Anders als Konrad Junghänel in seiner Ersteinspielung (Harmonia mundi France) besetzt Strobl die Vokalpartien dreifach, und er wählt etwas gesetztere Tempi, beides zum Vorteil der Musik. Andererseits fällt seine Interpretation nicht so starr aus wie die von Gunnar Letzbor (Pan Classics), sondern bietet eine ansprechende Vielfalt an Farben, Binnenspannungen und atmosphärischen Nuancen. Musikalisch also ein Glücksfall [...]

Edle Spätromantik mit dem Quartetto di Cremona und Andrea Lucchesini am Klavier.

Die Beethoven-Reise des ‘Quartto di Cremona’ neigt sich ihrem Ende zu, die Spannung bleibt hingegen unvermindert hoch. Auch nach sechs Etappen verliert diese Gesamteinspielung nichts an ihrem Reiz, an der hohen Dichte interpretatorischen Könnens. Die vier Musiker erreichen einen Grad wortloser Kommunikation, der kaum noch zu übersteigen ist. Nur so können sie derart unverkrampft an Beethovens Musik herangehen, die vor allem im Opus 18 immer vorwärts drängt, in der sich der widerspenstige junge Komponist schon deutlich bemerkbar macht. Die Noten vibrieren in allen Saiten, Ecken und Kanten bleiben wissentlich ungeschliffen.

Im Impetus gleich, in der Sprache allerdings forscher begegnen wir dem Bonner Meister anschließend in Opus 130. Das ‘Quartetto di Cremona’ lässt uns die Musik noch wesentlich intensiver erleben, sie wirkt schroff und zerklüftet, dann aber wiederum zart und intim. Selten zuvor haben wir die Cavatine derart rein und packend gehört, mit diesem leisen, wehmütigen Unterton. Ein Leben in Musik, das Beethoven gerade in der Schlusstrias seiner Streichquartette verdichtet hat und das kaum packender in Szene gesetzt werden kann, als dies das ‘Quartetto di Cremona’ macht.

Compelling, highly communicative and vibrant performances showing the great talent of the four musicians forming one of Italy’s best quartets, Quartetto di Cremona.

The G-Major Piano Trio is one of Beethoven’s “early comedies,” to use Donald Francis Tovey’s wonderful phrase, yet it’s not until the work’s fourth movement that the Swiss Piano Trio lets loose with enough energy and suggestion of comic timing to characterize the music fully. In the earlier movements, their rhythms could often be more “sprung,” dynamic contrasts seem underplayed, and the sense of interplay between the three instruments is too restrained. Were it not for the speed and commitment shown in the finale, I’d guess that the Swiss players base their interpretation on the outmoded notion that that early Beethoven should sound “Classically restrained” and predominantly gentle.

The group credits Menachem Pressler, among others, with having given them “artistic impulses,” but a quick listen to the Beaux Arts Trio’s recordings of this work reveals the benefits of sharper articulation, crisper delineation of rhythm, and lovelier “singing” tone—I’m thinking of the violin in the op. 1/2 slow movement—while maintaining the style’s basic elegance. Violinist Angela Golubeva plays with a deft bow, and but her tone is small, and in some lyrical moments rather unlovely.

In the fast outer movements of the “Ghost” Trio, the Swiss players sound fully engaged and play with admirable drive and dynamism, but their slightly faster than usual tempo for the Largo assai ed espressivo deprives the slow movement of its initial stillness and mystery. As in two other notable slow movements that share its key of D Minor, the Largo e mesto of the Piano Sonata, op. 10/3, and the Adagio con molto sentimento d’affetto of the Cello Sonata, op. 102/2, I believe that Beethoven challenges performers here to take the slowest possible tempo that can be sustained.

The Swiss Piano Trio is one of a number of successful European piano trios with widespread concert engagements, high level teaching appointments, summer festival residencies, and a connection with a fine label (Audite). This is the second volume in a projected complete Beethoven trio cycle, and though the playing is polished and technically competent, there are so many better competing recordings of these pieces that I can’t recommend it. The recorded sound is excellent; the booklet notes are pedantic.

The performance is spectacular, aided in its effect by the wonderfully sympathetic acoustic of the Abbey Church of Muri. [...] Recommended to all classical collections.

