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CD Review, Contemporary Classical, Electro-Acoustic, File Under?

Chamber Music from Hell – Chris Opperman (CD Review)

Chamber Music from Hell

Chris Opperman

 

Chris Opperman, Synclavier, piano 

Kurt Morgan, programming, electric bass 

Mike Keneally, electric guitar 

Ryan Brown, drum set 

Jason Camelio, trombone 

Brianna Tagliaferro, cello 

Marco Minnemann, drum set 

The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble (Peter Jarvis, Payton MacDonald, Mike Aberback, Paul Carroll) 

Ursula Joy Opperman, Synclavier 

 

Purple Cow Records

 

When you have two Synclavier players on a recording that begins with a comic spoken introduction (“Where is Everybody?” – these reappear periodically in a robotic voice), it is tempting to suggest that the composer, Chris Opperman, must be writing a post-Zappa homage. Without a doubt, Zappa, Mike Keneally, Adrian Belew, and other artists in the art rock vein are sources of inspiration for Opperman; Keneally even makes a cameo guitar solo, tearing it up  on “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?” 

 

These inspirations are only part of the mix, alongside Opperman’s own distinctive post-tonal concert music. He creates vivacious, complex, and tautly compact pieces on Chamber Music From Hell. A series of number compositions, each around a minute, are cases in point. They combine an acerbic pitch language with pith and wit. “Shades of Beige” is densely scored, and “Longest, Blackest Scarf” is a windswept piece with the rhythmic challenges that Babbitt posed for the RCA synthesizer: here the music is half live/half Synclavier. “Spider Yo-yo” is a grooving canon,  “Dancing Mimic” an ebullient piece for flute and cello, and “Hooded Stick Thinker” adds synth to this complement, with speedy lines in octaves concluding the set. 

 

New Jersey Percussion Ensemble performs “Owl Flight,” with scratches, timpani thrums, and a slowly stroked cymbal introducing the nocturnal sojourns of this most mysterious bird. This is followed by a mid-tempo rhythm with a florid tabla solo played atop it. A full-throated blast from the whole group ends the piece; perhaps the owl has found its prey. “Waking Up” begins sotto voce, a s synth pad providing a modal ostinato over which soaring string melodies are layered. “The Black Ball” is a polymetric prog rock song with more than a hint of “Supper’s Ready” by early Genesis; Ryan Brown plays a rousing drum solo, then joined by bassist Kurt Morgan, and then a full onslaught of keyboards. 

 

Chamber Music from Hell concludes with another suite, the Cribbage Variations. The first few are examples of Klangfarbenmelodie, with angular melodies corruscating throughout. “Mid-December” includes a puckish flute solo played in canon with synth. “Babbitt Time” also finds the muse of the RCA Synthesizer irresistible; Opperman crafts a compelling rendition of Milton Babbitt’s pitch language too. “At the Grave of Anton Webern” adopts the pointillism of the Second Viennese composer and is, of course, short in duration. 

 

Opperman’s piano takes center stage on “The Play,” while “Level Pegging” is a series of synth fanfares. “Muggins” features fast flute flourishes and synth brass interjections. “The 144,000” is a piano solo which begins with mid-register ostinato, followed by thunderous octaves, and then a reprise of the gentle repetitions. “Knock knock Bach” is a fugue for synthesizer and trombone, a demented recasting of the second Well-tempered Clavier fugue. Cribbage Variations’ finale, “The Show,” features dissonant arpeggiations, at first in the soprano register, then in bass octaves. These two registers overlap, and a huge crescendo moves the piece into major with the entire ensemble playing a syncopated groove. The chords are spiced up with extended tones and a gradual diminuendo brings the piece, and album, to a close.

 

Opperman is an imaginative arranger of the heterodox forces at his command. His music is varied and always distinctive. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Electro-Acoustic, Experimental Music, File Under?, Pop

Radical Romantics – Fever Ray Returns (CD Review)

Radical Romantics

Fever Ray

Mute

 

It has been nearly six years since Plunge, Karin Dreijer’s last album under the moniker Fever Ray. Equally well known for their band The Knife, on which they collaborate with their brother Olof Dreijer, Karin has made distinctive electronic music for over twenty years. Their latest, Radical Romantics, is a welcome return. In gestation since 2019, it is some of the finest work released by the Fever Ray project.

