John Corigliano: Concerto for Clarinet and Orch. Barber:
Third Essay for Orch. Stanley Drucker, cl., New York Philharmonic, Mehta. New World NW 309,
stereo, $8.95.
Fantastic record! It was a real sleeper for me, arriving as a test pressing last autumn, reaching me when I was ill and could not play it, finally landing on my turntable many months later. Wow! This is a brilliant concerto and, surely, a major work of the present time, conservative in that it is written, like Bartok or Hindemith or Stravinsky, for "conventional" symphony orchestra, wildly radical in the extraordinary sounds it evokes from that orchestra and, especially, from the clarinet. Unbelievable! Benny Goodman should listen (he played Bartok with Bartok himself)--but could he manage this amazing music?
If I am right (no annotations with the test pressing), John Corigliano is son of a fiddler who was concertmaster of the Philharmonic in New York and thus is very familiar with the ins and outs of the big ensemble. He writes superbly for orchestra and for clarinet, in a style that is, shall I say, neo-Bartok, very much influenced by that composer's works but in a manner wholly of today, a half century later. If you like the well-known Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, you will find yourself quickly at home in this piece, which is similarly expansive, imaginative and easy in the listening.
Such astonishing clarinet figurations, full of high-speed chortles and whoops, dashing madly all over the spectrum, stressing ultra-high notes that are absolutely piercing, screaming, of the like I have never heard before except once in a while in jazz. Such a marvelous apt and cooperative orchestra, also full of astonishing sounds! Yet the piece is indeed conservative, following concerto tradition with an opening slow segment followed by allegro, a marvelously sustained slow movement, and a last movement of prodigious force that ends in a percussion wham-bang such as you will not hear anywhere else. Best of all is the keen sense of rhythm and tempo, the very fast, the long, sustained slow ... I have listened to this piece four times through, at the expense of 50 other records; that's what I think of it.
Can't tell all from a test pressing, and this one had scratches and ticks near the beginning. But I'd judge that the finished release should be excellent in the surfaces and very fine in the hi-fi sound.
The performance is totally dedicated, the very best of the Philharmonic.
How do these "small companies" get hold of the big outfits' property like this? The Philharmonic has been at CBS exclusively for ever and ever. I can only say that CBS will have to work hard to match this disc.
A. Scarlatti: St. Cecilia Mass (1720). Harwood, Eathorne, Cable, Evans, Keyte, Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge, Wren Orch., Guest. Argo ZRG 903, stereo, $9.98.
Sound: A-
Recording:B-
Surface: A-
Domenico Scarlatti, born the same year as Bach and Handel (1685), is the better known of the Scarlatti’s today for his hundreds of little Spanish-flavored harpsichord sonatas. But his father Alessandro, who composed this Mass, was famous in his time as one of the founders of the mature classic Italian opera style; he was primarily a vocal and dramatic composer. This big Mass is composed in the prevailing big, semi-operatic style of high Baroque church music, with a brace of soloists, orchestra and chorus. It's one of those big "oratorio" pieces, like the newly circulated works of Vivaldi, solid and heavy with all the traditional brilliance of the Italian manner.
No, it isn't as meaty as Bach. It isn't intended to be. This is Italy! Easy opulence was the idea, music that was brilliant and impressive as well as entertaining in a relaxed fashion, church or no church. Obviously, you settled down for a long, comfortable listen when you went to hear this Mass in the original. That's what you have on records too.
The performance is dynamic, especially the very lively chorus (with boys' voices) interjecting its comments into the solos, and has a very competent orchestra. But things go too slowly and the reason is fairly clear the solo parts.
These are typical modern oratorio singers and they tend towards operatic pompousness; they can do no more than feign grotesquely at the fancy running parts they're supposed to sing. Wrong voices! But do no fear; this is merely normal for oratorio today and these are good musicians, even if they can't quite sing the notes. But with lighter, fleeter, more accurate soloists the whole thing could have taken on the greater brilliance that both chorus and orchestra are obviously ready to provide.
