Reviewing Reviews of Augustin Hadelich

Augustin Hadelich is now a musical household name, but I remember when knowing and loving his musicianship was like being in on a special secret. One of the great joys for me during the early years of Augustin Hadelich's career as an adult musician (I was, unfortunately, not aware at the time of the career he had as a child) was telling everyone I knew about him. Writing about Augustin Hadelich's recordings for the American Record Guide was a great pleasure.

HAYDN: Violin Concertos 1, 3, 4
Augustin Hadelich, v; Cologne Chamber Orchestra/Helmut Muller-Bruhl
Naxos 8.570483 60 minutes

It would be very easy to love Augustin Hadelich’s violin playing simply for his crystalline technical facility or his always-interesting singing sound, but I am partial to his long and deep sense of phrase, his sensual relationship to the pitches that really ring on his instrument, and his fresh approach to Haydn. There is something about his playing that excites my “inner violinist” (something that always seems to be at odds from my “outer violinist”) in a way that no other violinist excites it. There is something unique about Hadelich’s playing: perhaps a purity of intent, or a direct line to what is essential in music. It is difficult to describe, but it is easy to recognize.

He is able to let phrases soar in the air, making great and graceful arcs, and then lets them land lightly, yet decisively. Hearing him play Haydn makes me happy; not a giddy kind of happy, but a balanced kind of happy. While the music is playing, I have a feeling that all is right with the world.

This recording is one of his prizes for winning the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. Another prize is the use for four years of the ex-Gingold Stradivari violin, the instrument that he plays on this recording. Each component of the trio of Haydn, Hadelich, and Stradivari brings out the best in the others, and Hadelich’s stunningly-beautiful cadenzas reflect (and sometimes even improve upon) the best moments in these concertos.

I am impressed that he chose these three Haydn Concertos for his Naxos recording. Even though they are extremely difficult to play, they do not appear to the non-violinist to be virtuosic pieces. Aside from the First Concerto in C, these works are not very popular pieces in the solo violin literature. Violinists and people who play with violinists know that they all require a tremendous amount of musicianship and technical strength to play well, and they also demand an excellent accompanying orchestra, which Hadelich has in Helmut Muller-Bruhl and the Cologne Chamber Orchestra.

I know that after hearing this recording you will agree with me that the future of great violin playing is safe and very bright in Augustin Hadelich’s 24-year-old hands.

September/October 2008

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TELEMANN: Twelve Fantasies for Solo Violin
Augustin Hadelich
Naxos 8.570563 65 minutes

I admit that I was was rather surprised at first to see these Telemann Fantasies as Augustin Hadelich's choice for his second Naxos recording, one of the prizes given to him for winning the 2006 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. I had heard of these pieces, but, like a lot of people (and even a lot of violinists) had never heard all twelve of them played end to end. Because these Fantasies are mainly considered student works (by those who consider them at all), they are performed more often (if they are performed at all) by students than by professional violinists. If they are performed by professional violinists, the violinists are often early music specialists who play them on baroque period instruments.

Hadelich's Telemann is brilliant, intelligent, historically informed, and definitely modern. He offers these pieces as works of serious musical substance, shattering the long-held prejudice that Telemann must have been a a second-rate composer because he wrote so much music that is playable by people with an amateur's level of technique.

Telemann, who wrote these Fantasies in 1735, reached southward towards Italy for some of his influences. There are movements in these pieces that sound a lot like Corelli, particularly the Gigue of the Fourth Fantasie, which gives the solo violin its own accompanying bass line. Many movements of these pieces are written in a German rhetorical style, some use what sounds like a lot of counterpoint, and some exploit the violin's virtuosic qualities. No two are alike, though parts of some sound a bit like Telemann's Twelve Fantasies for solo flute that were written a couple of years earlier.

These pieces have obviously not enjoyed the place in the solo violin literature held by Bach, but they do offer a really attractive alternative to Bach. I ordered the sheet music immediately after my first hearing of this recording. I hope it arrives soon.

Perhaps Hadelich's background as a German-speaking person growing up in Italy adds to his deep understanding of the German-Italian nature of these pieces. Whatever the reason, this recording is a pleasure to listen to this wonderful music and stunningly-beautiful violin playing again and again.

July/August 2009

* * *

Echoes of Paris
DEBUSSY: Violin Sonata; POULENC: Violin Sonata; STRAVINSKY: Suite after Themes, Fragments and Pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi; PROKOFIEV: Violin Sonata 2
Augustin Hadelich, v; Robert Kulek, p
Avie 2216 70 minutes

There are many excellent young violinists around, but I can only think of a few young violinists who have the creative imagination to make well-worn pieces of the standard violin literature sound as fresh and as sturdy as Augustin Hadelich. He brings a great deal of intelligence, an uncompromising dedication to accuracy and beauty of sound, and a hearty dose of emotional idealism to his readings of the 20th century music on this recording.

He and Kulek present the Poulenc as a deeply serious piece (which it is), and seem to draw on images from Poulenc's other serious pieces (the emotional weight of Dialogues of the Carmelites comes to mind). In this reading of the Prokofiev, a piece originally written for flute and piano, Hadelich adds a surprising array of flute-like colors and articulations; something I have never heard any violinist do before. His tempo choices allow the piece to flow lightly forward, particularly in III, and he and Kulek keep II and IV very light and crispy.

These musicians play the Debussy Sonata as one continuous and remarkable 13-minute phrase, and they play Paul Kochanski's 1925 violin and piano transcription of Stravinsky's Pulcinella, the piece known (from Samuel Duskin's more popular 1932 transcription) as "Suite Italienne". The Kochanski version is much more colorful and much more difficult to play than the Dushkin, but the violinistic technical difficulties in this transcription all become expressive devices in Hadelich's hands. The microphones pick up the full range of bold and fragile nuances that come from the 1683 Ex-Gingold Stradivarius that Hadelich used until September of 2010.

