Classical Record Reviews (May 1972)

by Edward Tatnall Canby

R. Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier. Christa Ludwig, Gwyneth Jones, Walter Berry, et al., Chorus Vienna State Opera, Vienna Philharmonic, Bernstein. Columbia M4X 30652, stereo, 4 discs, $ 25.00.

Curious how much this opera has in common with Die Meistersinger-also newly recorded. Both are large-scale semi-comedies, yet with abundantly serious overtones; the lush orchestral textures, the constantly recurring musical themes, the fast-paced conversations, the numerous scenes involving quantities of people and much complicated vocalizing, all are similar, if the music, even in the same tradition, is very different. Rosenkavalier is a sort of feminine Meistersinger, full of lovely Viennese sentiment and human interest; Meistersinger itself has far more human characterization than in most Wagner, with its endless heroes, gods, noble females, and all the rest.

On records, the non-specialist listener won't find Rosenkavalier as easy as Meistersinger. Action is fast, more subtle, more dependent on following the stage doings. (The script or libretto "reads" wonderfully easily--but you are lost in the actual sound if your attention wanders for a moment.) The four principals are most oddly set forth--the pair of young lovers are both sopranos, endlessly confusing when they sing together, which is very often, and worse, when they sing with the only slightly heavier soprano voice of the older "heroine," the Marshallin. There is an absolutely enormous quantity of text to get over, 50 pages' worth in the big booklet, which is in three languages.

The music, moreover, has very few vocal "tunes" or arias, such as even "Meistersinger" contains in abundance, (though not, so to speak, officially); Strauss prefers sung language, wonderfully melodic fragments, with the more tuneful elements largely in the orchestra. Minus text with which to follow, then, "Rosenkavalier," unless you know it well, presents vast quantities of singing but few melodies to remember, nor many clues as to what all the vocal gymnastics are about in terms of the plot, and many listeners will soon wish for less voice and more orchestra.

(Opera specialists will pardon me! We are not all aficionados.) Though the performers are typically international and Bernstein has his own ideas, brought from outside, this is perforce a Viennese performance and close to the very tightly regulated tradition that governs the opera in Vienna. It is a good combination-the orchestra knows every note and, once accustomed to Bernstein, is very much in control of itself and utterly accurate; but the Bernstein touch adds an excitement which might well be missing in just another Viennese performance in Vienna. The singers are remarkably full of enthusiasm and that will, once again, to make this into a real "show," all for one, one for all. Which is all the more remarkable considering the dreadful time they had putting it together, with laryngitis and what-not disrupting the recording schedule--it is graphically described in the booklet.

The singers here are sonically more staged than in Angel's "Meistersinger," you hear them fairly close but definitely out there and in the same environment as the orchestra. "Meistersinger," with a degree of acoustic isolation for the soloists, does not get quite such a good overall blend. On the other hand, the German texts are much more easily followed in the Wagner opera. That is partly Wagner's doing and partly because of a more solidly German cast, but it also has to do with the recording mics.

If you have the courage to acquire both these mammoth new albums, you will have in your living room an absolutely breathtaking array of German operatic expression and its musical tradition, enough (with those big booklets of accompanying comment and text) to keep you going for years.

Performance: A, Sound: B +

Cliburn Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Liszt: Piano Concerto No. 2. Van Cliburn; Philadelphia Orch., Ormandy. RCA LSC 3179, stereo, $ 5.98.

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3. Van Cliburn; Philadelphia Orch., Ormandy. RCA LSC 3238, stereo, $5.98

Vain Cliburn--My Favorite Brahms. RCA LSC 3240, stereo, $ 5.98.

Van Cliburn remains a very serious, deliberate and sincere young man who, in spite of an obviously big piano talent, will not be rushed into any sort of mere powerhouse, show-off brilliance.

He belongs with the new younger pianists, whose ideals are high, who savor each note with Romantic fervor, hanging upon every detail, but tend to ignore the longer lines, the big shape.

When Cliburn plays, I'm reminded of the dinner guest who is the last to finish, solemnly eating every scrap while the hostess gets nervous. He just will not gulp, like everybody else.

Sober is the best word. Never dull--just sober. And when the talent finally gets turned on, he can match anybody's show. In this Beethoven Concerto, the piano comes in first with an upward dash of an octave scale-most pianists pounce on it as a fine "entrance," tossed off in a flash, with one dramatic swipe at the keyboard. Not Van. He plays eight notes in a row, one after the other, as written. But he has musical virtues that others sadly lack.

He has been impeccably trained in good phrasing, where so many virtuosi are merely crude. His perfect pedaling shows his very good ear for harmony.

He likes to shape a melody, and he brings out inner lines, as they used to do a half century ago. Thoughtful.

Above all, you know that he cares about the music. You can hear it in every note, and no great matter that as musical imaginations go, his is not the biggest.

