Strawinsky notiert in seinem bestechend originellen Violinkonzert die Ausdrucksanweisung "brillante" nicht etwa zur Solovioline, wie es zu erwarten gewesen wäre, sondern zu den Klarinetten. Und tatsächlich emanzipiert er auch Orchesterinstrumente immer wieder mit solistischem Spiel, sodass es im Konzert zu einer Vielzahl spannender Duette kommt: etwa zwischen der Solovioline und den Fagotten oder den Posaunen, den Trompeten oder Flöten. Im Finalsatz duettiert der Solist auch mit dem Konzertmeister des Orchesters fast schon wie in einem Doppelkonzert: Im Grunde konzertiert nicht nur der Solist, sondern auch das Orchester mit seinen verschiedenen Klanggruppen.

Das führt natürlich zu heiklen interpretatorischen Fragen, die gänzlich unterschiedlich gelöst wurden. Robert Craft etwa, der enge Vertraute des späten Strawinsky, lässt in seiner Einspielung den Solisten zurücktreten, der so gewissermaßen das orchestrale Musizieren kommentierend begleitet, während in einer Einspielung mit David Oistrach der Solist unangefochten dominiert und das Orchester als Klangkulisse die Musik reich bewegt grundiert.

Liana Gourdjia stellt sich auf dieses ungewöhnliche konzertante Musizieren mit stupender Musikalität sehr überzeugend ein. Sie dominiert nicht nur, wo es die Musik erfordert, sondern nimmt sich auch zurück – nicht nur durch dynamische Differenzierungen, sondern mehr noch durch die Intensität der Tonartikulation; sie gestaltet mit makellos-blendender Technik eben ganz aus der Musik heraus. Die Deutsche Radio Philharmonie unter Zsolt Nagy greift den lebhaften, eher schwingenden als stampfenden konzertanten Impetus, der Strawinskys Partitur durchzieht, niveauvoll auf. Und auch Katia Skanavi, die als Pianistin bei den Solostücken mehr als bloß assistiert, erweist sich als eine kongeniale Partnerin.

Den Anforderungen der doch so unterschiedlichen Lieder wird Forresters tiefe, dunkel getönte und angemessen timbrierte Kopfstimme gerecht. Wärme in Klangfarbe und Tongebung, expressive Schönheit der Linienführung, absolut saubere Intonation und verständliche Artikulation, dazu ein solides technisches Fundament: so erlebt man manches Lied aus neuer Perspektive. [...] Eine Box, die in die Sammlung eines jeden Freundes von Klavierliedern gehört!

[Patricia Kopatchinskaja] zwingt uns zum Zuhören. Kein Ton lässt sie kalt. Sie liebt die Extreme, lebt sie geigerisch aus – und wirkt dann mitunter wie eine "Nina Hagen des klassischen Violinspiels".

Wir erleben ein homogenes Quartett, aus dem sich die halsbrecherisch schwierige 1. Hornpartie bei Bedarf heraushebt, das aber in lyrischen wie dramatischen Partien mühelos seinen Mann steht, so dass eine der mitreißendsten Darbietungen des Konzertstücks entsteht, die der heutige Musikmarkt zu bieten hat.

Die Musiker des WDR Sinfonieorchesters finden aufgrund des feinnervigen und auf Schumann spezialisierten Dirigats von Heinz Holliger für jedes Werk den entsprechenden Ton, was diese CD besonders farbenreich und vielseitig werden lässt.

Sendebeleg siehe PDF!

L’excellent Quartetto di Cremona, lancé pour le même éditeur dans une intégrale des Quatuors de Beethoven, brille d’un feu sombre dans le vaste Quintette, mariant son geste à celui si éloquent du pianiste, alors qu’il distille une lumière tout autre au long des prospectives et des inventions brillantes du Premier Quatuor (1899), bien plus couru au disque.

This is Piano Duo Takahashi-Lehmann’s third disc for Audite. The first, Originals and Beyond (Audite 97.706), contained arrangements for piano four hands by Schoenberg, Beethoven, and Schumann of their own works. It was reviewed positively by Huntley Dent in Fanfare 39:1. The second, Transcriptions and Beyond (Audite 97.708), contained music by Stravinsky (including the composer’s own arrangement of Le sacre du printemps), Nancarrow, and Arnulf Herrmann. It appears not to have been reviewed in these pages. Now we have Allusions and Beyond. The title is itself an allusion to the fact that the works by Brahms and by Bernd Alois Zimmermann allude to the works of other composers.

