Trifonov arrives at his final destination in style
Erik Levi delights in the pianist’s journey through Rachmaninov concertos and transcriptions
Rachmaninov
Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 3; Vocalise;
The Silver Sleigh Bells
Daniil Trifonov (piano); Philadelphia Orchestra/ Yannick Nézet-séguin
DG 483 6618 81:50 mins
The main focus of this final instalment in Daniil Trifonov’s Rachmaninov Piano Concerto cycle is 1909-17. This was an exceptionally fruitful period, during which the composer wrote several major works in a variety of genres before the Russian Revolution put a temporary halt to his creativity.
Trifonov frames the two Concertos with two of his imaginative piano transcriptions. First, ‘The Silver Sleigh Bells’ drawn from the first movement of the composer’s epic choral and orchestral work The Bells. The glistening high-pitched harp, celesta and flute figurations that open the original sound just as luminous on the piano, and the whole movement is dispatched with dazzling brilliance. In contrast, Trifonov’s transcription of the famous Vocalise emphasises the lower registers of the piano, so intensifying the music’s longing and poignancy.
Trifonov is no less impressive in the Concertos. In the First, he steers the music’s dramatic ebb and flow with total conviction, while also bringing tremendous clarity of fingerwork to its elaborate piano writing. Yannick Nézet-séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra are superbly attentive partners, bringing a glorious warmth to the soaring string melodies and highlighting subtleties of instrumentation often missed in other recordings, such as the accompanying bassoon solo in the slow movement. In the Third Trifonov makes light work of the hugely challenging piano part, again driving a clear structural path through the work’s expansive and occasionally discursive design. High points are the masterly handling of the big cadenza in the first movement and the rollercoaster push towards the final apotheosis in the last movement which is absolutely thrilling. PERFORMANCE ★★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
Hear extracts from this recording and the rest of this month’s choices on the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com
Beethoven
Piano Concerto No. 1 in C,
Op. 15; Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op. 19; Rondo for Piano & Orchestra in B flat, Wo06 Boris Giltburg (piano);
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/vasily Petrenko
Naxos 8.574151 73:51 mins
The Rondo, WOO6, was Beethoven’s initial attempt at a finale for his first concerto, known as No. 2 since it was published after its later C major companion piece. It’s an enjoyably playful piece, and the Russian-israeli pianist Boris Giltburg clearly has fun with it.
Giltburg is also impressive in the Concertos, never failing to capture the music’s character. Perhaps he’s a bit cautious with his pedalling in the coda of the Second Concerto’s slow movement, with its deeply poetic recitative-like melodic line. Beethoven marks the whole passage to be pedalled through; although it’s true that the pianos of his day were weaker in sustaining power, this counts as an early instance of his fondness for blurred harmonies, and it shouldn’t sound completely clean.
Giltburg opts for the shorter of the two cadenzas Beethoven completed for the opening movement of the C major First Concerto, rather than the weird and wonderful alternative which can so easily overbalance the whole piece. Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic provide firm support throughout, albeit with true pianissimo playing rather at a premium. Misha Donat PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
Prokofiev
Symphony-concerto;
Cello Sonata
Bruno Philippe (cello), Tanguy de Williencourt (piano); Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Christoph Eschenbach
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902608 65:49 mins
The orchestra brings a glorious warmth to the string melodies
Hearing a gifted but relatively inexperienced cellist in these late, philosophical works is to appreciate all the more what the man who inspired them,
Mstislav Rostropovich, brought to each. True, Rostropovich was in his early 20s, younger than Bruno Philippe, when he worked with Prokofiev on both, but somehow he heard the pain in the deeper songs of the Cello Sonata and the Symphony-concerto (to give it the title Rostropovich confirmed it should have in translation, not Sinfonia Concertante as the cover gives it here – elsewhere, the name is correct).
What makes the disc worth hearing is the playing of the orchestral wind and brass in the bigger work, cause for even more wonder than usual at Prokofiev’s fine-tuned instrumentation; the recording certainly plays its part in ideal balances. Eschenbach supports when necessary but pulls out the stops for the one point in the first movement where the full orchestra sings its heart. Philippe gives us some remarkable ricochet bowing and makes a final bolt for the blue which is perfectly in (high) pitch, which can’t always be guaranteed in live performance.
