CD Review (The Straits Times, May 2019)

SCHUMANN-GRÜTZMACHER 

Cello Transcriptions

Francesco Dillon, Cello

Emanuele Torquati, Piano

Brilliant Classics 94060 (2 CDs) / ****1/2

The German Romantic composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856) wrote such a small body of music for cello – a great cello concerto and handful of short chamber works – that it seems a real pity. This album of transcriptions by German virtuoso cellist Friedrich Grützmacher (1832-1903) of Schumann’s Lieder, selected piano pieces and an entire sonata is a godsend for cellists seeking new repertoire.  

Schumann’s most popular lied, Widmung (Dedication), opens the selection of 17 song transcriptions. Also included are Der Nussbaum (The Walnut Tree), Frühlingsnacht (Spring Night), Mondnacht (Moonlit Night), The Two Grenadiers (which concludes with La Marseillaise, the French national anthem) and two numbers from song cycles Frauenliebe und Leben (A Woman’s Love And Life) and Dichterliebe (A Poet’s Love), all familiar tunes.

The autumnal Second Violin Sonata in D major (Op.121), in four movements, is also his most ambitious. Here it becomes a glorious cello sonata, full of brooding passion and foreboding. The transcriptions of piano pieces are mostly of miniatures, such as Schlummerlied (Slumber Song), The Happy Farmer and Soldier’s March. However all 13 pieces of Kinderszenen (Scenes From Childhood), including the unforgettable Träumerei (Dreaming), take pride of place. The Italian duo of Dillon and Torquati are excellent, making the best case possible of Schumann’s lyrical gifts.

WEBERN & SCHUMANN / Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra / Review

WEBERN & SCHUMANN

Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra

Conservatory Concert Hall

Saturday (14 March 2015)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 16 March 2015 with the title "Webern, Schumann cast in new light".

The Austro-Germanic coupling of music by Anton Webern and Robert Schumann continued for a second evening with a concert by the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Jason Lai. Early in Webern's output were his larger orchestral works, which were opulently orchestrated besides being his least forbidding.

His Passacaglia Op.1 carried off from the final movement of Brahms' Fourth Symphony, which had been written in the form of a passacaglia. The theme comprised just eight notes, crisply played by pizzicato strings. What ensued was a continuous set of very short variations on this 8-note ground bass, which got increasingly complex as the work progressed. What conductor Lai got out from his young players was clarity and precision, which became more admirable as the textures got increasingly dense. The underlying pulse never flagged and there were excellent violin solos from concertmaster Hong Mengqi, summing up the overall high level of playing.

The orchestra was joined by five members of the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées for the Schumann works, beginning with examplary partnership for Singapore-born British pianist Melvyn Tan in Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor. The piano was placed forward of the orchestra, instead of alongside it, and this definitely enhanced its projection. There was no chance of Tan being submerged by orchestral forces.

Here was no run-of-the-mill reading as Tan chose to heighten the tension of his solos by varying accents and phrasing, bringing out more bristling and even unexpectedly prickly aspects of the classic. Purists may be scandalised as they have yet to encounter Schumann in such rude state of health, but there was no denying its vitality, which emerged in the treacherously tricky finale as pure joy. Witnessing Tan's elan in his final act as Artist-in-Residence at the Conservatory was a jubilant culmination of sorts. Clearly ecstatic at the audience's reception, he played two lovely encores, Schubert's filigreed Impromptu in A flat major (Op.90 No.4) and Schumann's Träumerei.        

The second half opened with Webern's transcription of the Ricercata from J.S.Bach's A Musical Offering. Once again, the orchestra displayed a keen understanding of its counterpoint with clearly defined lines brought out vividly. Woodwinds and brass distinguished themselves in this piquantly orchestrated number, a showcase of Webern's klangfarben or tonal colour.

French horns also had a field day in Schumann's Third Symphony, also known as the Rhenish, but that was only part of the story. Conductor Lai's taut and tidy account did not stint on the music's grandeur, which can sound overblown and stodgy under less inspired minds. The opening chord was out of the first bar pf Beethoven's Eroica Symphony, and the first two movements were distinguished with broad striding sweeps. Emboldened, the slow movement's lofty edifice, the composer's vision of Cologne Cathedral, was illuminated with glorious sunshine.

The finale began with a gentle amble, and soon built up a head of steam as the forces rallied to a glowing end. Schumann has been maligned as an orchestrator, but his art was a direct extension of Beethoven's and he clearly knew what he wanted to achieve. This performance delivered his intentions on a silver platter, and made nonsense of those prejudices. More power to the young orchestra for being persuasive myth-busters.

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, November 2014)

SAINT-SAENS Cello Concertos

NATALIE CLEIN, Cello

BBC Scottish Symphony / Andrew Manze

Hyperion 68002 / *****

The French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) has been often accused of over-prodigiousness, conservatism and style over substance, but this cannot apply to his two cello concertos, where he weds poetry and virtuosity to near perfection. Both works play under 20 minutes; everything that is needed to be said is sung with slickness and brevity. Cello Concerto No.1 in A minor (composed in 1872) is by far the better known, with its fiery rhetoric and showiness accomplished in a single movement. Cello Concerto No.2 in D minor (1902) is seldom heard because of its immense technical difficulties required of the cellist.

