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      Bach’s Cello Suites, Now on Violin, With a Folksy Feel

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      With an ear for dance and a new five-string violin, Johnny Gandelsman set out to transform a towering classic.Bargemusic was rocking last Friday evening as rain fell heavily outside, casting the view of Lower Manhattan in gray.Inside, though, Bargemusic — the tiny concert hall docked in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo — was alight with the liveliness of belowdecks entertainment as a small audience rode out the storm to the fiddling sounds of Johnny Gandelsman’s violin. At times the performance had the improvisatory feel of folk music, but it was in fact a survey of Bach’s towering six cello suites — transformed, with foot-tapping joy, for a smaller string instrument.Gandelsman isn’t the only violinist to have tackled these classic works; Rachel Podger recorded them in 2019, a year before he released his own set. But his approach is singular: feather-light and rooted in dance and folk music. He treats the suites as six enclosed spaces, tracing long arcs through each one, the sections blurring as he plays them through without pausing.Gandelsman’s recording came out in February 2020, and he had a concert planned at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan that March. Like everything else, it was canceled. Bargemusic on Friday was his return; because of ongoing safety measures, it was a modest one, with a distanced crowd in an already small space, and the six suites spread over two evenings instead of his usual one.He’ll be back on the barge, June 24 and 25, with more Bach: the sonatas and partitas for solo violin. After that, he may return to this endlessly explorable composer, but his focus will be shifting to a new project: This Is America, a set of 22 new violin works commissioned from the likes of Angélica Negrón, Tyshawn Sorey and Tomeka Reid, with premieres rolling out starting this summer.But before that, he joined a video call after the Bargemusic concerts to discuss the cello suites, which he said he had been discouraged from recording.Gandelsman said that his interpretation of the suites aimed for the “sense of freedom” found in dance and folk music.Mary Inhea Kang for The New York Times“It was looked at as a novelty gimmick,” he said. “But there are at least three 19th-century editions of transcriptions, and they feel so good on the violin.”The project followed his recording of the sonatas and partitas. While the violin solos are most difficult in their fugues and implied counterpoint, he said, the cello works more or less keep multiple voices within the same line. The suites did, however, require idiosyncrasies like scordatura (alternative tuning) in the Fifth Suite and the use of a five-string violin in the Sixth — both common in folk music.That’s what he worked toward in his interpretation: a folk flavor. He avoided listening to recordings — though he said he had been inspired by Paolo Pandolfo’s viola da gamba rendering, “maybe the most radical in a way” — and tried to internalize the music to get at its dance-y “sense of freedom.”In the video call, he focused on three sections to discuss his approach. Here they are, with side-by-side comparisons of his recording and ones by Yo-Yo Ma, Pablo Casals and Anner Bylsma.Suite No. 1 in G: GigueThe First Suite, Gandelsman said, “has this just incredible sense of lightness, and also discovery” — a tone set immediately in the Prelude, airy and full of naïve wonder in his reading.“I don’t want to suggest that a viola or cello can’t do these things,” he said. “But there’s something about the way the violin resonates that just kind of propels everything forward.”He gives the sections the feel of “a real set of dances,” like something an Irish fiddler would play. Seen from that perspective, he said, the suite’s final movement, the Gigue, is a “party moment” — albeit a brief one. But that fleeting celebration, he added, is “pure joy.”“I think of the way my friend Martin Hayes” — a renowned fiddler — “might approach a gigue and vary inflections and articulations in a natural way,” Gandelsman said. “To bring a sense of joy and abandon and a sense of closing to these beautiful 15 minutes of discovery.”Suite No. 4 in E flat: PreludePlayed on a cello, this Prelude tends to take on what Gandelsman called a “majestic quality.” The phrases leap octaves, beginning at the lowest string and jumping to the highest — which, at an unhurried pace, creates a foundational resonance. “I quickly realized,” he recalled, “that that just does not work for me on the violin.”He couldn’t sustain the low-note resonance at a slow tempo and still articulate a long line. So he arrived, he said, at “an overall shift.” The score is in cut time, so he started by following that, speeding up the eighth notes and taking a wider view of the movement.“Suddenly everything kind of came together,” he said, “and created this incredible feeling where I felt like I was looking through a kaleidoscope.”The music was now perhaps less grand than on a cello, but the architecture had been revealed to Gandelsman in a new way. “The majestic quality can sound quite heavy,” he said, “and sometimes one can get lost in the beauty of each bar or each note and lose the sense of how the harmonies are shifting almost imperceptibly from bar to bar. Once I kind of let go of that majestic quality and went for something else, I saw an overall character of the entire suite that is incredibly light and funny and full of humor.”Suite No. 5 in C minor: SarabandeWhen Gandelsman started working on the Fifth Suite, he found himself “pulled into the world of the way that it sounds on the cello,” he said. “It’s very dramatic and in some ways the darkest of the suites.”The Sarabande, in particular, is despair in miniature — only a few lines in the score, made up of phrases seemingly cut short by low notes, a Sisyphean climb. Those depths, though, are impossible on the violin. And the character of the piece isn’t exactly a natural fit for the instrument’s bright high E string.Gandelsman took steps throughout the project to pre-empt any problems the violin’s upper register might pose: He used a gut E string, for instance, and recorded to tape to further soften its sound. On the violin, there is still a darkness to the Fifth Suite, Gandelsman said. But as he was working on it, “it started revealing a quality of loneliness, more so than gravitas.”“What I feel,” he added, “is the most inward kind of conversation with yourself.”The Fifth’s Sarabande is unique among the suites for not containing chords. “It is the most bare-naked, lonely line,” he said. Without multiple voices, and without a low C string, the violin is left with a fundamentally different, less resonant sound than the cello. But it’s no less affecting.“There’s a single voice, but there’s also incredible dissonance in this movement,” he said. “Not everywhere, but in specific places he chooses these minor-second inflections, which are so painful. I feel an incredible sense of loss when I’m playing it. I just try to embrace that and not try to compete with the fact that I don’t have low strings that can ring forever.” More

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      Bach Invented. Now a Pianist Is Trying to Match Him.