May/June 2011

Augustin Hadelich's Bach Sonatas and Partitas

I have known these pieces all of my life. I developed the way I wanted to hear them early on. I couldn't help seeking the sound and interpretations I grew up hearing (daily, and played by a great violinist in his early thirties, and then--also daily--a fifth lower on the viola). In the recordings I would later hear as an adult (seeking to replicate the best moments of my childhood experience), Milstein came the closest.

As an adult I always have the violin original (in the Szeryng edition) and the Polo transcription for viola on my stand. I alternate runs of the Sonatas and Partitas with runs of the Bach Cello Suites, and pepper them with runs of the Telemann Fantasies.

Before listening to Augustin Hadelich's 2021 recording I thought I knew these pieces rather well. But listening to this set, which he plays as a cycle: moving from the darkness of the G minor Sonata, through introspection, periods of questioning, periods of pathos, periods of complexity, and through the deep contours of the soul (the over-soul, if you will), with a trumphant arrival in C major (the third sonata, the fifth of the cycle), and a light set of celebratory dances in E major filled with humor, shows me just how perfunctory my understanding of this music has been.

Hadelich makes Bach's phrases feel absolute. He allows them to follow a logical kind of argument, which makes each movement a fully satisfying "chapter" that holds my attention from beginning to end. And then each subsequent "chapter" builds and reflects on the previous "goings on." He does this in a way that is not at all tiring to the listener, because, like a great film director working with great material, Hadelich is doing all the work. Listening allows me the space to observe and enjoy lines of music and counterpoint that I have never noticed before. It is like a walk in the woods with an expert guide who knows everything happening underground, above ground, and in the atmosphere.

My first introduction to Augustin Hadelich was during the preliminary round of the Indianapolis Violin Competition in 2006. He played the first two movements of the Bach A minor Sonata, and I was dazzled by his interpretation. But now, fifteen years later, his way of playing that piece is just as dazzling, but it is different. It is different beyond being more nuanced and sophisticated. He has moved into that musical territory of Bach playing "occupied" by Dinu Lipati.

(He also has a new violin--one of the great Strads--and a baroque bow, which allows for the kind of connection between notes that is so difficult to achieve with a modern bow.)

Now when I put bow to string to play Bach, my musical world of possibilities has been changed. Bach's music has always been music of the present and the future (with a nod to the past, which Bach experienced as his musical present). Hadelich's Bach steps forward and reveals new musical possibilities to me. No other violinist I have encountered, either in person or through recordings, has had his particular generousity of spirit, tremendous intelligence (musical and otherwise), and freedom to reach beyond playing traditions and bring Bach to a place where his music should be: current, modern, and, like nature (when it is allowed to) ever renewing.

Thinking about Equality in Musical Institutions

Every day seems to bring another piece of bad news about a high-level musical person who occupies a position of power in a partially closed and often merit-based musical institution. It seems that so far the people who have been exposed by adding the role of sexual predator to their role of teacher have been male. Is it because women don't usually abuse their power within musical institutions? Is it because women, no matter how well they play, write, conduct, sing, or administrate, don't have the same kind of power/entitlement mix that men have?

Operating to the extent that I do in the larger musical world, I do know that women participate in power struggles. And there are a multitude of hierarchies that women in every stage of the game of music have to work within. Women who men see as having power are feared. Men who men see as having power are admired.

When I was a CD reviewer I believe that I must have had power. Most readers had no idea about my gender because only my last name appeared on reviews. I know that I was despised by some (everyone hates a critic unless that critic gives a glowing review). Could I ever have inspired fear? Was I ever admired? Did it matter? Does it matter now?

I know that I was a "token" woman on the reviewing staff of the American Record Guide. Sometimes, out of a reviewing staff of 60 or so, there were two or three women writing reviews. And when the musical blogosphere was in its heyday, most of the musical bloggers were men. Now it seems that the field of musical bloggery is dominated by women, but the field of musical bloggery is a ghost of its former self. There are far fewer people who read blogs now. And, perhaps because of the degree of difficulty leaving a comment by way of a cell phone is, there are fewer still who engage by making comments.

Yet we persist.

Let me reflect on my youth a bit. When I was a teenager with a fierce dedication to music and a serious desire to engage in discussions about music as an equal, I believe I might have had the respect of my male peers. I know that I had the respect of the professional musicians (teachers and colleagues of my father) I interacted with. But I was a child with the kind of eagerness and dedication that projected an optimism nobody wanted to negate. Everyone likes a smart kid.

Once I was a college-age woman I found it harder to engage as an equal with my male peers because of the obsession with attractiveness that permeated all of our lives. If I was not attractive to a (straight) male musician, I was not worth talking to. If I was attractive to a male musician, I was rarely taken seriously as a thinking person or as a person with talent or a person with high aspirations. In a world where attractiveness-fueled self-esteem was currency, I was piss poor.

I did have wonderful encounters in the hallways with older male faculty members (I remember talking with Paul Doktor, David Diamond, and Rolf Fjelde) who were all gracious and interested in talking with me for the sake of talking about interesting stuff. I also did have great friends among my peers, and my fellow students who came to Juilliard with a college education served as inspiring teachers. And I had wonderful friends who were women.

