 |
|
||
 |
|||
 |
 |
 |
   | 
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Review: New strings on old worksTwo instruments, three artists, four iconic composersBy Porter Anderson  RELATED
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(CNN) -- Sometimes listening to the old masters is what you do while waiting for the recording labels to catch up with the new work you'd rather hear -- Morton Feldman, Steve Reich, John Corigliano, the racing majesty of a Jennifer Higdon "City Scape," the nerve-wracking beauty of a Roger Reynolds "Shattered Landscape." But when it comes to that great wait for the market to move with the times, three recent releases make bygone tastes particularly satisfying. Violin: Znaider's Beethoven, MendelssohnNikolaj Znaider hits two stations of the cross this fall with masterful assurance on this RCA Red Seal CD. Just entering his 30s, this powerful young violinist may not have the marketing savvy of his Sony Classical big brother, Joshua Bell. But boy, can Znaider play. Zubin Mehta, of course, knows precisely how to wrap a soloist's skills in the most delicate orchestral tissue. He leads the Israeli Philharmonic in a stirring duck-and-weave around the dig-and-vault force with which Znaider ramps up to the end of the first movement of Mendelssohn's Concerto in E Minor. By the time soloist and orchestra are opening the third movement of the Beethoven Concerto in D, the agility with which Znaider pops his sustained highs above the horns is no surprise. He simply dances, as this Rhondo demands to be performed. He flirts with the string section, bows in deference to the work's sober woodwinds -- and then dashes off into the Fritz Kreisler credenza with a glee we can only hope he'll soon deliver to the moderns among his fans. Imagine what this guy could do with John Adams' 1993 violin concerto. And we haven't even mentioned Philip Glass ... Cello: 'Secrets of Dvorak'Dresden-based cellist Jan Vogler proves he's cleverer than most at context in Sony Classical's new release. What might have been simply a first-rate reading of this mid-1890s monument -- David Robertson conducts the New York Philharmonic -- becomes instead an affecting meditation on the very personal issues that can propel the oldest standards to new moment. Dvorak (1841-1904) married Anna Cermak but his first love was her sister, Josefina. Not long after Josefina's death and four years after the premiere of Dvorak's "New World" symphony, the cello concerto was given a debut in London with clear references to the Dvorak song Josefina had loved most, the hauntingly regal Lasst mich allein, or "Leave Me Alone (to My Dreams)." Supporting notes and a double interview from New York University's Michael Beckerman are coupled here with the absolute gift of Austrian mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager's singing of Lasst mich allein -- and Stephen Foster's "Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair" and "Wilt Thou Be Gone, Love?" -- to the sensitive accompaniment of pianist HI'melmut Deutsche. Vogler then goes on to join Kirchschlager and Deutsche in a jewel-like salon performance of Dvorak's Zigeunerlieder, or "Gypsy Songs." You'll recognize the fourth instantly as one of the loveliest boulevard treasures of the entire repertoire. Violin: Mozart's 1781 sonatas Nobody so handsomely serves table wine as Harmonia Mundi. The label, once again, has come forward with a charmingly packaged, elegantly explained and thoroughly engaging release -- not of world-changing masterpieces but of the kind of daily-wear, life-enriching music other labels may shy from. Mozart, in Vienna after leaving the service of Colloredo in Salzburg, played out his dogged poverty with typical good humor in a series of sonatas. Here, violinist Andrew Manze and pianist Richard Egarr scurry through K. 376, 377 and 380 with what sound like truly light hearts, barely able to suppress their energy long enough for the Andante movement of the 376th. The Allegro of 377 does step right out, as Manze and Egarr have it here, as any of us might on the first day of summer vacation. This is a composer liberated in bounding fortepiano figures and bee-buzz violin flights. And by the Menuetto movement a fond, stately contentment is settling in. And there's a bonus -- one of the unfinished sonatas, a "fragment," K. 403, worked through to a very adroit conclusion by the Abbe Maximillian Stadler. Somehow the fact of Stadler's skillful, respectful work with Mozart's manuscripts after the maestro's death is again, a reminder of what workaday pleasures these pieces are. Manze has just been announced the new principal conductor of Sweden's Helsingborg Symphony. Lucky Helsingborg. Manze is an artist who lands so surely on his feet in the great landmarks of the canon that he's nimbly fluent in the art of "daily" music, the conversational aesthetics -- good table wine. Cheers. 
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| © 2007 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Site Map. |
|
Pay service with live and archived video. 
