Music and Recording Reviews

Beethoven: Triple Concerto
Nicola Benedetti, violin; Benjamin Grosvenor, piano; Sheku Kanneh-Mason, cello; Gerald Finley, bass-baritone; Philharmonia Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, cond.
Decca 4854624 (reviewed as 24/96 WAV). 2024. Jonathan Allen, prod., Philip Siney, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

The tendency to dismiss the Triple Concerto for Violin, Cello & Piano in C, Op.56, as second-rate Beethoven may stem from the seriousness with which so many artists approach the work. Many perform it—especially the famous second movement, Largo—with a profundity bordering on stolidity. In most cases (including a few period-instrument recordings), soloists and conductors fail to recognize that Beethoven was probably having a ball as he reworked the concerto's simple earworm of a theme into a series of endless variations that bring to mind some Schubert composed while Beethoven was still alive.

Benedetti, Grosvenor, Kanneh-Mason, and Rouvali clear away cobwebs. Their smiles extend beyond the album cover; you can hear their joy in almost every phrase of the first and third movements. With their light, fleet playing beautifully balanced by the weight and depth that the Philharmonia Orchestra brings to this performance in Henry Wood Hall, this recording makes a convincing case for critical reassessment.

Many ensembles view the Largo as an opportunity to show how deep they can go. Rostropovich, in his famous recording with Oistrakh and Richter, takes 5:35; Kanneh-Mason, whose lovely lightness in some passages harkens back to the sound of gut-stringed cellos, takes just 4:52. You may not weep, but are we sure that tears are what Beethoven was after?

Filling out the program are Beethoven's arrangements of eight Scottish, Welsh, and Irish songs, mellifluously sung by bass-baritone Finley with nary a hint of affectation (or brogue), and a take on the Kreislers' arrangement of "Londonderry Air" that confirms, once again, that no one can play it like Fritz.—Jason Victor Serinus

David Lang: Composition as Explanation
Cedille Records CDR9000 230 (auditioned as 24/96 WAV). 2024. Matthew Duvall, Lisa Kaplan, Emily Lazar, Bill Maylone, prod.; Maylone, eng.
Performance *****
Sonics ****½

Wacky as the project may seem, this marvelous world premiere recording of David Lang's Composition as Explanation sets, virtually word for word, the many, many words in Gertrude Stein's 1926 lecture "Composition as Explanation."

Lang, upon receiving a commission from Eighth Blackbird for their upcoming performance at the centennial of the Arts Club of Chicago, discovered that Stein addressed the club in 1934, after she became a famous writer. Her lecture took place before her fame as a writer approached her fame as a collector of modern art, artists, and intellectuals. Stein's lecture may have been designed to explain her writing style, but it likely drove many audience members into fits of ecstasy, disorientation, or laughter. Most likely all three, simultaneously.

We cannot see Eighth Blackbird as its members stride across the stage, declaim lines with musical authority, write and type on amplified surfaces, and punctuate declarations that defy punctuation with musical commentary whose form and coherence resembles author Stein's. But we can feel the six musicians strongly. Each member of "8BB" has perfected a different verbal persona whose strong contrasts are as delectable as their mixture of flute, piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and percussion (glockenspiel, marimba, vibraphone, various drums, a tuned tom tom, and a kickdrum). Shadings, propulsions, and off-kilter emphases are a delightful hoot. There are a lot of hoots. Not that Blackbirds hoot—or do they? After listening to an hour of Gertrude Stein, who can be sure of anything?

If you enjoy witnessing genius explore all the avenues at its disposal, start by catching the instrumentation at the end of "and now to begin as if to begin." Unfasten your seatbelt and prepare to tumble.—Jason Victor Serinus

Yunchan Lim: Chopin Études
Yunchan Lim (piano)
Decca 4870122 (CD, WAV download). 2024. John Fraser, prod.; Philip Siney, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

Given the overwhelmingly favorable scuttlebutt about the young Van Cliburn winner Yunchan Lim, I had to hear what the fuss was about. Well, he's special indeed. You expect the arpeggios of the first piece to be clean and fast, but you don't always hear the chord changes so clearly. Immediately thereafter, the delicate "Chromatique" doesn't sacrifice tonal weight.

And so it goes. Left-hand runs, in the "Torrent" and the "Revolutionary," are every bit as deft and dazzling as the right-hand runs. A joyous, unfettered rippling dominates the "Sunshine Étude." The "Black Key" étude, beneath all the virtuosity, is wonderfully playful, though Mr. Lim unceremoniously bangs the downbeat of the recap. (The same infelicity happens twice in the "Cello" piece of Op.25.) The "Double Thirds" of the G-sharp minor étude shimmer. He doesn't just make all the coruscating figurations sound easy; he sounds like he's having a grand old time.

Mr. Lim takes the trouble to convey the music's harmonic and dramatic elements. He brings out and consciously shapes those left-hand harmonic frameworks that support the right's cascading torrents. The F minor of Op.10 is a bubbling cauldron, as is the "Octave" of Op.25. In the latter set, "The Horseman" briskly gallops; the "Paganini" has a Hungarian-dance feel; and the "Wrong Note" étude trips wittily.

The faults are those of youth: the occasional moment of confused metrical scansion; some tentative recap "setups"; a lack of tonal depth in the topmost register. Mr. Lim projects the "Aeolian Harp" as an impressive volley, but the interior counterpoint gets swallowed up in the general cascade. The phrases winding down the lyrical "Tristesse" are all stuck in a single color.

But Mr. Lim is young. He has plenty of time to transcend such flaws. Meanwhile, this is first-class playing.—Stephen Francis Vasta

Urlicht: Songs of Death and Resurrection
Samuel Hasselhorn, baritone; Poznan Philharmonic, Łukasz Borowicz
Harmonia Mundi HMM 902384 (CD). 2024. Philipp Nedel, prod.; Matthias Erb, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****

As 19th century German composers expanded the size and scope of the Lied, the dividing line between this form and opera grew nebulous. This program illustrates the point, mixing familiar symphonic Lieder with operatic arias and scenes, in idioms from late-Romantic to atonal.

Hasselhorn's clean, resonant baritone mostly makes a good showing. Especially where the music stays in the midrange, as in Urlicht, he can diminish and swell within a well-bound legato. And while he allows himself some rhetorical emphasis—hear the final phrases of his stirring Revelge—he never lapses into the gruff parlando of more famous practitioners. The top turns tremulous under pressure, however, and he fudges the upward reaches; single notes flip into falsetto. Hasselhorn turns easily through a supported head voice in Zemlinsky's Der alte Garten. Such finesse would have been useful elsewhere.

Of the less familiar songs, Walter Braunfels's Auf ein Soldatengrab is a well-managed, surging piece of proto-Strauss; in Pfitzner's Herr Oluf, a sex-changed orchestral Erlkönig in which the Erlking's daughter spirits off a bridegroom-to-be, Hasselhorn's final whispered "tot" is hammy, as is the same word closing the Wozzeck duet.

Borowicz's polished orchestra plays stylishly. The Revelge fanfares are brilliant and alert, and the interlude winds down precisely. Pfitzner's and Braunfels's busy textures are well balanced; Humperdinck's Königskinder finale expands handsomely; the Berg is expertly turned.

Hasselhorn is overmiked at the start of Pierrot's Aria, and I'd have liked a drier focus on the reeds in Um Mitternacht; otherwise, the sound is fine. The translators fall into a standard trap, rendering Mondschein as "moonshine."—Stephen Francis Vasta