My own teacher was deficient in the "teaching" department, but I was fortunate to find two teachers on the outside who taught me for free. One was a flutist who was just getting started in what has turned out to be a fantastic teaching career. He was appalled at the neglect that my teacher demonstrated, and he was eager to have a really good student who would take his (then way out-of-the-box) ideas seriously. The other teacher was not a flutist, but he wanted to "pay forward" the kindness of lessons that had been given to him, and wanted to emulate his teacher and keep his teacher's ideas alive. Both these teachers were men, and there was NEVER A HINT of impropriety in either relationship. I owe my life to these people. One is still a very close friend, and the other is inaccessible.

Some of my friends have experienced the dark side of trying to balance studying seriously and having to cope with the complications of having student/teacher relationship become intimate. Some people thought of it as a kind of flattery--that such a relationship was a relationship between equals. Some people felt trapped, and so no way of getting away without compromising their careers. This happened to students who were women and students who were men.

There are cases when cross-generational relationships can be relationships between equals, but the larger number of cross-generational relations between teachers and their students are not relationships between equals. They are exercises of power on the part of the person who has the career, has the influence, and often has a family.

Perhaps we are headed into a healthier musical world now, or at least a musical world where people who have, in the past, been able to get away with abusing their power, are seeing the consequences of that abuse.

Confessions of a Recovering Recovered CD Reviewer

I suppose that during the 23 twenty years I spent as a CD reviewer for the American Record Guide, my opinions about music were valid. I did listen carefully to all of the recordings I received, and I did always try to write statements that were true. How I managed write more than 50 reviews every year is a mystery to me.

I started reviewing while I working at the local university's radio station. During the Thanksgiving break of 1992, Michael and I went to the library to get a bunch of periodicals to read over the break. With a faculty card he could take periodicals out for more than one day. I remember that I got a few copies of The Strad and several issues of the American Record Guide, which I had never read.

I took issue with an essay written by the editor concerning "historically informed performance," and wrote him a long letter. He wrote back saying, "Too bad you can't write for us." I wrote back asking why I couldn't. A few weeks later a box of flute CDs and a style sheet arrived by mail. After a few months I asked if I could (please) have recordings other than flute recordings to review, and I became one of the chamber music reviewers.

I used to play the recordings I received to review on the air, where I could listen using high-quality speakers. It was actually an ideal situation because our (very small and underfunded) radio station could finally play brand new recordings of often unusual repertoire, providing an alternative to the repertoire of classical “hits” played by the other classical stations (well, we were classical in the morning) in our listening area. I donated some of the review copies to the station's library, and I put them into regular rotation, which made our library current and good (my goal for the radio station library was to have only excellent recordings to play). The writing, which took far more time than the listening, was something that I generally did at home, while raising two children and trying to learn to play a new instrument.

In 2000, when I left the radio station and went to graduate school (with a "grading" assistantship), things became far more difficult. I listened using headphones and a portable CD player, and I had to sandwich my review writing between marathon exam grading sessions and general graduate school work, in addition to composing and practicing. I suppose it was good practice for my days teaching music appreciation (which I was doing concurrently with private teaching and freelance orchestral playing, not to mention practicing and composing).

There were a few years when I also worked as the advertising manager for the magazine, a job that I wasn't at all cut out for, and it was then that I realized how much I disliked the whole business aspect of recordings. I was a little embarrassed when things I wrote in the ARG as "FINE" were quoted on people's websites and on CD covers. People also treated me differently when I was a reviewer. Famous people called me. Really.

I also had a CD storage problem, and an American Record Guide issue storage problem (we reviewers were supposed to make reference to old reviews). I dispensed with the plastic CD cases, and kept the CDs in large loose-leaf binders. Those still took up a great deal of shelf space. Since I rarely listened to those CDs for pleasure, they mostly sat there.

I stopped writing for the ARG a few years ago. I moved the books of CDs to the garage, where they sit undisturbed. I cut out the pages in the ARG issues that had my reviews, and put those pages in a zipped binder where they sit in the garage, next to the CD binders. I might even throw them away one of these days.

I mostly listen to live music now, and have made a point of going to more concerts. I do sometimes listen to music on the radio when I am in the car, and I do listen on YouTube now and again. Now that I don't have to make judgements about what I hear, I have a far greater appreciation for music than ever before.

Steven Staryk Plays the Schumann, Walton, and Mendelssohn Violin Concertos

Steven Staryk
A Retrospective: Volume 7
Centaur CRC 3366

I rarely write about CDs in this space, but this recording on Centaur, which will be available this November 13th is really something special and worthy of your attention. I got an advance copy from Mr. Staryk, and I resisted the temptation to listen to it until the month of November was in sight. Now I just have to write about it.

Joseph Joachim's will stated that the Schumann Violin Concerto could not be performed until 100 years after Schumann's death (Joachim and Clara Schumann did not understand the piece and were therefore unable to understand its value). In 1937 Yehudi Menuhin got permission, after Joachim's granddaughter located the manuscript, to violate the will, but the Nazi authorities would not allow Menuhin to premiere the Concerto. It was performed and first recorded by Georg Kulenhampff, but was not given the performance it deserved. Staryk's performance with the Toronto Festival Orchestra (1983 or 1985) with Pierre Hétu conducting IS the performance this piece deserves. (I find the Kulenhampff recording unlistenable now. I just have it here for reference.)

The Concerto had a slight resurgence in the last decade, and there have been some very good recordings of it, but this concert performance is really remarkable. The recorded sound of the orchestra is not pristine (it was probably recorded using a microphone placed in the audience), but it is rich, commanding, and beautifully phrased. Staryk plays the solo part on the Barrere Strad, which has a fantastically complex sound. His eloquent elocution in the opening declamatory passages continues with absolute focused attention throughout the piece.

