The Sound of the Mozart Piano. Jorg Demus and Norman Shelter, pianists. RCA Victrola VICS 1495 stereo ($2.98).
Chamber Music by Beethoven on Original Instruments 1792-1800. Assorted instrumentalists (Dutch). Telefunken SAWT 9547 stereo ($5.95).
Here are two fascinating recordings for those who wonder how Beethoven and Mozart sounded in their own day--when really well performed.
Too many so-called "authentic" performances, we have found these last years, sacrifice imagination and artistry to exact authenticity in the instruments.
Better a good performance on the wrong instruments, is the common conclusion.
But these disks are of the new generation where, at last, first-rate artistry and authenticity have come together.
There is no more thoroughly satisfying Mozart performer today than Jorg Demus, whose Mozart and Schubert recordings with Paul Badura-Skoda years ago were an early ornament in Westminster's pioneer LP catalog. Here, with a new team-mate, Norman Shelter, he has mastered the art of the Mozart piano itself, which is no mean feat. Two Mozart pianos! Both of the period, by Anton Walter of Mozart's own Vienna, one instrument 1785, the other 1795. The familiar two-piano Sonata in D, K. 448, is a revelation in this brilliant, clattery sound, seemingly much bigger and more orchestral than the music ever can be on two modern grands. Matter of tone color and bright overtones. This is precisely as the music must have sounded when Mozart and his sister Nannerl played it together. Equally telling is the ( one-piano) D minor Fantasia, K. 397 and the little "Twinkle, twinkle, Little Star" variations (Ah, vous dirai-je maman) K. 265. The record is capped by the superb and unfamiliar four-hand (one piano) Andante and Variations, K. 501, a late and profoundly rich work of keyboard coloration, wonderfully revealed by the Mozart piano.
Beethoven? Yes, even Beethoven can benefit by "old instruments." Here we have a variety of chamber works, all via period instruments. First, the Trio Op. 11 for piano, clarinet, and cello with a Broadwood fortepiano of 1825 (slightly late for the music but plenty "early" even so), a clarinet of 1800 and a cello of 1835. ( Many cellos are much older, of course, but are variably modernized.) Excellent performance! Lively, knowing, technically perfect. The clarinet is a bit hoarser than ours but otherwise like today ( though without the modern key system). The piano compares interestingly with the Mozart instruments, still rather twangy, with a trace of the harpsichord in its bass but otherwise fuller and more precise. A brief "WoO" work fills out the side, an Allegro and Minuet for two ( old) flutes, wooden, with six and seven keys.
Side 2 is technically spectacular. First a Sonata for piano and horn, Op. 17, played on a valveless natural horn.
Astonishing-no fingers! Except for odd tone-color changes for the muted in-between notes, the performance of the complex melodic lines is quite as good as with a modern valved instrument. All done via breath and lip, plus a hand in the bell. Then an unlikely piece, a Quintet for three natural horns, an oboe, and a bassoon, this one minus even a "WoO" designation. Excellent oboe, 1820, and bassoon, 1795, and the three horns, with not a valve between them, play the most elaborate tissue of often chromatic harmony and melody without a blooper. It was done in Beethoven's day; now it can be done again. Once more, excellent and imaginative playing in all these works.
These two disks are worth a month of study, and you can forget all the rest of the month's output.
Performances: A, Sound: A
J. M. Kraus: Funeral Cantata for Gustave III of Sweden (1792). Soloists, Clarion Concerts Orch. and Chorus, Newell Jenkins. Vanguard Cardinal VCS 10065 stereo ($3.98).
F. W. Rust: Four Sonatas. Vladimir Pleshakov, piano. Orion ORS 7023 stereo ($5.98).
One of the finest things that is happening in "old" music today is the rediscovery of some of the unknown classic and Romantic composers of the post Baroque era, from Haydn on through Beethoven. We have had immense doses of minor Baroque music including far too many unimportant exercises by such as Vivaldi; there is more discrimination being shown in these later revivals--if only because, perhaps, the music is bigger, longer, and more costly to present.
Good.
Newell Jenkins, of New York, has specialized in late 18th century unknowns--this discovery, while not quite as earthshaking as the liner notes (by Jenkins ) would have it, is certainly an interesting one. Kraus was a well trained German composer resident in Sweden at the highly musical court there. Gustave's assassination, which furnished the plot for Verdi's Ballo in mascera, led to this funeral cantata, on the spot. (Verdi's opera had political overtones for his own time and had to be disguised, though originally called Gustavo Terzo.) The music is reminiscent of that Catholic church style so characteristic of Haydn and, especially, Mozart-operatic, but full of rather special church-style harmonies, augmented-sixth chords and the like, which were reserved for sacred music.
Kraus is a good melodist and a thoroughly professional craftsman but he overdoes the augmented sixths as Mozart never would have, nor Haydn. All in all, this is precisely what it ought to be, a competent, informed, skilled and expressive work by a well trained musician in a fringe-area European court.
What else? Mr. Jenkins' orchestra plays as it always does, with finesse, fine phrasing and close attention. Excellent! But his soloists in the work are unfortunate, though three of them hail from the Swedish Royal Opera, which ought to qualify them, somehow. The soprano (American born ) sings with a tight, strangled delivery wholly out of place in such graceful music, though her intentions are musical enough. The tenor is weak and quavery.
The basso, Finnish Kim Borg, is merely sepulchral, which is not enough. As for the chorus, it is an inattentive bunch of ( New York?) professionals, full of nasty wobbles and operatic power, unblended. For pros they are singularly sloppy, Mr. Jenkins is an orchestra man. Period.