 

Another welcome return is one of collaboration. Olof helped to produce some of the recording and co-wrote four of the songs, the first collaboration between the siblings in eight years. Other co-producers and performers include Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (Nine Inch Nails), experimental artist and producer Vessel, Portuguese DJ and producer Nídia, Johannes Berglund, Peder Mannerfelt, and Pär Grindvik’s technicolor dance project Aasthma. Long-time collaborator, Martin Falck, joined Dreijer in creating an impressive visual corollary to the recording. Indeed, Radical Romantics is a project in which videos and artwork are a strong component, not the promotional devices that they so often are for other releases. 

 

The first four songs are a set written by Karin and Olof. “What They Call Us” started life some time ago as material for two unrealized movie soundtracks. Thrumming live drums alongside drum machine, an insistent synth riff, and electronic interjections demonstrate the number of iterations of the genesis of “What They Call Us.” However, this working approach is not uncommon on Radical Romantics. The end result, like much of the rest of the album, is music chock full of multifaceted layers, as well as far flung allusions in its lyrics. Another tune the siblings co-wrote, being supported by a video, is “Kandy.” It has an irrepressible “Whoo” vocal ostinato, an alto register lead vocal, and squirms with synth melodies. Tabla on “Shiver” and hand claps and a bass drum on “New Utensils” provide fulsome grooves. Both also feature modular synths that create a swarm of glissandos. Karin’s vocals encompass a variety of colors and superlative control. Gone is the stridency that typified some of their work in the Knife, replaced with a supple upper range and honeyed lower register. When they want to, as on “Even it Out,’ a steely edge appears.

 

The hit single, thus far, is “Carbon Dioxide,” on which Vessel helps to craft a club track with a soaring vocal by Karin and strings by Sakhi Singh and Seb Gainsborough. “Carbon Dioxide” includes an unusual tune, the Baby Elephant melody. Like many of Radical Romantic’s songs, the backstory recalls a diverse selection of inspirations and influences. Fever Ray has said they wanted the music to,  “Have the feeling of when you first fall in love …to be nice, happy, full of everything, extra everything. The Baby Elephant melody is the happiest melody of all time. The track contains wording from 1 Corinthians 13:1 because those words made a great impact when hearing them in Kieślowski’s Blue film. And a line from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s, Gift from the Sea.” 

 

Another standout is “Even it Out,” on which Karin collaborates with Nine Inch Nails. Reverberant vocals create a texture over which a second line, a rousing chant, is placed. NiN supply a terse electric guitar, bending notes, and an alt-rock drum pattern. The song imagines settling scores with your child’s bully, a feeling many parents have likely had (hopefully, as here, it remains a fantasy). Reznor and Ross also assist on “North,” which Karin describes as “stillness after collapse.” As its title suggests, there is a chilly atmosphere, with whispered vocals, a syncopated rhythmic loop, and an architecture of overlaid synths. Mining their father’s record collection, Karin got to know Bob Marley’s music. On “Looking for a Ghost,” a line from Marley’s “Satisfy My Soul” appears alongside an unlikely compatriot – a Porno for Pyros snippet – as well as words by the eminent Swedish author Barbo Lindgren.

 

“Tapping Fingers” is a sad song, one that Karin suggests is the saddest song they have written, about trying to communicate with your partner, listening for a morse code message in their tapping fingers, repeated over and over again as they fall asleep. Vocals in octaves, a descending chord progression with fat bass underneath, and regular synth punctuations adorn the song. The final track is seven minutes long, but makes much with a small amount of material. “Bottom of the Ocean” consists of Karin performing repeating vowels that echo with long repeated bass tones underneath. It is a suitable denouement to cool down from an album of imaginative instrumentation and excellent songwriting. Recommended. 

 

  • Christian Carey
by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Guitar

Voyageur – Ali Farka Touré (CD Review)

Voyageur

Ali Farka Touré

Work Circuit Records

 

The late Ali Farka Touré (1939-2006) was one of the most venerated of West African guitarists. His work combined the musical culture of his home country Mali with that of other African styles, including frequent collaborations that extended his work’s reach. Touré had a belated introduction to First World listeners, via a solo record that came out in the 1980s, when he was in his fifties. By 1994, Taking Timbuktu had won him a Grammy, with more awards to follow, including a Grammy for the posthumous release Ali & Toumani.

 

When material is released posthumously, it is fair to question the wishes of an artist, who is not there to weigh in on edits, production choices, or song selections. World Circuit Record’s Nick Gold has tried to ameliorate this by producing the record with Ali’s son Vieux Farka Touré. In addition, a longtime collaborator, vocalist Oumou Sangaré, is included on selected songs.

