Alice Sara Ott CHOPIN Complete Waltzes

“I feel a deep attachment to Chopin’s Waltzes”, says Alice Sara Ott. “They reflect the whole arc of his composing life, and they also reflect his split personality – between Polish and French – and his lifelong search for identity. I feel split in a similar way, between Japanese and German. Only in music do I feel completely at home.”
Asked what she sees as the challenge of playing Chopin’s Waltzes, Alice Sara Ott replies that it is to find “the true smell, the true colour” of each one. “Chopin’s music is never heart-on-sleeve. He never parades his emotions: he always preserves his dignity. For me, it’s as though he lets one single tear roll down his cheek – but behind the mask there’s a deep sadness. He was outwardly charming, but in private he was melancholic. These pieces don’t so much conjure up pictures for me as recall experiences I have had in my life. When I am sad, I play op. 64 no. 2 in C sharp minor, and it consoles me. I play it when night is falling, with the lights off.” In this respect, she is carrying out Chopin’s instructions to the letter. As he told his own pupils: “When the eyes can see neither notes nor keys, when all disappears, only then does the hearing function with all its sensitivity.”
Alice Sara Ott’s commentary on the Waltzes is often illuminating. The op. 42 Waltz in A flat major is one she particularly loves: “The inner voice at the start must be a dark murmur to help the outer one shine more brightly, which paradoxically creates a kind of melancholy. I love the harmonies in the middle section, and also the dramatic shift in colour before the final reprise. I made a very quick connection with that one.” For her, making a connection is not always instantaneous – for example, she initially found the op. 18 Waltz resistant: “Maybe because the phrases are so short, and a throughline therefore so hard to find, whereas with the Waltz op. 34 no. 1 the phrases are long and graceful, and easy to slip into.” Op. 64 no. 1 in D flat major, familiarly known as the “Minute” Waltz, makes her laugh: “In Japan, it’s called the ‘Waltz of the Little Dog’, and that’s how it seems to me – chasing its tail. It’s all done with a smile and a wink.”
Chopin was never satisfied with the way his pupils played the opening of op. 64 no. 2 in C sharp minor, and even Alice Sara Ott found its first few bars a challenge: “It took me a while to find a way to connect the smooth first phrase with the lightly tossed-off second.” The following Waltz op. 64 no. 3 in A flat major is one of the rare moments in this cycle where Chopin gives the theme to the left hand half-way through, and its brilliant coda is often seen as an excuse for display. “I don’t take this one too fast”, she says. “It needs to retain its waltz quality – these are sa-lon pieces, and they must entertain in that style. Virtuosity would obscure the underlying melancholy and longing.” In her view, Alfred Cortot and Dinu Lipatti are the pianists who have come closest to that spirit.
Alice Sara Ott regards the restrained regret in the “Farewell” Waltz op. 69 no. 1 as being very much a young man’s utterance: “When you are young, saying goodbye to people is not so terrible – you feel you have plenty of time ahead. I tried playing this Waltz in many different ways, at first very slowly to feel the harmonies, before I found the best way for me. Understanding the deep structure of a piece is what I spend most of my practice time doing – understanding the different ways, at first very slowly to feel the harmonies, before I found the best way for me. Understanding the deep structure of a piece is what I spend most of my practice time doing – understanding the different touches required – and slow practice is essential for that.” And of the Waltz in A minor (KK IVb no. 11) that rounds off the collection, she says, “It’s simple, but with moments of deep sadness. With it I can find inner peace – and so can the audience. And that is my aim.”
Her other aim is absolute fidelity to Chopin’s intentions. Alice Sara Ott has chosen to play from the autograph manuscripts, regarding them as truer than some of the published versions are to the essentially sombre spirit of his music. If Chopin were to materialize in front of her, how would she react? “We know he had quite a small sound – he couldn’t play fortissimo, but he had many subtle shades of pianissimo. He was simply a poet. If he were here now, I wouldn’t ask any questions about interpretation. I would just ask him to play, to check that I had the smell of each piece exactly right.” (Michael Church)

Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849)
1) Waltz No.1 in E flat, Op.18 -"Grande valse brillante" [5:40]
2) Waltz No.2 in A flat, Op.34 No.1 - "Valse brillante" [5:21]
3) Waltz No.3 in A minor, Op.34 No.2 [5:59]
4) Waltz No.4 in F, Op.34 No.3 [2:16]
5) Waltz No.5 in A flat, Op.42 - "Grande valse" [4:00]
6) Waltz No.6 in D flat, Op.64 No.1 -"Minute" [1:54]
7) Waltz No.7 in C sharp minor, Op.64 No.2 [3:40]
8) Waltz No.8 in A flat, Op.64 No.3 [3:04]
9) Waltz No.9 in A flat, Op.69 No.1 -"Farewell" [3:16]
10) Waltz No.10 in B minor, Op.69 No.2 [3:29]
11) Waltz No.11 in G flat, Op.70 No.1 [1:43]
12) Waltz No.12 in F minor/A flat, Op.70 No.2 [1:46]
13) Waltz No.13 in D flat, Op.70 No.3 [2:37]
14) Waltz In A Flat Opus Posth. Kk4A No.13 [1:18]
15) Waltz In E Flat Opus Posth. Kk4b No.10 - Sostenuto [1:36]
16) Waltz In E Flat Opus Posth. Kk4A No.14 [2:33]
17) Waltz In E Opus Posth. Kk4A No.12 [2:14]
18) Waltz In E Minor Opus Posth. Kk4A No.15 [2:33]
19) Waltz In A Minor Opus Posth. Kk4B No.11 - Allegretto [2:00]

Alice Sara Ott

2010 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
1 CD DDD
477 8095 3 GH

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Maurizio Pollini CHOPIN Nocturnes

Maurizio Pollini's decades-long career has been so closely linked with the music of Chopin that it might seem an odd oversight that the pianist has neglected the Nocturnes until now. He did record a handful of these pieces in the 1960s, but this masterful new release of the complete Nocturnes -- arguably the composer's most popular works -- is a long-awaited and fitting companion to Pollini's albums of the Polonaises, Etudes, Preludes, Scherzos, and Ballades. All of this shelf space wouldn't add up to such an imposing legacy if Pollini's Chopin performances weren't so insightful and unique. Less sentimental than most pianists, he dispels the cloudy vagueness that can afflict this repertoire when a performer exaggerates its "romantic" qualities. Instead, Pollini emphasizes the latent drama Chopin infused into his small forms, often revealing the Nocturnes' affinity with the Ballades. If Arthur Rubinstein's 1965 version has long been the gold-standard recording, it's revealing just to compare the timings: Less inclined to linger, Pollini shaves almost a minute off each of the 19 pieces, clocking in at just over 90 minutes (against Rubinstein's 107). But Pollini's playing never feels rushed; he still takes notable liberties with tempo and allows the listener countless details to savor. (Scott Paulin)

Frédéric Chopin (1810 - 1849)
CD 1:
1) Nocturne No.1 in B flat minor, Op.9 No.1 [4:49]
2) Nocturne No.2 in E flat, Op.9 No.2 [4:03]
3) Nocturne No.3 in B, Op.9 No.3 [5:40]
4) Nocturne No.4 in F, Op.15 No.1 [3:58]
5) Nocturne No.5 in F sharp, Op.15 No.2 [3:11]
6) Nocturne No.6 in G minor, Op.15 No.3 [4:12]
7) Nocturne No.7 in C sharp minor, Op.27 No.1 [4:13]
8) Nocturne No.8 in D flat, Op.27 No.2 [4:55]
9) Nocturne No.9 in B, Op.32 No.1 [4:09]
10) Nocturne No.10 in A flat, Op.32 No.2 [4:38]