The sheer physical talent is there and will not be denied. It comes out in triumph in the Rachmaninoff, a piece that is all keyboard pyrotechnics and gruesome death-harmonies. Cliburn plays it effortlessly and beautifully. This late work (1934) is a nominal theme and variations, a form that kept Rachmaninoff from his usual meanderings. It does the same for Cliburn's tendency to wanter into detailed piano introspections.

The Liszt No. 2 is a work I can't take. It has an ever-repeated series of harmonies that soon drive me nuts, no matter how they are played, Cliburn plays them slow, which doesn't help.

As for his Favorite Brahms, the record does honor to that old man on his home ground, in a properly introspective look at some of the loveliest of leisurely Romanticism. You can't rush Brahms-Cliburn doesn't want to.

He relishes all those inner voices, the lush melodies and expressive harmonies, at long length. But even Brahms has shape-plenty-and the thread of continuity sometimes gets mighty thin, especially in the middle areas of these late-Brahms pieces when the Cliburn nose, so to speak, gets closer and closer to the keyboard. In the bigger works, notably the two Op. 79 Rhapsodies, we are really lost in the underbush; will we ever get out? We do, but barely. A larger perspective is very much needed.

Excellent sound from RCA. It seems to have done RCA good to pull out of Symphony Hall in Boston and set up a new shop in Philadelphia, presumably with all-new equipment. The Philadelphia sound is marvelously clean and well balanced, the RCA piano tone as fine as any I have ever heard.

Performances: B +, Sound: A

Morton Feldman: The Viola in my Life; False Relationships and the Extended Ending. Assorted Soloists. CRI S 276, stereo, $5.95.

Big, practical-looking Morton Feldman, who could be a used car salesman or maybe a prosperous insurance man as you look at him, writes elfin music of a revolutionary philosophy. It is the recording engineer's nightmare; most of it is sheer silence, minutely measured, punctuated by tiny single sounds, or brief groups, faint squeaks on a violin, a breath or two on the flute, pizzicati plucks--now and then--from a cello, a barely audible wonk from a clarinet. A carefully lowered pair of piano hands brings out a distant dissonant chord. Two pianos; you'd never know it except for the directionality. And, of course, the viola. The one in his life. It is played by Karen Phillips, for whom he writes.

All together, there are a dozen-odd performers involved here (too many to list), including such well-known modernists as Anahid Ajamian, violin; Seymour Barab, cello; David Tudor, piano. No conductor, unless maybe Mr. Feldman is sitting on the sidelines, silently coaching. Could be.

It is not only the silence, carefully measured, that is unusual. More arresting, and more profound, is the deliberate breaking up of ordinary musical continuity, the normal adding together of successive sounds to make shapes that exist, like language, in time clusterings. Feldman gets away from it. "Sounds do not progress, but merely heap up and accumulate in the same place." A nice idea and if your attention is acute enough, and your listening place quiet enough, you may well fall under the Feldman spell. It's real!

Performances: A? Sound: A!

Concertante Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in E Flat, K. 297b. Haydn: Sinfonia Concertante in B Flat, Op. 84. English Chamber Orch., Barenboim. Angel S-36582, stereo, $5.98.

Prokofiev: Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orch., Op. 125. Rostropovich; Royal Philharmonic, Sargeant. Seraphim S-60171, stereo, $2.98.

The sinfonia concertante ("concertoized symphony") was an outgrowth of the old Baroque idea of an orchestra of performers contrasted with soloists, singly or in groups-the Bach, Handel, Corelli and Vivaldi concerti being familiar examples. Styles changed, but the idea persisted, and it popped up again. in new form in the 1770's under this fancy title. It hasn't died yet, as witness such works as the Brahms Double Concerto, the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra and a hundred modem works, including this Prokofiev with its explicit title, featuring a cello solo and much solo work among the orchestral musicians-hence concertante. Mozart's "Concertante" (the usual short name) was composed, wistfully, to wow the Paris audiences of 1778 during his fateful trip to that city, at age 21. Concertantes were all the rage.

But Mozart's was not even played; worse, the callous French authorities lost the music and it did not turn up until a half century later, in a somewhat altered copy. Haydn's Concertante was composed a dozen years later in England, where we may suppose that the concertante style had just arrived, with the usual delay occasioned by the English Channel. Both these works involve a quartet of mixed solo players, all winds in Mozart, strings and winds in Haydn. Both, in the concertante manner, are rather long-drawn-out concerti complete with written-out cadenzas for the entire solo group playing together.

The Barenboim performances are, I would say, impeccably so-so. A good polish to both, especially in the solo playing (and particularly in the horn); but beyond that, there is a blandness, a lack of the shaping and musical tension that both works demand.