Damn it--those soloists are too loud and too close! Why do they have to record them in this conventional fashion, a few feet from your nose and louder than the whole chorus en masse? It puts them at an even worse disadvantage, and disturbs the musical sense. Some day, we'll get away from this dreadfully old-fashioned technique. Maybe the answer will come with the new PZM microphones, which are said to give better definition at a distance .... Nevertheless, the performance comes through wonderfully in spite of these problems. Music conquers all.
Miles Anderson Plays His Slide Trombone Again. With Virko Baley, pf., The L.A Slide Trombone Ensemble. Crystal 90065, stereo, $7.98.
Sound: B+
Recording: A-
Surfaces: B+
On the cover, a cherubic face with a big gnome's smile beams out of an enormous beard, past a gleaming trombone; on one side a discreet bottle of wine, open, with glass handy, looks inviting.
To a good extent that's the atmosphere of this very professional trombone record-though not all of the music, which is entirely French contemporary, is that relaxed. Even so, it goes to prove that a seemingly specialized recording of this sort can still be interesting to us, on the outside, if done with humor, imagination, intelligence and so on. Crystal has been good at this, as I've said before, and Crystal's fi and recording technique remain excellent on anybody's scale.
Side one should really send you. It opens modestly with Carlos Salzedo, a once-famous French harpist of the last generation, here writing for trombone in a rather conventional late-late Romantic style, all flowers and perfume. It does sound sort of harpy, come to think of it.
Luckily, it's short, seven minutes or so; now (says Anderson) we'll show you what this instrument can do. Wow! "Impulsions" by Charles Chaynes (in his late 50s) is a real saucy bit, the two slow movements full of stunts. The man has to sing through his trombone as well as play, and even, at one point, give a gusty sigh through its pipes--the two fast movements violently dynamic in a neo-neoclassic manner, enough to knock you off your feet. (No, this is not for background listening.) Two short "Danses" by another Frenchman, Jean Michel Defaye, jolt again but in the other direction: This man (you'll know instantly) has done film music and the like. Very smooth, and with Miles Anderson's help he manages to make the trombone sound like a tenor sax.
Side two may please trombonists but not necessarily me and you--it is the quintessence of conservatory writing, French style. Two more French composers, very much champions of professionalism, show their colleagues how good they are. You might call these "engineering papers" in music. Jacques Casterede really rubs me the wrong way, at length--such a self-consciously studied melange of anything and everything recent-French, and even a bit of Frenchy Hindemith and Stravinsky! The music has it all, but I found it cold as so many flatfish, and not even Miles Anderson could change that.
The last piece, by Roger Boutry, also highly professional, is for four trombones, and maybe less annoying for us out here. It is more limited, relatively short, the slow parts extremely dissonant and the faster segments violently "jazzy" in the approved neoclassical manner of conservatories and music departments these days, but its acrid sounds are interesting.
So--all that for one out-of-the-way LP? That's not all; there's another Miles Anderson, too, if you like this one, and I'd bet on more to come. The LP record, never forget, is a very productive music medium, one of the most versatile ever invented. How else could you get to take all this home with you?
Mostly Mozart, Volume Four. (Mozart, Sonatas K. 282, K. 310. Beethoven: Bagatelles, Op. 33.) Alicia de Larrocha, piano. London CS 7179, stereo, $9.98.
Sound: B+
Recording: B+
Surface: A
Mozart: Sonatas No. 12, K. 332, No. 13, K. 33. Malcolm Bilson, fortepiano. Nonesuch N-78004, stereo, $9.98.
Sound: A-
Recording: A-
Surface: B
Here is Mozart for the piano, and some Beethoven, in an interesting contrast not only between the instruments themselves-a grand piano and a reconstruction of Mozart's own instrument but in the corresponding styles of playing of these two excellent artists.