 

Voyageur’s recordings span fifteen years, and were made in a variety of locations:  Timbuktu, West Hollywood, California, concert halls in London and Tokyo, and tiny villages strung out on the Malian riverside. Sangaré’s contributions, notably the single “Cherie,” in which the vocalist and Touré perform a rousing duet, and the quick-syllable riffs of “Sadjona,” are standouts. On the former, singing in octaves with Touré, who also creates a loping polyrhythmic groove and fluent guitar solo, the vocalist provides various inflections distinctive to West African vocal styles. The latter is a showcase of vocalism at its most virtuosic.  “Safari” is equally diverting, Touré’s guitar-playing placed front and center, the artist riffing with abandon over background musicians, percussionists prominent among them. 

The diversity of recording locations provides a panoply of contexts in which to experience Touré’s music, and he adapts himself to each situation seemingly effortlessly. An excellent place to start, with a catalog of releases to further explore. Recommended.

 

  • Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, jazz

Marc Ducret Plays Time Berne (CD Review)

Palm Sweat: Marc Ducret Plays the Music of Tim Berne
Marc Ducret, guitar/arranger
Out of Your Head CD/DL

This is no ordinary jazz guitar album. Saxophonist/composer Tim Berne and guitarist Marc Ducret are longtime collaborators. After receiving a stack of compositions from Berne, Ducret set out to arrange them for overdubbed guitars, brass choir, voices, percussion, and cello (played by his son). Ducret knows Berne’s own style well, and while celebratingnd 2 it places his own stamp on this collection of work.

“Curls/Palm Sweat/Mirth of the Cool” begins the recording. An eleven-minute long suite, in it Ducret comes on heavy, with overdubbed, distorted guitars, panning between speakers. I didn’t previously associate Berne’s music with power chords, but Ducret rocking out is in some ways analogous to Berne’s Snake Oil band at full fury. “Stutter Step” begins with a long drone, over which an extended solo of angular lines, complete with whammy bar vibrato, create a fractious demeanor. There are then a series of harmonic arpeggiations alongside brass choir. The layering of instruments is adroit and the result, once again, faithful to Berne’s musical language. “Shiteless 1 and 2” are a study in contrasts, the first exploring noise and then adding horns to the mix, and the second overlapping harp-like arpeggios and a clean guitar sound.

Not all the compositions feature amplification. “Rolled Oats 1” and “Rolled Oats 2” feature a more traditional jazz sound, without effects or extreme amplitude. They are lithe standouts among the recording’s walls of sound, and a welcome respite that features Ducret’s playing in a gentler vein.

Palm Sweat is a fascinating translation by Ducret of Berne’s works. Recommended.

-Christian Carey

by Christian Carey
CD Review, File Under?, Twentieth Century Composer

Bernd Alois Zimmermann – Recomposed (CD Review)

Recomposed, Volumes 1-3

Bernd Alois Zimmermann

WDR Sinfonieorchester, Heinz Holliger: conductor

Sarah Wegener: soprano; Marcus Weiss: saxophone;  Ueli Wiget: piano

Wergo 3xCD boxed set

 

Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970) lived in Cologne and was an important member of the postwar avant-garde. However, he retained an independent voice, and did not operate in the circles of the Cologne School. His 1960 opera Soldaten, an ambitious work in terms of theatrical devices, vocal requirements, and musical demands, is both a zenith in terms of post-tonal writing and, with its use of collage, a precursor to postmodernism. 

 

Everyone needs to make a living. Zimmermann did so by crafting arrangements of preexisting pieces. His orchestrations did not strictly hew to the styles of the originals, instead creating vibrant translations that not only reconsidered them but proved influential on his own compositions. Many of the arrangements were composed for radio, a medium with which Zimmermann would retain a lifelong connection. He wrote about a hundred arrangements for radio and an additional hundred scores for radio plays. Heinz Holliger leads the WDR Sinfonieorchester in performances that emphasize Zimmermann’s penchant for rapid shifts of texture and dynamics – the aforementioned collage technique is built up in several of the pieces. The recording also features original compositions, some previously unrecorded.

 

Soprano Sarah Wegener admirably negotiates arrangements with their Zimmermann spin. Her performance of Franz Liszt’s “Oh! Quand je dors” is particularly lovely, the soprano spinning long lyrical lines and declaiming the text with detail and vivid dynamics. The orchestration is Mahlerian in cast, an interesting take on a Liszt lieder. The composer’s “Die Drei Zigeuner ” features nimble Magyar violin solos, with Wegerner’s voice blooming in arioso passages. Saxophonist Marcus Weiss provides a dynamic rendition of Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Romanze,” originally composed for solo piano. The orchestral interludes are thunderous, alternating with Weiss’s ardent phrasing. Uli Wiget is the nimble soloist in the aphoristic, blazing Concertino for Piano and Orchestra. 

