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On Record – Arthur Lourié: Chamber and Instrumental Music Vol. 1 (Toccata Classics)

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Lourié
Sunrise (1957)a
Pastorale de la Volga (1916)b
Regina Coeli (1924)c
La Flute à travers le Violon (1935)d
Dithyrambes (1938)e
Deux Études sur un sonnet de Mallarmé (1945/62)f
The Mime (1956)g
The Flute of Pan (1957)h
Funeral Games in Honor of Chronos (1964)i

cCandy Grace Ho (contralto) iRaphael Leone (piccolo) adehBirgit Ramsl (flute), gPaolo Beltramini (clarinet), Egidius Streiff, bd(viola/violin) fiGottlieb Wallisch (piano)
Musicians of Arthur Lourié Festival, Basel [iLucie Brotbek Prochásková (alto flute), bcHansjürgen Wäldele (oboe), bNicolas Rihs (bassoon), cSimon Lilly (trumpet), bAgnès Mauri (viola), bMateusz Kamiński (cello), iNicolas Suter (percussion)]

Toccata Classics TOCC0652 [70’05’’]
Producer Mauro Piccinini Engineers Sergio Cossu & Riccardo Botta
Recorded 26 November 2021 (g) and 25 February 2022 (adeh) at Sacro Cuore, Bellinzona; 20/24 February 2022 (bcfi) at Studio 1, Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen, Zurich

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics adds to the growing recorded representation of Arthur Lourié (1892-1966) with this first volume devoted to chamber and instrumental music, so extending appreciation of not only a culturally significant figure but a strikingly original composer in his own right.

What’s the music like?

Earliest here is Pastorale de la Volga – its pungent scoring for woodwind and strings, with its avowedly constructivist unfolding (what might be termed ‘additive form’), maintained across two continuous movements which do not develop linearly as evolve modularly; these motifs intensifying, as it were, through association and in a manner Stravinsky or Prokofiev drew on intensively around this time. Subsequently isolated in Wiesbaden, Lourié brought modernist and traditional facets into telling accord with his setting Regina Coeli; here, oboe and trumpet play off a vocal line that continues unaware of, or is indifferent to, their contrasting presence.

In essence a sonata ‘malgré-lui’, La Flûte à travers le Violon has its composer utilizing some of the more recondite aspects of Stravinskian neo-classicism – whether in the agile rhythmic displacement of its opening Allegretto, taciturn eloquence of its central Adagio or engaging repartee of the final Presto with its appealingly populist undertones. By contrast, the trilogy for solo flute Dithyrambes offers an avowedly Nietzschean take on the choral odes found in Greek antiquity – the graceful undulations of Le Sacrifice du miel duly complemented by the unfurling lament of Plainte d’Ariane, before the tonal and rhythmic intricacies of the relatively lengthy Labyrinthe make a potent corollary to that fabled if mythical construct.

Phrases, first of two études respectively commenting on and setting a sonnet by Mallarmé, finds this composer at his most unashamedly melodic – though there is nothing reactionary about its plaintive and at times capricious interplay between flute and piano. This is no less true of Mime, a study for clarinet which is dedicated to Charles Chaplin and which it is not unreasonable to think of as a portrait of this actor in his most enduring guise as the Tramp.

The programme had opened with the alluring strains of Sunrise, its (imagined?) evocation of the ‘dawn chorus’ just one of the aspects of this first cousin to pieces by Debussy and Varèse, and to which The Flute of Pan makes for a pointed contrast with its gradually but inexorably mounting activity to a febrile ending. From here to Funeral Games in Honor of Chronos is to encounter Lourié’s penultimate work, his latter preoccupation with ritual heard in a sequence of linked episodes conceptually of the ancient past yet aesthetically of the immediate present.

Does it all work?

Yes, notwithstanding that Lourié is a composer less occupied with any expressive or technical consistency than with imparting a ‘world view’ such as veers freely between past and present. These performances, recorded under the auspices of the Arthur Lourié Festival in Basel, are always attuned to his arresting idiom and have been recorded with the requisite spaciousness.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, and good to hear a follow-up volume from this source is forthcoming. In particular, Lourié’s music for string quartet would be necessary listening for anyone who has heard his epic first such work (recorded by the Asasello Quartett on Genuin GEN22745) in this genre.