Alicia de Larrocha is Spanish and does the piano music of recent Spain with marvelous instinct--nobody is better. Astonishingly, she can also play the other standard classics, including an unlikely Mozart. Here, she takes the traditional stance of the older generation of Mozart pianists who play on the huge modern grand: A certain delicacy and restraint, which is almost a necessity for Mozart on that instrument. Which is not to say that, on occasion, de Larrocha doesn't let out the big basso sounds, with no harm to Mozart at all. Even so, her approach is the best of recent grand-piano tradition.
The fortepiano (pianoforte backwards) is a convenient name for the pre-1800 instrument, roughly through early Beethoven, after which the machinery began to be beefed up for bigger sounds.
We've had recordings of numerous restored pianos of Mozart's day; this one is newly built. If you have enjoyed the quaint buzzing and clattering of the actual old pianos, you may find this one at first a bit tame, until you listen further, and think a bit. Did Mozart's instrument actually clatter and buzz and clank? Or is that merely instrumental arthritis of extreme old age, in spite of restoration? Two hundred years! What you will find here is the brighter, stronger, less bassy sound of the much smaller instrument, a bit hard in the treble, almost guitar-like in the bass.
And, most striking, a seemingly fuller effect, less on the precious, delicate side.
This is an acoustic phenomenon. On the big modern grand, Mozart sounds paradoxically small; on the little, more brilliant piano, his music fills out as it should--and on records, of course, volume level is the same; you set it for yourself.
Stylistically, then, the grand-piano pianists are almost forced into a delicacy of a sort, since the music simply will not sound brilliant and full, given the printed notes. But on the old-type fortepiano the same notes come out with full musical "health." Thus in contrast to the de Larrocha (and many others), Bilson plays us a robust, hearty, roast-beef Mozart, not in the least precious or held-back, and this is surely right though it may surprise you at first. Just wait for his climax moments--quite startling.
The grand piano is recorded somewhat "small" in sound by London, perhaps deliberately, within the style. The Bilson fortepiano gets a loud, close recording with a lot of mechanical action and maybe a trace of extra boom in the bass. It's effective. But the level is high and there are too many pre-echoes for comfort on my copy. (I suppose we should have a fourth letter to grade the disc-cutting job. . . or is it tape pre-echo?)
Van de Vate: Music for Viola, Percussion and Piano. Iannaccone: Trio for Flute, Clarinet & Piano. Orion ORS 80386, stereo, $8.98.
Sound: A
Recording: A
Surfaces: B-
The second of these two composers, an indefatigable publicist for his own music, sent me this disc. Hate to say so, but I was really intrigued instead by the first item, a wild and zany percussion piece by a feminine whirlwind of a musical activist who, by the sound of her brief biography on the jacket, never stops running. Except maybe to compose. Ms.
Van de Vate's piece is definitely for the hi-fi fan as well as the adventuresome listener.
The Iannaccone Trio is a model of its type, highly professional, fresh and good hearted, full of a multitude of counterpoints and other expert ingenuities; yet my mind kept wandering. Reminded me, somehow, of Felix Mendelssohn, the happy one, who tended to the same sort of fluency back in the early 1800s. Also reminded me of entirely too many other neo-classic university-based works, still full of the learned "modern" devices and the jagged rhythms of the 1940s.
As backing for Ms. Van de Vate, the Trio is certainly not a minus; just a rather pallid plus.
As for the lady, she is an original, all right! Crazy, mixed-up styling, yet consistent too. Strong feeling of the very early 1920s, brash, acrid, noisy, jazzy.
Like Prokofiev's early "Age of Gold" music; but she also likes to spring a dim, mystical little melody, like Satie or even Scriabin, then blast it to smithereens with an enormous sonic bomb burst to knock you flat. Flying glass (percussion) in every direction. Also, she writes foot-tapping early-twenties oom-pah marches, excruciatingly dissonant. Not at all learned sounding, as you can imagine, but nevertheless very expertly put together, as of 1976. You'll enjoy.
(Audio magazine, Oct. 1981; Edward Tatnall Canby)
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