 

Zimmermann was interested in Brazilian music, and the first volume of Recomposed includes several compositions and arrangements with South American influences. His own “Algoana. Caprichos Brasilieros” combines folk dances with stentorian percussion and, in places, more than a hint of Rite of Spring. ”A Lenda do Caboclo,” a piano piece by Villa-Lobos, is given a soaring rendition, with ebullient string passages and timpani supporting the clave rhythm. Darius Milhaud and Zimmermann were on amicable terms. Two arrangements  of movements from Milhaud’s “Saudades do Brasil. Suite de Danses” are included here, “Leme “ and”Sorocaba,” the former combining Ravelian impressionism and neo-classicism a lá middle period Stravinsky. “Sorocaba” has a lilting rhythm and overlapping winds. Equally fetching are two arrangements from Alfredo Casella’s “Undici pezzi infantili.”

 

Vernacular music comes from other sources as well, and Zimmermann demonstrates a keen ear for various styles. A polka by Bedrich Smetana is given a wry scoring. Antonin Dvořák’s “Causerie,” originally for solo piano, sounds as if the composer himself could have orchestrated it. A septet provides Cyril Scott’s “Lotus Land” with an exotic flavor. There’s even a “Blues,” composed by Edmund Nick. Zimmermann creates a rendition more akin to Hollywood than St. Louis, but it is attractive nevertheless.

 

A standout among the original pieces is Kontraste, a six-movement suite for “an imaginary ballet.” Composed in 1953, its waltzes and march must have thoroughly perplexed the composers at Darmstadt. Although the dance rhythms are faithful, much of the scoring is actually reminiscent of early Schoenberg. Also from 1953, “Symphonie in einem Satz” is at the other end of the  spectrum of Zimmermann’s work, a fiery serial piece that is most compelling. A valuable addition to the programmed works is “Konzert für Orchester,” a piece from 1949 set in a Bergian idiom.

 

WERGO Records knows how to do it right. The three-CD boxed set is accompanied by a 92-page booklet. Original compositions by Zimmermann are set alongside his orchestrations, providing interesting comparisons and contrasts. Holliger engages in a conversation with Michael Kunkel about the arrangements and original works. 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Cello, File Under?, jazz

Laufey – A Night at the Symphony (CD Review)

Laufey

A Night at the Symphony

Laufey, vocals; Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hugh Brunt

AWAL

 

A Night at the Symphony sees release this week. Jazz artist Laufey performs a varied program in a concert performance with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Hugh Brunt. It consists of previously released songs off her debut album Everything I Know About Love and 2021 EP Typical of Me, standards, and Icelandic jazz artist Elly Vilhjálms’ “Ég Veit Þú Kemur. Hearing a jazz ballad sung in Icelandic is a new experience for me. Vilhjálms’ style and the arrangement are indebted to Kurt Weill.

The hit tune, “Valentine,” displays the characteristics of Laufey’s voice, with suave phrasing and a warm tone. Laufey accompanies herself on the cello on “I Wish You Love,” using pizzicatos to create a bluesy progression. Her rendition of “The Nearness of You” demonstrates an awareness of swing that often places the vocal ahead and behind of the beat in a fluid rendition. “Every Time We Say Goodbye” is a valedictory staple. Here Laufey displays her awareness of expert predecessors who sang the American Songbook, Ella Fitgerald notable among them. A Night at the Symphony, a retro revival of swing and standards, is an excellent introduction to an artist coming into her own.

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?, Percussion

Tony Oliver plays James Romig’s Spaces (CD Review)

Spaces

James Romig

Tony Oliver, vibraphone

Sawyer Editions

 

James Romig’s music has become more expansive. Spaces (2021) is his third recent piece to run over an hour in duration. Still (2016), a piece for pianist Ashlee Mack, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Last year brought The Complexity of Distance, a piece for metal guitarist Mike Scheidt that was both rigorously constructed and ripped uproariously. 

 

Like all of Romig’s music, Spaces has a highly detailed plan. Each of the four sections of the piece has an “a” and a “b” subgroup. They begin with a collection of three pitch classes that works its way up to six by the end of “a,” while “b” unspools this in reverse, ending with only three pitches. Three strands are put in a structural polyrhythm of 9:10:11, providing the work with an asymmetrical rhythmic scheme.

