Schubert, Franz

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Facing Death, a Pianist Recorded Music of Unspeakable Emotions

      by

      Lars Vogt, for one of his final albums made before dying from cancer, turned to chamber music by Schubert with Christian and Tanja Tetzlaff.There are recordings that are meant for the ages, that are intended to sound definitive. There are recordings that document a fleeting interpretation, that inspire or provoke, that accept the impossibility of a final word. And then there are the rare recordings whose circumstances defy the ordinary routines of an artist, that capture a high or a low moment in that person’s life and, matched to the right music, transcend it.In February 2021, Lars Vogt probably should not have traveled to Bremen, Germany, to join his close friends, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and his sister, the cellist Tanja Tetzlaff, in recording Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E flat. Vogt, a widely beloved pianist and a conductor on the rise, arrived in pain; his doctors had asked him not to go, but to check into a hospital to await a conclusive diagnosis of the cancer that would take his life, at just 51, last September.Instead, Vogt sat down at a keyboard.“He did the most incredible things,” Christian said in an interview, adding that Vogt, his colleague of 26 years, suddenly played as if he had reached a kind of fulfillment or liberation. “Even on a technical level,” he continued, “I’d never heard him in this kind of perfection, exuberance, lightness. He was everything at the same time.”Vogt, who spoke openly about his illness, continued to perform until not long before his death; he was making plans for a U.S. tour with the Tetzlaffs this spring, on which they will now be joined by one of Vogt’s dearest students, Kiveli Dörken.Vogt’s remaining recordings include concertos by Mendelssohn and Mozart, as well as a Schubert album with the tenor Ian Bostridge.Anna VogtThe Schubert — to which Vogt and the Tetzlaffs added an earlier trio and other works by the composer for a double album, out on the Ondine label this week — was far from the pianist’s valedictory recording. With the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, of which he was music director, he taped Mendelssohn and Mozart concertos; with the tenor Ian Bostridge, Schubert’s “Schwanengesang.”But the E flat trio — a piece in which Schubert, a year short of his own death, peers into the darkness yet finds joy — became particularly significant to Vogt. “Feels a little bit like everything, at least in my life, has developed toward this Trio in E flat major,” he wrote after hearing the recording, in a message to the Tetzlaffs that is quoted in the album’s liner notes. “If not much time remains, then it’s a worthy farewell.”Schubert: Piano Trio in E Flat, finaleChristian Tetzlaff, Tanja Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt (Ondine)As Tanja tells it, an awareness of mortality was not entirely new in Vogt’s personality or artistry, though he necessarily felt it more strongly as his cancer treatment progressed.“It was always this strange mixture of feeling, ‘OK, there is death somewhere, and there is despair, frustration, whatever, it’s there because we’re human beings’ — and then, next moment, he would be the most silly and joyful person,” she said. “That’s what always made his playing so incredibly touching, because you see the whole range of the human tragedy, and the lightness of life.”Judging by his recordings, Vogt was a heartfelt soloist, excelling in the Bach-Schubert-Brahms lineage, yet he was arguably at his finest as a chamber musician; even the tone he gleaned from a piano — compassionate, never domineering — seems to invite collaboration. The Schubert album is the latest in a peerless series of releases with the Tetzlaffs that bears witness to a relationship not just between three artists of stature, but among intimates with a common, fearless commitment to expression.