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      With “Inventions/Reinventions,” Dan Tepfer fills out Bach’s missing two-part inventions with daring free improvisations.“Of course Bach is a million times greater than me,” the pianist Dan Tepfer said recently. “I can still have a conversation with him.”That conversation is ongoing. While Tepfer, 39, is best known as a jazz artist, who has worked with giants like the saxophonist Lee Konitz, he has also delved into Bach — with twists.In “Goldberg Variations/Variations,” Tepfer performed that monumental keyboard work, but instead of repeating each variation, as Bach’s score indicates, he improvised his own responses. Last year, homebound and intrigued by the idea that Bach’s contrapuntal lines would work just as well inverted, he recorded himself playing the “Goldbergs” on a Yamaha Disklavier, a grand piano with a high-tech player-piano function. A computer program he devised — Tepfer also has an undergraduate degree in astrophysics — then played back each variation, but flipped.Last Friday at Bargemusic, the recently reopened performance space docked near the Brooklyn Bridge in Dumbo, Tepfer offered his latest Bach project: “Inventions/Reinventions.” Bach wrote 15 two-part inventions as teaching pieces for young students, originally compiling them for his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. The pieces, written in just two voices, one per hand, are not technically difficult. But within their limits Bach introduces beginning players to some sophisticated elements of music, including daring harmonic modulations.The pianist and composer Dan Tepfer is best known as a jazz artist, but he has entered into daring conversations with canonical Bach works.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesOne aspect of these works has long raised a simple question. Since in his “Well-Tempered Clavier,” Bach wrote paired preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, why did he not explore all those keys in the two-part inventions? Tepfer ascribes to the explanation that Bach wanted to focus beginners on only the “easiest keys” — that is, the ones with the fewest sharps or flats.So in “Inventions/Reinventions,” Tepfer boldly — even audaciously — supplies those “missing” nine inventions in the form of his own free improvisations.“Improvisation is what is dearest to my heart,” he said in an interview, “and has always felt so natural.”When he was a student, Tepfer said, he “spent vastly more time just improvising stuff at home,” even when teachers told him not to. He added that the way he thinks about jazz may well have been the way Bach would have thought about improvising.“And we know from the historical record that improvisation was essential to Bach,” Tepfer said. “He clearly excelled at it to a unique degree.”Of course, for Tepfer to supply his own improvised versions of the missing Bach inventions takes some bravado. “That tension is at the heart of any of these projects that I’ve done where I’ve kind of interacted with Bach and these totemic pieces,” he said. “But the only way these projects can come alive is if is feels like a true conversation, and in any good conversation people speak in their own voice.”That his improvisations are indeed free — created with “no preconceptions going in,” as he put it — came through in the performance at Bargemusic, in part because his “reinventions” sounded nothing like those captured on a video that was made the second time he tried the program out — in 2019 in Paris, where he was born to American parents and studied at a division of the Paris Conservatory.Following the sequence of pieces in Bach’s score, Tepfer begins with Invention No. 1 in C, a piece every elementary piano student learns, and goes right into the Invention No. 2 in C minor — probably the most musically complex of the 15, unfolding as an intricate canon and moving through distant realms of harmony. At Bargemusic, as in Paris, Tepfer played with transparent, articulate touch; a jazz musician’s feel for lithe, bouncy rhythms; and tastefully expressive lyrical freedom.Tepfer plays Bach:Bach didn’t write inventions in C-sharp major or minor, so Telfer supplied them. In Paris, his free improvisation in C-sharp major opened with a quizzical motif — a quick note that leapt to a repeated tone and hesitated, until that motif was echoed up and down the keyboard, becoming a hook for expanded passages of intersecting voices, wistful melodic stretches and some poignant episodes of dark, chromatic chords.Tepfer improvises:The equivalent improvisation at Bargemusic was more insistently rhythmic and spiky, driven by an invention-like motif that popped up everywhere and led to beautiful flights of harmony and some restless, agitated episodes.In Brooklyn, his improvisation in C-sharp minor was gently jazzy, with passages of jumpy riffs alternating with delicate filigree. In Paris, it was jazzy in a more assertive, punchy way, with a clipped three-note riff that shot downward one moment, then segued into fleeting passages that wanted to turn pensive but never gave in.And improvises again:Some of the improvisations in Brooklyn had a searching, mellow quality, as if Bill Evans were meeting Debussy. Perhaps the occasion, a return to live music in an intimate setting with just 25 people in attendance, brought out Tepfer’s ruminative side, as the performance continued and the improvisations turned impetuous, reflective, almost Romantic.“With the inventions, I’m not taking any material from Bach,” he said; instead, he tries to respond to the “concept” of the piece.