The relative dourness of the Sonata, a close but not ideal partnership with pianist Tanguy de Williencourt, comes as a surprise; the far from straightforward first movement needs more flow, occasionally more extroversion, and one of Prokofiev’s greatest melodic inspirations at the centre of the work, a match for the great theme at the heart of the Symphonyconcerto, doesn’t quite take flight. Otherwise, good work throughout. David Nice
PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Vivaldi
The Four Seasons; Trio Sonata for Two Violins & Continuo in D minor, RV 63 (La Follia); Violin Concerto in D, RV 222 – excerpt
Leila Schayegh (violin); Musica Fiorita/daniela Dolci (harpsichord) Glossa GCD 924203 52:94 mins
This quirky Four Seasons will doubtless find its adherents; and, up to a point, deservedly so. Violinist Leila Schayegh is a fine player and her approach demonstrates a warm rapport with the music and a lively response to its pastoral inspiration. So far, so good; but what diminished my own enjoyment of these perennially refreshing concertos is her need, presumably with the tacit agreement of director Daniela Dolci and her ensemble, Musica Fiorita, to introduce intrusive sound effects which add absolutely nothing to Vivaldi’s enchanting seasonal vignettes.
The most irritating of these incursions are those which can be heard as an accompaniment to the music. The opening movement of the Spring Concerto, for example, features a small bird or, possibly several small birds twittering intermittently, while Summer is afflicted by distant rumbles of thunder in the Adagio, followed by not so distant thundering in the concluding Presto. There seemed to be other noises too, which to my ears, at least, were less identifiable. Autumn fares better and the sound of a psaltery among the continuo instruments is pleasing. The lyrical Largo of Winter is too generously embellished, obscuring Vivaldi’s enchanting melody, while short solo violin improvisations, linking one concerto to the next, seemed pointless. Dolci’s often enervating predilection for legato articulation too often drains the tuttis of vitality though the high calibre of the playing has its own rewards.
Vivaldi’s splendid sonata for two violins and continuo, La Follia, and a chaconne-based movement from a D major Violin Concerto are more convincing. Nicholas Anderson PERFORMANCE ★★★ RECORDING ★★★
Works by Debussy, D’indy, Dukas, Frances-hoad, Hahn, Haydn, Ravel & Widor
Ivana Gavri (piano); Southbank Sinfonia/karin Hendrickson
Rubicon RCD 1038 64:21 mins Bosnian-born pianist Ivana Gavri tells us she was attracted to Haydn’s sprightly Piano Concerto No. 11 in D major, HOBXVIII: 11 by the musicological surmise that its finale may be based upon a Croatian or Bosnian folksong. Her spirited reading of this, with the Southbank Sinfonia under Karin Hendrickson, precedes solo pieces on a five-note cypher of Haydn’s name written by eminent French composers on the centenary of his death in 1909. These include Debussy’s aqueous Hommage and Ravel’s delectable Menuet sur le nom d’haydn, but also Dukas’s less familiar Prélude élégiaque and a neat Thème varié by Hahn.
Gavri complements these pieces with Stolen Rhythm, composed for the Haydn bicentenary in 2009 by her fellow student at Cambridge, Cheryl Frances-hoad. Her substantial and touching piano concerto Between the Skies, the River and the Hills is, she tells us, partly inspired by the Haydn, partly by a Bosnian lament, partly by an Ivo Andric´ novel. This is a beautiful collection, vividly recorded.
Bayan Northcott
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
★★★★
★★★★
Stories
Beamish: Trumpet Concerto*; Jolas: Histoires varies; Neuwirth: ...miramondo multiplo...
Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet), Roger Muraro (piano); Malmö Symphony Orchestra; *National Youth Orchestra of Scotland/
Martyn Brabbins
BIS BIS-2293 61.00 mins
An orchestra tunes up, the sound melts into a haze. There’s a knocking on wood, a smattering of applause. This ambient concert noise is in fact the start of Betsy Jolas’s 2015 Histoires varies. It’s one of three concertos for the virtuosic trumpeter Håkan Hardenberger featured on this well-recorded disc, two of which are given their premiere recordings by the exemplary Malmö Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins.
Jolas has recently been championed by conductor Simon Rattle, after he met her at a dinner party, but the 93-year-old, once an assistant to Messiaen, has been plying her craft for decades. This modernist score, with piano and trumpet concertante soloists, represents, she says, ‘her first conscious attempt to work with “sounds we try not to hear”’. The result is terse and eloquent; jagged atonal gestures are juxtaposed with glimpses of shimmering light.
The whole of music history is refracted in Olga Neuwirth’s brilliant five-movement …miramondo multiplo… (2006). The Austrian composer, who dreamed of being a professional trumpeter, weaves together diverse threads: Mahler’s fateful trumpet fanfares, Handel’s ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’, Stravinsky’s rhythmic bite, a glimpse of woozy Gershwin, a nod to Miles Davis.
The National Youth Orchestra of Scotland recording of Sally Beamish’s 2003 Trumpet
Concerto, available on a previous BIS showcase of her music, here sits happily between Jolas and Neuwirth. Traditional in its use of three movements, with the soloist in dialogue with orchestra, this concerto also conjures a modern urban landscape with percussive effects using scaffolding pipes and scrapped car parts. Rebecca Franks PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★