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You can listen to sample tracks and purchase on the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names for more on composer Arthur Lourié

Published post no.2,165 – Wednesday 1 May 2024

On Record – Solarek Piano Trio – Henriëtte Bosmans: Early Chamber Music (Toccata Classics)

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Solarek Piano Trio [Marina Solarek (violin), Miriam Lowbury (cello), Andrew Bottrill (piano)

Henriëtte Bosmans
Arietta (1917)
Violin Sonata (1918)
Piano Trio (1921)

Toccata Classics TOCC0654 [55’22’’]
Producer Ian Dean Engineers Bárbara Santos & Carlos Jesús
Recorded 6-7 April 2022 at Arda Studio A, Porto

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its exploration of neglected and overlooked figures with a release of early pieces for chamber forces by Henriëtte Bosmans (1895-1952), Dutch composer and pianist whose eventful life drew attention away from her substantial and distinctive output.

What’s the music like?

Although her later music has latterly enjoyed performance and recording, that from Bosman’s formative years has had little exposure, making the pieces recorded here the more welcome – not least for underlining that her journey toward compositional maturity was a successful one.

The Violin Sonata is certainly a statement of intent. Its first of four movements is a substantial sonata design, the impulsive then ruminative main themes duly repeated prior to an extensive development (the transition into which derives from this latter theme rather than being a new idea as such); one whose understated resourcefulness continues throughout an altered reprise then suddenly decisive coda. The other movements (shorter even when combined) comprise a tensile and agitated scherzo, its absence of any trio section making contrast with the ethereal ‘song without words’ of the Adagio the more potent, then a finale that fails less by recycling themes previously encountered as by being too emotionally temperate to round off the whole with quite the resolution needed. This is an appealing and frequently prophetic piece, even so.

A few years later and the Piano Trio finds such promise being amply met. The initial Allegro maintains unflagging impetus that is by no means offset in the second theme, with its sultrily modal colouring, and abetted by the cello’s playing for much of the time in its higher register. After this, the central Andante ably fulfils its role within the overall scheme – the undulating moodiness of its main theme twice contrasted with livelier music, before finding repose at its bittersweet last hearing. It thus remains for the finale, prefaced by a cadenza-like passage, to restore the earlier energy with a dance-like theme which draws an almost orchestral sonority from the three instruments. A secondary idea elaborates on the material of that introduction, while the main theme returns to see this work through to its conclusion with some abandon.

Between these works comes the brief but enticing Ariëtta which is of interest for inhabiting the lower reaches of the violin’s compass (thereby making performances on viola the more common), and which adds to the solemn if not unduly earnest aura of its expressive profile.

Does it all work?

Not entirely, though such failings as there are constitute part of the interest here and the Piano Trio is evidently a minor masterpiece. Performances by the members of the Solarek Trio are never less than sympathetic, but would have benefited from a more sympathetic ambience, as that here has a narrow perspective such as robs them of any subtlety or finesse (those having spent numerous evenings at the British Music Information Centre in London will know what to expect). What is never in doubt is the dedication or the commitment of this music-making.

Is it recommended?

Yes, with reservations as outlined above. The two main works now have rival recordings by the Brundibar Ensemble (Fineline Classics FL72416) but this Toccata release is not thereby outclassed, while its annotations from violinist Marina Solarek are succinct and informative.

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You can listen to sample tracks and purchase on the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names for more on the Solarek Piano Trio, and on composer Henriëtte Bosmans

Published post no.2,165 – Wednesday 1 May 2024

On Record – Leon Bosch, Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine / Theodore Kuchar – Thomas de Hartmann: Orchestral Music Vol. 2 (Toccata Classics)

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Leon Bosch (double bass), Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra of Ukraine / Theodore Kuchar

Thomas de Hartmann
Symphonie-Poème no.1 Op.50 (1934)
Fantaisie-Concerto Op.65 (1942)

Toccata Classics TOCC0676 [81’49’’]
Producers and Engineers Andriy Mokrytskiy and Oleksii Grytsyshyn
Recorded 15-23 September at National Philharmonic Hall, Lviv

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its exploration of orchestral music by Thomas de Hartmann with first recordings for two of his most characteristic works, idiomatically realized by the most fervent of present-day advocates and further confirming the intrinsic value of this composer.

What’s the music like?

De Hartmann heralded a return to original composition, after more than a decade focussed on his collaboration with philosopher Georges Gurdjieff, with the first of four pieces designated Symphonie-Poème. Those having heard the unfinished last of these (recorded on TOCC0633) may be taken aback by what they encounter – this 65-minute work drawing on such expansive symphonic precursors as Rachmaninoff’s Second and Glière’s Third, but with a formal logic and harmonic practice all its own. Not least in the imposing first movement, whose brooding introduction presages its synthesis of fantasia and fugue with an underpinning of sonata form to result in a construct as diverse in musical content as it feels cumulative in its overall design.