“I try to come up with a musical idea,” he said, “and it’s not something preplanned.”That idea could be a short motif, like an intervallic figure. Then Tepfer wants to take this idea on a harmonic, fraught dramatic adventure, before finally getting the idea — the hero — safely home; he connects the inventions to ancient Greek rhetoric and drama. “That’s the DNA of Bach’s inventions,” he said. The quality of a dramatic scenario came through in all of Tepfer’s improvisations.In one sense, this conversation with Bach was a little unbalanced: Bach’s inventions mostly last a minute or two, while Tepfer’s improvisations tend to be five minutes or longer. Both in Paris and Brooklyn, the whole program lasted about 75 minutes. I could imagine another approach in which he tried, as a discipline, to constrict himself more to Bach’s time frame.Yet it was hard not to be swept away by Tepfer’s vision and compelling realizations. With disarming seriousness and extraordinary musicianship, he is honoring Bach by going all out in creating a conversation with him that is true to both artists.“We know from the historical record that Bach was very kind and respectful to his students,” Tepfer said. “So it’s perfectly OK to be fully yourself.” More

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      Love Classical Music? Anthony Tommasini Recommends Contemporary Composers

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLove Classical Music? Anthony Tommasini Recommends Contemporary ComposersThe New York Times’s Culture editor has questions. Our chief classical music critic has answers.San Francisco Symphony performing a Stravinsky program at Carnegie Hall in 2018.Credit…Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesFeb. 23, 2021As the editor of the Culture department at The New York Times, Gilbert Cruz relies on critics, reporters and editors in every field of the arts for their expertise. Now we’re bringing his personal questions — and our writers’ answers — to you. Currently on his mind: his constant struggle with how to learn more about everything that Anthony Tommasini, the chief classical music critic, writes about.Gilbert asks: I’m very open when it comes to my lack of knowledge about classical music and opera. And through conversations over the years, you’ve been gracious enough to try to explain to me that I shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by this. I’m also a fan of working through groups of works — all of a pop artist’s albums, all the movies from a particular director, et cetera. Walk me through how I (or someone else) might want to start doing this when it comes to classical music.Anthony answers: If someone has a natural inclination to go through a body of works, classical music certainly invites that approach. Take Beethoven’s nine symphonies: There they are, nine numbered scores spanning nearly 25 years of his adult life. Of course it can be fascinating to go through them in order. Or Brahms’s four; or Sibelius’s seven.Yet, too often, I’ve found, newcomers to classical music feel they have to take a music survey class before they can “get” certain pieces or composers. My only caution would be to avoid that mind-set and just go on an immersive exploration. My general preference is for programs where, say, Beethoven’s amazing Seventh Symphony is performed alongside contemporary scores, including, ideally, a new piece by a young composer who is indebted to Beethoven but unintimidated by the big guy and eager to share the stage with him.Also, I’d recommend exploring whole groups of pieces if possible through attending live concerts (when they return, of course). For example, last February, over 12 days at Alice Tully Hall the Danish String Quartet played Beethoven’s 16 quartets in chronological order, on six programs. Now that was an exhilarating way to plunge into those incredible pieces. The series was one of the last momentous classical music events in New York before everything stopped in mid-March.Gilbert asks: I want to ask you about this extended absence of live music, but first — please pair me a few contemporary scores with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony!Tony answers: Well, back in 2002 at Carnegie Hall Christoph von Dohnanyi led the Cleveland Orchestra in a program that offered Wolfgang Rihm’s Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra (2000). That piece, written in a pungently modernist musical language, unfolded as a long, uninterrupted, strangely riveting but very elusive single movement.Then, after intermission, came Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Maybe because the Rihm was still in my ears, the slow, extended introduction to the first movement seemed unusually elusive, almost evasive. Beethoven is toying with us here, I realized. I listened thinking: “What’s going on? Where is this heading? When does the ‘real’ first movement start?” I’m sure that’s the way Dohnanyi wanted me to hear it.When I was a teenager, I heard Leonard Bernstein conduct the New York Philharmonic in Beethoven’s epic, intrepid “Eroica” Symphony, followed by Stravinsky’s still-shocking “The Rite of Spring.” Hearing those works juxtaposed emphasized the pathbreaking qualities of each score. The “Eroica” sounded utterly audacious; the “Rite” seemed elemental and timeless. Beethoven and Stravinsky emerged like fellow radicals.Gilbert asks: I have to say, hearing you describe those performances makes me miss the grandeur of a concert hall, sort of in the same way I miss