I must admit that I sighed a little as I got ready to review this CD. “Here we go, another Dvořák Cello Concerto,” I thought. Even so, my interest and then my excitement mounted as I listened to this disc, because it has so much going for it. It opens with Bloch’s Schelomo, a work that I enjoy, but that often seems a little long for its material, and also a little Hollywood-hysterical. The first thing I noticed was how good everything sounds. Cellist Marc Coppey produces an unusually burnished and smooth sound in all three of these works, and both he and the orchestra play with considerable tonal character. And then there’s the engineering, which strikes me as superior in its clarity and balance. It also is exceptionally realistic. Pulled in by the sound per se, I was then taken with the sensitivity of the playing. Many lovely things occur during these readings, particularly where Coppey is concerned. One of those lovely things takes place in the last movement of Dvořák’s concerto—at the five-minute mark, to be exact, where, after some transitional material, the cellist returns briefly to the movement’s opening theme. Coppey plays this passage with eloquent simplicity, and with the most refined and rich tone. Even some of the best cellists have difficulty avoiding awkwardness in some of this concerto’s more awkward passages, but not Coppey. He attended conservatories in his native Strasbourg, then Paris, and then Bloomington, and he won the Leipzig Bach Competition in 1988. I think that this is the first time that I have heard him play; I’m certainly going to be checking out his earlier recordings after this! His Bach cello suites are on YouTube. At first listen, they seem a little Romantic to me, but the sound and the assurance of his playing are not to be ignored.

Steven Kruger, Huntley Dent, and Jerry Dubins all beat me to reviews of this program because they were working with a download. (I’m old school, preferring, when I can, to review a physical CD.) I made a point of not reading their reviews until I had formed my own opinion and written the previous paragraph. Dent was similarly impressed with the evenness and beauty of Coppey’s tone. Kruger also liked the program very much. Dubins, on the other hand, wrote, “In much of the technically difficult passagework, cellist Marc Coppey sounds labored, and even in relaxed moments of lyrical calm his tone, which is a bit on the grainy side to begin with, is not the loveliest I’ve heard. But Coppey’s technical and tonal shortcomings are minor beside Kirill Karabits’s lackadaisical conducting and the German Symphony Orchestra Berlin’s lapses in good behavior.” Much as I respect Dubins’s opinion, I don’t share it. (Maybe he should check his computer cables!) In a very competitive field, in which cellists such as Rostropovich, Starker, and Piatigorsky all have given us excellent recordings of this music, Coppey does not supplant them—but he has no reason to be ashamed in their august company. If you’re looking for a modern recording of these works in very fine sound, I have no hesitation about recommending this new release to you.

This worthy addition to the discography of Nelson Freire captures one of a handful of live concerto recordings to be found outside his major-label catalog, in this case the Saint-Saëns Concerto No. 2—the boldest of his five piano concertos—coupled with incidental solo works by Grieg and Liszt. The solo pieces are studio recordings from 1966; the concerto is a live recording from 20 years later. Without a discography of the pianist to consult, I’ll venture to say that everything here is a new addition, and the recorded sound is quite good throughout. In the Saint-Saëns the forwardly placed piano is as full and realistic-sounding as one could hope for, but orchestral detail hasn’t been sacrificed.