That the composer continued from here says much for his ambition, but the work does justify itself as a totality – whether in a Scherzo that unfolds as continually evolving structure rather than the usual ternary form, an Andante whose recourse to martial rhythm and Ukrainian folk -music gives it a distinctive colouring and emotional affect, then finale (interestingly marked Allegretto feroce) such as projects this covertly autobiographical statement defiantly into the ‘present’ through a trenchant rhythmic profile that builds inexorably toward the visceral close. Received with guarded admiration and not a little consternation at performances in Paris and Brussels in the mid-1930s, this is a major inter-war work as well warrants its belated revival.

So, too, does the Fantaisie-Concerto which de Hartmann wrote with the double-bass playing of Serge Koussevitzky vivid in his mind’s ear decades afterwards (the latter had long since turned to conducting, and it is not stated who premiered this piece). Drawing on elements of dance, the outer Allegros indicate those quizzical and capricious qualities which come to the fore in the composer’s later music, but the central Adagio leaves the most lasting impression. This ‘Romance 1830’ draws on an earlier setting of Vasily Zhukovsky, along with images of Glinka and his bass-playing servant, in what is a ‘song without words’ of no mean eloquence or evocative poise: qualities duly enhanced by the subtle understatement of its orchestration.

Does it all work?

Yes, though the larger work will likely take a few listens for its overall coherence to become manifest. That it does so is owing primarily to the conviction of de Hartmann’s thinking, but also to that of Theodore Kuchar in having the measure of this opulent score and conveying it to the musicians of the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra, who almost always sound unfazed by its demands. The concerto benefits from the expertise of Leon Bosch, affirming this as among a handful of pieces that establish the double bass as a concertante instrument in its own right.

Is it recommended?

Indeed – not least as the orchestral sound has been so sympathetically captured, detailed and spacious in equal measure, with informative notes by Elan Sicroff and Evan A. MacCarthy on life and work respectively. Cordially recommended, with the third instalment keenly awaited.

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You can listen to sample tracks and purchase on the Toccata Classics website. For further information on the artists, click on the names for more on Leon Bosch, Theodore Kuchar and the Lviv National Philharmonic Orchestra Click on the name for more on composer Thomas de Hartmann

Published post no.2,158 – Wednesday 24 April 2024

On Record: The Tippett Quartet – Steve Elcock: Chamber Music Volume Two: String Quartets

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Steve Elcock
String Quartets – The Girl from Marseille, Op. 17 (2010); The Cage of Opprobrium, Op. 22 (2014); Night after Night, Op. 27 (2017); The Aftermath of Longing, Op. 36 (2021)

Tippett Quartet [John Mills & Jeremy Isaac (violins), Lydia Lowndes-Northcott (viola), Božidar Vukotić (cello)]

Toccata Classics TOCC0688 [80’31”]

Producer Michael Ponder Engineer Adaq Khan

Recorded 6-8 October 2022, Studio TQHQ, Ruislip, London

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its survey of Steve Elcock (b1957) – arguably its most important ongoing project – with this collection of his four (to date) string quartets, performed by the enterprising Tippett Quartet and reaffirming his stature among composers of his generation.

What’s the music like?

Elcock is not the first composer to eschew numbering his quartets (Daniel Jones, for instance, differentiated his eight by date), with The Girl from Marseille preceded by at least four such works (one of these refashioned into his Eighth Symphony). Coming after weighty pieces as the Second and Third Symphonies (the latter on TOCC0400), these eight diverse variations in search of a theme – its identity in the title – find his music at its most playful and entertaining, though the fractious final variation pointedly invokes the brutal origins of its source material.

It was the location of this work’s first performance that provided ‘inspiration’ for The Cage of Opprobrium, namely a 16th-century metal pillory used to incarcerate women found walking unaccompanied after dark. Its five continuous sections graphically evoke the imagined victim through alternate slow and fast sections – building towards a violent culmination (its alluding to a famous quartet less striking than the way in which this music is transformed into Elcock’s own), before subsiding into a postlude where mourning is informed by emotional exhaustion.

Emerging in a relatively long gap between Elcock’s Fifth and Sixth Symphonies (TOCC0445 and TOCC0616), Night after Night takes its cue from the poem in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Songs of Travel. The first of its six continuous sections, entitled ‘Somniloquy’, evokes those unbidden thoughts of a chronic insomniac then returns between episodes of a more volatile nature. Its climax comes in the aggressive final ‘Incubus’ (later extended into an autonomous orchestral piece), which elides between sleep and wakefulness without hope of reconciliation.

Elcock’s most recent quartet, The Aftermath of Longing is likewise in six continuous sections but is very different in mood. It is also the most inherently abstract of these works, moving fitfully between varying degrees of emotional ambivalence to a penultimate episode whose releasing of the pent-up intensity results only in a desolate recollection of the initial music. Something of its character can be sensed in the composer’s subsequent symphonies, notably the Ninth that is his largest such work to date and may well prove to be his most impressive.