the largeness of a movie screen. Part of experiencing art outside my home is the potential to be overwhelmed, and as many speakers as I might have, or as big as my TV might be, it obviously doesn’t feel the same. I’ve only started to go to see live classical music in earnest in the past three or four years. You’ve been doing it for much longer, and I have to imagine the longing is deeper.You recently wrote a wonderful piece, “Notes Toward Reinventing the American Orchestra,” which is full of smart suggestions for how classical music organizations might change post-pandemic. What don’t you want to change?Tony answers: Ah, what I don’t want to change in classical music, what will never change, I’m convinced, is the sheer sensual pleasure, ecstasy even, of being immersed in the sound of a great orchestra, a fine string quartet, a radiant soprano. And to experience that you must experience this art form live.As a kid, I first got to know countless pieces through recordings. And during the pandemic it often feels like recordings are all we have. But growing up, what finally hooked me on classical music was hearing the pianist Rudolf Serkin and the New York Philharmonic under Bernstein at Carnegie Hall in Beethoven’s mighty “Emperor” Concerto; and having a standing-room ticket as a young teenager to hear the celebrated soprano Renata Tebaldi, with her sumptuous voice, as Desdemona in Verdi’s “Otello” at the Metropolitan Opera; or, a little later, hearing Leontyne Price’s soft, sustained high notes in “Aida” soar upward and surround me in a balcony seat at the Met. I only vaguely knew what these operas were about. I didn’t care.And what I’m saying goes for more intimate music, too. Only when you hear a terrific string quartet performing works by Haydn, Shostakovich or Bartok in a hall that seats just a few hundred do you really understand what makes “chamber music” so overwhelming. But it makes a huge difference to hear a symphony, whether by Mozart or Messiaen, in a lively, inviting concert hall.Gilbert asks: You’ve proven this to me several times over the past three years — I’m thinking of the time you took me to hear “The Rite of Spring” at Carnegie Hall and I walked out gobsmacked. (I know, such a rookie.) Or the time I found my eyes welling up at the end of Samuel Barber’s “Knoxville, Summer of 1915” at David Geffen Hall. I just don’t think I would have felt those same emotions listening to those pieces at home.But there is something I really do want to listen to at home, and it was my initial reason for wanting to have this exchange with you. In reading your wonderfully personal piece from a few weeks ago about the pianist Peter Serkin, you mention his recording of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations. And I’ve heard about the “Goldberg” Variations hundreds of times, but I’ve never actually heard them. (I know, such a rookie!) Help a colleague out?Tony answers: The sheer vitality and ingenious inventiveness of Bach’s music in the “Goldberg” Variations — moment to moment, section to section — surely accounts for the enduring popularity of this monumental work. But the overall structure of the composition is also captivating even to listeners who may not consciously perceive it. In a typical theme and variations form, a theme is heard straight through and then followed by a series of variations that spin off, play with, tweak or elaborate upon it.Mozart wrote a playful set of piano variations on the tune known today as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The “Goldberg” Variations is more unusual: The theme is a lovely, mellow “Aria,” as Bach calls it. It’s followed by a set of 30 variations. It’s not really the aria’s melody, as such, that’s put through variations; it’s the bass line and the series (or progression) of harmonies (the chords) suggested by the bass line that Bach plays around with in each variation.So the allure of the piece, I think, is that the individual variations sound strikingly fresh and boldly contrasted, yet they all seem to go together, to emanate from the same place. There’s another element to it in that every third variation is written as a specific kind of canon, a strict contrapuntal form that’s like what’s commonly called a round (think “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”).But you can be a huge “Goldberg” Variations fan without really understanding the technique involved. I’d suggest listening carefully to the opening aria a few times, concentrating on the bass line in the piano. Then I bet you’ll sense how the sequence of bass notes and harmonies permeates the subsequent variations, even when the music goes through exciting contrasts. And, yes, the young Peter Serkin is a wonderful guide.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      How Classical Music Can Help You Hear the Open Road

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      @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More

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      Swapping Songs With Chess Grandmaster Garry Kasparov

