Yesterday marked 200 years since the death of the influential composer and teacher, Antonio Salieri, at the age of 74.
Salieri gets a very one-dimensional press these days, known primarily for his rivalry with Mozart, but as with so many of these things there is a whole lot more to the story as far as we can tell it.
As a teacher, Salieri was responsible for helping shape the careers of Beethoven, Schubert and Liszt, along with Hummel and Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus’s son. His keen dramatic instincts were honed by his own teacher Gluck, who became a good friend and was a clear influence on an operatic career whose gems are only just being revealed.
Of course the rivalry with Mozart makes very good press – but without the full knowledge, I’m going to sidestep that and simply present a short playlist of Salieri’s own, highly accomplished music – some from the concert hall and some from the stage:
Complementing the playlist is a new recording of the 1788 opera Cublai, gran kan de’ Tartari, conducted by Christoph Rousset – his fourth venture into the stage works of Salieri for the Aparté label.
Sarah Leonard (soprano), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins (Lila) Xue Wei (violin), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins (Violin Concerto)
Heritage HTGCD133 78’40” Remastering Paul Arden-Taylor
Live performances at BBC Broadcasting House, Glasgow on 24th October 1992 (Violin Concerto); Royal Festival Hall, London on 13th October 1996 (Lila)
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Heritage follows up its earlier release of Naresh Sohal with this coupling of major orchestral works, both of them heard in their premiere performances.
What’s the music like?
By the 1990s, Sohal was a well-respected if not regularly played figure. Both these works demonstrate his compositional versatility while being wholly characteristic of his maturity. They were also written before and after his move from Edinburgh to London; having spent more than a decade in the Scottish capital, during which period he embarked on numerous multi-media pieces, he subsequently found himself drawn anew to the Punjabi and Bengali writers whose work frequently informed his compositions over the ensuing quarter-century.
Written a decade apart, these works could hardly be more different in their nominal concerns. At just under half an hour, the Violin Concerto may appear to be firmly within the lineage of such pieces from the Classical and early Romantic eras yet its three movements are hardly, if at all, beholden to precedent. That each is faster as to its underlying pulse than the one before, what one might loosely call an ‘Andante-Allegretto-Allegro’ progression, is less notable than the transformation of ideas and texture from one to the other; resulting in an overall sequence as convinces in its formal discipline and beguiles in its expressive immediacy. Its inhabiting a neo-Romantic world (with significant precursors by David Blake and H. K. Gruber) does not detract from the individuality and sheer attractiveness of Sohal’s contribution to this medium.
By contrast Lila, it title a Sanskrit term for the play of Nature, is the representation in music of the seven stages of development, in yogic philosophy, from the earthbound to the cosmic. That each of these can be linked to a specific colour, sound and elemental force might imply a multi-media presentation, and one as integrated music with dance and lighting was initially planned, but the work succeeds admirably on its own terms as it traverses seven continuous while increasingly shorter sections with its transformation of salient motifs never less than audible. There is no ultimate climax, yet the passing from ‘Consciousness’ to ‘Yoga’ could be heard as a culmination; after which – this final section is graced with a soaring vocalise, here the late Sarah Leonard in what was a no doubt unintentional but appropriate memorial.
Does it all work?
Yes, once one has grasped the basis of Sohal’s compositional thinking via the essence of what he was seeking to convey. It helps that both these performances are fully attuned to his idiom – Xue Wei evincing no indecision or uncertainty in the Violin Concerto, and Martyn Brabbins (who replaced an indisposed Andrew Davis for the first rendition of Lila) securing committed playing from the BBC Symphony and the BBC Scottish Symphony orchestras. Any future performances could hardly hope for more persuasive guides when approaching these pieces.
Is it recommended?
Very much so. Paul Arden-Taylor has once again done a fine job in remastering the original broadcasts while Suddhaseel Sen’s annotations, with a biographical note by Janet Swinney, provide all the relevant background. Further releases from this source will hopefully follow.
Thomas Adès Shanty (2020); Dawn (2020); Tower (2021); Aquifer (2024) Oliver Leith Cartoon Sun (2024) William Marsey Man with Limp Wrist (2023)
Hallé / Thomas Adès
Hallé CDHLL7567 68’20” Producer Jeremy Hayes Engineers Steve Portnoi, Niall Gault, Edward Cittanova
Live performances at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 21-24 November 2024
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
This latest release on the Hallé’s label focusses on music by or conducted by Thomas Adès during his 2023-25 residency with this orchestra, with works by two younger composers he has championed heard alongside several of his own pieces – including a major UK premiere.
What’s the music like?
Of the three shorter pieces by Adès, Shanty – Over the Sea unfolds as cumulative variants on an archetypal-sounding sea-shanty, with all this may imply in terms of transcending captivity and longing for freedom. Subtitled ‘Chacony for Orchestra at Any Distance’, Dawn conveys in spatial terms a concentric evolution toward a likely epiphany that yet remains out of reach. By contrast, Tower – For Frank Geary envisages a building near Arles by the Canadian-born American architect in terms of a bracing and increasingly effervescent fanfare for 14 trumpets.
Of those works by younger composers, Man with Limp Wrist finds William Marsey drawing on paintings by Salman Toor for a sequence of eight ‘scenes’; the first seven of which are as succinctly descriptive as the titles that inspired them. The eighth piece, which takes its name from the titular canvas, brings culmination of sorts through its collision of old tunes (mainly hymns) in music as feels arresting if curiously uninvolving. Much the same could be said of Cartoon Sun by Oliver Leith, a detailed evocation of which is provided by the composer and whose premise that ‘‘Everything looks different under the sun’’ is related over three sections – the first two relatively brief and primarily gestural, the lengthier third building cumulative intensity which dissipates towards the end as if to confirm that nothing is ever what it seems.
