Gidon Kremer performing at his 2008 Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival (photograph by Guus Krol, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license)
Readers may recall that, in the Deutsche Grammophon (DG) 22-CD box set of concerto recordings featuring violinist Gidon Kremer, the portion devoted to the twentieth-century repertoire was the largest. Mind you, not all of the compositions were concertos, but they were all concertante performances. In a sharp and unexpected contrast, the twentieth-century portion of the chamber music anthology was the smallest portion of the DG collection. It amounts to three and one-half discs with Alfred Schnittke sharing one of the discs with Carl Maria von Weber. Schnittke is one of the three composers found in the concerto anthology, the other two being Béla Bartók and Alban Berg.
The only composer to be allocated an entire CD is Sergei Prokofiev (both of whose concertos were absent from the DG concerto collection). The chamber music CD presents three of his compositions, the two sonatas, Opus 80 in F minor and Opus 94a in D major (reworking the Opus 94 flute sonata), and the Opus 35bis set of five “melodies.” Only the Opus 115 solo violin sonata is missing from this collection in representing Prokofiev.
The most interesting CD amounts to a “journey to the Second Viennese School.” It begins a quarter-century before the beginning of the twentieth century with the quartet for piano, violin, viola, and cello composed by a teenaged Gustav Mahler. This is followed by one of Arnold Schoenberg’s earliest compositions, simply called a “piece” in the key of D minor for violin and piano.
The remainder of the CD explores the ambiguities of atonality. Both Schoenberg and Berg share their offerings with Schoenberg’s other best-known pupil, Anton Webern. Webern begins the “set” with his Opus 7 collection of four pieces for violin and piano, composed in 1910. This is followed by a bit of an oddity. One of Alban Berg’s most sophisticated serial compositions is his “Kammerkonzert” (chamber concerto), scored for piano and violin soloists accompanied by an ensemble of thirteen wind instruments. By all rights this piece should have been recorded in its entirety. However, all that is included is an arrangement of the second of its three movements for piano, violin, and clarinet.
Even more disconcerting is the following account of Schoenberg’s Opus 45 1946 string trio. This is chillingly macabre music, which Schoenberg used to document the experience of his heart attack. I have had the good fortune to listen to recital performances of this music that have scared the living daylights out of me. (The older I get, the scarier the experience.) Kremer’s recorded performance with violist Veronika Hagen and cellist Clemens Hagen is, if you will pardon the expression, disconcertingly bloodless. The trio is followed by the Opus 47 “Phantasy” for violin and piano, another composition that I have rapturously enjoyed in a recital performance setting. Sadly, neither Kremer nor pianist Oleg Maisenberg come close to capturing a spirit that, as violinist György Pauk once observed, makes you want to dance.
The remaining CD provided an interesting (if not informative) perspective on the first half of the twentieth century. It begins with two sonatas, both of which were completed in 1921. The first of these is Bartók’s first violin sonata, followed by Leoš Janáček’s only sonata for that coupling of violin and piano. When I consulted Halsey Stevens’ biography of Bartók, I was not particularly surprised at the absence of Janáček from the index; but their respective sonatas definitely make for some interesting side-by-side listening. They are followed by Olivier Messiaen’s set of five variations of a theme, composed for violin and piano in 1932. This is before-Messiaen-became-Messiaen music, which definitely has a spirit of its own; but neither Kremer nor his accompanist, Martha Argerich, gave much evidence of grasping that spirit.
Personally, I am glad that ECM Records provided a platform after Kremer formed his Kremerata Baltica; and their recordings to date all feel like a breath of fresh air when compared with these DG offerings.
No comments:
Post a Comment