Journeys
By James Manheim
The Emerson String Quartet formed in 1976 and kept the same personnel for more than 30 years. Journeys marks its final release with original cellist David Finckel, who has departed to pursue other projects (notably duo concerts with his wife, pianist Wu Han). It thus represents a turning point of sorts, and it is good to see that the group has not been content with simply recrossing safe territory but has delivered something innovative, both within its own catalog and in the general chamber music marketplace. The Emerson Quartet's repertory has rested solidly in the Haydn/Beethoven/Brahms mainstream. The group has rarely recorded Tchaikovsky, and Schoenberg never until this release. Journeys contains both, in the form of two sextets, Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence and Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. (The Emerson Quartet is joined by violist Paul Neubauer and cellist Colin Carr.) The two works were written within ten years of each other, but they were at opposite extremes of the music of the period in their handling of tonality, and a conventional outlook would hold that they could hardly be more different. Yet the players seem to be suggesting that composers can't fully escape the spirit of the times in which they live, and that in fact, the two works have much in common. Both were written for the combination of two violins, two violas, and two cellos. Both, as the album title suggests, depict journeys, Tchaikovsky's physical, Schoenberg's psychological. And there is a certain emotionally overheated quality that spills through the neat classic forms of the Souvenir de Florence and links it to the more radical world of Schoenberg. The performances seem to stress the connection, with an unusually nervous Tchaikovsky that stresses the dissonances and a warmly Romantic Schoenberg. You may be able to find performances that bring out the basic traits of each work more effectively, but it's safe to say that they haven't been put together in this way. A bold move from some veteran musicians.
Martha Argerich & Claudio Abbado
By James Manheim
The Emerson String Quartet formed in 1976 and kept the same personnel for more than 30 years. Journeys marks its final release with original cellist David Finckel, who has departed to pursue other projects (notably duo concerts with his wife, pianist Wu Han). It thus represents a turning point of sorts, and it is good to see that the group has not been content with simply recrossing safe territory but has delivered something innovative, both within its own catalog and in the general chamber music marketplace. The Emerson Quartet's repertory has rested solidly in the Haydn/Beethoven/Brahms mainstream. The group has rarely recorded Tchaikovsky, and Schoenberg never until this release. Journeys contains both, in the form of two sextets, Tchaikovsky's Souvenir de Florence and Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht. (The Emerson Quartet is joined by violist Paul Neubauer and cellist Colin Carr.) The two works were written within ten years of each other, but they were at opposite extremes of the music of the period in their handling of tonality, and a conventional outlook would hold that they could hardly be more different. Yet the players seem to be suggesting that composers can't fully escape the spirit of the times in which they live, and that in fact, the two works have much in common. Both were written for the combination of two violins, two violas, and two cellos. Both, as the album title suggests, depict journeys, Tchaikovsky's physical, Schoenberg's psychological. And there is a certain emotionally overheated quality that spills through the neat classic forms of the Souvenir de Florence and links it to the more radical world of Schoenberg. The performances seem to stress the connection, with an unusually nervous Tchaikovsky that stresses the dissonances and a warmly Romantic Schoenberg. You may be able to find performances that bring out the basic traits of each work more effectively, but it's safe to say that they haven't been put together in this way. A bold move from some veteran musicians.
Martha Argerich & Claudio Abbado
Orchestra Mozart
By Geoffrey Norris
Mozart: Piano Concertos in C Major K 503 & D Minor K 466, Martha Argerich (piano), Orchestra Mozart, cond Claudio Abbado, DG 479 1033
Back in the Sixties, the first recording that Claudio Abbado made for Deutsche Grammophon happened to be with Martha Argerich in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto and Ravel's G Major. It is somehow fitting, then, and certainly poignant, that following Abbado's death last month DG should now release this coupling of two Mozart concertos, again with Argerich as soloist. They were recorded during the Lucerne Festival of 2013.