British cellist Natalie Clein, a former BBC Young Musician of the Year, crafts a gorgeous tone above all the surface glitz and display. This disc, part of Hyperion’s Romantic Cello Concertos series, is a first choice for listeners who want to hear both concertos in succession. Clein is joined by German violinist Antje Weithaas in The Muse and the Poet (1910), a lovely double concerto in all but name. Here both instruments resonate as one sublime whole. Two encores, Allegro Appassionato and The Swan from Carnival of the Animals, enhance the desirability of this winning album.

Book It:

NATALIE CLEIN performs

Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No.1

with Singapore National Youth Orchestra

conducted by Jason Lai

27 November 2014 / Esplanade Concert Hall at 7.30 pm

Tickets available at SISTIC

SCHUMANN Piano Works

VLADIMIR HOROWITZ, Piano

Sony Classical 88697719262 / *****

Nobody understands piano music of the Romantic era better than Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989). That assertion is no idle fantasy, as which pianist dead or alive could claim equal ownership to the works of Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Rachmaninov and Scriabin? This all-Schumann disc, of works recorded between 1962 and 1969, finds the Ukraine-born legend at his most genial yet volatile. Such are the extremes to be encountered in the German Romantic composer’s music. The pianist as poet shines through in Kinderszenen (Scenes from Childhood) Op.15, including that gem called Träumerei (Dreaming), and the short single-movement Arabeske Op.18 and Blumenstück (Flower Piece) Op.19. The simplicity evinced is just disarming.

For sheer dramatics, the 1965 Carnegie Hall live performance of the Fantasy in C major (Op.17) has it all – flubbed notes, ecstatic climaxes and full-blooded pianism, all captured in the heat of his comeback recital. The Variations on a Theme by Clara Wieck from the Third Sonata Op.14 is a microcosm of his finest qualities, but reserve the last listen for Horowitz’s jaw-dropping account of the Toccata in C major Op.7. Nobody has played it faster without sacrificing musicality and the spirit of spontaneity. This disc is a “must listen” for students of Romantic piano-playing.  

CD Reviews (The Straits Times, February 2013)

SCHUMANN Piano Works

Fabula Classica 2221 / *****

It may be said that Robert Schumann (1810-1856) was the ultimate Romantic composer. A failed virtuoso pianist, he poured out his heart, inspired by the muse Clara whom he later married against all odds. After fathering 8 children and vainly fighting schizophrenia, he died painfully and alone in an insane asylum. His piano music encompasses all the passions, trials and tribulations, and ultimately undying loves. These historical recordings attest to his enduring spirit.

Despite numerous slips and inaccuracies, Alfred Cortot’s performance of the 22-movement Carnaval (1928) radiates an irrepressible warmth and unfettered ecstasy. Has there been a more plain-speaking Scenes From Childhood (1950) from that arch-virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz? His plaintive Träumerei (Dreaming) says it all. For scintillating dexterity, look no further than the ABEGG Variations from Clara Haskil (1953) or the Toccata in C major from Sviatoslav Richter (1959). There is not a note of machine-like playing here, instead undiminished poetry that distinguishes these pianists of yesteryear.

Wilhelm Backhaus contributes more lyricism in the underrated Forest Scenes (1955). The oldest recordings are also the shortest: Francis Planté in Romance in F sharp major (1928) and Liszt-student Carl Reinecke in Warum? from Fantasy Pieces Op.12 (1906). The playing and musicianship are transcendent enough to overlook the hiss, crackle and pop.  This is essential listening for serious students of musical history.

PAR.TI.TA

VADIM GLUZMAN, Violin

BIS SACD-1972 / ****1/2

Johann Sebastian Bach’s unaccompanied violin partitas are the inspiration for this recital, which develops upon the German master’s ever-creative play on counterpoint and the spirit of the dance. The start points are the multi-movement Second and Third Partitas, which Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman performs with utmost accuracy, perfect intonation and much verve. Immediately following the imposing Chaconne in D minor, Par.ti.ta (2007) by the Russian-American Lera Auerbach (born 1973) begins. It is an engaging 10-movement suite that relives the antique style and spirit of the Baroque, unremittingly tonal but spiced with occasional Schnittke-like dissonances. Its dedicatee Gluzman laps up its every nuance and phrase.

There is a thematic link between Bach’s Third Partita and Eugene Ysaye’s Second Sonata (Op.27 No.2). The latter, in four movements, opens with exactly the same bars as the Preludio of the former. A tribute to both Bach and its dedicatee Jacques Thibaud, the fearsomely virtuosic works then takes off on a tangent into the realms of the diabolical and dare-devilry. Cast in A minor, it unsurprisingly ruminates on the Dies Irae theme which reveals yet another inspiration – the seemingly impossible technical feats of Paganini. Gluzman is the modern-day Paganini and brings to these scores an unwavering sense of adventure, risk and ultimately reward.