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySwapping Songs With Chess Grandmaster Garry KasparovMusic brought a critic and a guest together, in a conversation about Bach, Beethoven, chess and politics.Garry Kasparov, shown here in 1997, picked Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”) to share; our critic chose Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations.Credit…Ted Thai/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty ImagesDec. 18, 2020, 10:00 a.m. ETMusic, we all know, can bring people together. To stimulate a conversation between a music critic and a guest — in this case, the Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov — about listening and life, there was one ground rule: Each participant suggests a single piece for the other to listen to ahead of the chat.I chose Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations. Mr. Kasparov picked Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3, “Eroica.”Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, Mr. Kasparov comes from a musical family: His paternal grandfather and uncle were composers, his grandmother was a pianist and his father studied the violin before becoming an engineer. A former World Chess Champion, Mr. Kasparov is now a political activist, a prominent critic of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative. He spoke by phone from his home in Croatia, where he has spent the pandemic with his wife, Daria, and their two children. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.[embedded content]The two pieces we picked are interesting in the context of the pandemic. The Beethoven symphony has the social dimension of the full orchestra and the Bach is a solitary puzzle.The “Goldbergs” are not just one piece! It’s like an encyclopedia of music.I like that. There is that sense of trying out a problem according to different possibilities. I picked Bach for you, with all his fugues, because I think of chess as having similar qualities. The elegance of algorithms and the beauty that comes out of processes that actually obey very strict rules.For me it was a new experience. I don’t listen to much music before Mozart. It was quite a discovery to understand that Bach introduced many future themes. From the chess or computer world, I would use the term founding father. I am amazed by people who are ahead of their time.Listening to the “Goldbergs” I was struck by what I see as parallels with the way pieces move in chess. Even in the opening Aria, there is this very methodical movement in the left hand, while the right hand has much more freedom.I’m not sure. I see the Aria as something godly, heavenly — but then it goes back to earth. It’s this combination.What do you make of the fugues in strict counterpoint? These lines that interlock in a way that is both a beautiful mechanism and has this creative freedom to it.Well, it’s about variety. I read the legend that Bach wrote it for his patron to fight insomnia. But it doesn’t strike me as something that helps people go to sleep. The first 10 variations, he’s basically demonstrating his power as a composer. But then he shifts to something that is more interesting. In many of the variations we can hear the herald of new music. I have one favorite: Variation 25. It’s Chopin. It’s the first Ballade. And I love Chopin.What is it that attracts you to that? I hear a lot of melancholy in that variation.It’s not sadness. It’s a kind of realism. The world is as it is, and we have to accept it. It makes me feel comfortable. I also like Variation 13. It draws you into this water of music. And for energy and style I would pick number 16. In Variations 14 and 29, Bach is a virtuoso à la Liszt.I get the sense that the connections I made to chess don’t feel true to you at all. Did you find anything that you could relate to the game?It’s more how the music relates to me, Garry Kasparov, the person. I left the professional game years ago. Sure, the “Goldbergs” are an encyclopedia. It’s a demonstration of what could be done. It was prescient.I was also curious to ask you about artificial intelligence, and to what extent beauty can come out of a closed system with its own rules. Can a machine make moves that are elegant or is the human spark required? There are efforts that try to teach machines to write music, even in the style of Bach.A machine can learn rules, whether it’s chess or music. Offered a variety of options, it can eventually come up with something. But creativity has a human quality: It accepts the notion of failure.The way machines approach a problem is always about the bottom line: “This move is good because it offers the best return.” But creative beauty is not to go against the rules, but beyond the known pattern.You’re setting up a nice transition to the Beethoven symphony you picked. So much of that is about changing received patterns and disrupting expectations. He has accents in the wrong place that take you off guard and build drama. A machine would never see the advantage of breaking those rules.In a closed space a machine will beat humans. But when we are talking about art, the lines are blurry. We enjoy the journey into the unknown.In Beethoven’s period, music was structured around the development of a theme. It encounters an opposing theme and out of that a story unfolds. I was curious if you could connect that to a chess game. In the sense that the opening determines a lot, but that it’s in the encounter with your opponent that the game develops.Sorry to disappoint you again. I view this from a different angle. They wrote the music because they heard it in their heads. It’s pure genius. They can make very complicated constructions. But it’s flow. It’s intuition. That’s also my playing style. That’s the only time I can make a parallel to my playing. I know when a move is right.With Beethoven I see it as heroic. But it’s different from Wagner. That’s mythology. It comes from another world. With Beethoven it’s human.At a granular level the “Eroica” has this energetic play