Vibraphonist Tony Oliver has worked with Romig for over thirty years, and Spaces was composed to celebrate that collaboration. One can readily hear why the two have enjoyed this association. Oliver performs every nuance of the score, embodying Romig’s music like few others do. Romig is a percussionist himself, and knows the in and outs of the vibraphone, the resonance of each key and the best way to balance a passage. This affords the music, despite its limited palette, to retain interest throughout.

James Romig

One continues to be fascinated by the surface of Romig’s music. After all the preplanning, the result sounds intuitive. Romig studied with the most prominent of American serial composers, Charles Wuorinen and Milton Babbitt, and yet there is a palpable influence of the music of Morton Feldman on these recent extended pieces. And like Feldman’s own long works, Spaces has a meditative quality that draws one in and makes them forget the time that’s passing. As Feldman said about one of his pieces at its premiere, “It’s a short eighty minutes.” 

 

-Christian Carey



by Christian Carey
CD Review, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Anthony Cheung on Kairos (CD Review)

Anthony Cheung

Music for Film, Sculpture, and Captions

Ueli Wiget, piano, Ensemble Modern, Franck Ollu, conductor;

Ensemble dal Niente, Michael Lewanski, conductor;

Ensemble Musikfabrik, Elena Schwarz, conductor

Kairos Music

 

Anthony Cheung is a prolific composer whose music is situated astride spectralism and second modernity. This is his fifth portrait CD, his first for Kairos, and first of music that accompanies extra musical media. While these sources of inspiration are pivotal components for the music’s genesis, it stands on its own as an audio recording. The works are performed by three top flight groups, Ensemble Modern, conducted by Franck Ollu with piano soloist Ueli Wiget, Ensemble dal Niente, conducted by Michael Lewanski, and Ensemble Musikfabrik, conducted by Elena Schwarz. 

 

Visual artist Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) made sculptures out of wire mesh. A line can go anywhere (2019) is a three-movement piano concerto inspired by Asawa’s work. The first movement’s title, “Wound Wire,” points out the connection between piano strings and Asaway’s wires. Harp-like piano arpeggiations and descending color chords are met by tumult, often riding just below the surface, that periodically erupts into repeated brass verticals. The piano enters a swirl of percussion and brass glissandos and shakes. Wind solos imitate the piano’s gestures with a dovetailing effect, and the movement ends with softer, angular attacks from soloist and ensemble. Wiget does a stalwart job matching the dynamic of the ensemble without ever overplaying. His imitation of the attacks of other instruments is noteworthy. 

 

The second movement, “Weightless/Sustained,” begins with the soft dynamic that ended the first movement. A second keyboard, tuned down a quarter tone, as well as microtones from the ensemble, serve to blur the piano’s music, creating a haze of overtones. Not to be outdone, the piano thrums low bass notes followed by birdsong-like flurries. Gongs and chimes further complicate the atmosphere, and descending wind lines are juxtaposed with the piano’s now ubiquitous birdsong and taut, quickly, repeated verticals. Once again, a denouement closes the movement.

 

The piece’s finale, “Woven Wire – Homage to Ruth Asawa” is a clever rendering in sound of the sculptor’s working method. The piano contorts a single line solo, let’s call it wiry, while metallophones also provide a taste of Asawa’s metallic medium. A plethora of glissandos in the various sections of the ensemble, as well as periodic stabs from winds, enhance this impression. A final section finds the piano playing repeated notes while boisterous brass and punctilious percussion attacks create a vibrant accompaniment. The piece closes with string glissandos surrounding final punctuations from, successively, piano and percussion. 

 

The Natural Word (2019) is based on the work of author Sean Zdenek, who has researched the use of closed captions in television and film. Zdemek observes that sound captions are selective. Since not every sound can be included, the editor must decide what to foreground and what background noises to select. The Natural Word doesn’t include captions spoken aloud, but rather uses a collection of them, taken from Zdenek and expanded by Cheung. The composer then found analogous film clips to score. The result is a series of short contrasting sections, many of which use coloristic orchestration: seagulls are depicted via altissimo glissandos, pattering rain by percussion, upper register plucked piano, and harp, and so on. Cheung does not just seek to imitate sounds, but in juxtaposing them, mine their cultural reference points. Thus, he shuttles between disparate scorings like jump cuts, but the piece is a cohesive whole.