F. W. Rust, of the generation of Haydn, writes really excellent piano sonatas, with much of Haydn in them but even more of the early Beethoven period. He is more introspective and far less flamboyant than Beethoven, of course, nor is he as formally circumspect as Haydn. But he has a fine ear for ornamental melody and a keen sense of harmonic contrast. The sonatas are well built early-Romantic and should add a very useful perspective to the present Beethoven Anniversary Year. Vladimir Pleshakov plays with grace and naturalness. Even his piano seems to have a certain authentic sound, as though of the period. Bet it's no Steinway concert grand. Good record.
Performances: B-, A, Sound: B+, B+
La Reine des Coeurs. Couperin: Ordres 8, 14, 21. George Malcolm, harpsichord. Argo ZRG 632 stereo ($5.95).
Sylvia Marlowe plays Couperin le Grand. (harpsichord). Decca DL 710174 stereo ($5.98).
Two recordings of the French master of the harpsichord, and very different though the differences are not easily described in so many words. Both records are worthwhile if you enjoy the silvery, highly ornamented, stylized French music of the time of Louis XIV and his great-grandson successor, Louis XV. You have your choice here of an English or American view.
George Malcolm plays his Couperin fluently and brilliantly, as always with him; he has a show-biz flair, if you can imagine such a thing applied to the harpsichord. He plays fast-too fast, I'd say, for this music. Driving, but without enough breathing space, the millions of finger ornaments played so glibly that the ear does not hear the individual notes.
Considering that this was a subtle art, full of nuances and suggestions, a more leisurely sort of intensity would seem to be right, if shades of meaning are to be conveyed. Tension, yes. But a measured tension? The music is never dull in Malcolm's version-no chance of that! Is it his harpsichord, or the recording technique, that gives a certain coarseness of sound, as though he were belaboring the small instrument for more than it could take? I suspect the instrument. It does not sing as it should.
Sylvia Marlowe's Couperin is of an opposite sort. Her versions (including one whole Ordre, or Suite, the same: No. 8) are the product of exhaustive study, in every detail of ornamentation and registration. Here there is leisure and gravity.
And here also there is a fine, singing harpsichord tone, beautifully recorded.
( Hers is a William Dowd instrument.) Sylvia Marlowe's ornamentations are precise and always correct, where Malcolm's have a certain slapdash quality and his rhythms, notably the "double-dotted" figures, seem . . . well, absent minded. Not Marlowe! She is never dull or plodding-far from it-but, in contrast to Malcolm, her music has just a faint smell of the lamp, as the old pre-electricity phrase goes. Always has, to my memory.
All in all, even so, I think I prefer the Marlowe version, for the studied care with which it is prepared. Malcolm seems to say, look! It's easy. It isn't, and shouldn't sound so.
Performances: B, B. Sound: B-, B+
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BEETHOVEN
By EDWARD TATNALL CANBY
Beethoven: Three "Elector" Sonatas, WoO 47; Eight Variations, WoO 67 and Sonata in D, Op. 6, for piano duet. Jörg Demus, piano; Demus and Norman Shetler. Deutsche Grammophon 139 448 stereo $5.98.
In this Beethoven year of plenty we will not often hear really new and unfamiliar music by the composer. This collection of early piano music, mostly from before the official Op. 1, is unexpectedly interesting. The music is virtually unknown and one wonders how it could have been so long ignored. Superb playing and recording bring out its best qualities.
The intriguing "WoO" items are part of the large quantity of youthful music that has come to light only recently and is now beginning to reach into our musical consciousness. "WoO" stands merely for "without opus number" but it represents a new body of Beethoven material, well worth the listening. The three "elector" sonatas were composed at approximately the age of 12 and published in 1783, when Mozart was just 27. (They were hopefully dedicated to the local ruler, the Elector at Koln.) For a child of that age they are extraordinary, even beyond Mozart and Schubert. The style is familiar enough and astonishingly mature; one hears Mozart first, but also Haydn and, perhaps, C.P.E. Bach--though these influences of course were filtered through more--immediate composers, Beethoven's teacher Neefe, and others who wrote in the current style of the time.
But what is most surprising is the remarkable suggestions of Beethoven himself, in phrase after phrase-the gruff, competent, brilliant pianist of later years already foreshadowed even to hints of the "Pathetique" and many other familiar works.
There are, to be sure, many too-easy figurations, a few clumsy moments and some pretentiousness-youth trying to sound grown up. But generally the composing technique is faultless and the works are consistently and beautifully built in their own terms; Beethoven had already learned to solve specific musical problems in the methodical fashion that was to be characteristic of his later life.
The Sonatas are immeasurably well served by Jorg Demus, whose strong, beautifully phrased and sympathetic pianism is a joy to hear. It is hard to imagine them played with a better sense for their innate values.
The two works for piano duet are not far apart in style, though one is "WoO 67" and the other Op. 6. The Variations are forthrightly built on an interesting theme by Count von Waldstein, he of the later Waldstein Sonata and a long-time Beethoven patron; it is curiously advanced, with an almost sentimental, turn of-the-century sound already scented with Chopinesque lights and colors. They do not bother the young Beethoven a bit.
The Sonata Op. 6 is out of the "recognized" early Beethoven period, not very different in style from the "WoO" works but more suavely polished and better shaped, with fewer of the youthful experimental flashes of the earlier music.
Grown-up, but for our ears perhaps less interesting.
The piano recording is the finest I have heard for a long time, an absolutely superb rendition of one of those mellow, woody sounding central European instruments, so unlike our brilliant Steinways.
Why, why, can't we all make piano recordings like this?
Performances: A, Sound: A
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(Audio magazine, aug. 1970; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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