By contrast, I can locate only one prior recording of the Adolf Busch Suite, by Sibylle Langmaack on an Antes CD that offers a recital of various 20th-century solo viola works and a transcription of Bach’s BWV 903 Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue. These are the premiere recordings of the three Suites for Solo Viola by Justus Weinrich (1858–1927). Reger’s suites, among his last compositions, date from 1915; he had planned to write a fourth suite for Karl Doktor, violist of the Busch quartet, and had even played themes from the planned work for him, but died in 1916 before actually composing it. Busch, a friend and composition protégé of Reger, then wrote his suite for Doktor to compensate for the loss. The extremely obscure Weinreich—there is no entry for him even in the New Grove, and this is the first recording of any of his works—was a court musician in Karlsruhe who apparently was a teacher, as he composed various pedagogical works, including these suites in 1894. They are lighter and less sophisticated in content than the Reger and Busch suites, but pleasingly melodious and not lacking in invention.

Violist Roland Glassl performs all these works with secure technique and a fine interpretive sense. His tonal quality is somewhat light, partaking of oak rather than cherry or mahogany. In the Busch Suite, Langmaack plays with richer tone, and I find her interpretation more searching, but she is recorded in a very resonant acoustic and is miked so closely that her breathing is intrusive, which may put some listeners off and lead them to prefer Glassl instead. As for the Reger Suites, I was unable to audition the recordings of Fukai, Franck, or Kobayashi. Of the rest, there isn’t a bad performance in the bunch, though Vladimir Bukac had some rhythmically stiff phrasing in some of the fast movements. Though I am a fan of Tabea Zimmermann and expected to favor her recording, everyone seemed to be more or less on a par with Glassl—until I reached the final entry with Katarzyna Budnik-Gałązka and was left slack-jawed at some of the most stunning viola playing I’ve ever heard, with a gorgeously rich tone, seemingly limitless technical facility, and deeply probing interpretive artistry. Yes, this disc is firmly recommended and very much worth getting for all its contents, being a necessity for the Weinreich Suites and one of only two choices for the Busch Suite; but for the Reger Suites absolutely do lay your hands on Budnik-Gałązka’s recording as well.

The fourth and fifth volumes of Audite’s Schumann series with Heinz Holliger and the West German Radio Symphony are in many ways the most fascinating so far and the toughest sell. The difficulty is obvious from a glance at the repertoire list: one masterpiece, one quasi-masterpiece, and four conspicuous examples of less than top-drawer Schumann.

The version of the Piano Concerto is all we’ve come to expect from this excellent series, including alert, rhythmically flexible playing from a first-class radio orchestra (people who play to microphones for a living), a conductor who knows his business in Schumann (a firm grasp of the long line, an ability to clarify the occasionally dense inner voicing, a total lack of fear when it comes to punching the telling accent, an uncanny knack for pointing out the previously overlooked—but deeply important—detail), together with superbly realistic recorded sound that nonetheless bathes everything in an early-Romantic glow. The young Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon takes a wonderfully fresh and unaffected approach to this familiar music; while everything feels perfectly controlled, he bends the bar line in a way that recalls the great Schumann pianists of the past (Cortot and Rubinstein especially) but nothing feels willful or self-aggrandizing. If the finale lacks the head-long excitement of Fleisher, Janis, Richter, and others, then overall it’s an immensely satisfying outing that makes you want to hear some of the solo piano music from this source. (There’s already an excellent version of the violin sonatas with Carolin Widmann on ECM 1902 and an even finer recording of the cello music with Steven Isserlis on Hyperion 67661.)

Wild child Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s presence guarantees an immensely individual look at the problematic Violin Concerto, and, as usual, she doesn’t disappoint. From her first entrance, it’s a startlingly original interpretation, with a seemingly endless variety of tone color—insured by her endless types of vibrato—down to that chilling moment in the heart of the first movement where the line is so drained of life it sounds like someone keening at a funeral. (There are other moments where the sound is so intense at the lower range of audibility that you wonder if she heard of Leonard Bernstein’s extraordinary instruction to a string section: “Play triple piano, but use the kind of vibrato you use playing triple forte.”) Holliger adds as much point and thrust as he possibly can to the outer movements—especially the opening movement, which for once never seems to drag—and although the slow movement seems less a premature anticlimax than usual, things never quite add up (as they never quite have, at least on records).

Kopatchinskaja is just as committed and persuasive in the violin Fantasie, whose gypsy-like opening flourishes are a reminder that it was written for the Hungarian-born Joseph Joachim, who actually played the piece (he refused to touch the concerto). Like the late Concert Allegro with Introduction which Schumann began writing only three days after the Fantasie was finished, it’s a work whose thematic inspiration is pretty thin gruel, as is the working out of the basic material. Like Kopatchinskaja, pianist Alexander Lonquich does everything he can to invest his part with life and interest, though well before the Concert Allegro begins you realize why—after a certain point—the composer’s widow stopped playing it in public.