 

Null and void (2021) was composed for the soundtrack of a short silent film Stump the Guesser, created by the Canadian filmmakers Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, and Galin Johnson. In his liner notes, Tim Rutherford-Johnson describes the film as having a “surrealistic, absurdist tone,” and being inspired by the Russian poet and dramatist Daniil Karms (1905-1942). Cheung responds to the material, and to Karms’ aesthetic, with nearly everything but the kitchen sink: Harry Partch’s instruments, thunderous, motoric percussion that references Russian futurism, swing-era jazz brass, with wah-wah mutes, glissandos, and altissimo stabs, and a pistol firing (there is a game of Russian roulette on screen). I would greatly like to see how it syncs up with the film, but null and void as an aural document has a beguiling sound world. 

 

Cheung’s partnership with Kairos continues to expand, encompassing a variety of techniques and inspirational material. Accompanying videos of these pieces would be welcome – dare we hope for a DVD release?

 

-Christian Carey

 

 

 

by Christian Carey
CD Review, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, File Under?

Renaud Capuçon and Martha Argerich on DG (CD Review)

Beethoven, Schumann, Franck

Renaud Capuçon, violin; Martha Argerich, piano

Deutsche Grammophon

 

Three violin sonatas by great nineteenth century composers, all in A, grace this recording by violinist Renaud Capuçon and pianist Martha Argerich. Longtime collaborators, the duo sound seamless in these performances. They create detailed renditions, faithful to the scores but keen to put their own stamp on the pieces.

 

The first movement of the Schumann exemplifies this approach, with the performers digging into the main theme and unspinning  legato lines in its development, the tempo treated flexibly. In the second movement, an Allegretto of considerable delicacy, Capuçon and Argerich provide shading between its major and minor sections that create a chiaroscuro effect. The final movement is dazzling, with Argerich’s right hand and the violin doubling in a fleet duet. Emphatic chords and sforzandos punctuate the music, which culminates with a heroic cadence.

 

Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata is one of the most prized in the violin-piano literature, and Capuçon and Argerich play it with powerfully delineated dynamic contrasts, exquisite attention to phrasing and articulations, and a sense of familiarity by dint of long association with the piece. Every time one or the other player stretches out, they know that the other will be there to support them, even catch them. The breaths provided by subtle ritardandos and slightly extended rests are part of what gives the performance a special character. Beethoven’s music isn’t meant to be motoric, but more timid performers sometimes play it that way. The second movement, an extended set of variations. The F major theme, as so often for this key in Beethoven, has a simple, limpid quality. Despite its length – over sixteen minutes – the music is shaped with a keen awareness of its overarching form. After the piano leads off, the violin takes a turn in the foreground with ornate soprano register embellishments. A minor section mid-movement lends the music a melancholic flavor, with keening accentuations doubled by violin and piano. A return to the major key references the beginning, with florid ornaments even more present. The major key persists in the last variation, the longest in the movement. It is slow and grandiose, with a cadenza-like piano introduction. The violin enters with trills and the two render the tune in a call and response duet that brings the movement to a warm conclusion. It is followed by a presto sendoff, a sonata rondo. Once again the length of the movement is significant and the jaunty theme is subjected to many different permutations and harmonic underpinnings. The playing is virtuosic, displaying Capuçon and Argerich at their fleet-fingered best. 

 

César Franck’s Violin Sonata, composed in 1886 when the composer was sixty-three, is an example of  late Romantic treatment of chamber music. Sinuous melodies, denied resolution again and again, suggesting the influence of Wagner’s operas. There is a winsome character to the first movement’s tune that is affecting. With the change in style, one is afforded a different sense of the musicians’ playing. Argerich displays a sonorous, muscular tone and Capuçon complements this with a steely sound of his own. The second movement, an Allegro, is where the dramatic conflict of the sonata occurs. It is followed by a recitative and fantasy, which stretch phrases nearly to their breaking point in mournful melodies. The ambiguity of harmony and interwoven rhythms move the piece to the other side of the romantic divide, reminiscent of Johannes Brahms. The sonata comes full circle, returning to an allegretto tempo for the final movement. The beginning’s descending thirds are offset later by shimmering altissimo duets. Juxtaposed are A minor, in boisterous passages, and the more lyrical exploration of A major. Cascades of piano arpeggios,  scales and supple variations of the tune by the violin build the piece to a rousing finish. 

 

There are many recordings of these pieces. Few display the lived-in quality and consummate sensitivity of Capuçon and Argerich. Recommended.

 

-Christian Carey

 

by Christian Carey