons are not entirely clear from a technical standpoint to this amateur, but the music of Franz Joseph Haydn is particularly appealing a great deal of the time. It stands to reason that his brilliance in perenially writing beautiful, flowing, lilting melodies with a steady and confident handling of harmony in a consistent and reliable sense of time make his music so attractive that it is easy to go back regularly to indulge in the richness and emotionally uplifting dynamics of his work.

An excellent presentation of the master's 104 symphonies is through the Esterhazy recordings by the Austro-Hungarian Haydn Orchestra led by conductor Adam Fischer on Nimbus Records.  The orchestra was built to play the composer's music with a conductor and performers deeply committed to performing these works with the passion and feel that shines through on these recordings.

The only reason that this initial set of the first numbered symphonies, which are not necessarily those in order of actual composition, though they are all early (meaning around 1760), is the subject of this post, rather than some other set in the series, is that, eventually, the whole run will be featured.

Basically, for this admirer, the work of Haydn is full of "pretty music" that will be uplifting at just about any time. As much as more atonal and dissonant work has interest, given the mood at the moment, it's hard to go wrong by listening to Haydn's symphonies at any time, especially when they are as well performed as they are by the orchestra on these recordings.