Because of Staryk's commanding musical "vision," there is no way to listen without becoming completely involved in the music making. Staryk has such integrity as a violinist that every single one of the difficulty arranged notes sounds clear and clean (even through some of the recorded fuzz, and the occasional bump--like the big one at around 8:30 of the first movement).

The crystal clear scale passages in the last movement are certainly impressive:

But what is most impressive to me is the way they operate as fine filagree in the musical texture rather than as pure foreground. I have heard recordings of the piece where the passage work in the last movement feels like pure torture. Here it feels like pure pleasure, albeit the kind of pleasure you get from watching high-wire artists perform death-defying acrobatics.

Then we get the Walton Concerto. This recording comes from a 1981 radio broadcast, and the recorded sound is better than the recorded sound in the Schumann Concerto. It is charming and brilliant, and you really get to hear all the colors Staryk gets from the Barerre Strad and the way the orchestration reflects those colors. I actually prefer this recording (with Mario Bernardi leading the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Ottawa) to Menuhin's recording with the composer conducting, but I tend to prefer Staryk's playing to Menuhin's playing in general.

Staryk uses the Muntz Strad for his performance of the Mendelssohn Concerto with the University of Victoria Orchestra conducted by George Corwin. The balance between the solo violin and the orchestra is often a problem in performances of the Mendelssohn Concerto, and one would imagine that it would be a problem during this outdoor public performance in 1973, but the commanding sound of the Muntz Strad can be heard clearly even in pianissimo passages, and even when the occasional breeze causes the sound to waft away from the microphone.

I love the brisk tempos, particularly the tempo of the slow movement (which is not slow).

You'll have to wait for a few weeks before this recording becomes available, so in the meantime, particularly if you are unfamiliar with Staryk's playing and career, you might like to read this interview I did with him in 2009. And I'm sure you would certainly enjoying hearing the recordings on this YouTube channel devoted to films of Staryk playing recitals, concertos, and even donning a red wig and playing the part of Vivaldi in a film.

Recorded Music

Unlike most of my peers, I came to the world of recorded music late. We had a stereo cabinet in our house, and we did have a few dozen recordings, but the stereo in the cabinet didn't work, and the recordings were all very old. I got a stereo of my own when I was 13 or 14, and I enjoyed listening to recordings a lot, but I enjoyed listening to concerts more. I used recordings mostly for my education rather than for entertainment.

When I worked in radio as a young adult my goal was never to program the same piece twice in a six month period. I wanted to give the impression that listening to a recording was an event, and that the radio was a kind of a large concert hall. When I had recordings to review, I would usually listen to them twice, and then would either put them in rotation at the station or bring them home and put them on a shelf.

My collection or recordings outgrew shelves. I started taking the CDs out of their boxes and filing them in books. I organized the books by instrumentation and roughly by period. I would occasional listen to recordings again for comparison purposes, or play along with recordings of pieces I was working on in order to get "lessons" from the people who made the recordings. I also had to reference older recordings when writing reviews of newer ones.

After I stopped writing for the ARG I was free to file, give away, or throw away as many recordings as I wanted to file, give away, or throw away. I threw away the lousy ones. I gave a few hundred (taken out of their cases and put into loose-leaf books) to my mother, and I filed the rest in loose-leaf books that now fill a small (but wide) bookshelf. The process of filing the CDs took about three weeks. Looking at the recordings reminded me of where I was (perhaps on a walk) when I heard the recording for the first time. I usually remembered the season, the weather, and the route. I usually remembered what I liked about the recording.

Perhaps I am still in CD withdrawal, but I haven't even considered opening up the books to listen to a CD.

I noticed the other day that for the past month or so I have been getting all of my intentional music live, either from playing it myself or from listening to other people play it. And when I hear other people play music I REALLY appreciate it. (Unintentional recorded music would be musical soundtracks in movies, which are created to be automated.)

This makes me feel even more excited about playing the Mayer, Bauer, and Bonis concert tomorrow night, because every play through of every piece is a new experience, and having people in the room changes the experience in wonderful ways.

I'm off to rehearse . . .

Beyond Criticism

When I was growing up I used to enjoy reading the music reviews in the Boston Globe and the Berkshire Eagle, particularly when I had been at the concert. Michael Steinberg's reviews were particularly interesting to read. I used to talk with him at Tanglewood (he was a brilliant man), and I used to think that it might be fun to write reviews when I grew up.

I came across an issue of the American Record Guide in November of 1992. I wrote a letter to the editor in response to a piece he wrote about the uselessness of baroque period instruments, and he answered by telling me that it was "too bad I couldn't write for them." My response was to ask why I couldn't. A week later a box of CDs arrived along with a style sheet, and I began writing CD reviews. I used many of the CDs that the ARG sent to build a CD library for the radio station I worked at. I was able to learn a great deal through reviewing, but after around 20 years it became more of a burden than a pleasure, and the last year or so it was all burden.

I am pleased to announce that the March/April issue will be the last issue that will have any of my writing in it, and I am free to listen to music without feeling the need (or the duty) to make some sort of statement about it.

It is a great feeling of freedom.

The other day a friend forwarded me a letter from a music critic essentially apologizing to a musician for the way he (the music critic) essentially bashed the musician's playing twenty years earlier. Negative reviews weigh heavily on a reviewer's conscience. The negative reviews I have written over the past 22 years weigh heavily on mine. Once I labeled a recording "not worth reviewing," an option that ARG reviewers were given, and then, because the person who made the recording was a prominent person in music, I wrote a couple of harsh sentences to substantiate my reasons for not choosing to review the recording. The editor of the magazine decided that my nasty sentences constituted a spicy review, so he published them.