“It’s something that’s a bit hard to understand totally from the outside; there was a very strong symbiosis,” Reijo Kiilunen, the founder and managing director of Ondine, said of the trio’s recording sessions, in which they appeared to speak “a special language” with one another. “You simply hear it in their playing.”Before the Schubert, Vogt and the Tetzlaffs had essayed the three Brahms trios, as well as two by Dvorak; with Christian alone, there were accounts of sonatas by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. There is never the feeling, in any of those interpretations, that the instrumentalists are competing for the limelight or trying to impress anyone, least of all the listener; they are sharing the music with one another.One of those recordings has become especially poignant since it was made in 2015: a searing reading of Brahms’s Violin Sonata in G, which was also the last piece that Vogt and Christian played together, as nurses gathered to hear them perform a week or so before the pianist’s death.There is one passage, in the first movement, that movingly illustrates their partnership. It seems simple enough — the violin strums, like a guitar, as the piano adopts the searching main theme — and most duos play it simply, as a basic question of foreground and background. Yet Vogt’s tone is soft, withdrawn, as if he does not want the attention to fall entirely on himself, but would rather draw the ear to the support that Christian is offering, the essential accompaniment to his mournful song. There is no ego.Brahms: Violin Sonata in G, first movementChristian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt (Ondine)“In Lars’s words, which I think we all share,” Christian said, “the incredible difference between Schubert and Brahms is that Schubert shows you the absurdity, the horror and the beauty of everything, and Brahms actually takes you by your hand, and tries to give solace.” With Brahms, he added, “you have somebody at your side who is very much like you, and suffering like you. Whereas you are next to Schubert, and say, ‘Who is this giant?’”For the Tetzlaffs, Schubert’s E flat trio represents Vogt’s emotional landscape, as well as the strength he showed in the face of his illness. Finished in November 1827, the piece dwells on Beethoven’s death earlier that year: It is in the same key as Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony, and it likewise centers on a funeral march, in C minor, whose shadow is cast off only in a finale that takes consolation, of a sort, in compositional virtuosity, delighting as it layers themes on top of one another.“This is like a psychodrama with Lars dealing with the situation,” Christian said. “He would still have the loudest laughter and the wildest demeanor, engaging with us. But this is also what Schubert is doing in that slow movement: dealing with pain in a way that is not hiding, and not getting smaller, but getting bigger.”The funeral march, with moments of dignified hope that are interrupted by outbursts of extreme turmoil, is clearly a reckoning with the abyss, so much so that Schubert demands the impossible from the people playing it, much as grief asks of its sufferers. There is one point where the string lines are marked triple forte, yet crescendo from there, accents spiking the way. It’s unplayable writing, for unspeakable emotions.“He says, ‘Deal with it; say something,’” Christian explained of Schubert in those moments. “But how?”Schubert: Piano Trio in E Flat, Andante con motoChristian Tetzlaff, Tanja Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt (Ondine)For Vogt, music remained, to the end, a means of saying something. The Tetzlaffs said that he timed his chemotherapy treatments to fit his concert and recording schedule, and that playing helped keep him going.“It reminds me of a Ukrainian woman I know,” Tanja said. “She said, in Ukraine — because from one side, from the other side, it was always conquered by different people — there is a saying: When things get bad, we start laughing, and when things get unbearably bad, we make music; we sing.”Making music, “you are away, somehow, from real tragedies, but you can canalize everything that you are feeling and suffering from into something that becomes a moment,” Tanja continued. “It’s so incredibly important that we have this. I mean, what a miracle.” More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Music

