Music and Recording Reviews

Gabriel Fauré: La Bonne Chanson, L'horizon chimérique
Stéphane Degout, Alain Planès
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902382, CD (reviewed as 24/96). 2024.
Alban Moraud, prod.; Alban Moraud Audio, eng.
Performance ****
Sonics ****

During the current Fauré Centennial, recordings of the composer's music are appearing at a steady pace. So far, vocal music has gotten short shrift, adding importance to this new Harmonia Mundi recital, in which baritone Stéphane Degout, one of today's foremost proponents of French mélodie, adds his mellifluous voice to Alain Planès's period-authentic Pleyel "Grand Patron" piano, manufactured in 1892.

Degout, almost 48 at the time of the recording, may have produced even sweeter soft tones in his younger years, but the voice retains its strength, absolute steadiness, and flexibility. Degout, who in Fauré values steady tempo over romantic pliability, begins with one of Fauré's earliest cycles, the three Poème d'un jour Op.21, and proceeds through La Bonne Chanson, Le jardin clos, Mirages, and the final L'horizon chimérique. Of these, only the latter was recorded—several times—by its dedicatee, baritone Charles Panzéra.

Degout's tempos and approach are similar to Panzéra's, but he savors vowels and nasal consonants with less precision. He also brings a bit less sweetness to one of Fauré's last songs, the gorgeous "Diane, Séléne." (For a very different approach—one which revels in language and subtlety but sometimes engages in transposition—try tenor Cyrille Dubois and Tristan Raës's elegant 2022 traversal of Fauré's entire song oeuvre, on Aparté).

For those who only know Fauré's most popular songs, including "Les roses d'Ispahan," "Claire de lune," and "Soir," the adventurous sonorities of the nine mélodie of La Bonne Chanson may come as a surprise. Fauré often set second-rate, overly effusive romantic poetry, but his choice of Paul Verlaine's verse for this cycle inspired him to explore new directions. Highly recommended.—Jason Victor Serinus

Mozart: Symphonies 35, 40, 36
Tarmo Peltokoski/Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
Deutsche Grammophon 00028948657445 (CD, WAV download). Stephan Flock, prod. and eng.
Performance **
Sonics ****

Boulez once suggested that "it is not enough to add a moustache to the Mona Lisa." The young Tarmo Peltokoski appears to have taken this suggestion to heart. The G minor's Andante would flow better with less stressing. The conductor adopts "different" articulations to underline the music's structural connections, and he'll occasionally lengthen a general rest to good dramatic effect. The Bremen orchestra plays brightly with splendid rhythmic acumen and tremendous verve. The engineers capture all this with a brilliant presence, which turns fierce in the tuttis.

But beginning with the Haffner's Andante, repeats and developments are decorated, sometimes by solo instruments (which is possible) and sometimes by the whole violin section (which is not, without premeditation. Discreet ornamenting has been accepted in piano concerti and even operas for decades, but here it's carried much too far. The contrapuntal crisscross of warring twiddles, fill-ins, and upward "rocket" scales distracts from the music Mozart wrote. The booklet doesn't mention any of this.

The download of this album interpolates three solo-piano Improvisations by Peltokoski among their respective symphonies, though you wouldn't know it from that booklet. Stylistically, they careen from concertante virtuosity to easy listening. Peltokoski's playing is accomplished, with some sparkling high runs.

I usually complain that young conductors prefer the showy repertoire to the hardcore classics like Mozart and Beethoven, but I'd rather hear Peltokoski apply his excellent musical instincts to more intricate repertoire—middle-to-late Mahler—that doesn't allow scope for shenanigans. Let's hear what he can do with "just" the music!—Stephen Francis Vasta

Martinů, Dvořák, Krása, and Klein: Czech Songs
Magdalena Kožená, mezzo-soprano; Czech Philharmonic/Sir Simon Rattle
Pentatone Music PTC5187077 (CD, hi-rez download). Markéta Tomková Janáčková, prod.; Jakub Hadraba & Filip Beneš, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics ***½

In this wide-ranging sampling of brief Czech songs—the longest runs 4'30"—the two Martinů cycles are a nice surprise. Some of his orchestral music can sound sparse and hard-bitten; here, the textures glow and sparkle, with a lyrical bent—though the turbulent orchestra in Pohled nazpět, from the Nipponari cycle, sounds "modern." That cycle combines hints of Japanese color with a gentle Slavic emotional ambivalence. The other Martinů cycle, Songs on One Page (talk about brief), has more Czech folk flavor, until it's outdone by the Dvořák, which is unsettled, reposeful, and lively by turns. The Evening Songs close with simple dignity.

Occasional sliding harmonics signal Hans Krása's macabre Four Orchestral Songs as "modern," though the open textures, solo instruments, and one heartfelt chorale mitigate the angular, Expressionist lines and dissonant idiom.

Kožená is in representative form: a diffuse midrange opening into a brighter top, sometimes with added pressure, In these Czech texts, a natural, "spoken" immediacy is compromised by overly open vowels. She's sensitive and expressive in Dvořák's patches of quiet, sustained writing.

Rattle's favored soft-edged attacks work to temper the Czech strings' lean, tapered tone, providing a supportive, varied cushion for the soloist. The liquid woodwinds, standing out in sharp relief, are expressive. Yet the sonorities remain transparent, and the livelier numbers—including the Slavonic Dance–like one that begins the Dvořák—are vigorously marked. He holds the more adventurous Krása in good order.

The booklet's English texts give the general idea but aren't word-for-word translations.—Stephen Francis Vasta

Charles Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2 (Concord, Mass, 1840–1860), The St. Gaudens (Black March)
Donald Berman, piano
Avie AV 2678 (CD). 2024. Adam Abeshouse, prod. & eng.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½

Ives's best-known work, the Concord Sonata has been recorded dozens of times since John Kirkpatrick first waxed it in 1945. Berman, a student of Kirkpatrick's who specializes in modern American classical music, gives the sonata a fresh interpretation and adds material from manuscript marginalia left by Ives, who continually revised the composition. "The St. Gaudens," a similar but shorter piece that Ives later orchestrated as the first movement of his "Three Places in New England," is offered as a prelude to the sonata.

The familiar opening theme of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with a melodic addition Ives composed, is the sonata's leitmotif, fragmentarily pervading four movements titled after transcendental philosophers. The climax comes in the third movement, "The Alcotts," where the gradually developed Beethoven theme is pounded out in full glory, followed ironically by a contrasting high note. Additional melodies include a foreshadowing of the 1934 pop standard "Autumn in New York" in the opening "Emerson" movement and a lively march in the second movement, "Hawthorne." The music quotes Debussy and Stephen Foster, among others, but most of it is dissonant and improvisatory-sounding, typical of Ives, presaging free jazz including Muhal Richard Abrams (to whom this writer, then a record store clerk, once sold a copy of Aloys Kontarsky's 1962 recording).

Berman plays the piece in a more legato style than others do. Tender, almost romantic in the pensive passages, forceful in the agitated sections, he charges the complex music with vitality, rumbling bass notes, and pummeling cluster chords. The audio is as good as one might expect, with an impressive dynamic range. All told, a smashing performance.—Larry Birnbaum