Premiered in Munich by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Aquifer is Simon Rattle’s third major commission from Adès (after Asyla for the City of Birmingham Symphony then Tevot for the Berlin Philharmonic). Its title referring to ‘‘a geological structure which can transmit water’’, the piece unfolds across seven continuous sections, though the outline of a sonata design can be sensed not as the dynamic means of change but rather (and more appropriately) as a fluid construct from which ideas emerge and mutate – as might water as it passes between different vessels. In terms of content, it ranges widely over styles and allusions before culminating in a vivid while hardly epiphanic coda, yet its overall cohesion along with its assured handling of sizable orchestral forces ensures an impact which audibly commended it to all those present.
Does it all work?
Whether or not it does so is much of the fascination. The works by Marsey and Leith offer no mean indication in terms of where these composers (in their mid-30s) are headed, while those by Adès afford intrigues aplenty. Neither is there any doubt as to the commitment of the Hallé in presenting these pieces to best advantage, nor of Adès’s ability to get the most out of these players. If a sense persists of his music having an essence that beguiles more than it conceals in intrinsic substance, no living composer has reinvented the wheel quite so skilfully as Adès.
Is it recommended?
Yes, not least as the programme makes for a cohesive and engaging listen throughout. Sound makes the most of Bridgewater Hall’s evident clarity and spaciousness, with annotations as informative as usual from this source. Adès is undeniably a defining presence in new music.
by Ben Hogwood Photo by By Carl Van Vechten – Library of Congress
On this day in 1932, the first performance of Gershwin’s Cuban Overture took place in New York’s Lewisohn Stadium. Originally titled Rumba, its premiere with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Albert Coates was a success – and the work was renamed soon after. You can hear it below in a performance from the Orchestre national de France, conducted by Dalia Stasevska:
Havergal Brian Symphony no.29 in E flat major (1967) Symphony no.30 in B flat minor (1967) Symphony no.31 (1968) Symphony no.32 in A flat major (1968)
Philharmonia Orchestra / Myer Fredman (nos.29 & 32), Sir Charles Mackerras (no.31), BBC Symphony Orchestra / Lionel Friend (no.30)
Heritage HTGCD130 73’20” Recorded 12 March 1979 (nos.29 & 32) and 16 March 1989 at Maida Vale Studio One, London (no.30), 9 January 1979 at Henry Wood Hall, London (no.31)
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
The enterprising Heritage label continues its coverage of Havergal Brian with this volume featuring the last four of his 32 symphonies, three of them in pioneering studio broadcasts that were organized by Robert Simpson during his last years as music producer at the BBC.
What’s the music like?
The 29th Symphony is the culmination of a classicizing tendency Brian pursued throughout the 1960s, falling into four continuous if clearly demarcated sections whose formal poise is matched by their lucidity of expression. Thus, a ruminative Lento then genial Allegretto are balanced by the rumbustious though not unduly truculent Allegros either side but it is those framing Adagio sections, launching the piece before bringing it full circle in a mood of rapt contemplation, which leave the deepest impression and so set the seal on an eloquent work.
Barely four months later, the 30th Symphony inhabits a wholly different and fractious world. Likely drawing on material for an abandoned opera on Sophocles’ Oedipus Coloneus, its two continuous parts unfold from a restive, increasingly ominous Lento into the most disjunctive of Brian’s numerous Passacaglia movements; its inherent logic countered at every stage with a visceral and even assaultive impetus prior to the suitably implacable apotheosis. Definitely a work for all times, and among a select handful of orchestral masterpieces from this period.
Five months later and the 31st Symphony emerges as among its composer’s most enigmatic statements, abetted by its single movement being the most seamless of Brian’s symphonies and the one whose key-centre is most difficult to discern. Evolving almost intuitively from casual gestures, it builds with unsparing focus towards a climax whose dynamism is thrown into relief by the inevitability of those final bars. Easy to underestimate in context, it might be considered a rule-book for Brian’s late maturity did it not break those rules at every turn.
Completed six months later, the 32nd Symphony is the longest work here – pursuing a sustained evolution across its four movements divided into two parts. Its thoughtful while not untroubled Allegretto is followed by an Adagio of keen inner strength, its seriousness of purpose subtly offset by a leisurely, often capricious scherzo then finale whose contrapuntal ingenuity underpins the determined onward course to a coda defiant in its resignation. Brian was to finish no further works, so leaving this symphony to stand as an inimitable testament.
Does it all work?
Yes, once the essence, recalcitrant but never intractable, of Brian’s symphonism in this final creative decade is grasped. It helps when performances of the 29th and 32nd were entrusted to Myer Fredman, his appreciation of Brian’s music evident elsewhere in this Heritage series, and the 31st to Sir Charles Mackerras who made a fine studio recording eight years on. The 30th is heard in a reading by Lionel Friend far more assured than its premiere by Harry Newstone, but it was not until Martyn Brabbins’s 2010 studio account that this work came into its own.
Is it recommended?
It is. The sound of the older performances has been cleaned up and opened out, much to their advantage, and that of the 30th offsets the dryness of the Maida Vale acoustic. John Pickard’s insightful booklet notes are further incentive to acquiring this welcome and necessary release.
Arcana.fm 