From the archives
Andrew Mcgregor delves into a treasure trove of rare recordings of a great pianist, Hephzibah Menuhin
‘A distinguished spirit, a gracious, generous woman… deserving of a place among the great pianists of the 20th century’, says film-maker Bruno Monsaingeon, who curated this centenary Hephzibah Menuhin – Homage(warner Classics 9029527031; 9 CDS/2 DVDS). He knew Hephzibah and her dazzlingly famous older brother Yehudi Menuhin well, but they were treated quite differently. According to their mother in a newspaper interview: ‘I tell her that the only immortality to which a woman should aspire is that of a home and children.’ Yet the siblings formed a duo in private, then in public. Their recorded legacy begins with a Mozart Sonata in Paris 1933, with 13-yearold Hephzibah showing a delightfully sensitive touch. ‘I’ve often wondered if anyone has ever felt as much pure happiness when performing as I did on the best occasions with Hephzibah,’ wrote Yehudi, and you can feel it for yourself in the conversational intimacy of Bach and Beethoven from 1938, and Brahms recorded during Yehudi’s tour of Australia in 1940, where Hephzibah was now living with her sheep-farmer husband.
Some of Hephzibah’s classics are there: Schubert’s Trout Quintet with the Amadeus Quartet, and effortlessly stylish Mozart concertos with Yehudi conducting. But Monsaingeon also includes unreleased, live recordings: there’s a Mozart Concerto for Two Pianos with her nephew Jeremy Menuhin, scrappily accompanied; better is Beethoven’s Op. 110 from mid-1970s Paris, a 1960
Bath Festival appearance with Louis Kentner playing a Mozart duo sonata, and Brahms Liebeslieder-walzer with a quartet of singers including Janet Baker.
My favourite finds are brother and sister together in a blistering Bartók First Sonata live in Moscow, and previously unreleased Debussy and Enescu. The two DVDS present a remarkable range of occasions, from a family reunion in Mozart at Yehudi’s 50th-birthday concert to the Franck Sonata at the UN. A touching tribute to a fine musician who forged her own path. and the orchestra stays with her all the time – it’s not clear from the booklet whether she or the orchestra leader is in charge, incidentally.
The most interesting movement in the earlier concertos is the
Rondo finale in the Fourth, where the episodes explore different moods, keys and time signatures. But standing out is the Twelfth Concerto, with its opening very much in the Sturm und Drang tradition, and reaching forward towards something more Romantic. It also draws the best playing from Siranossian, especially the first movement cadenza – unusually accompanied by wind and timpani – and in the finale, a buoyant polonaise. Martin Cotton PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
A Rosetti
Violin Concertos in C, D and F Lena Neudauer (violin); Southwest German Chamber Orchestra
CPO 555 381-2 58:54 mins
Received wisdom tends to suggest that in the age of Haydn and Mozart, no other music apart from theirs is really worth bothering about, because if it were, we’d be hearing it more often. This may be broadly true, but only up to a point. While the Bohemian-born Antonio Rosetti’s violin concertos are not in Mozart’s league, on this evidence their quality deserves more than just specialist interest. These three were written (in the reverse order of their catalogue numbering) in the late 1770s for successive leaders of the Oettingen-wallerstein court orchestra where Rosetti was then director.
As it happens, the first two movements of the C major Concerto feature the stiffest and dullest music, which turns out to be untypical: the finale has genuine sparkle, as do the quick outer movements of the other two works (the intercut slower and quicker sections of the F major Concerto’s closing Rondo throw up some likeable surprises), while the D major Concerto’s slow central movement has much lyrical poise and charm.
The performances respond in classy style: Lena Neudauer is a warmly expressive soloist with a firm, rounded tone and super-precise articulation, and the accompanying support is crisp without being over-dry. Malcolm Hayes PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★
Shostakovich
Cello Concertos Nos 1 & 2
Marc Coppey (cello); Polish National Radio Symphony/lawrence Foster Audite AUDITE97777 60:07 mins Pairing Shostakovich’s cello concertos, both dedicated to Mstislav Rostropovich and premiered by him in 1959 and 1966 respectively, has become commonplace on recordings. To feature them in the same concert may be unique, but it makes sense, being a more varied journey than the one to be found in the two violin concertos. The greater part of the live intensity and atmosphere is to be found in the magnificent ensembles and (more often) solos of the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra players under the ever-reliable Lawrence Foster. Wind and horn especially sound wonderful in Katowice’s muchpraised orchestra, with plenty of air around the instruments but also much immediacy. A bit too much, perhaps, as Coppey launches mezzo forte rather than piano into the quest of the First Concerto. At the opposite extreme, too, the best interpreters tend to find more tearing intensity.
