Debussy: Jeux (Piano Version) - Ader

Claude Debussy
Jeux (Piano Version)
Préludes 1ère Livre
Alice Ader
OGAM 488005-2 - 2002


Paris, 29th May 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Pierre Monteux looks at his bassoonist and unfolds Modern Music to the world, creating the sensationalistic mayhem and rage we all know of at Stravinsky’s Sacre du Printemps première.

That day, sat a funny looking man in the beautiful, newly opened hall on Avenue Montaigne. His mind probably reflecting on when his own music, two weeks before, had already marked the beginning of the great modern musical art, albeit a less chaotic but just as unsuccessful soirée, with the great Nijinsky on stage.
This man, in my humble opinion one of the five greatest innovators of the entire history of music alongside Bach, Beethoven, Wagner and Schoenberg, was Claude Debussy. The sublime masterpiece premiered just a few days before the Sacre, in the very same theatre, under the same conductor, was Jeux.

This amazingly intellectual composition almost makes the Sacre sound like a comfortable mainstream work. While Stravinsky’s masterpiece confronts the listener with powerful interwoven dynamics and startling rhythmical figures, Debussy’s heady and sensual score takes modernity to a totally new structural depth.

In order to really fathom the harmonic marvels, it helps to plunge into the amazing solo piano version, although personally I’m in love with the sublime orchestral colours of the full score. In this superb recording, Alice Ader analyses this fundamental music like no one else, conveying the playful and innocently mischievous ménage à trois of the subject’s ballet with elegance and beauty of tone.

This distinguished Parisian pianist, a champion of the great contemporary repertoire at IRCAM, also treats her listener with a delicate and subtle rendition of another of Debussy’s milestones, the 1st Book of the Préludes.


FLACs & Covers

Binder: Concerto per due Cembali - Cyclopes, Lapointe, Maeder

Christlieb Sigmund Binder
Concerto per due Cembali
Les Cyclopes, Bibane Lapointe, Thierry Maeder
Pierre Verany PV704061

There are certainly not many recordings out there of the works of Christlieb Sigmund Binder so I hope you appreciate this 2007 take on his Concertos for Two Harpsichords and Orchestra. Enjoy them half as much as I do and it will be well worth the download!

Mahler: Das klagende Lied - Studer, Meier, Goldberg, Allen, Sinopoli

Gustav Mahler

Das klagende Lied

Cheryl Studer, Waltraud Meier

Reiner Goldberg, Thomas Allen

Philarmonia Orchestra, Giuseppe Sinopoli

Deutsche Grammophon CD 463 216-2

For my first post I choose a "minor" listening among Mahler's works.
Surely not to compete with the later "Das Lied von der Erde" for intensity, but worth hearing as the first steps of the great M. in shaping his musical world...
Sinopoli, even if not the best in sound recording, with his passionate and precise direction, and joined by four great soloists, makes Mahler's music (as always) a truly wonderful experience.
Enjoy!



(FLAC + cue + cover)

Berg: 3 Orchesterstücke Op. 6, Lulu-Suite - Efraty, Gatti (2008)

Alban Berg

Drei Orchesterstücke Op. 6

Symphonische Stücke aus der Oper "Lulu"

Anat Efraty

Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Daniele Gatti

RCO Live 8004

„Meinem Lehrer und Freunde Arnold Schönberg in unermeßlicher

Dankbarkeit und Liebe“

- reads Alban Berg's dedication of his Three Pieces for Orchestra Op. 6, the pinnacle of the late romantic orchestral output; according to some. "Mahler's 11th", as I sometimes call it, or rather the first mature work of a genial innovator? Berg's music always defies labels and speaks to us with its unmistakable fondness and unsurpassed sensuality.

And where sensuality itself becomes "music", then we are in the magic world of Lulu...

One of the highest dramatic masterpieces of the last century, combining perfect complex musical structures with the most natural, sweet and human listening experience.

Some 20 years after Berg had composed his Pieces Op. 6, and at the end of his brief life, the Viennese master adapted some magnificent symphonic excerpts from his second drama into a famous Suite.

Opening with the tragic, lustful and desperate Alwa's love hymn in the magic first piece, and ending with the eternal love's vow from the dying Countess Geschwitz - both, like the many fallen heroes of Pandora's Box, Lulu's victims and executioners alike.