      In Cleveland, Schubert Outsings Even the Mighty ‘Otello’

      by

      After playing Schubert’s Ninth Symphony just before the pandemic lockdown, the Cleveland Orchestra shone in its return to the sprawling work.CLEVELAND — On the morning of Friday, March 13, 2020, the Cleveland Orchestra played Schubert’s Ninth Symphony. The musicians were in concert dress, but just a handful of people were in the seats of Severance Hall. Pandemic bans on public gatherings were going into effect, and this would be the last concert here before the long lockdown.A section of the symphony was released a few weeks later, as part of the premiere episode of a new podcast from the ensemble. By way of introduction, its longtime music director, Franz Welser-Möst, spoke about what he’d felt as he led the second movement: “I thought, all of a sudden, this might be the last time I ever conduct this orchestra again.”Amid the anxiety and uncertainty of early April 2020 in New York, I remember listening to him say that, and bursting into tears. So I have rarely had a sweeter experience with music than returning to Severance on Friday morning and listening to the Clevelanders and Welser-Möst play, yes, Schubert’s Ninth.This is music of stark shifts between celebration and melancholy, ballroom grandeur and drawing-room wistfulness, between forcefulness and expansiveness. It is a sprawling work that nevertheless, when done well, unfolds with a sense of inevitability through all its changes.Welser-Möst said on the podcast that the performance for the near-empty hall — with everyone “calm but extremely, extremely focused” — was “as close to perfection” as he’d ever heard the orchestra sound. That this wasn’t hyperbole became clear when the full symphony was released on the in-house record label that the ensemble started during the pandemic.On Friday, too, the notion of perfection came to mind. The Clevelanders played, as usual, with clarity, poise and adroit balances among the sections, elegance without reticence, urgency without pressure, airiness without weightlessness. But while descriptions of their precision and transparency sometimes make them seem cool, even chilly, this was poignant, humane, truly warm music-making.The first movement was brisk — as is Welser-Möst’s wont — but easygoing in its phrasing, without exaggeration, even in emphasis. As I felt when I heard this ensemble play Dvorak’s Fifth Symphony here in 2015, there was one foot in aristocratic Vienna, the other in a country meadow; I don’t know another American orchestra that lilts with such unforced gracefulness.Heat radiated off the high strings in the second movement, before softening to a gentleness that surpassed that of the recent recording. The passing of a line among different instruments — cello, flute, clarinet, oboe — was an understated layering of liquidities of different densities.The Scherzo was lushly garrulous until it relaxed into spacious calm; the fourth movement had the panache of bursts of golden powder. Throughout, Schubert’s huge section repeats weren’t drudgery, but displays of quietly accumulated power, of material subtly yet thoroughly transformed.From left on platform, Raymond Aceto, Pene Pati, Tamara Wilson, Welser-Möst, Limmie Pulliam, Christopher Maltman, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Owen McCausland and Kidon Choi, with the Cleveland Orchestra, after Verdi’s “Otello.”Roger Mastroianni/Cleveland OrchestraSuch was the quality of the symphony, and the intensity of the emotions it conjured, that it slightly overshadowed the main event of the weekend: Verdi’s opera “Otello,” which was given as a semi-staged concert on Saturday (and will be repeated this Thursday and Sunday).The operatic repertory has been a glory of Welser-Möst’s tenure here. The pandemic sadly spiked a run of Berg’s “Lulu,” but “Otello” is a sweeping orchestral showcase. (I won’t soon forget the Chicago Symphony’s ferocious rendition under Riccardo Muti at Carnegie Hall in 2011.)And the playing was excellent, with attention to detail in moments like the slight wooziness that enters the rhythms as the first-act drinking song grows drunker. The third act progressed toward a finale of controlled nobility; the opening of the fourth was an elegy of mellow, mournful winds, their music seeming to exhale into being taken up by the low strings.But overall Welser-Möst flew through the score at a clip; coupled with this ensemble’s lithe textures, even at its loudest and most powerful, there was sometimes a sense of skating atop the music. The opera impressed; it didn’t shock or wound.In the title role, the tenor Limmie Pulliam had a healthy, attractively grainy tone, with a hint of weeping in it. Once he got past some dropped high notes in “Ora e per sempre,” he sang with burnished security, and acted — even in this semi-staged setting — with moving sobriety.The soprano Tamara Wilson, as Desdemona, gained authority and tonal richness as the performance went on, her high notes strong and clear. But from the start, the baritone Christopher Maltman oozed juicy seductiveness as an imposing Iago.Jennifer Johnson Cano’s mezzo-soprano was smoothly plangent as Emilia; the tenor Pene Pati was a sweetly ingenuous Cassio. The chorus, directed by Lisa Wong, was far more nuanced than usual in this piece, even while wearing face masks; I heard harmonies in the opening scene that were new to me.Whatever the quibbles, few ensembles are ready to do Schubert’s Ninth and “Otello” back-to-back with such accomplishment. Part of it is doubtless the enchanted, silvery atmosphere of Severance, but there is always a sense of occasion when this orchestra performs.Not that everything is perfect. Attendance has been down this season from prepandemic averages, as it has been for many arts institutions; the question is whether those numbers will rebound or settle into a disconcerting new normal.And while Welser-Möst has filled many important positions over the past few years, there are still a handful of openings, none more conspicuous than the concertmaster seat that has been vacant since William Preucil was fired in 2018 after an investigation revealed he had engaged in sexual misconduct and harassment. The orchestra’s principal trombonist was also fired then, for the same reason; that chair remains empty, too.But there was nothing to fear this weekend from either of those corners of the ensemble. Peter Otto, the first associate concertmaster, gave a solo in Berg’s “Lyric Suite” — which preceded the Schubert on Friday — that had the self-effacing eloquence for which Cleveland is justly renowned. (Solos from this orchestra often, in the best way, don’t feel like solos at all.) And in the first movement of the Schubert, the trombones played with an uncanny evocation of doleful distance, as if they were on a nearby hilltop rather than right in front of us.It speaks to the depth of this extraordinary ensemble’s roster that what should have been its weaknesses ended up as particular strengths. And it was so, so good to be back here.OtelloThrough May 29 at the Severance Music Center, Cleveland; clevelandorchestra.com. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Review: A Recital Brings Together Two Schubert Masters