Coppey’s intonation and timbre at both extremes of the register, though, are always of the highest order. The interweaving of soloist and orchestra constantly holds the attention, and you find more genuine pianissimos in the Second Concerto, its final Allegretto one of the most compelling in the entire orchestral repertoire with its percussion-accompanied fanfares, cadenzas, ritornellos and marionette dances. Here you really do sense the depths of Shostakovich’s later style, always rethought in each work’s approach to the question of imminent death, always original. The many quotations, speculative or actual, and what Shostakovich would have called ‘pseudo-quotations’, are admirably covered in Michael Stuck-schloen’s impressively detailed notes. David Nice PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Concertos for Mallet Instruments
Alexis Alrich: Marimba Concerto; Karl Jenkins: La Folia;
Ned Rorem: Mallet Concerto Evelyn Glennie (percussion); City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong/ Jean Thorel
Naxos 8.574218 71:01 mins
Another engaging disc from the ever-compelling Evelyn Glennie with three attractive concertos that should win many friends. From its shimmering opening, Alexis Alrich’s substantial three-movement Marimba Concerto creates a distinctive lyrical world. The insistent rhythmic patterns of minimalism sit naturally alongside calmer, more impressionistic textures allied to hints of Glennie’s fascination with Asian music. Under Jean Thorel, the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong are evocatively hazy when needed, yet also fresh and beautifully balanced with the marimba, an instrument all-too-easily overwhelmed.
With La Folia, the only previously recorded piece, Karl Jenkins joins the litany of composers inspired by this centuries-old theme, some of his figurations taking off from Corelli’s celebrated variations.
The orchestra strings play with an appositely grainy, almost archaic, texture to underpin the simultaneously modern, yet ancient marimba. Full of delicious nuances, Glennie’s ever-musical virtuosity is to the fore, not just in the sustained streams of notes in the showier variations, but also in the numerous subtle flourishes that unobtrusively decorate more sedate passages.
Ned Rorem’s Mallet Concerto features pairs of movements each for vibraphone, glockenspiel and marimba arranged palindromically around a centrepiece for xylophone. Like Jenkins’s La Folia, it was written for Glennie and, while there is plenty of dizzying pizzazz, Rorem has the confidence also to write the simplest of lines for her. Ever-true to his inventive brand of neoclassicism, it is by turns wistful, quirky, exuberant and reflective, the final ‘An ending’ a profound conclusion to an engrossing disc. Christopher Dingle
PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
★★★★★
★★★★
Occurrence
Works by Bjarnason, MB Johannsson, Jónsdóttir, Tómasson and Vaka
Mario Caroli (flute), Pekka Kuusisto (violin); Iceland Symphony Orchestra/daníel Bjarnason
Sono Luminus DSL-92243 70:42 mins This third – and, for now, final – instalment of Iceland Symphony Orchestra’s Project series continues with aplomb their survey of homegrown contemporary composers. In all, nine have been featured; each in their way reflecting the richly creative ethos that has flourished post-war in that land of ice and volcanic fire.
Three composers return from previous volumes – including the brilliant series conductor, Daníel Bjarnason. His 2017 Violin Concerto opens the album with a spectacular performance by soloist Pekka Kuusisto. Intensely virtuosic, the violin is nonetheless always part of a greater whole: from folky, whistled tunes to roaring and growling on the detuned bottom string, storms of colour are unleashed for the orchestra to absorb and rework in surging textures.
By contrast, Thurídur Jónsdóttir’s Flutter suffuses a slow-moving orchestral backdrop with recordings of grasshoppers, against which flute soloist Mario Caroli explores birdlike extended techniques in honour of Messiaen’s 2008 birth centenary.
While a more human drama pervades Haukur Tómasson’s quirkily imaginative In Seventh Heaven (2011), Iceland’s landscape takes centre stage in Lendh (2019) by Canadian-born newcomer, Veronique Vaka. Transcribing into sound the topography of a geothermal region near Reykjavik, the orchestra feels embedded in the environment: solid yet lithe, dark yet light and peppered with eruptions that subside as quickly as they appear.
Also new to the series is Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson (1925-2005). The former avant-gardist brings this engaging release to a rapt close with his lyrically tonal Adagio, which emerged in 1980 following a lengthy silence. Steph Power PERFORMANCE
RECORDING
★★★★
★★★★★