5 classical music albums you can listen to right now
“Lieder Ohne Worte,” Igor Levit, piano (Sony): Music doesn’t have the power to end wars. Peace, said Daniel Barenboim, whose Westeastern Divan Orchestra brings together Israeli and Palestinian artists, “needs something else.”
But that doesn’t mean musicians are powerless. On this album, recorded and released with whiteheat urgency following the latest conflict in Israel and Gaza, Igor Levit documents a personal reaction while using his platform as a star pianist to support two organizations against antisemitism that are based in Berlin, where he lives.
In the past, Levit has been accused of opportunistic political posturing, but his philanthropic projects have been virtually apolitical — and too substantial to dismiss. Early in the pandemic, he spun his “house concert” livestreams into a marathon of Satie’s “Vexations” that raised money for artist relief. And this album’s proceeds will go directly to the Berlin organizations.
Levit wanted to record selections from Felix Mendelssohn’s “Lieder Ohne Worte,” or “Songs Without Words,” because, he has said, “there is a certain melancholy about them which really helped me a bit.” That doleful mood pervades these interpretations: a sadly beautiful tone; an emotional climax that evaporates rather than reaching a resolution; a heartbreakingly simple plunk of high keys.
Just as emotionally communicative is the cover art, a gray-scale photograph of Levit’s hand holding his Star of David necklace. The background is black — a void that emphasizes absence, the “without” of the music’s title, and loss. This image doesn’t necessarily pick sides in the war, but instead mourns its fundamental tragedy. —
Ethan Iverson, “Technically Acceptable,” Ethan Iverson, piano; Thomas Morgan and Simón Willson, basses; Kush Abadey and Vinnie Sperrazza, percussion; Rob Schwimmer, theremin (Blue Note): One of the marketing hooks for this pianist and composer’s latest release is that it contains the first piano sonata ever released on the storied jazz label Blue Note. Anyone in the mood for tuneful and ambitious formal composition should proceed directly to the end of this album.
The sonata, Ethan Iverson’s first, reflects his diverse lodestars. Classical in conception — right down to a repeat of the exposition material in the opening movement — it also contains traces of crunchy harmonic modernism and the bumptious sounds of vintage American jazz styles. The protean first movement dictates that some syncopated figures should sound in the manner of Harlem stride master James P. Johnson; the lyrical middle movement sports bluesy licks, marked forte, that Iverson likens to the style of Bobby Timmons. (To savor the notation, check out the score-scrolling videos that Blue Note has uploaded to Youtube. While you’re there, check out the balance of the album, which features sterling jazz-trio work, not to mention a theremin solo on “‘Round Midnight.”)
In an interview last year, Iverson said: “I feel James P. with me; I feel Erroll Garner with me. And I feel Ralph Shapey.” That final namedrop — of a maverick American composer — is another useful reference point. While the risk in a piece like Iverson’s sonata usually involves accusations of pastiche, he steers well clear of that trap, thanks to a rigorous engagement with his chosen inspirations. The result, performed by him on this recording, is a work both high spirited and sturdy. I await his second effort in this vein. —
“Songs of Fate,” Gidon Kremer, violin; Vida Mikneviciute, soprano; Kremerata Baltica (ECM New Series): Several years ago, Gidon Kremer told The New York Times that his roots go “deep in many directions.” This moving if elusive new album plays like a nod to all, or at least to several, of them. There is the notion of Jewishness, something that the Latvian-born violinist was surprised by, according to his liner note. The album also reflects his Baltic heritage, with music by three composers hardly known outside the region: Raminta Serksnyte, Giedrius Kuprevicius, both Lithuanian, and Jekabs Jancevskis, who is Latvian. The inclusion of Mieczyslaw Weinberg speaks to his ardent championing of that Polish-born composer.
Hovering over everything, to my ears, is a starkly despondent tone that marks this project as being haunted by the ongoing horrors in Ukraine, something that would be fitting for a musician unafraid of linking art and politics.