There are surprisingly few recordings of Max Reger’s very convincing arrangements of Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos. In fact, the only recording of all six of them—as far as I know, anyway—is a set that was released on LP by the Musical Heritage Society, featuring pianists Martin Berkofsky and David Hagan. It’s serviceable, although aggressively recorded, and (obviously) out of print. Peter Rösel and Santiago Rodriguez also recorded Concerto No. 5, for Elan Recordings. That’s a better recording, but it is even harder to find than the MHS LPs. Let’s hope that this strong and joyful performance by Piano Duo Takahashi-Lehmann encourages Audite to ask these performers to record the remaining five. I’d buy it.

György Kurtág’s Bach transcriptions are somewhat better represented on disc, including on an ECM New Series disc that features the composer himself with his wife, Márta. These are extraordinarily subtle works. For example, at times Kurtág asks the pianists to cross their own or each other’s arms as they play. This is not a circus stunt, but still trickery of a sort, because the departure from traditional playing positions forces a rethinking of the music, and thus produces changes in the “expressive microcosm,” to use the booklet annotator’s apt phrase. A YouTube video (youtube.com/watch?v=Z8lTh58jhA8) of the aged Kurtágs playing some of these works is very moving, but the present performers certainly are sensitive to what is going on here, and these are beautiful readings. It’s worth mentioning that Kurtág’s setting of O Lamm Gottes unschuldig uses doublings of the melody at octaves or fifths in order to mimic an organ’s overtone stops. You will swear that another instrument is being played, but it’s all piano!

For Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Monologues, Norie Takahashi and Björn Lehmann leave each other’s side for 18 minutes and sit at their own pianos. (They remain separated for the Brahms.) Monologues contains five sections, and most of them include fragments of music by Bach, Beethoven, Debussy, and Messiaen to create what the composer called “music about music.” Zimmermann had the idea that time was not a line but a sphere, and that cosmic time and an individual’s “inner time” were not necessarily in sync. He described this as “pluralistic chronological simultaneity,” and expressed it musically through the insertion of quotations into his own works. Thus (we are asked to consider in the booklet note), his Monologues “embody the concept for this CD.” Whether you buy that or not probably will determine how you feel about Monologues. Perhaps ironically, it seems a little dated to me, but I might need more time to grow into it. The present performers plunge into this work unreservedly.

The last piece on this CD is Brahms’s famous Haydn Variations. The version for two pianos predated the orchestral version. Other than that, little needs to be said about the music itself, probably. As for the performance, I find it refined, hush-hush sensitive, and interpreted almost to the point of preciousness. It’s as if Elisabeth Schwarzkopf cloned herself and both of them took up the piano. My impression of Brahms was that he was unaffected, and that’s a quality I listen for in his music as well. Piano Duo Takahashi-Lehmann seems to have other ideas, and while I can respect them I do not share them. This is fussy, finicky Brahms.

I’ll come back to this disc for the Bach/Reger and the Bach/Kurtág, and not so much for the Zimmermann and Brahms. There’s no denying, however, that Norie Takahashi and Björn Lehmann are thoughtful and superbly capable musicians.

Without doubt, Maureen Forrester was one of the greatest singers of the previous century. By happy coincidence, three Fanfare critics—Henry Fogel, Paul Orgel, and I—just placed her recording of Mahler’s Rückert Lieder with Ferenc Fricsay and the RIAS Symphony of Berlin in the magazine’s Classical Hall of Fame. (I can’t recall any previous occasion on which three different Fanfare critics were moved to nominate the same recording for that status.) And yet her discography, while not small, is somewhat limited, and does not cover major aspects of her repertoire. There is of course a good deal of Mahler, and some Bach cantatas, and solo roles in major choral works by Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, and so on, plus two major operatic parts: Cornelia in Handel’s Julius Caesar and the title role of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. But remarkably lacking is recorded documentation of the wide array of Lieder and mélodies she sang in her almost innumerable concert recitals over four decades. Hence the appearance of this set, featuring five radio broadcasts in Berlin of vocal recitals given in her early peak years between 1955 and 1963, is a discographic event of the first magnitude.