I should have stopped writing for the magazine then and there, but the damage was already done. I blamed myself, and wrote a letter of apology to the person who made the recording. I never got a reply. I imagine that person is still hurt by what I did not intend for publication. I imagine that person still hates me. It's a heavy burden to bear.

Once the magazine sent me a recording made by a former teacher, and the recording was not very good. I did not want to say anything negative in print about one of my teachers, so I chose not to review the recording. That teacher contacted the magazine to inquire why no review was published in the magazine, and then called me. I had to lie and say something about a conflict of interest in order not to hurt that teacher's feelings.

Now I can listen to music without having to come up with something to write about it. Not writing about a recording means that I can relate far more personally to the music I hear. I much prefer to hear music live anyway. Even more, I prefer to play it.

Sheldon Harnick's Hidden Treasures

I rarely buy CDs because my cup runneth over (and my shelves as well) with recordings I get for review, but immediately after I heard this interview on Fresh Air with Sheldon Harnick (recorded on his 90th birthday, which happened to be April 30, 2014, the same day as my 55th) I went to The Musical Theater Project's website and ordered a copy.

The 2-CD set is loaded with demo recordings of many songs that didn't make it into the final versions of the many Broadway shows Harnick wrote with Jerry Bock, including a few pieces that didn't make it into their most famous collaboration, Fiddler on the Roof. Harnick, who is a fine singer as well as a brilliant lyricist, sings on most of the demo recordings (most often with Jerry Bock singing and playing the piano), but there are appearances by Charlotte Rae, Hugh Martin, Betty Garrett, Buster Davis, Claiborne Cary, Danny Meehan, Susan Watson, Buster Davis, Leigh Beery, William Tost, Brian D'arcy James, Audra McDonald, and Margery Gray, who is married to Sheldon Harnick.

[Sheldon Harnick and Margery Gray]

Much of the music comes from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, but there are recordings from the later 70s through 2013 here as well. I admire all of these "Hidden Treasures," and there are some I have grown to love deeply. "Precious Little" is from an adaptation of the film It's a Wonderful Life that Harnick wrote with Joe Raposo. The show never made it to Broadway because a typographical error in the contract made it impossible for the show to be produced in New York. "'Til the Bootlegger Comes" and "Where Do I Go From Here," (one of the best Broadway ballads I have ever heard) were written out of Fiorello, the first highly-successful show Harnick wrote with Jerry Bock, but they have new life here. Perhaps "Where Do I Go From Here" is just too strong a song for any environment other than a recital of great art songs.

The song I listen to daily (and have going through my head while I'm not listening to it) is a 1978 collaboration with Michel Legrand (who plays the piano on this recording), Harnick, and Margery Gray called "My Star." It was a song from a film project that was cancelled, but they recorded "My Star" anyway. I'm so grateful.

My favorite line from that song: "I dream of steam."

Martin Perry Plays Ives and Binkerd: Ramble After a Recording

There is really no way that I can write an unbiased review of Martin Perry's brand new recording on Bridge of the Charles Ives "Concord" Sonata and three of Gordon Binkerd's Essays for the Piano (the first recordings of these pieces), so I will let my biases fly and ramble.



The Ives "Concord" Sonata is a work of time and place for me. I spent a good part of my last year in high school listening to John Kirkpatrick's recording, and reading Essays Before A Sonata. It was at Martin Perry's apartment in New York in the early 1980s (he now lives in Maine) that I first met a live person who actually played the "Concord" Sonata (it was Stephen Drury). It was also in Marty's apartment that I first read Proust and made the immediate connection with the Saint-Saens D minor Violin Sonata, a piece that I played with Marty back in my days as a flutist who really wished she were a violinist (and I'm living proof that wishes like that can come true).

I was thrilled to hear that Marty made a recording of the piece on the excellent Bridge label, and I just finished listening to it.

The Ives is music of place for me (since I grew up outside of Boston, and had significant events happen at Walden Pond), and it turns out that the Binkerd is also music of place. Gordon Binkerd (1916-2003) spent his career teaching composition at the University of Illinois (50 miles up the road from me), and these three piano pieces sparkle with the prairie landscape that I have grown to love. Marty has never been to this part of the country, but he does a really good job of picking up Binkerd's clues and making it aurally recognizable. The connection to the Ives "Concord" Sonata is unmistakable.

Drew Massey's notes mention that Binkerd's Essays were published in 1976. That happened to be the year I spent obsessed with Ives. Who knew that I would meet Martin Perry at Juilliard the following year, and who knew that I would move to Binkerd's Illinois in 1985? Binkerd retired from teaching in 1971, but he stuck around here for the rest of his life. I could have seen him in the grocery store, in the library, or even at a concert.

All these highly personal coincidences are wrapped up in this remarkable recording.

I said earlier that I cannot be unbiased, so it is with a great deal of bias that I tell you that this is extremely thoughtful and extremely beautiful playing. Marty is a person of serious musical intelligence, and he uses it to bring out all the cyclic material in the "Concord" Sonata in a way that provides a strong structure for the piece. All the musical thoughts have their places. He allows for great amounts of exuberance in the exuberant parts, and extraordinarily touching introspection in the introspective parts. Listening is a rather cathartic experience, and an experience that helps put some of the craziness of the world into perspective for me, if only by presenting a world of pure feeling, pure sound, and a bunch of nostalgia in such a clean and fresh package.

Music's Gradual Change from Being a Service to Being a Good

We are all currently witnessing something that traditionally was thought of as a service transform, through the magic of technology, into a good. And it seems that the trend might render music as a person's livelihood into something truly rare, and something reserved for the relative few.

