Prokofiev: Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution
(1937). Shostakovich: The Sun Shines on our Motherland (1952). RSFSR
Russian Chorus, Moscow Philharmonic, Kondrashin. Melodiya/Angel SR 40129
stereo ($5.98).
Angel's monopoly on current official Russian production is bearing remarkable fruit. Here are two Cantatas by the two big Russians, both new to us, the Prokofiev unperformed for almost 30 years after its composition in 1937, the Shostakovich dating from a much later date but composed in a more conservative style. Both are gloriously performed in the grandest Russian manner.
The Prokofiev, composed on texts by Lenin, missed out on performance for logistic rather than political reasons.
With four orchestras and two choirs, one pro, the other amateur, it required some 500 performers, apparently more than the Anniversary could provide. It is a big work and the sounds are marvelous, for this is Russian big-time drama at its most exciting. Old hands will note with interest that this work is of the same period and closely related to the celebrated cantata "Alexander Nevsky," out of the film of the same name. Many of the same starkly dramatic traits and all of the strength of the better known work turn up in this more imposing opus.
The Shostakovich Cantata celebrated a similar later occasion, the 35th Anniversary of the Revolution. As always, Shostakovich seems to today more positively to the state musical party line than Prokofiev-this Cantata is bland and unctuous, as consonant as a Sunday hymn tune. Nice music but it can't hold a Soviet candle to the Prokofiev.
Both texts are given complete in translation. Unless you know Russian, you'll soon get lost.
Performances: A Sound: B +
Computer Music. (J. K. Randall, Barry Vercoe, Charles Dodge). Columbia and Princeton Univ. Computer Centers. Nonesuch H-71245 stereo ($2.98)
Charles Dodge: Earth's Magnetic Field. Realizations in Computed Electronic Sound. Columbia Univ. Computer Center. Nonesuch H-71250 stereo ($2.98)
Let's try an analogy. It's 1975 and baseball has changed. The boys still play the game but the diamond is a super-polygon with X bases and the players move by computer; they huddle over in one corner of the field and intercept the enemy's radar. Yet whoever heard of a baseball game with no audience-and no sports reporters? So they still work out there under the lights and the crowds still yell-you see, they just sent these records to me as a musical reviewer. I'm supposed to pass judgment (and so are you). You are supposed to buy tickets. I mean, put out cash for the discs, take 'em home and enjoy the game. I merely opine.
OK, I'm the sportswriter. I really don't quite get all of the new rules, but I'm an old pro at this and I seem to have fairly strong ideas as I listen. It is the same old game. And that is perhaps the trouble as well as the virtue of computer music. Nothing wrong per se and why shouldn't they modernize the rules? But are they really thinking of us as an audience? And, under all this fancy computerization, is it sometimes (to change analogies) like the old story of the Emperor's clothes? It often has been in ages past.
I like the first record very much. I just like it. I like to listen to it, which is the only reason I would ever buy it. I even like the very long "Changes" by Charles Dodge which fills the entire second side. (Mr. Randall's items, in contrast, range from 1:21 to 6:57.) Simple reasons. An interesting variety of sounds, really quite "imaginative" (even if the computer, in theory, has the imagination-maybe. Who cares?). Randall's short pieces. "Quartets in Paris," "Quartersines" (made out of quarter sine waves), and the oddly named "Mudgett" with a tiny soprano voice who sings high up wonderfully accurately along with the beeps and, at the same time, speaks various languages (Schoenhergian Sprechstimme) in a lower pitch range. Barry Vercoe's "Synthesism" (a nice name). with attractive little rushes of fast notes, all breathless; and the Dodge immensity, all clanging chords and drummy-sounding rustles and wheeps and sneezes, very audibly organized into a tight variation-type format, even to a casual ear. These are nice because they do appeal to eternal fundamentals of organized sound-rhythm, color, pitch contrast. sonic organization into patterns that are sensed if not analyzed.
Like Beethoven. My ear says yes. So will yours.
But Mr. Dodge's solo commissioned piece (hv Nonesuch) got me down.
Not quickly but slowly--it's very long.
This magnetic field stuff! Ugh. I never did like program music (music with extra-musical connotations) even when Richard Strauss imitated windmills, sheep. and whole gales not to mention deaths and transfigurations. This one purports to be based (I gather) on the pattern of fluctuations in earth's magnetic field under the influence of the solar wind, specifically as registered in the Kp index. You can, of course, set any old graph to music, like a graph of the potholes in my somewhat decayed driveway as the protesting tires bounce along it. But solar wind sounds a lot better. More modern, definitely. Yet what somebody in this outfit doesn't know about the solar wind sets my amateurish teeth on edge. Look, fellows, if you're going to get technical, then stick to the rules.
Solar wind? Somebody here evidently thinks it's a blast of Pyrofax that the sun sends out periodically and if it weren't for earth's magnetic field we'd all be roast turkeys. A gas, fellows? I'd say more of a plasma. And it travels, you say, at several hundred miles an hour? Maybe they meant to say miles a second--that would be closer.