All concerned are on far firmer footing in the earlier Introduction and Allegro appassionato, written well before Schumann was beginning to lose his grip on things. Lonquich responds admirably to the work’s impetuosity and high romance, though not with quite the same magical fusion of freshness and knowing finesse Jan Lisiecki achieves in his recent recording with Antonio Pappano (DG 479 5327).

The orchestra’s horn section turns in a spectacular account of the op. 86 Konzertstück, which still gets recorded far more frequently than it’s actually performed, given that its often stratospheric writing for the first horn is an endless series of clams just waiting to happen. Holliger and the soloists’ colleagues give them rousing support, though the closing bars lack the visceral excitement of Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony’s madcap dash to the end (Naxos 8.572770).

Collectors of this fine series will have snatched up both installments by now; others can proceed with minimal caution, as anything Kopatchinskaja does these days is mandatory listening.

The fourth and fifth volumes of Audite’s Schumann series with Heinz Holliger and the West German Radio Symphony are in many ways the most fascinating so far and the toughest sell. The difficulty is obvious from a glance at the repertoire list: one masterpiece, one quasi-masterpiece, and four conspicuous examples of less than top-drawer Schumann.

The version of the Piano Concerto is all we’ve come to expect from this excellent series, including alert, rhythmically flexible playing from a first-class radio orchestra (people who play to microphones for a living), a conductor who knows his business in Schumann (a firm grasp of the long line, an ability to clarify the occasionally dense inner voicing, a total lack of fear when it comes to punching the telling accent, an uncanny knack for pointing out the previously overlooked—but deeply important—detail), together with superbly realistic recorded sound that nonetheless bathes everything in an early-Romantic glow. The young Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon takes a wonderfully fresh and unaffected approach to this familiar music; while everything feels perfectly controlled, he bends the bar line in a way that recalls the great Schumann pianists of the past (Cortot and Rubinstein especially) but nothing feels willful or self-aggrandizing. If the finale lacks the head-long excitement of Fleisher, Janis, Richter, and others, then overall it’s an immensely satisfying outing that makes you want to hear some of the solo piano music from this source. (There’s already an excellent version of the violin sonatas with Carolin Widmann on ECM 1902 and an even finer recording of the cello music with Steven Isserlis on Hyperion 67661.)

Wild child Patricia Kopatchinskaja’s presence guarantees an immensely individual look at the problematic Violin Concerto, and, as usual, she doesn’t disappoint. From her first entrance, it’s a startlingly original interpretation, with a seemingly endless variety of tone color—insured by her endless types of vibrato—down to that chilling moment in the heart of the first movement where the line is so drained of life it sounds like someone keening at a funeral. (There are other moments where the sound is so intense at the lower range of audibility that you wonder if she heard of Leonard Bernstein’s extraordinary instruction to a string section: “Play triple piano, but use the kind of vibrato you use playing triple forte.”) Holliger adds as much point and thrust as he possibly can to the outer movements—especially the opening movement, which for once never seems to drag—and although the slow movement seems less a premature anticlimax than usual, things never quite add up (as they never quite have, at least on records).

Kopatchinskaja is just as committed and persuasive in the violin Fantasie, whose gypsy-like opening flourishes are a reminder that it was written for the Hungarian-born Joseph Joachim, who actually played the piece (he refused to touch the concerto). Like the late Concert Allegro with Introduction which Schumann began writing only three days after the Fantasie was finished, it’s a work whose thematic inspiration is pretty thin gruel, as is the working out of the basic material. Like Kopatchinskaja, pianist Alexander Lonquich does everything he can to invest his part with life and interest, though well before the Concert Allegro begins you realize why—after a certain point—the composer’s widow stopped playing it in public.

All concerned are on far firmer footing in the earlier Introduction and Allegro appassionato, written well before Schumann was beginning to lose his grip on things. Lonquich responds admirably to the work’s impetuosity and high romance, though not with quite the same magical fusion of freshness and knowing finesse Jan Lisiecki achieves in his recent recording with Antonio Pappano (DG 479 5327).