      by

      The pianist Mitsuko Uchida and the tenor Mark Padmore subtly threaded a program of Beethoven songs and Schubert’s “Schwanengesang.”It’s difficult to avoid superlatives when writing about Mitsuko Uchida and Mark Padmore.Especially when it comes to Schubert. Among pianists, Uchida is our reigning interpreter of his music — returning to it repeatedly, revealing ever more layers of mystery, wit and aching beauty. And Padmore, his tenor sound delicate and direct, with an unforced undercurrent of sadness, can feel like the incarnation of this composer’s style.As a pairing, Uchida and Padmore are wellsprings of wisdom and sensitivity, a truly equal partnership. The performances that result from their deep study of these scores are unpretentious master classes in the art of letting music speak for itself.Yet they have never recorded any Schubert together. (Padmore has released albums of this repertory with Paul Lewis and Kristian Bezuidenhout; Uchida, with Ian Bostridge.) So it was a gift to hear them in recital at Zankel Hall on Sunday in the posthumous collection “Schwanengesang” and Beethoven songs, including the pioneering cycle “An die ferne Geliebte,” all studies in extreme longing.Apart from “An die ferne Geliebte,” Beethoven’s lieder are chronically overlooked next to his towering achievements in the symphony, sonata and string quartet. But his songs are fascinating and unwieldy: shifting with little predictability among folk melody, recitative and concert aria virtuosity, sometimes from verse to verse. With their voice-forward writing, they put the most strain of the recital on Padmore, who can fill an opera house but scaled his sound back to Zankel’s intimacy, with flashes of full power all the more effective for their judiciousness.There were rattling contrasts even in the first song of the program: the Op. 94 setting, Beethoven’s second, of “An die Hoffnung” (“To Hope”), which starts with a recitative-like questioning of God’s existence before launching into lyrical lines that showcase the fine softness of Padmore’s upper range, and a radiant climax. “Resignation,” which followed, had the Schubertian spareness to which his voice is best suited; simpler still was “Abendlied unterm gestirnten Himmel” (“Evening Song Beneath the Starry Sky”), its closing chords of childlike purity played by Uchida as if a private prayer.“An die ferne Geliebte” (“To the Distant Beloved”) is often regarded as the first song cycle: six brief text settings, flowing without pause, in a precursor to longer Schubert masterpieces like “Die schöne Müllerin” and “Winterreise.” Throughout, Uchida and Padmore behaved like a single instrument; so thorough was their shared vision that they almost never cued or acknowledged each other, even for rubato stretchings of the line or for abrupt changes in tempo.As in the account of “Schwanengesang” (“Swan Song”) that followed, Padmore’s sound was remarkable most for its balance of clarity and character. Similar to Uchida, his performances are compelling — without the theatricality of, for example, Bostridge, who tends to serve Schubert with a side of self-immolation.“Schwanengesang” wouldn’t benefit from histrionics, anyway; a loose collection of Schubert’s final songs, it lacks the through line of his cycles, packing their intensity into discrete pieces that demand discrete interpretations. If one trait united them here, though, it was restraint. The famous “Ständchen” (“Serenade”), for example, has an expressive style that invites schmaltz, but also maintains a chilly distance in its articulation — a tension borne out in Padmore’s wide vocal contours and Uchida’s staccato, choked off like a series of declarations repeatedly withheld.Schubert verges on tone painting in some of the collection’s later songs; Uchida responded with pedal work that, in “Die Stadt” (“The Town”), allowed the rumbling low notes to evoke a dense fog occasionally penetrated by a mysterious run in the right hand, like an image coming in and out of focus. In “Der Doppelgänger” — one of Schubert’s most terrifying songs — she sustained dissonances, letting their uneasiness warp and linger under Padmore’s stark melody.The frighteningly open chords of “Der Doppelgänger” recall those of “Der Leiermann” at the end of “Winterreise,” but “Schwanengesang” concludes in an entirely different mood: “Die Taubenpost” (“Carrier Pigeon”), a comparatively sunny setting of text by Johann Gabriel Seidl. That pigeon, the narrator reveals, is named “die Sehnsucht,” or Longing.Speaking from the stage earlier in the recital, Padmore reflected on that word. He tallied its appearances in the Schubert and Beethoven songs, as a noun and a verb, and noted that it figures in the finales of both “An die ferne Geliebte” and “Schwanengesang.”Yet “Die Taubenpost” also ends by describing the bird as “the messenger of faithfulness.” Longing can be painful, yes; this recital’s poems suggested as much. But Uchida and Padmore also made a subtle argument that it can also be — with a clue in the first song’s cry of “O Hoffnung!” — hopeful.Mitsuko Uchida and Mark PadmorePerformed on Sunday at Zankel Hall, Manhattan. More

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      The 25 Best Classical Music Tracks of 2020

      by

      #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