What immediately attracts major pianists to the Saint-Saëns Second is the gesture of placing a cadenza-like prelude before the orchestra enters, a twist on a Bach organ prelude, and as in Bach (or Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, which uses the same gesture) the music is free-form, improvisatory, and expressive. Freire takes a large-scaled Romantic view of the introduction, setting the mood for a reading of the first movement strong in passion and virtuosity. Ádám Fischer’s conducting follows suit, although he’s fairly ordinary in comparison to such a charismatic soloist. Taking Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Charles Dutoit (Decca) as a good modern standard, Freire is just as sparkling in the Scherzo but more virtuosic in the finale, where Fischer also catches fire. It would get no argument from me if someone called his reading a first choice. (Equally exciting concerto performances can be found in Decca’s two-CD collection of the pianist’s radio broadcasts, which I welcomed enthusiastically in Fanfare 38:4.)
Since there was no online booklet, I can’t say why the Liszt and Grieg pieces, being studio recordings, didn’t make it to disc previously; I presume this was a radio broadcast. In any event, the recorded sound, if a bit dry and confined, is perfectly respectable. In his selection of five of Grieg’s 66 Lyric Pieces, Freire is so convincing that one longs for more. Charisma isn’t what these homey pieces call for, being chiefly aimed at the Victorian market for amateur-level character pieces. Freire brings the sensitivity of a great Chopinist to meditative miniatures such as “Lonely Wanderer” and imparts a touch of brilliance where he can, as in “Little Birds.” The only other pianist I know who found such modest magic was Walter Gieseking in his monaural collection for EMI.

Liszt is more familiar territory for Freire, whose Decca album for the composer’s bicentennial was one of the high spots among a slew of solo recitals that year; he has also recorded the B-Minor Sonata, Totentanz, and both concertos. The three works on the present release are fairly offbeat. The two Hungarian Rhapsodies, No. 5 and No. 10, are generally found only in complete cycles—neither was recorded by Horowitz or Richter, and Grigory Ginzburg has only a single recording of No. 10, just to name my favorite Lisztians. Freire gives No. 5 a dignified, stately reading suitable to its solemnity. No. 10 is far more a showpiece, like the famous No. 2, and here Freire shines with effortless passagework and trills while avoiding any hint of vulgarity. He succeeds in finding the music behind the cascade of notes, in the vein of Alfred Brendel’s Liszt but with more warmth. Polonaise No. 2 is as heroic and showy as Chopin’s most forceful examples, so I’m surprised that I didn’t know the piece already. It’s like Chopin with bells and whistles added, an exciting final flourish to the program. Richter has been captured in this work no less than 15 times (!), the vast majority on tour in 1988; I should have been paying much better attention. Freire plays at the same level of bravura.

Everything about this release is superb. In the current issue I review Freire’s new release of Brahms solo piano works, also new to his discography, so it’s a month to celebrate for those who esteem his art.

Volume 5 in Audite’s survey of the Berlin broadcasts of the Amadeus Quartet is undoubtedly the most important yet. Works wholly new to the quartet’s discography, superbly performed, ensure that the box is of far more than archival interest. And then there are the three guest artists – Cecil Aronowitz, Heinrich Geuser and Conrad Hansen. A box to savour.

[...] die im Rahmen des Kunstfests Weimar mitgeschnittene Neuaufnahme [ist] aber mehr als nur das Zeitdokument einer vergangenen Epoche. Was das bisweilen collagenartige Gefüge angeht, bei dem russische Volksliedanleihen auf schneidende Rhythmen, Akkordeon- auf Sirenenklänge, Straßen-Parolen auf sakrale Hymnen treffen, gelingt der höchst engagierten Teamleistung unter der Leitung des Ukrainers Kirill Karabits ein Agitprop-Sound, der nicht von gestern ist, sondern in seiner Modernität durchaus packend.

In the words of Laura Carlo, 2017 has been a year of musical riches. Here's the...

The selling point here is the order of the program and the liner notes by Coppey with a further set by Habakuk Traber. These present Schelomo as a work written as Bloch was planning to move to the United States, while the Dvorak concerto was written here while the composer was homesick for his native Bohemia. The quiet Silent Woods is placed between them and, as Coppey puts it: “forges a connection between the reflections of an individual and the violence of being uprooted”.

These works are favorites of mine, and I am happy to hear them in this context. The recorded quality is excellent, clean and dramatic; but the interpretations are not always as impressive as the sound. Coppey plays beautifully, but the orchestra is not always clear in its phrasing—I miss some of the answers to the cello’s side of the conversation. The dramatic statements are fine on both sides, but the relations are often more vague than they should be, and the orchestra is not always audible in softer passages.