Frankly, I don't think Barenboim has got the idea at all, in spite of his frequent playings and leadings of such music. The Mozart here just goes along, ever so accurately and colorlessly. The Haydn has too much of the old and unlamented "Papa Haydn" approach, jolly good music, you know, but awfully superficial. To be sure, it is brittle music, carefully hiding its profundities in the usual Haydn manner. But the meaning is there, strong and sinewy in the very curve of the themes, in the sudden harmonic wrenches. Here, all is blandly uncolored, as though it didn't matter very much.

The big Prokofiev work is a reissue of a tape dating from the later 1950's, evidently made in stereo though my disc copy in 1958 (on Capitol-EMI) was mono. If this is, then, a disc-stereo first release, it is a good one. Few people will notice the minute evidences of age, the perceptible flatness of perspective (minimal microphoning?), the vague bit of distortion in the loudest parts. The music, Prokofiev's last, was composed for Rostropovich, who gives it here a definitive performance. It is long and thickly composed work but gets easier as it goes forward, thanks to the interesting variety of solo color in the orchestra that goes with the title.

Try side 2 first. Sir Malcolm Sargent gives it all the strength of phrasing, rhythm and shaping that is deficient in the Barenboim Mozart and Haydn. Not only right, but an immense help in the listening.

Performances: B-, A; Sound: B, B

Schubert & Brahms Lieder. Harold Enns, bass-baritone; Peggy Sheffield, piano. Orion ORS 7040, stereo, $5.98.

Romantic Music for Harp and Flute. Edward Vito, harp; Jean Roberts, flute. Orion ORS 7039, stereo, $5.98.

Two pairs of Orion artists here, and some good moments for listening. Not many Americans tackle those Germanic gods of song, Schubert and Brahms, on records-the competition from Germany is too hot. (On records it's one world.) Harold Enns is a grave, dignified American basso with a beautifully controlled voice, fine diction and pitch.

His only stylistic problem here is too much of an American-type vibrato, alien to the sense of the music. His accompanist is fluent and lively if not always subtle in her pianism. She plays as loud when he sings as when he doesn't. Her privilege, I guess.

The recording sounds oddly amateurish. A jangly Steinway, not quite in tune, badly microphoned (it's MS stereo, all from a point). A harsh sound in the loud parts, probably the disc cutting.

Edward Vito is a very musical and strong harpist and Jean Roberts is a fine French-style flutist. On the second of these discs, side 1 goes to Vito alone, side 2 to both artists together. Specialized flute-harp music, of course, but some of it makes good general listening.

The Spohr Fantaisie for solo harp is outstanding and beautifully played.

On side 2, a Sonata for harp and flute by the Russian A. Schaposhnikoff is the purest early Debussy or very early Ravel, say about 1904. It was composed in 1925! Nice, even so. A slow dance by the Belgian, J. Jongen inclines more to later Ravel, mildly. It might even be contemporary, since Jongen would be 99 if he were still operating now.

Again, so-so recording. The harp side starts off at a jarring high level, seems to improve as it goes on. The second side has nice acoustics, the flute at a reverberant distance, but once more there is an overloaded sound. More likely in the disc than in the tape, I'd guess.

Performances: B +, A-; Sound: C +

Ars Antigua First Recital. Phoenix Woodwind Quintet of New York; Hugo Noth, accordion. Kaibala 20B01, stereo, ( Box 512, Oreland, Pa. 19075.)

Like paper books, the LP record brings us anything and everything. Surely, the greatest sound publishing medium ever devised! This one is a somewhat fuzzy oddity, looking two ways. Both have their points, though you can't split the disc down the middle if you like only one.

First side, a typical and very proficient young pro woodwind quintet, the standard flute, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, who play seven Baroque period items (and one earlier, Lassus), all of them transcribed for their special medium from various originals, and all played with precisely the same non Baroque styling. After all, isn't the music for woodwind quintet? In these transcriptions-yes. But the original music does matter, for those who aren't woodwind specialists. The composers range from Bach and Handel to Rameau and Dandrieu in France, and all of it needs a continuo accompaniment to sound right-none is right for clarinet.

So what, if you like the sound of good woodwind playing. Annoying if you like Handel, Bach, Rameau, Dandrieu, et al.

Side 2 offers a different kind of transcription-harpsichord Sonatas by D. Scarlatti, played by a young Swiss genius on the accordion! Excellent! His sense of Scarlatti style is perfect, he projects the music better than many harpsichordists. If you know Scarlatti, your mouth will drop in astonishment.

Even the choice is well informed, a few well known Sonatas and a brace of unusual ones (there are more than 500 to choose from). The playing is flawless, not a note wrong or missing, though how he gets all those buttons to produce Scarlatti I do not know.

Performances: B, A; Sound: B +

(Audio magazine, May 1972; Edward Tatnall Canby)

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