In this RCO release, our beloved Milanese Maestro, Daniele Gatti is leading the glowing Concertgebouw not only with heart but also with precision, as a true apostle of Berg's music (I still recall his touching Lulu at La Scala back in 2010), joined by the Israeli soprano Anat Efraty (Lulu at the Massimo of Palermo in 2001), who shines in the fiendish Lied, and also takes on Geschwitz's final lines, although she certainly is no match for the divine Margaret Price in Abbado's classic recording from 1970.

FLACs and Cover (Front Cover is all I got 4 years ago from a very mean, world renowned digital store... sorry!)

Wassenaer: Concerti Armonici 1-6 - ASMF, Neville Marriner

Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer
Concerti Armonici 1-6
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Neville Marriner
Argo 410 205-2

Marriner and the ASMF give the impression of having sought, and found, the music's special vein of nobility and spaciousness, and its exalted poetic nature.

A reminder about the background of these magnificent concertos, whose mystery was cleared up two years ago by the Dutch scholar Albert Dunning, might be in order. They were published anonymously in the eighteenth century, with a dedication to Count Bentinck by Carlo Bacciccia Ricciotti, which says they were the work of "an illustrious hand." Those familiar with the period have always suspected that the authorship of a nobleman was implied, but various composers have been nominated, on circumstantial or stylistic grounds, or sometimes on no grounds at all--certainly this last applies to the best-known attribution, to Pergolesi (on the strength of a manuscript note on a late copy in Washington). Others nominated include Handel, J. A. Birkenstock, Fortunato Chelleri, Willem de Fesch and Ricciotti himself. Dr. Dunning has solved the problem in the best possible way, by finding the autograph, which is the work of Unico Wilhelm, Count van Wassenaer. Here and there a clumsy progression betrays the hand of an amateur contrapuntist, but set against the originality, the textural richness and the nobility of diction of these fine works it scarcely matters... Michael Talbot...rightly points out that they belong not in the Vivaldian, north Italian tradition but in a Roman and southern one of four-movement works with fuller textures and fugal writing--there are several formal fugues, and contrapuntal thinking permeates the music. The style is conservative for the date, as one usually finds with an amateur composer (the concertos belong to the years 1725-40).

I hope someone will record them before long on authentic instruments. For these sumptuous textures and expressive lines and harmonies seem to invite vibrato-laden playing and strong emotional feeling--and by goodness they receive them from Neville Marriner's superb group, who play them as warmly and tenderly as they would Siegfried Idyll. The result is in its way marvellous, a tour de force of supple, expressive and euphonious string playing; but I do not think it very closely corresponds to what the composer is likely to have intended... Yet the ASMF do seem to me to make much more of the particular character of these works. I Musici approach them just as they would Vivaldi or Albinoni or anyone else; the ASMF however give the impression of having sought, and found, the music's special vein of nobility and spaciousness, and its exalted poetic nature. This is reflected in their softer, warmer textures, their perhaps more careful selection of the tempo of each movement, their readiness not simply to play the music through at face value but to think a little deeper about its character. Listen for example to the richness of feeling in the Largo affettuoso of the second G major, or the management of the dynamics in those high repeated triplets in the finale of the F minor--I Musici make it a big climax, but the ASMF give it an altogether subtler shape and much more point, though they do take it very fast... Although this isn't really quite how I want to hear these concertos--I am curious to discover how a closer approximation to Wassenaer's intended sound would affect their expressive nature--it would take an austerer spirit than mine not to take delight in what is offered here.

Stanley Sadie, Gramophone Magazine

Schumann: Symphony No.2, Manfred Overture - Sinopoli, Wiener Philharmoniker

Robert Schumann
Symphony No.2, Manfred Overture
Giuseppe Sinopoli, Wiener Philharmoniker
I Grandi Interpreti della Musica Classica - DeAgostini (out of print)

This is a great Schumann 2nd. It is the first version of it I ever owned and I still love this febrile performance, which I think can stand up with dignity against any competitor. I loved this recording so much that I even provide complete scans. An effort that will undoubtedly earn me a place in heaven.

Torelli: Sonate, Sinfonie e Concerti - Ens. Seicentonovecento

Giuseppe Torelli
Sonate, Sinfonie e Concerti
Sandro Verzari, Ensemble Seicentonovecento, Flavio Colusso
Bongiovanni GB 10008-2

Considering the unexplainable and undeserved shortage of recordings of Torellis concertos and symphonies, this one belongs in any proper collection of baroque instrumental music. Enjoy!