with the idea of disruption — creating crises and then rushing forward again. Are there parallels you can draw to your political activism, with how to effect change?Now you hit the right button. It’s more about my political engagement. You have to pretend to be heroic. But our fight is not for some mythological object or carving our name in the history books; it’s about other humans and improving the world we live in. And that’s a shift. The “Eroica” is very rich with this shift.I appreciate you being honest and rejecting my high-flung theories about counterpoint and chess. It shows that what one person reads into music is not necessarily what’s there at all. It was fun to try out these ideas with you.Thank you for forcing me to listen to the “Goldberg” Variations. Now I have a greater appreciation of Bach. I was very surprised by how modern it feels.It might have something to do with transparency. Because in Bach’s keyboard music the structure is visible, the same way in really good modern architecture form just follows function.I could use another analogy. These days I’m doing a lot of Lego with my five-year-old. You have a plan and then you have the Legos. And you can always see the structure.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020Listen to our critics’ favorites from a year in which much of the energy in music came from recordings.Credit…The New York TimesAnthony Tommasini, Zachary Woolfe, Joshua Barone, Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, David Allen and Dec. 17, 2020Thomas Adès: Berceuse from ‘The Exterminating Angel’“In Seven Days”; Kirill Gerstein, piano (Myrios)The composer Thomas Adès and the pianist Kirill Gerstein’s artistically fruitful friendship has given us two essential albums this year: the premiere recording of Mr. Adès’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, featuring Mr. Gerstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon); and this one, which includes a solo arrangement of the harrowing and slippery Berceuse from Mr. Adès’s opera “The Exterminating Angel.” JOSHUA BARONEBerceuse from “The Exterminating Angel”Myrios◆ ◆ ◆Bach: Cello Suite No. 4, GigueBach: Complete Cello Suites (Transcribed for Violin); Johnny Gandelsman, violin (In a Circle)From the beginning of this movement, ornamented with the insouciance of folk music, it’s difficult to resist tapping along with your foot. That urge doesn’t really leave throughout the rest of the six cello suites, lithely rendered here on solo violin by Johnny Gandelsman. This is Bach in zero gravity: feather-light and freely dancing. JOSHUA BARONESuite No. 4, GigueIn a Circle◆ ◆ ◆Beethoven: Symphony No. 2, Allegro moltoBeethoven: Symphonies and Overtures; Vienna State Opera Orchestra and others; Hermann Scherchen, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)The few new Beethoven symphonies released in this, his 250th birthday year, have largely offered more evidence for the drab state of interpretive tastes today. Not so the rereleases — above all this remastered and exceptionally bracing cycle that was eons ahead of its time when it first came out in the 1950s. Scherchen’s Beethoven — like this Second Symphony with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra — is fast, sleek and astonishing detailed, as exciting as anything set down since. DAVID ALLENSymphony No. 2, Allegro moltoDeutsche Grammophon◆ ◆ ◆Nadia Boulanger: ‘Soir d’hiver’“Clairières: Songs by Lili and Nadia Boulanger”; Nicholas Phan, tenor; Myra Huang, piano (Avie)After Lili Boulanger, the gifted French composer, died in 1918 at just 24, her devoted older sister Nadia suffered doubts about her own composing and turned to teaching. On this lovely recording, the tenor Nicholas Phan performs elegant songs by both sisters, ending with Nadia’s misty, rapturous “Soir d’hiver,” a 1915 setting of her poem about a young mother abandoned by her lover. ANTHONY TOMMASINI“Soir d’hiver”Avie◆ ◆ ◆Chopin: Piano Concerto No. 1, RomanceChopin: Piano Concertos; Benjamin Grosvenor, piano; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Elim Chan, conductor (Decca)There’s pianism of historic caliber on this release, and another mark of Mr. Grosvenor’s breathtaking maturity, even though he is still in his 20s. Summoning playing of pure poetry, he lavishes on these concertos all his lauded sensitivity, innate sense of pace and effortless way with phrasing. He’s matched bar for bar by Ms. Chan, an impressive young conductor who makes an occasion of orchestral writing that in other hands sounds routine. DAVID ALLENPiano Concerto No. 1, RomanceDecca◆ ◆ ◆Duke Ellington: ‘Light’“Black, Brown and Beige”; Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis (Blue Engine)If Ellington’s 1943 Carnegie Hall performance of his “Black, Brown and Beige” remains matchless, its radio broadcast sound has dated, making the crispness of this faithful recent rendition worth savoring. Sterling interpretation and production values permit a fresh look at “Light,” including the elegant way Ellington weaves together motifs heard earlier in “Black,” just before a rousing finish. SETH COLTER WALLS“Light”Blue Engine◆ ◆ ◆Eriks Esenvalds: ‘Earth Teach Me Quiet’“Rising w/ the Crossing”; the Crossing (New Focus)Earlier this year, when singing together became just about the most dangerous thing you could do, Donald Nally, the magus behind the Crossing, our finest contemporary-music choir, began posting daily recordings from their archives. He called it “Rising w/ the Crossing,” also the title of an album of a dozen highlights. There’s