Alexander Reinagle, an American composer born the same year as Mozart, may be unfamiliar. He was born in England but moved to New York and later Philadelphia to develop his career. Sonata 1, with Murtfeld’s expressive and vibrant playing, seems to be a good piece for learners to tackle, besides the usual Clementi and Mozart.

The program moves to more familiar fare, like MacDowell’s ‘To a Wild Rose’. Murtfeld interprets it with little sentimentality and rubato. His Virtuoso Etudes are not very technical, but Murtfeld plays with a full scope and effortless technique. I especially enjoyed Sessions’s ‘From my Diary’, a magical and mysterious set.

Overall, this is full of wonderful finds, like the thrill-seeking Antheil Jazz Sonata and the Ives 3-Page Sonata.

Two recordings of the Sextets, both very good and at the same time very different. The most obvious clue comes from the timings. The scherzos are at effectively the same tempo, but everywhere else the Mandelring is noticeably quicker. I’ve noted in their previous recordings (Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms) that they always seem to be at the faster end of the tempo spectrum, so their playing seems consistently youthful and unsentimental. They do prefer the “long line” rather than a style that reveals lots of inner detail; but it would be a mistake to call their playing cold, mechanical or inexpressive. Everything’s there, just in slightly compressed form. They also have an advantage as an established quartet, so four of the players have (we hope!) similar interpretive tastes. A fifth player (Glassl) was a former member of the quartet, so he speaks the same language. I don’t know what to say about the sixth player, a cellist named Schmidt, because three members of the quartet are already named Schmidt, and this makes four! I have been unable to find out if they’re all related, but the playing is very polished and unified in spirit.

The players in the Capucon group, according to the notes, met each other through various performances in Vienna, Paris, and Salzburg. They came together at the 2016 Easter Festival in Aix-en-Provence for these performances, which were recorded in concert. Here tempos seem more normal in that the music flows easily, while with the Mandelring a tempo sometimes seems imposed on the music. The gentler tempo pleased me in the movements I particularly love (1:I), though the Mandelring didn’t seem too fast when I flipped back to them.

A word about the sonics. Audite’s sound is very rich and full, which is fine, but the instruments often seem glaringly close. Erato’s recording is more distant, but sounds nasal next to Audite’s; in time, though, the ear adjusts, and it sounds good. Better than either, though, is the much more neutral perspective that Hyperion gave the Raphael Ensemble nearly 30 years ago. If you’re looking for something up to date, either of the review recordings would be fine, but if choosing one, I would pick the Mandelring.

Karol Szymanowski collaborated with the Polish violinist Pavel Kochanski when he wrote his Myths in 1915. These are three movements: ‘The Fountain of Arethusa’, ‘Narcissus’, and ‘Dryads and Pan’. The composer and his violinist muse worked to extend the coloristic possibilities of the violin and piano duo in these works. These are some of the loveliest works written for this combination. Franziska Pietsch and Detlev Eisinger play this music beautifully, about as fine as David Oistrakh and Vladimir Yampolsky but in much better sound.

Their Franck is not as good. Pietsch again shows that she excels at lower dynamics, but like so many others, she fails to maintain the intensity needed to hold the listener’s attention through this hypnotic, half-hour-long work. The only performances I know that I cannot fault in this respect are by David Oistrakh and Sviatoslav Richter and Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot (acoustic recording of 1923). Pietsch’s strength, which she demonstrates in the Szymanowski and which was the glory of her Prokofieff disc (Nov/Dec 2016), is her affinity for gestural music. Music that would benefit from a more sustained, belcanto style of tone production and phrasing, like the Franck, does not play to this strength.

Pietsch plays a violin made by Carlo Antonio Testore in 1751, and Detlev Eisinger plays a Bosendorfer piano.

Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov are better in the Franck. Theirs is not the most mesmerizing account, but it is more sustained than the German duo’s. Its disc-mate is the Concert by Ernest Chausson for violin and piano with string quartet accompaniment. It is a lovely work with an autumnal mood, characteristic of the inventiveness of the time. The scoring gives it a delicate transparency. Another thing that contributes to the transparency is the use of an Erard piano from 1885. It doesn’t have the thick, assertive tone of a modern concert grand and balances the strings beautifully. Both the Sonata and the Concert were written for Eugene Ysaye, and this could account for the use of long melodic lines in the violin in both works.

Faust plays the Vieuxtemps Stradivarius violin of 1710. Good sound.

As time moves along, and it does, certain music becomes as if old friends. Nothing to take for granted, ideally a comfortable familiar that one turns to when spirits need brightening. The Prokofiev Violin Concertos (Audite 97.733) have long been that for me. The First Concerto I discovered when a Freshman in high school as a cutout in the local 5 & 10, the marvelous Szigeti version on Mercury. The Second I came to a little later, while still in high school, in the Heifetz-Boston rendition on RCA. The concertos are landmark Prokofiev, with thematic wealth and tender bitter-sweet beauty virtually unmatched in the modern repertoire for violin.

The two LP versions of the concertos long established themselves in my mind as benchmark performances that set the standard and defined for me what these works are about. As glorious as these old recordings are to me, I have in no way closed myself off to new interpretations. I am very happy that I asked to review the new recording of both concertos as played with brilliance by Franziska Pietsch and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under conductor Cristian Macelaru.

In the hearing and rehearing of the new versions I am captivated, from the first, with what Ms. Pietsch brings to the music. The role of the orchestra engages very much as well.

The two works, as the liners remind us, mark the beginning and the end of Prokofiev's time in exile from Russia. What that means to the music does not concern me especially right now, since the works took their shape and life took shape as two interrelated but contrasting entities.

The First Concerto is very much Russian, modern without any hesitation, with almost a folk-Gypsy intensity and a beauty that persists in the work almost in spite of itself. Pietsch does not have quite the same folkish attack as Szigeti did, but what she brings is her own, at times even more savage than Szigeti, yet too with a soaring beauty Szigeti did not quite equal. The orchestra seconds her with a heart-felt staging and a detailed balance that together are breathtaking.

The Second is perhaps a less impetuous work and one that spins out regretful lyricism in even larger doses than the first. The rendition we get from Pietsch and orchestra is not perhaps as poetic as Heifetz but on the other hand has a dynamic and an irresistible engagement that brings us the tender and molto-expressivo sides in a new balance. There is pensive fragility and a little infernal zest in perhaps more equal measure than with Heifetz.

As I listened it occurred to me that Pietsch and Berlin respond to these works now, some more than 50 years beyond the two LP versions, at a time when hindsight in no way diminishes the works in our eyes and ears, yet it is music after all that we may now more completely, collectively understand and embrace as familiars. The "brazen" modernism that the music seemed to embody years ago has not disappeared, but it has become less off-putting, more naturally heard and understood, completely comprehensible so that Pietsch and Berlin can build on what we already accept and embrace.

These remarkable Pietsch readings do not replace the Szigeti and Heifetz. They stand alongside them as equals, which is to say much. She and Macelaru-Berlin bring to us joyfully alive interpretations that remind us that the music is as much a part of today as yesterday.

It occurs to me as I immerse myself in the music again that much could be said about a kind of tribal strain that both Stravinsky and Prokofiev introduced into the early modernist project that has parallels with Picasso and his fascination with African masks and such. You can hear a primal strain in this music, too. Pietsch lets herself feel that influence and she lets us experience fully how it belongs very much to parts of both concertos.

And so I conclude the review with much more that could be said. It is unnecessary to say it here. Suffice to say what I have. Franziska Pietsch clearly dwells in the heart of the music throughout. Berlin and Macelaru craft stunning orchestral sonarities to match. There are passages that nearly bring on tears, they hit home so well.

The recording to me is another benchmark of a way to approach Prokofiev. It holds its own and so brings me to a strong recommendation. It forms an ideal introduction to these masterpieces, or for that matter new versions that deserve a place in your collection. I tell you true. This recording may well be for YOU!