The orchestra’s horn section turns in a spectacular account of the op. 86 Konzertstück, which still gets recorded far more frequently than it’s actually performed, given that its often stratospheric writing for the first horn is an endless series of clams just waiting to happen. Holliger and the soloists’ colleagues give them rousing support, though the closing bars lack the visceral excitement of Gerard Schwarz and the Seattle Symphony’s madcap dash to the end (Naxos 8.572770).

Collectors of this fine series will have snatched up both installments by now; others can proceed with minimal caution, as anything Kopatchinskaja does these days is mandatory listening.

The Schumann Violin Concerto, rejected in his lifetime by its dedicatee, Joseph Joachim, and suppressed after his death by his wife Clara and devoted friend Brahms, is somehow entering its shining hour. “Somehow” refers to the considerable obstacles inherent in the score, which are open today to the same criticism it originally received from Joachim, who considered it the inferior product of an unstable mind. The music can be faulted as uninspired in its melodies, repetitive, disorganized in development, and feebly or incompetently orchestrated. Not many works can resurface after such a blanket condemnation, but advocates for late Schumann argue that he has unique intentions in mind, even as that mind became erratic. The argument isn’t worth entering, however, when confronted by a beautiful, intimately personal reading of the kind delivered by Isabelle Faust (Harmonia Mundi), backed by period-style accompaniment that edges Schumann into a different sound world from what we’re used to (reviewed in Fanfare 39:2).

As a non-fan of the Violin Concerto, I can hardly credit that I am even more enthusiastic about this new release in Heinz Holliger’s ongoing Schumann orchestral cycle, of which this is Volume 4, with the extraordinary violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja as soloist. In its daring departures from convention their reading surpasses Faust’s in fascination. To begin with, Kopatchinskaja, who was born in the former Soviet republic of Moldavia in 1977, has assumed the mantle of the late Lydia Mordkovitch for fierceness of attack and courageous nonconformity. Her timbre here is almost never consistent within a phrase or even beautiful. The tone whistles, whines, and scrapes as often as it sings, all in service of an interpretation that takes not a single note for granted. I associate this kind of keenly felt violin playing with Leila Josefowicz and more recently the young Norwegian phenom Vilde Frang. But Kopatchinskaja is the only violinist who has the ferocity to frighten me—I found her extreme interpretation of the Prokofiev Violin Concerto No. 2 and the Stravinsky Violin Concerto with Vladimir Jurowski from 2013 (Naïve) almost too unsettling to listen to. But it and her other releases, especially a disc of violin concertos by Eötvös, Bartók, and Ligeti on the same label, have been rapturously received, or at the very least caused heads to turn. The same is certainly true here.

The Schumann Piano Concerto exists at the opposite end of universal love and admiration, which makes things difficult for a relative unknown like Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon—he won’t be unknown to those who have heard his recordings on Naxos, ECM, Hyperion, Capriccio, and other labels (I seem to be out of the loop on this one). A graduate of the Liszt Academy in Budapest, where he now teaches, Várjon has recorded Holliger’s music under the composer, so I assume a close musical affinity. Here they collaborate to produce a reading of the A-Minor Concerto that I’d describe as streamlined but intense. Tempos and phrasing are not out of the ordinary. The total timing is about the same as for Jan Lisiecki’s recent DG recording (reviewed in Fanfare 39:5), but where Lisiecki is poetic to the point of being subdued, Várjon puts his technique on extrovert display. Short of Martha Argerich’s charismatic, rocket-fueled interpretations, this is one of the more engaging readings of the solo part that I’ve heard, even if the finale loses oomph after a while.

Heinz Holliger has focused his Schumann cycle on making us hear the music without prejudice and absent the traditional Schumann Romantic sound. His starkness in the Violin Concerto succeeds remarkably well, although the orchestral part in the Piano Concerto feels a little abrupt and dry at times. At 77 he’s very much a force to be reckoned with. Holliger’s transition from superstar oboist to composer and conductor has worked on all counts, although here he doesn’t make the WDR Symphony sound better than workmanlike. That hardly matters, nor does the good but not exceptional recorded sound. It’s Kopatchinskaja’s highly original playing that wins the day.

Überwältigend schön eine Gruppe unbekannter Loewe-Lieder, mitreißend ihre Britten-, Barber- und Poulenc-Interpretationen. Hier und da kommt ein wenig Janet-Baker-Timbre zum Vorschein, aber über weite Strecken hören wir eine ganz eigenständige, selbstbewusst und hochbegabt ihren Weg gehende Künstlerin zwischen 25 und 33 Jahren, die eine bemerkenswerte Karriere beginnt.