One thing is certain: This is one of Kremer’s most personal undertakings. His playing — especially in Serksnyte’s “This Too Shall Pass” and Weinberg’s simple, sad “Nocturne” — has the breath and rhythm of halting speech. Soprano Vida Mikneviciute imparts a similar tone to Kuprevicius’ “Kaddish” and to excerpts from Weinberg’s “Jewish Songs.” Jancevskis’ “Lignum” for string orchestra and chimes, played with deep sensitivity by chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica, progresses from dissonance to resounding affirmation to an open-ended conclusion. It sounds like Kremer’s description of the album’s purpose: “reminding us of tragic fates along the way and that we each have a ‘voice’ that deserves to be heard.” —
“Éventail,” Heinz Holliger, oboe and oboe d’amore; Anton Kernjak, piano; Alice Belugou, harp (ECM New Series): There’s a dreamy, wistful quality to this album of French music from the oboist Heinz Holliger. At 84, his tone is less sweet and bright than it is mysterious and sinuous, ambercolored, with occasional passing clouds. His phrasing is sensitive, as in the romance at the center of the middle movement of Saintsaëns’ late sonata; this take on that sonata’s finale is more easygoing and lyrical than some other accounts. Pianist Anton Kernjak is an eloquent partner, here and elsewhere on the recording.
Holliger makes some intriguing choices. He plays Charles Koechlin’s pastoral “Le Repos de Tityre,” written for the mellow oboe d’amore, and then also uses that instrument for two works by Claude Debussy: the plaintive “Syrinx” (originally for flute) and the “Petite Pièce” (clarinet). Adaptations to oboe abound, including from wordless vocalises by Maurice Joseph Ravel, Oliver Messiaen and Camille Saint-saëns. Robert Casadesus’ sonata — by turns quietly noble, cheerful and elegantly driving — receives a rare, pleasant performance.
It is all lovely, if a bit monochromatic. The highlight is André Jolivet’s shrouded, skittish “Controversia,” from 1968, which was dedicated to Holliger and harpist Ursula Holliger, his wife. On the album, the harp part is taken up by Alice Belugou, who interacts with Holliger to impressively eerie effect. —
Puccini: “I Canti,” Charles Castronovo, tenor; Munich Radio Orchestra; Ivan Repušic, conductor (BR Klassik): All but two of Giacomo Puccini’s operas are repertory staples. There isn’t a lot of vocal music left to unearth from the well-loved composer of big, heart-on-your-sleeve melodies. So this album of Puccini songs, presented in new orchestrations by Johannes X. Schachtner, feels like stumbling upon a trove of undiscovered arias — a minor trove, but a trove nevertheless. And some of the material was in fact recently rediscovered.
The songs’ original piano parts, pro forma in the extreme, sound like a pianovocal reduction of an opera score. Schachtner fills in the instrumental colors — obbligato winds, vocal doublings, radiant strings — that might have swirled in Puccini’s mind. If Schachtner’s orchestrations lack the confident stroke of the master’s pen, they remain a pleasing simulacrum of his flamboyantly emotional style.
Robust, with only a touch of dryness in his tone, tenor Charles Castronovo sings these songs as though they’re proto-arias. And in some cases they are: Puccini, an inveterate self-borrower, repurposed melodies for his operas, and Castronovo’s broad, stirring phrases, gregarious outbursts and linguistic relish bring to mind those reckless romantics Rodolfo, Ruggero and des Grieux.
This year is the centennial of Puccini’s death, and Angela Gheorghiu is releasing her own recording of this repertoire on the Signum Classics label. Overmilked phrases and wayward pitch aside, the Romanian soprano’s voice retains glints of its delicate, kaleidoscopic colors and a sense of interiority.
Whether these are art songs or arias in disguise, both singers express their character with an ardor that is unmistakably Puccinian. —