And, though I'll admit that solar Pyrofax as well as earthly Pyrofax is very explosive when mixed with earth's air, I somehow doubt that the solar wind is ever going to blow us up with a loud pop.
Look, these guys have taken the shape of a graph on paper and made it into a musical theme. Period! Please forget all the rest of the stuff they put out. Just listen.
Side one, the naked graph, sounds like an interminably strung out Bach Invention in C major. It is, indeed, in C and it never goes anywhere else. Boring is what I thought after two minutes or so.
Side 2, where the graph gets elaborated in more sophisticated fashion, is a lot better-but why side 1 in the first place (that is, for our listening and our cash)? The whole thing is overly pretentious and long winded. (These people aren't at all immune to that sort of thing just because they are into computers instead of French horns and bassoons.) But I could be wrong; try it for yourself. Or buy the first disc, "Computer Music." It's easier to enjoy.
P.S. This sort of synthetic material is really excellent on the three-way "Dyna 2" home hookup. with a rear speaker tapped off the "high" terminals of a stereo amplifier. All sorts of precise three-dimensional placements, in every part of your room. Adds a lot to the impact. The precise synthetic phasings. uncluttered by random "live" background sound pickup. account for it.
Performances: Fortran B. etc. Sound: A
Arthur Grumiaux, Clara Haskil: Beethoven, Sämtliche Sonaten für Klavier Und Violin (The Violin Sonatas). Philips 6733 001 (4 discs) stereo ($17.96).
Thank you, Beethoven, for being born 200 years ago; otherwise Philips might not have been able to swing this excellent reissue, four whole discs, of one of the more modestly first-rate performances ever put down. Wispy little Clara Haskil, tiny, bent, and diseased, just barely managed to keep playing-and finally didn't, after a minor fall in a railroad station just before a concert.
She was one of the greatest pianists around, if not the loudest. Her equally unassuming violin companion, Arthur Grumiaux was a perfect teammate and the two often toured, impeccably, though neither one produced even the beginning of a visual charisma.
Philips got the sonatas down with a very modest stereo and a mild bit of scratchiness in the fiddle but, in compensation, a fine balance between the two instruments. It is not what you would call a "modern recording" but the transference of musical sense is nevertheless excellent. It may take awhile to catch onto Clara Haskil's astonishingly perfect playing, every note precisely right, every phrase shaped and jewel-like. The Grumiaux violin, similarly, is no great virtuoso shakes but matches Haskil's line exactly. This was no fly-by-night teaming.
Performances: A, Sound: B-
Beethoven: Complete Piano Trios. Zukerman, Du Pré, Barenboim. Angel SE-3771 stereo ($29.90).
This is a bit delayed-for a very natural reason. How many Trios can one pair of musical ears absorb at a time? After experiencing the rival album from Columbia via Istomin, Rose, and Stern, recently reviewed, I simply quailed at the thought of still another deluge.
Sorry 'bout that. Sometimes unexpected guests are mighty useful-mine pulled out this album like a flash and put it on the machine. That did it! And wouldn't you know: Though I have not really enthused about this playing group in many cases before, excepting the Mozart violin concerti (Zukerman, with Barenboim conducting), I was immediately entranced by their combined Beethoven, the husband and wife (Barenboim, Du Pré) on piano and cello, Zukerman again on fiddle. It is a very young group, as players of this sort of big-time music go, but the sound is exactly what it should be and, for my taste, far ahead of those "sounds of genius" issuing so portentously from Columbia's press department in the other recording. Take due note. You'll have to stand up against some pretty hefty critical acclaim if you turn Columbia down.
How and why? First, there is a really surprising verve and enthusiasm here, the sort that is youthful, yet experienced, the best of both worlds. The tasteful approach is what amazed me (the Mozart is dismally unstyled) and the accurate, beautifully worked-out ensemble, as though these three had been playing the music for years. In a sense they have, for youth learns fast when the learning's good.
Equally important-and in great contrast to Istomin-Stern-Rose in the same works-this is real chamber music playing rather than amplified, blown-up trio projection out of some vast, symphonic concert hall. This one gives us the right sense that the music is basically "close-up" music, however forceful its meaning; whereas Istomin-SternRose make gargantuan (if very musical) efforts to fill up a vast space, before a vast audience, with us listeners sitting uncomfortably a few feet away. The Angel sound, you will find, is immedi ately at home in your home. And sized to fit.
Finally and perhaps most important (for a record album), Angel has recorded these three-at last!-with the perfect trio balance. The piano leads, as it historically should. The violin and cello, An interesting dividend is the Op. 11 Trio with clarinet, played by a sterling artist, Gervase de Peyer.
Performances: A, Sound: A
Mauricio Kagel: Ludwig van. Carlos Feller, bass, Wm. Pearson, baritone, instr. ensemble. Deutsche Grammophon 2530 014 stereo ($5.98)
Redo: Sequenza VI; Chemins H; Chemins III. Walter Trampler, viola; Juilliard Ensemble, London Symphony Orch., Berio. RCA LSC 3168 stereo ($5.98).