We didn't think it would happen with 78 records, LP records, or tapes, but the transistor radio and the Walkman made it extremely enjoyable to listen to recordings while being out in the world (i.e. not at home), and listening to music became something private and personal. The quality of the CD and the quality of the technology that has gone into recording music on one end, and "spitting it out" on the other end has come to the point where rendered "readings" are even preferable for reasons of balance and of accuracy to natural ones.

The change has sure put a lot of musicians out of work over the past hundred years or so, because in places where musicians once provided the desired ambience, recordings do it for a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the price.

You can buy a CD for $15.00, and play it a thousand times without paying a cent more to anybody (and you can download the files for even less). The guests at your party, the people eating in your restaurant, or the people shopping your store will be bathed in its ambience, and the people who made the recordings, if they are still alive, will never even know. If you sell enough of these to enough people, the world will be flooded with electronically-generated sound with nary a musician attached to it. Oh yes. It already is pretty much that way with the "classical" kind of music.

I have been wracking my brain, and haven't found anything in current life or in the life of times past to compare this transformation of service to good with.

Can you?

UPDATE: I finally found one on-line discussion about this matter, and then another discussion about the question of whether music is a product or a service. If Jeff McDougall (the person who wrote one of the articles that started the discussion) happens to be reading this, I would love to have his take on this question.

Music Market Ramble

A couple of years ago I wrote a note to an ensemble that recorded some rather rare music by a little-known composer I happen to like a great deal (and anyone reading this blog could probably guess the identity of that composer). I wrote my message to the ensemble through the rather large company that made their CD, which was the only way I could reach the musicians who played this music. My message included a statement about the quality of this composer, and suggested that the members of the ensemble might consider scanning the manuscripts they played from into the Petrucci Library so that other people could study it and play this music. I mentioned how difficult it is to interest publishers in music by little-known composers, no matter how good their music happens to be.

(Nearly three years have passed since that e-mail message, and these pieces are still not available for other musicians to play.)

The recording company executive told me that he passed my message onto a person who would forward it to the ensemble, and included the phrase "This music deserves definitely more recognition; we hope that many customers encourage us to advance soon."

What strikes me as terribly sad about that statement is the simple fact that the furthering (and preserving) of worthwhile musical endeavors is so often driven by consumer demand. It is one thing when the consumer in question is a music ensemble, and that ensemble is looking for interesting and unusual music to play. Most musicians are happy to pay for nice editions of music they want to play. The "economy" in that kind of situation is one that would, under the best of circumstances, move forward. In the case of newly-discovered music by people who have been dead for a while, a publisher makes money (or makes back an initial investment of time and engraving skill) by selling the music, and musicians can make money by playing the music in concerts (and the same people can play the same piece of music for many different audiences). Perhaps there is also money involved in paying people who staff and promote the various ensembles and concert venues. There is also a little money involved when academic musicians include musical analysis in the books and articles they write, and money involved when applied teachers use published music to teach. Most of all, the music itself can be played many different ways by many different people, and a lot of people can get a lot of pleasure from playing and listening to it. At any rate, the egg-white economic theory is at play: money (or anything) is worth more when it remains in circulation.

It is another thing when the consumer in question is a person buying a recording. A person may love the music on the recording, and it may be extremely meaningful for his or her life, but there is no way a record company can measure how many times someone plays a recording. S/he only buys it once, and the only thing that can be measured is how many recordings are sold. Many recording companies require a certain amount of investment on the part of the people playing on the recording, and the production of a recording does involve some economic movement, but once the music is on a disc and the disc is in a box, that is the end of the line. A record company can make the investment to promote a recording, but the resulting numbers really reflect more on how well the recording is marketed than how worthwhile the music on the CD happens to be.

The idea of a wonderful piece of music ending its life as a single out-of-print recording is terribly sad.

Avril and Shamonia: an April Fool's Joke on Critics

Music by Coates, Rowley, Clarke, Dale, Carse, Fulton, Elgar, Moffat, Dunhill, Bridge, and Tertis
Dame Avril Piston, viola; Shamonia Harpa, piano
Guild GMCD 7275 73 minutes

This recording is a gift to the astute record reviewer. You can read a bunch of reviews from the Essex Chronicle, The BBC Music Magazine, the International Record Review, and a very good one by the independent writer Jonathan Woolf on the Classical Music Review Blog. My review in the the January/February 2005 issue of the American Record Guide didn't make it onto the Classical Music Review Blog's radar, but you can read it here:

Though the music is serious, rare, and very well played, this recording is actually a successful April Fool's joke (as the pseudonyms of the violist and the pianist reveal). The violist's character is described in the liner notes as a student of Lionel Tertis and the pianist is described as a champion of York Bowen. Both women are said to be in their 80s, though the violist has only been a woman since 1961. Before she was a Dame would she have been a Sir? I had never heard of Dame Avril Piston, so, being a dutiful researcher, I search for a male titled British violist named Piston, but I found nothing.

The playing, particularly the viola playing, does not sound like the playing of an octogenarian. Violists in their eighties, if they can still play at all, tend to vibrate slowly and often play out of tune in the high register. This violist, whoever s/he is, has fine intonation in the high register, a lovely and supple vibrato, and a great deal of power. The pianist is equally fine and equally strong. My questions led me to seek these musicians out on the internet, where I came upon a page of hilarious photos. It still took me a while to realize that the joke was on me.

Joking aside, this is a very nice collection of 20th century English viola music, much of it inspired by Tertis. There are recordings of the Bridge and the Clarke that I prefer to this, but I enjoy being introduced to the rest of the music, particularly the pieces by Alec Rowley, Adam Carse, and Eric Coates.

[It is unfortunate that those pictures have been removed from Guild's website.]