Forrester was one of the last representatives of a voice type that seems now all but extinct—the true, pure alto, with a deep, vibrant vibrato and voluminous weight and power. As with all such voices, the top was secure but not brilliant, with the weight of projection located in the middle and lower registers. While powerful in projection, she could also scale back and produce delicate, deeply affecting mezza voce and piano effects. Her intonation was rock-solid, and her diction a model of clarity without in the least impairing the legato of the vocal line. The timbre had an innate pathos to it that made it particularly suitable for tragic subjects, and she sculpted phrases in ways that made every word count.

All of her many virtues are fully on display in these five recitals. Although the opening Rückert Lieder falls somewhat short of her aforementioned immortal studio recording with Fricsay, it is a formidable and moving account in its own right, though of course the piano accompaniment cannot match the impact of the orchestral version. After that, Forrester soars. The Loewe songs glow; the Wesendonck Lieder smolder with subterranean longing; the Brahms Zigeunerlieder exult in high spirits. In the Schubert and Schumann Lieder, Forrester demonstrates her ability to scale back her voice for intimate effects (try, for example, “Bertas Lied”) and intense pathos. (Interestingly, she sings the Maria Stuart Lieder in the original French and Latin of the poems rather than in the German translation set by Schumann; Forrester’s regular accompanist, John Newmark, had searched out those versions for her Paris debut, and she stayed with them thereafter.) The third disc brings stylistic shifts that move her into repertoire both before and after the Romantic period, and initially is somewhat less successful. While the two brief devotional pieces by the obscure Johann Wolfgang Franck (1644–1710) come off well, by modern standards the two C. P. E. Bach songs and the extended scena of Arianna a Naxos by Haydn are highly unidiomatic, almost clumsy sounding, though Forrester invests her singing with deep feeling. In the sets of songs by Britten, Barber, and Poulenc she is back on form, with a good command of French, though her voice is unusually dark and heavy for this repertoire; it is actually amazing how well she brings them all off in spite of that. Her feeling for Poulenc’s style is so idiomatic that I wonder if she had any personal coaching by him when she was in France.

Forrester is also mostly fortunate in her accompanists. Michael Raucheisen is of course legendary (the 69-CD set of his comprehensive survey of German Lieder during World War II, with a bevy of that nation’s greatest signers, is one of my prized possessions). His successor at RIAS, Felix Schröder, shows considerable sensitivity in the Britten songs and Poulenc’s La fraîcheur. Hertha Klust is best remembered today as an early accompanist to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau; I find her acceptable but somewhat heavy-handed and lacking in nuance, particularly in Haydn’s Arianna. The recorded sound is clear monaural radio broadcast quality of its era. The booklet provides the complete contents of the set and a well-considered essay on Forrester and these performances, but no song texts. This is an indispensable acquisition not only for fans of the great Canadian contralto, but of lovers of great singing in general. Emphatically recommended, and another candidate for my burgeoning 2017 Want List.

On connaît mal, trop mal, en France le Quatuor Mandelring, pourtant en activité depuis plus de trente ans. De son opulente discographie (dont des intégrales Mendelssohn et Chostakovitch), seule sa lecture exaltée des quatuors de Janacek nous était parvenue—elle se taillait d’ailleurs une place de choix dans la discographie dressée par Nicolas Derny dans le n° 642.

On réalise dès les premières mesures de l’Opus 881a droiture et l’intégrité du jeu. Cette remarquable formation impressionne autant par la densité des timbres et par la façon de « calibrer » les élans: on y reconnaît l’héritage d’une culture et d’un style. Autorité et puissance habitent un discours rigoureusement organisé dans les trois mouvements du Quintette n° 1 ; les artistes trouvent un juste davanéquilibre des voix comme des nuances. La séduction n’est pas la priorité d’une vision plus forte et intense que véritablement printanière.

Le lyrisme plus généreux du Quintette n° 2 s’épanouit mieux dans leur palette expressive. La vigueu r, l’assurance dominent un propos d’une solidité à toute épreuve, ponctué d’envolées héroïques. Pourtant dans le sublime Adagio, ce n’est pas le rêve qu’ils dessinent mais toujours la réalité. Un brin d’abandon aurait allégé le ton, un peu trop musclé. La couleur slave des deux derniers mouvements est clairement soulignée—encore plus nettement que dans la gravure historique des Budapest. Si, comme nous, vous aimez par-dessus tout le charme plus viennois et surtout la touche de tendresse des Amadeus (avec Cecil Aronowitz en 1967, DG), vous risquez de rester au bord du chemin nettement tracé et balisé par les nouveaux venus, avec métier et conviction.