Here's a brace of oddly conceived modernity to keep you busy for an evening. "Ludwig van," composed without any doubt to celebrate and capitalize upon the 200th, is a most curious work, a musical mosaic made up entirely of fragments from actual Beethoven, the textures patched together and played simultaneously as a wholly new structure. Sounds crazy but in fact it is unexpectedly interesting, not merely because it sets up a fascinating guessing game in which you can recognize dozens of chamber and vocal pieces if your ear is good, but more legitimately because the juxtaposition of fragments in various different keys and rhythms, sets up a new twentieth-century dissonance that is remarkably consistent as the work progresses. I found that it made considerable "sense" on its own for my somewhat post-Beethoven ears.
As the long-very long-work progresses, however, it becomes something else and still more modern. Voices appear, and waver in and out. Pulsings, cuts, raucously thick textures begin to imply a tape collage, and the work is indeed a collage of bits and pieces though by no means all of it is tape edited; a good deal is played, simultaneously. Towards the end there are even bits of rehearsal discussion (in German) and tuning up. The "live" aspect of the performance adds a lot of power and interest, as does the "chance" element arranged for some of the playing, done in bits and pieces.
Yes, it is a "fundamental modernity, a modernity of relationship" as the composer puts it, a concept composition of patterned rearrangement. I think I like it. I only wish I could figure out whether maybe all this weird collage was played live and at the same time! It would take the concentration of a genius to perform thusly.
The Berio work is harsher and more directly structured. "Sequenza VI" is a piece for unaccompanied viola (as commissioned by Walter Trampler, the performer); "Chemins II" (where is Chemins I?) is a recomposing of the same with a chamber ensemble added, "Chemins III" is a further re-working with a full-sized orchestra. The relationship between the three is not difficult to hear. The transformation technique is not unlike that of the third movement of Berio's now celebrated Sinfonia into which a movement of a Mahler Symphony is incorporated, at length. Berio's thinking is thus not too far removed from that of Mauricio Kagel, and the two of them are clearly on the well-trod avant-gardè track that is becoming the main drag towards our musical future.
Performances: B? Sounds: B
Beethoven: Fidelio. Jones, Mathis, Crass, King, Schreier, Talvela; Rundfunkchor Leipzig, Chor der Staatsoper Dresden, Staatskapelle Dresden, Karl Böhm. Deutsche Grammophone 139288/90 (3 discs) stereo ($17.94).
Beethoven won't be 201 until next December, time a'plenty for you (and me) to catch up with the inordinate floods of 200th anniversary music. This "Fidelio" had me bemused, for DG already had a "Fidelio" in stereo, only a half dozen-odd years old. There was, to be sure, a Böhm-conducted live version going on in the USA this year, which would tie in neatly. But, now that I've listened, I see there are better reasons.
The old version, on only two discs (I assume it is cut but have not checked in detail) had good singers-Rysanek, Seefried, Fischer-Dieskau, Häfligerand a well known director, Ferenc Fric say. It is basically an all-German performance (in spite of a few geographical anomalies), the sort that, though originally envisioned by the composer, is no longer very much in style. We prefer the more brilliant international performance with singers jetting to the recording scene from all over the world.
Moreover, under Fricsay the Beethoven music comes through musically but with a surprisingly low voltage, bordering at times on the inadequate. Somehow, it is unimaginative, lacking in drive.
Finally, the stereo sound is already antiquated, lacking in presence and clarity of definition. Perhaps, I suspect, because it comes from the early stereo period when microphone techniques were more "pure" and less colorful than is now customary. Sort of flat and uninteresting though nothing is specifically wrong.
The new set is in every way a contrast.
First, it is definitely of the new international sort, with a vengeance, and brilliantly so. After the other, this one will positively jolt you out of your easy chair. Musically, thanks to Karl Böhm, it is full of explosive vitality and the climaxes (zu Freiheit, zu Freiheit!) positively crackle with high-voltage excitement. On paper the voices are surely not superior to those in the old version but they, too, are energized with excitement and do their best, which is better than the superior voices do when under-insnired.
Finally, the new version is enormously--there is no other word-superior to the old in recording technique. The voices fairly jump out at you, loud but utterly undistorted, vast in dynamic range; the background silence is startling and the "soft" passages so low in volume you will flounder to find a good over-all setting. The presence and separation of musical elements are vastly ahead of the old version. Even the problematical spoken dialog is taken in good stride--by a separate set of actors. (The international cast, after all, can hardly be expected to chatter volubly in German between numbers, a problem that Beethoven did not envision.) A new trick: the dialog is mostly at a very low level, whispered and conspirational. Good, for it sets off the music with much less of a jarring contrast than in the usual recorded versions of sing-and-talk operas.
Performance: A, Sound: A-
(Audio magazine, Mar. 1971; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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