David Vernier was fooled. Walter E. Langsam, who made a comment on Tom Roper's blog, suggests the true identity of Shamonia Harper could be Stephen Hough, who has an excellent April Fool's post of his own today.

Primas Stefan and his Royal Tziganes

I have written a great deal on this blog about Steven Staryk, but I haven't written much about his musical alter ego, Primus Stefan, a Gypsy fiddler par excellence, who was one of the first (if not the first) "legit" violinists to bring traditional violin music from Eastern Europe to more Western ears by way of recordings. In order to become Primas Stefan, Staryk, who had learned to play traditional Eastern European music as a child in Toronto, had to seek out traditional musicians in post World War II Europe, which was no easy task.

Centaur has added two tracks to the second volume of its forthcoming multi-volume retrospective (this disc is CRC 3203, and it should be available soon). One piece is called "Gloomy Sunday," recorded by Primas Stefan in 1959, and the other is the middle section of Sarasate's Ziegeunerweisen.

This Ziegeunerweisen comes from two recordings: the outer parts come from a 1967 recording of the very familiar Sarasate piece (played exquisitely by Staryk and Douglas Gamley conducting the London Festival Orchestra), and the inner part, recorded in 1959 by Primus Stefan and his Royal Tziganes for the recording pictured above, is a traditional setting of one of the popular Gypsy melodies that Sarasate used in his piece.

Staryk served the concertmaster of both London's Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, so the "royal" nature of the Tziganes' name seems quite natural. Copies of the LP are still available, but this "mash up" on the Centaur CD is unique. The disc (Volume 2 of a 2-CD set) is also loaded with Kreisler and other treats. Volume 1 has concertos by Paganini, Beethoven, Mozart, Saint-Saens and Shostakovich.

Check Centaur's website from time to time and do a search for Staryk. These recordings will certainly be listed there soon. If you haven't heard the Beethoven or the "Every Violinist's Guide" that are there, I can recommend them both heartily.

Whither liner notes?

I rarely buy anything resembling a pop recording, but, after hearing a radio broadcast of a concert of popular songs that Nathan Gunn and his wife Julie Gunn performed this summer in Urbana, I just had to buy Gunn's recording of this repertoire. I had a pile of listening obligations to run through before being able to crack open this recording, but today I did.

I was very excited to see that my old violinist-friend Joyce Hammann featured on the Amazon listing (I haven't seen Joyce for 30 years), but was terribly disappointed not to see her listed on the printed material that came with the recording. The name of Gene Scheer appears Nathan Gunn's four-paragraph essay about life in New York (written in English and translated into French and German), which could lead someone to believe that Scheer composed all the music on the CD, or that he might be playing piano on the CD. None of the other composers' names appear, none of the arrangers' names appear, and none of the accompanying musicians' names appear.

The poorly-designed booklet is printed on cheap paper, with a centerfold of the Sony Music logo sitting in the middle of two pages of white space. There are five poorly-printed head-shot photos of Nathan Gunn, and a page about Legacy, which prompts me to imagine that this might be a reissue of an older recording (but from when?) I'll never know. Nobody will ever know.

The liner notes are truly designed to be thrown away. Perhaps the CD is too. I loaded it into my ipod (where the composers of the songs are displayed, and I learned that Scheer wrote three of the songs. The other information I want to know (like the recording date(s), the specific arrangers, and the performing musicians) will never be known by anybody except for the musicians themselves, and the people at Sony who are withholding the information.

Couldn't Sony have used the vast amount of white space on that centerfold to provide information for people who might think of the music they listen to as more than just the utterings of a pretty voice? It couldn't have anything to do with money, because it doesn't cost that much to print black text on paper that is already white.

Humph! I hope that I enjoy listening to this recording.

UPDATE: I did enjoy the recording: the arrangements for various combinations of (superbly-played) flute, clarinet, horn, string quintet (with many solos), harp, piano, and a moment of recorder are great, and they really help hold interest in this group of mostly mournful songs about the endings of relationships. There are two more sprightly pieces tacked on from what sound like recordings made at different times (with music arranged by different arrangers and performed by different ensembles). I love Nathan Gunn's voice, but after this I want is to hear him sing Schubert again.

Critical Critics

The musical blogosphere is full of whimpy critics, including me. I tend to save my critical criticism for my ARG reviews (stuff I have to write about), and usually don't bother to fill these blog pages with music I don't like.

But today I'm inspired. A set of lively discussions over at Iron Tongue of Midnight (which now truly deserves its name) about aesthetic banality prompted me to remember the music of Richard Nanes.

I first encountered the music of Richard Nanes many years ago when a package of his CDs arrived on my desk during my former life as a radio station programmer. Judging a CD by its cover (and CDs were still a novelty then), I made the quick decision to simply play one of them on the air, right then and there. I was so frazzled by the banality of the music, that after the piece was finished playing I took the CD out of the CD player and rolled my chair over it and its companion CDs, over and over again. I wanted to make sure that nobody would ever play them again. If I threw them away, somebody might have plucked one of them out of the garbage. CDs were expensive to make and buy back in the early 1990s, and there was a sense of "quality" that surround the CD back in its infancy.

I came across this 2006 Jeffrey Quick review today, and have the burning need to share it here. Quick's review is right on the money, which you shouldn't waste on any of Nanes' music, by the way. Just listen to a few clips on line, and you'll get the picture.

Doesn't this make you curious?

I admit that my original interest in this CD was because of the composer's name, but I also was intrigued by the idea of this person, who lived from 1742 until 1810, being a composer for the Imperial Court of St. Petersburg. Up until this morning I thought that "western classical" music in Russia began with Glinka. Knowing about Anton Ferdinand Titz changes everything completely, especially since the music is terrific. This is definitely not the milquetoast Viennese Classical music that people come across from time to time when doing research for dissertations. This is forward-thinking music in the spirit of Haydn and Boccherini, but with a completely original compositional voice. Although Titz was not Russian by birth, he was the first Viennese Classical composer to write in Russia. That he used Russian folk material in his quartets is just a little more icing on the cake of historical re-thinking.