That early Prokofiev/Ravel disc was made with the Berlin Philharmonic and is still available on DG Originals (447 4382). In more recent times, however, Abbado took particular pleasure in working with hand-picked ensembles such as the Orchestra Mozart, founded in Bologna in 2004. This proved a fascinatingly fertile collaboration, producing discs not only of Mozart but also of Bach, Beethoven and Berg and, last year, a remarkable one of Schumann overtures and the Symphony No 2 (479 1061), Abbado's first recording of a Schumann symphony.
Mozart was in Abbado's very DNA, a fact that is highlighted here in the elegance, élan and well-harnessed energy in his moulding of the orchestral parts of these two keyboard concertos. The artistic partnership with Argerich is an intimate, seasoned and spirited one: the way in which her delicate fingerwork in the slow movement of the C Major Concerto is so perfectly coordinated with the woodwind instruments is just one example of how the orchestra, soloist and conductor are in complete, responsive harmony.
But on the broader front, too, this is a performance where everything works instinctively. Argerich, as always, is a characterful, spontaneous soloist but, as is equally typical of her winning manner of playing, she is thoroughly attuned to the music's scale and stylistic niceties. With Abbado as a constant source of sensitivity as regards balance and instrumental colour, this is an interpretation that is in every sense live and, with excellent engineering of sound, has a compelling immediacy of presence.
The atmosphere of tension and apprehension that Abbado triggers at the start of the D Minor Concerto fuels a viscerally exciting, aptly disquieting performance of the first movement, its emotions in flux, Argerich complementing Abbado in tempering darkness with light. She launches the finale as a true Allegro assai, but it is fit, healthy and lithe rather than in any way breathless. These are performances in which vital sparks generate palpable electricity.
By Geoffrey Norris
Mozart: Piano Concertos in C Major K 503 & D Minor K 466, Martha Argerich (piano), Orchestra Mozart, cond Claudio Abbado, DG 479 1033
Back in the Sixties, the first recording that Claudio Abbado made for Deutsche Grammophon happened to be with Martha Argerich in Prokofiev's Third Piano Concerto and Ravel's G Major. It is somehow fitting, then, and certainly poignant, that following Abbado's death last month DG should now release this coupling of two Mozart concertos, again with Argerich as soloist. They were recorded during the Lucerne Festival of 2013.
That early Prokofiev/Ravel disc was made with the Berlin Philharmonic and is still available on DG Originals (447 4382). In more recent times, however, Abbado took particular pleasure in working with hand-picked ensembles such as the Orchestra Mozart, founded in Bologna in 2004. This proved a fascinatingly fertile collaboration, producing discs not only of Mozart but also of Bach, Beethoven and Berg and, last year, a remarkable one of Schumann overtures and the Symphony No 2 (479 1061), Abbado's first recording of a Schumann symphony.
Mozart was in Abbado's very DNA, a fact that is highlighted here in the elegance, élan and well-harnessed energy in his moulding of the orchestral parts of these two keyboard concertos. The artistic partnership with Argerich is an intimate, seasoned and spirited one: the way in which her delicate fingerwork in the slow movement of the C Major Concerto is so perfectly coordinated with the woodwind instruments is just one example of how the orchestra, soloist and conductor are in complete, responsive harmony.
But on the broader front, too, this is a performance where everything works instinctively. Argerich, as always, is a characterful, spontaneous soloist but, as is equally typical of her winning manner of playing, she is thoroughly attuned to the music's scale and stylistic niceties. With Abbado as a constant source of sensitivity as regards balance and instrumental colour, this is an interpretation that is in every sense live and, with excellent engineering of sound, has a compelling immediacy of presence.
The atmosphere of tension and apprehension that Abbado triggers at the start of the D Minor Concerto fuels a viscerally exciting, aptly disquieting performance of the first movement, its emotions in flux, Argerich complementing Abbado in tempering darkness with light. She launches the finale as a true Allegro assai, but it is fit, healthy and lithe rather than in any way breathless. These are performances in which vital sparks generate palpable electricity.