David Lang’s eerily prescient reflection on the 1918 flu pandemic, performed last year, and Alex Berko’s stirring “Lincoln.” But I keep returning to Eriks Esenvalds’s dreamily unfolding appeal to the Earth, its text a prayer of the Ute people of the American Southwest: a work of true radiance, fired by the precision and passion of this spectacular group. ZACHARY WOOLFE“Earth Teach Me Quiet”New Focus◆ ◆ ◆Antoine Forqueray: ‘Jupiter’“Barricades”; Thomas Dunford, lute; Jean Rondeau, harpsichord (Erato)This is Baroque music as hard-rock jam: driving, intense, dizzying, two musicians facing off in a brash battle that raises both their levels. It is the raucous climax of an album that creates a new little repertory for lute and harpsichord duo, with arrangements of favorites and relative obscurities that highlight Thomas Dunford and Jean Rondeau’s sly, exuberant artistic chemistry. ZACHARY WOOLFE“Jupiter”Warner Classics◆ ◆ ◆Ash Fure: ‘Shiver Lung’“Something to Hunt”; International Contemporary Ensemble; Lucy Dhegrae and Alice Teyssier, vocalists (Sound American)I try not to be fussy with audio quality. But if anything calls for an exception, it’s this long-awaited collection of music by Ash Fure — works that experiment with how sounds are made and felt. So before hitting play, gather your focus, along with your best headphones or speakers, for an intensely visceral listening experience. JOSHUA BARONE“Shiver Lung”Sound American◆ ◆ ◆Handel: ‘Pensieri, voi mi tormentate’“Agrippina”; Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano; Il Pomo d’Oro; Maxim Emelyanychev, conductor (Erato)A shot of venom, boring its way into the brain: There are some arias that aim to soothe anxiety, but for pure cathartic transference of all the anger, fear and impotence that 2020 has sparked, this aria — “Thoughts, you torment me” — by the title character of Handel’s “Agrippina” is the ticket. The fiercely dramatic Joyce DiDonato brings her multihued mezzo and over-the-top embellishments to the music, while the period-instrument orchestra pushes things along with raw-edged insistence. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM“Pensieri, voi mi tormentate”Erato◆ ◆ ◆Handel: Harpsichord Suite No. 4, AllemandeHandel: Suites for Harpsichord; Pierre Hantaï, harpsichord (Mirare)Handel’s eight suites for harpsichord, published in 1720, haven’t always gotten as much attention or respect among performers as the keyboard works of Couperin, Rameau or, especially, Bach. Sometimes they’ve been viewed more or less as training exercises: good for technique but not quite sublime. Pierre Hantaï, known for his vivid Scarlatti, dispels the slightly derogatory preconceptions with suave danciness and lucid touch. ZACHARY WOOLFEHarpsichord Suite No. 4, AllemandeMirare◆ ◆ ◆David Hertzberg: ‘Is that you, my love?’“The Wake World”; Maeve Hoglund, soprano; Samantha Hankey, mezzo-soprano; Elizabeth Braden, conductor (Tzadik)With his playfully convoluted 2017 fairy tale opera “The Wake World,” David Hertzberg demonstrated that voluptuous, sweeping elements of grand opera could be reimagined for today. In the work’s swelling, shimmering climactic duet between a young seeker and her fairy prince, Ravel meets Messiaen, and Wagner meets Scriabin; the music is spiky, original and wondrous strange. ANTHONY TOMMASINI“Is that you, my love?”Tzadik◆ ◆ ◆Nathalie Joachim: ‘Dam mwen yo’“Forward Music Project 1.0”; Amanda Gookin, cello (Bright Shiny Things)Even when brief and minimalist, Nathalie Joachim’s compositions cross complex ranges of emotion. Here, in a piece for cello (and vocals recorded by its composer), the somber cast of mood at the opening is complicated by a change in gait. The effect is akin to what you might feel inventing a new dance on the spot, while trudging through otherwise grim surroundings. SETH COLTER WALLS“Dam mwen yo”Bright Shiny Things◆ ◆ ◆George Lewis: ‘As We May Feel’“Breaking News”; Studio Dan (Hat Hut)Boisterous riffs and counter-riffs seem to suggest improvisatory practices; after all, this veteran artist has explored those practices. Yet George Lewis’s 25-minute joy ride is fully notated. And it was written for an Austrian ensemble which appreciates the chug and wail of Duke Ellington’s train-imitation music, as well as the rigors of extended-technique modernism. SETH COLTER WALLS“As We May Feel”Hat Hut◆ ◆ ◆Meredith Monk: ‘Downfall’“Memory Game”; Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble; Bang on a Can All-Stars (Cantaloupe Music)For almost 60 years, the composer and performer Meredith Monk has created works mainly for herself and her close circle, so it’s been an open question what will happen to those intricate, idiosyncratic pieces when she’s gone. This album of sympathetic but not slavish new arrangements — collaborations with the Bang on a Can collective — offers tantalizing experiments. The clarinetist Ken Thomson gives the hawing vocals of “Downfall,” part of Ms. Monk’s post-apocalyptic 1983 evening “The Games,” seductively sinister instrumental surroundings. ZACHARY WOOLFE“Downfall”Cantaloupe Music◆ ◆ ◆Tristan Perich: ‘Drift Multiply,’ Section 6“Drift Multiply” (New Amsterdam/Nonesuch)Music emerges out of snowdrifts of white noise on this mesmerizing track. Tristan Perich is one of the most innovative tinkerers in electronic music, creating works of vibrant mystery. In “Drift Multiply,” 50 violins interact with 50 loudspeakers connected to as many custom-built circuit boards that channel the sound into one-bit audio. The result is a constantly evolving landscape where sounds coalesce and prism, where the violins both pull into focus and blur into a soothing ether. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM“Drift Multiply,” Section 6New Amsterdam◆ ◆ ◆Joseph C. Phillips Jr.: ‘Ferguson: Summer of 2014’“The Grey Land”; Numinous (New Amsterdam)Joseph C. Phillips Jr.’s “The Grey Land” is a stirring, stylistically varied mono-opera that draws on its composer’s reflections on being Black in contemporary America. The longest movement on the premiere recording makes an early textual reference to Barber’s “Knoxville: Summer of 1915” while dramatizing an expectant couple’s unease in the wake of the death of Michael Brown. SETH COLTER WALLS“Ferguson: Summer of 2014”New Amsterdam◆ ◆ ◆Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 2, Andantino“Silver Age”; Daniil Trifonov, piano; Mariinsky Orchestra; Valery Gergiev, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)The thoughtful pianist Daniil Trifonov explores the music of Russia’s so-called “silver age” of the early 20th century on a fascinating album that offers various solo works and concertos by Scriabin, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. The spacious yet fiendishly difficult first movement of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto is especially exciting. ANTHONY TOMMASINIPiano Concerto No. 2, AndantinoDeutsche Grammophon◆ ◆ ◆Rameau: ‘The Arts and the Hours’“Debussy Rameau”; Vikingur Olafsson, piano (Deutsche Grammophon)Few musicians craft their albums with as much care as Vikingur Olafsson, whose “Debussy Rameau” is a brilliantly conceived, nearly 30-track conversation across centuries between two French masters. There is one modern intervention: Mr. Olafsson’s solo arrangement of an interlude from Rameau’s “Les Boréades” — tender and reverential, a wellspring of grace. JOSHUA BARONE“The Arts and the Hours”Deutsche Grammophon◆ ◆ ◆Jean-Féry Rebel: ‘Le Chaos’“Labyrinth”; David Greilsammer, piano (Naïve)In his riveting, aptly titled album “Labyrinth,” the formidable pianist David Greilsammer daringly juxtaposes pieces spanning centuries, from Lully to Ofer Pelz. The theme of the album is captured in Jonathan Keren’s arrangement of Rebel’s “Le Chaos,” which comes across like an early-18th-century venture into mind-spinning modernism. ANTHONY TOMMASINI“Le Chaos”Naïve◆ ◆ ◆Rebecca Saunders: ‘Still’“Musica Viva, Vol. 35”; Carolin Widmann, violin; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra; Ilan Volkov, conductor (BR-Klassik)A renowned figure on Europe’s experimental music scene, Rebecca Saunders builds teeming systems of shimmying severity from the sparest melodic materials. In this live recording of her violin concerto, Carolin Widmann excels in fulfilling the score’s contrasting requirements of delicacy and power. Helping judge the balance is the conductor Ilan Volkov, an artist American orchestras might consider working with. SETH COLTER WALLS“Still”BR-Klassik◆ ◆ ◆Schubert: ‘Des Fischers Liebesglück’“Where Only Stars Can Hear Us: Schubert Songs”; Karim Sulayman, tenor; Yi-heng Yang, fortepiano (Avie)Intimate, sweet-toned and more easily given to dry humor than its powerful keyboard successors, the fortepiano should be a natural choice for Schubert lieder. Yet recordings such as this exquisitely personal recital — with the clear-voiced tenor Karim Sulayman and the sensitive pianist Yi-heng Yang — are still rare. Listen to them weave a storyteller’s spell in this song about a nighttime tryst in a fishing boat, and marvel at the emotional arc they weave with the simplest of gestures. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM“Des Fischers Liebesglück”Avie◆ ◆ ◆Ethel Smyth: ‘The Prisoner Awakes’“The Prison”; Experiential Orchestra and Chorus; James Blachly, conductor (Chandos)Ethel Smyth, suffragist and composer, is among several female composers receiving fresh, deserved attention as the classical music industry tackles its diversity problem. If they all receive recordings as perfect as this account of her last major work, we will all benefit. Half symphony, half oratorio, “The Prison” includes this striking chorale prelude, with dark and light in the same bars, at its heart. DAVID ALLEN“The Prisoner Awakes”Chandos◆ ◆ ◆Anna Thorvaldsdottir: ‘Mikros’“Epicycle II”; Gyda Valtysdottir (Sono Luminus)A subterranean hall of mirrors lures in the listener in this deeply affecting three-minute track. Gyda Valtysdottir’s cello takes on the guise of a modern-day Orpheus and the spectral sounds of the underworld as she layers her performance on top of two prerecorded tracks. As this protagonist cello line sighs, heaves and slackens, the taped parts add fragmented scratch tones, whispers and tremors, evoking terrain both alluring and treacherous. CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM“Mikros”Sono Luminus◆ ◆ ◆Joseph Wölfl: Piano Sonata in E, Allegro“The Beethoven Connection”; Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, piano (Chandos)No finer recording has emerged from the Beethoven celebration than this, and it has not a single work by Beethoven on it. Mr. Bavouzet’s inquisitive look at the musicians who were composing at the same time as their colleague and competitor features Muzio Clementi, Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Jan Ladislav Dussek — but it’s the forgotten Joseph Wölfl, who once battled Beethoven in a duel of keyboard skills, who comes out best, in this immaculate, charming sonata. DAVID ALLENPiano Sonata in E, AllegroChandos◆ ◆ ◆[embedded content]AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More