Does it all work?

Indeed, it does and not least because Elcock has put his formative years of playing the violin to profitable use with his idiomatic and resourceful writing for strings. For all their technical demands, nothing is left to chance in these quartets which are evidently building into a cycle scarcely less involving than that of the symphonies. Suffice to add the Tippett Quartet, which premiered Night after Night, proves an assured and persuasive exponent while the running order, of 2-1-4-3, makes for a programme well worth experiencing as a continuous sequence.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. Sound is vivid and detailed, if a little confined in more tumultuous passages, while the composer’s notes are informative without prejudicing the response of each listener. Hopefully these quartets will be taken up by other suitably equipped and inquiring ensembles.

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For buying options, and to listen to clips from the album, visit the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names for more on composer Steve Elcock and the Tippett Quartet

On Record: Don Banks: Vocal and Chamber Music (Toccata Classics)

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Don Banks
Horn Trio (1962) a
Five North Country Folk Songs (1953) b
Prologue, Night Piece and Blues (1968) c
Three Studies (1954) d
Piano Sonatina in C sharp minor (1948) e
Violin Sonata (1953) f
Tirade (1968) g

(bg) Jenny Duck-Chong (mezzo-soprano), (c) Francesco Celata (clarinet), (a) Robert Johnson (horn), (af) Ole Böhn (violin), (d) Geoffrey Gartner (cello), (g): Rowan Phemister (harp), David Kim-Boyle (siren), Alison Pratt, Daryl Pratt, Joshua Hill (percussion), Daniel Herscovitch (piano)

Toccata Classics TOCC0591 [81’34″]

Producer David Kim-Boyle Engineer David Kinney

Recorded (cdf) 21 September (ag) 24 September and (be) 5 November 2020 at Recital Hall West, Conservatorium of Music, Sydney

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics provides a strong case for the greater recognition of Don Banks (1923-80) with this release of a representative cross-section of vocal and chamber works, performed by Australian and Australia-based musicians who are never less than empathetic with his music.

What’s the music like?

Wholly neglected following his untimely death, Banks was a senior figure in the generation of Australian composers – featuring such as Malcolm Williamson, David Lumsdaine and Nigel Butterley – who posited a decisive if hardly uniform course for the country’s music during the post-war era. Based in London for two decades, he made a living through teaching (notably at Goldsmith’s College) or writing music for horror films (notably Hammer productions), while evolving an increasingly personal language which can be heard in those works included here.

Earliest is the Piano Sonatina whose three movements – an agile Allegro, pensive Largo that nimbly amalgamates elements of fugue and chorale, then an impulsive Risoluto – constitute no mean statement of intent. It was the Violin Sonata which Banks considered his Op. 1, its pithy if contrasted ideas drawn into intensive development that effortlessly sustains a single movement whose 15 minutes seem never less than eventful. More unexpected is his identity with traditional sources in Five North Country Folk Songs (written for Sophie Wyss no less), whose piano accompaniments enhance the sentiment of each text with deadpan humour and audible affection. Reflecting his time spent with Dallapiccola (and, by extension, Webern), Three Studies for cello and piano applies its serial thinking both deftly and resourcefully.

By the 1960s, Banks had fashioned an idiom that was demonstrably but never slavishly of its time. One of the finest instances is the Horn Trio that, for all its inherent abstraction, pursues a tangible emotional trajectory from its forceful opening Allegro, via an Adagio of no mean eloquence, to a final Moderato in which the work’s arresting slow introduction is transformed through hunt-like gestures. Conversely, Prologue, Night Piece and Blues for Two underlines his love for jazz and its deployment within a ‘third stream’ context; here, the music’s restraint affords a sultriness alluring and ominous. Tirade could hardly be more different – its setting of Peter Porter’s impassioned poem on the increasing commercialization of Australian culture notable for a virtuoso vocal part and its imaginative writing for a sizable array of percussion.

Does it all work?

Almost always. Banks took a compositional path that assuredly takes no prisoners, yet which is rarely less than engrossing and, on occasion, affecting. Almost all these pieces would stand up well in recital today, not least for the opportunities they provide to enterprising performers. Other than the concertos for horn and violin (Lyrita), few of his major works are available in modern accounts, and if Toccata could undertake or even licence recordings of his orchestral Divisions or such cross-genre conceptions as Nexus and Meeting Place, so much the better.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. These performances, rarely less than authoritative, are heard to advantage in a spacious but never diffuse ambience. Daniel Herscovitch contributes detailed and informative annotations, and this release hopefully marks a first stage in the rediscovery of a major figure.

Listen & Buy

For buying options, and to listen to clips from the album, visit the Toccata Classics website. For more information on Don Banks, click here