Here's his biography from Grove:

(b Nuremberg, c1742; d St Petersburg, 25 Dec 1810/6 Jan 1811). German violinist and composer, active in Russia. He was orphaned at an early age and was taught painting in Nuremberg by Johann C. and Barbara R. Dietzsch, his uncle and aunt. By the age of 16 he was a violinist at St Sebaldus’s church there. After an unhappy love affair a few years later he went to Vienna, where he played in the opera orchestra and may have studied with Haydn. In 1771 he became a member of the Hofkapelle in St Petersburg; Catherine the Great paid him the highest salary of any of her court musicians. He also taught at the theatre school, gave the future Tsar Aleksandr I violin lessons, directed a court chamber orchestra (which included the clarinettist Joseph Beer and other outstanding musicians), and performed publicly, for instance in 1782, but most of his performances were at court, as a violinist and viola d'amore player. Later in life he suffered a mental disorder that sometimes prevented him from working, but he was encouraged and protected by Senator A.G. Teplov, a St Petersburg amateur musician. He dedicated three string quartets to Teplov and three more to Aleksandr I.

Titz was particularly admired for his sensitive playing of adagio passages, but by the time Spohr met him in St Petersburg in 1803 his technical assurance had gone. His compositions are mainly chamber works in the Viennese Classical style; his string quartets strive for a large dramatic compass and the three upper parts have considerable independence. He also wrote some small vocal works (now lost), including Le pigeon bleu et noir gémit, a romance that was popular in Russian salons until the mid-19th century. He has often been confused with the Dresden violinist Ludwig Tietz.

The liner notes for this CD also include a quotation from the 60-year-old Ludwig Spohr.

"I also saw and listened to Titz, the famous mad violinist. We found a man of about forty with a glowing face and pleasant appearance. You could not tell he suffered from mental confusion. So we were all the more surprised when he asked each of us: 'My most gracious monarch, how are you feeling?' He then proceeded to relate to us a tall tale, containing very little common sense, and complained bitterly about an evil wizard, who was jealous of his violin playing and cursed his middle finger on his left hand so that he could no longer play, but he then said he thought he might be able to reverse the curse."

The music for the 12 quartets recorded by the Hoffmeister Quartet was discovered in the Academic Regional Library in Ulyanovsk by Andrey Reshetin. A modern edition has been made of the first quartet, and it was published in 2000. I hope that all the music will be made available for other quartets to play, perhaps through the Petrucci Library. I also wonder if Titz wrote anything for the viola d'amore?

My Father was Simon Barere

This is the name of a CD on VAI Audio (VAIA 1244 to be exact) that has concert performances of the pianist Simon Barere (1896-1951) interspersed with an interviews with his son, Boris Barere. The person talking with Barere is Jacques Leiser.

For those who do not know him, Simon Barere was a Russian pianist who studied with Felix Blumenfeld. He was famous for playing extremely difficult music at extraordinarily fast tempi, but from the interview on this CD I learned that he did so with very little practice. His playing is thrilling to hear, not just for the speed, and not even for the ease of his playing, but for what he is able to do with the music simply because he can. His recording of the Schumann Toccata, Opus 7, had to be fast in order to have the piece fit onto one side of a 78 r.p.m. recording, but he still takes time to let the music breathe, and sing, and fly. It is extremely inspiring.

Technorati tags: Simon Barere, piano, pianists, classical music

Random Thoughts about Listening to Recordings

Because I work as a record reviewer, much of the listening I do could be thought of by some as work. When I listen to a recording that I am planning to review I need to pay attention to what I hear and figure out something to say about it that might be useful to someone who may or may not be interested in what I have to say. Those readers may or may not go out and buy that particular recording, and if any of them do, each person would certainly have a different experience listening to the recordings I write about. I hope that I'm doing some good.

My concern as a record reviewer is to try and hear what the people who participated in the making of a particular recording, including the composer of the music, put into it. This requires listening beyond the surface. It is very important to be honest. If what I write is true (and there are many truths when it comes to writing subjectively) then I am happy.

I rarely have any contact with any of the people who make the recordings I review, even when they are people I once knew, and it is equally rare that anyone makes any kind of comment about a review I have written. It is a kind of lonely way of communicating, but listening to recordings has become a rather solitary act thanks to portable stereos and ipods. Even listening to the radio is usually a solitary act. People tend to listen alone in their cars. Once in a while two people might be listening at the same time in a car, but I believe it is rare to have a really communal listening experience listening to classical music on the radio. There is certainly no communication with the person sitting in the radio station who decided to play that particular recording and press the button to have it play.

In a way listening to recordings is the opposite experience from being in the audience at a concert. A recording you can turn off if you are tired of it, but at a concert you would be disruptive or even insulting if you got up and left. If you happen to be listening to a recording with someone else, you can make comments out loud about the music (another concert no-no). If you want to listen to something again on a recording, it takes no more effort than pressing a button. In a concert you would have to wait unti the end of the piece and yell "encore!" Even then the performers would probably play a selection they prepared for their "encore," and would not repeat the exact movement or section of a movement you would have liked to have heard again. It would also surely be different from the performance you would have just heard, because no two performances of any piece are exactly the same, even when played by the same people in the same place, and for the same audience.

At a concert (one that is not being recorded) you can share a collective experience of a moment in time that happens only once and will never happen again.