OSM among orchestras churning out CDs for gifts
Danse macabre is one of two CDs recorded with OSM in 2016
Gracious, look at the calendar. Barely a week left to deal with a stack of 2016 CDs that reaches fairly to the ceiling.
Not that the middle of December is a bad time to write about the archaic shiny saucers, which have a great advantage over downloads and live-streams as stocking stuffers. Say what you will, a compact disc is a thing, and a thing can be given.
Kent Nagano and the OSM generated two albums on Decca this year, of which the more clearly gift-ish is titled Danse macabre. Three scary hits are balanced with three novelties — a word that might look suspiciously like a euphemism for “bad pieces,” but here denotes scores of real appeal that missed the standard repertoire boat for one reason or other.
The case of Dvorak’s 1896 tone poem The Noon Witch is interesting. The compact opening tune, expressing the innocence of youth, is certainly memorable, unfortunately to the point of becoming an earworm after only a few iterations. A contrasting four-note motif then proves too close to the motto of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for comfort, especially as scored for unison strings.
These reservations might be overlooked if The Noon Witch had an upbeat trajectory. Alas, the Bohemian fairy tale ends badly as the evil title character enters the rustic cottage and seizes the child from his mother. Dvorak is thus compelled to conclude a work that opened in sunniest C Major in grim, cataclysmic A Minor.
Nagano nonetheless finds much character and colour in the score, with assists by wind principals, starting with clarinet Todd Cope. Instrumental riches are even more abundant in Balakirev’s Tamara, once a calling card of Sir Thomas Beecham but now fallen into neglect. Again the title character is a woman who is bad for your health, at least if you are a male passerby who succumbs to her come-hither entreaties.
Completed in 1882 after years of painstaking labour, Tamara is regarded as a predecessor to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade, which it resembles in imagery and exotic flair. Playing has the generosity and virtuosity we equate with the OSM in the glory years; and while I am not prepared to abandon my allegiance to the Church of St. Eustache as the acoustical ideal, Montreal engineer Carl Talbot has certainly captured the resonance of the Maison symphonique. Perhaps what keeps Tamara out of the concert hall is its ungainly length of 22 minutes, too ample to work as an overture yet too short for symphony service. At home, all bets are off, so sit back and enjoy.
Of the works firmly in the repertoire, two are associated with Walt Disney’s Fantasia. Coincidentally these pieces were also recorded by the OSM under Charles Dutoit in the 1980s. While I am prepared to call Dukas’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice a draw, I lean to the 1985 version of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain for its cleaner brass entries, tighter tempos and less ponderous overall conception.
The other repertoire number is the title track, Saint Saëns’s Danse macabre, with incisive solo violin work by concertmaster Andrew Wan (although it is the veteran flutist Timothy Hutchins who first speaks the main theme). The third oddball on the program is Charles Ives’s Hallowe’en, an amusing exercise in chamber cacophony that lasts a little more than two minutes. Could nothing scary from Canada be found (or commissioned) to add to the lineup?
My other gripe concerns the live recording. As I said, the sound lives up to the Decca tradition, but this means that the coughing of the audience is faithfully captured. The very first sound on the CD is a cough, before the Dukas begins, and there is a beauty at 19 seconds into the Dvorak.
The notion that “live” performance before an audience yields superior results might apply to certain artists of the past (Leonard Bernstein and Maria Callas come to mind). In our professional age, this is largely a fiction. The OSM built its international reputation in the 20th century on studio recordings made in the aforementioned Church of St. Eustache. If there are obstacles to studio recording in the existing OSM contract, let us send these pointless clauses to oblivion in the next round of negotiations.
L’Aiglon, the nearly forgotten opera by Arthur Honneger and Jacques Ibert on the subject of Emperor Napoleon II, is touching and accessible and splendidly done by Nagano and the OSM. But you need not take my word for it. This Decca recording has earned a Diapason d’or for album of the year in the opera category. The annual award is administered by the Paris-based Diapason magazine.
Other winners are Anna Netrebko (her admirable program of verismo arias on DG), Daniel Harding and the Bavarian State Radio Orchestra (Mahler’s Sixth Symphony) and Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic (Beethoven’s Nine Symphonies on video). The latter two releases are on the respective orchestra’s proprietary labels. The Quatuor Molinari, on the ATMA label, has won a Diapason disc-of-the-month mention for a recording of music of the veteran Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina. Messiah watch: There was a time when I offered a ritual recommendation of the 1987 EMI Toronto Symphony/Toronto Mendelssohn Choir recording of Handel’s oratorio under Andrew Davis, which even at the time was swimming against the historicist flow by using fairly large forces. Now the British conductor has created a recording of his own “new concert edition,” which applies all manner of modern instrumental accoutrements to the masterpiece, marimba not excluded.
Again the TSO and Toronto Mendelssohn Choir are the ensembles. The label is Chandos. I am sure Sir Andrew would agree that this should not be the only Messiah on your shelves. Certainly, it has its striking and high-spirited moments, but I find it rather like a walk through the toy department. Go to www. chandos.net.
For something a little heftier: Universal Music Group has produced 15,000 copies of a monumental and hyper-complete Mozart box as a recognition of the 225th anniversary of the composer’s death. More than 200 CDs and 600 artists and ensembles cover not only the works recognized by Köchel number (a revised list of which, called “Das K Buch,” is included), but innumerable scraps, discoveries, arrangements of music by other composers and pieces of uncertain provenance, all fastidiously described.
Of course, the style of performance is an issue with Mozart in a way it is not with Balakirev and Saint-Saëns. Period groups are somewhat dominant, although “modern-instrument” performances are not banished. “It is hoped that any momentary jolts of sound and style will be amply compensated for by the opportunity of hearing strikingly different but equally valid approaches to this most universal of music,” writes Paul Moseley, director of the Mozart 225 project.
Supplementary discs include what we might now for better or worse call archival performances from the Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and Phillips catalogues. The Piano Concertos K.466, No. 27 K.595 as recorded in 1970 by the Clifford Curzon and the English Chamber Orchestra under Benjamin Britten are salient examples. All the same, the basic symphony and concerto collection is of the “historically informed” persuasion, and I am saddened not to see any of Karl Böhm’s opera recordings included. The Don Giovanni, on the other hand, is led by our own Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
A biography and posters are part of the package. More upto-date extras include online access to “Urtext” scores and a “libretto app” that calls up the words of operas, arias and songs on you tablet or smartphone. One notable Canadian retailer is selling Mozart 225 for $474.98. Go to www.mozart225.com for information on the release.
My other gripe concerns the live recording. The sound lives up to the Decca tradition, but this means the coughing of the audience is faithfully captured.