CD 2:
1) Nocturne No.11 in G minor, Op.37 No.1 [5:23]
2) Nocturne No.12 in G, Op.37 No.2 [5:55]
3) Nocturne No.13 in C minor, Op.48 No.1 [5:09]
4) Nocturne No.14 in F sharp minor, Op.48 No.2 [6:36]
5) Nocturne No.15 in F minor, Op.55 No.1 [4:20]
6) Nocturne No.16 in E flat, Op.55 No.2 [4:34]
7) Nocturne No.17 in B, Op.62 No.1 [5:59]
8) Nocturne No.18 in E, Op.62 No.2 [5:17]
9) Nocturne No.19 in E minor, Op.72 No.1 [3:35]

Maurizio Pollini

2005 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
2 Compact Discs
477 5718 4 GH2

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Ragna Schirmer J.S. BACH Goldberg - Variationen

The German pianist, Ragna Schirmer, studied from 1991 at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover in the class of Professor Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, and from 1993 with Professor Bernard Ringeissen in Paris. In 1995 she graduated with top marks, and in 1999 she completed her education with a solo concert exam. She attended numerous master-classes, among others with Professor Tatiana Nikolayeva and Professor Andrej Jasinski. She proved her prowess at competitions whilst still in her teens and was invited to take part in the major music festivals. She has been awarded a total of 15 first prizes, becoming the only person to win the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig twice. She reached the finals of the Busoni Competition at the age of 15 and attracted particular attention by winning special prizes at the UNISA Competition in Pretoria, South Africa.
Ragna Schirmer is regarded as one of the most promising artists of the young generation. Her repertoire is comprehensive, extending from J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations to the music of today. “It is difficult to think of anyone else with a comparable ability, a comparable personality. Ragna Schirmer has a lot to say.” Berlin Philharmonic Magazine. Her astounding technique enables Ragna Schirmer to impart a very individual sound to her interpretations, which benefit as much from the power of her attack as by her courage in leaving things unsaid.


JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685 - 1750)

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

CD 1:

1) Aria
2) Variatio 1. a 1 Clav.
3) Variatio 2. a 1 Clav.
4) Variatio 3. Canone all'Unisuono a 1 Clav.
5) Variatio 4. a 1 Clav.
6) Variatio 5. a 1 o vero 2 Clav.
7) Variatio 6. Canone alla Seconda. a 1 Clav.
8) Variatio 7. a 1 o vero 2 Clav.
9) Variatio 8. a 2 Clav.
10) Variatio 9. Canzone alla Terza. a 1 Clav.
11) Variatio 10. Fughetta. a 1 Clav.
12) Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 : Variatio 11. a Clav.
13) Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 : Variatio 12. Canone alla Quarta. a 1 Clav.
14) Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 : Variatio 13. a 2 Clav.
15) Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 : Variatio 14. a 2 Clav.
16) Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 : Variatio 15. Canone alla Quinta. a 1 Clav.

CD 2:
1) Variatio 16. Ouverture. a 1 Clav.
2) Variatio 17. a 2 Clav.
3) Variatio 18. Canone alla Sexta. a 1 Clav.
4) Variatio 19. a 1 Clav.
5) Variatio 20. a 2 Clav.
6) Variatio 21. Canone alla Settima. a 1 Clav.
7) Variatio 22. a 1 Clav.
8) Variatio 23. a 2 Clav.
9) Variatio 24. Canone all' Ottava. a 1 Clav.
10) Variatio 25. a 2 Clav.
11) Variatio 26. a 2 Clav.
12) Variatio 27. Canone alla Nona. a 2 Clav.
13) Variatio 28. a 2 Clav.
14) Variatio 29. a 1 o vero 2 Clav.
15) Variatio 30. Quodlibet. a 1 Clav.
16) Aria da capo

1999 Berlin Classics

2 Compact Discs

0017162BC

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BARTÓK: KLAVIERKONZERTE 1 + 2 Maurizio Pollini - Claudio Abbado

Want to know what the two smartest musicians in Italy think of Bartók's first two piano concertos? Try this disc. With Maurizio Pollini at the piano and Claudio Abbado on the podium, the Hungarian modernist's concertos have never sounded so brilliant. Recorded in transparent stereo for Deutsche Grammophon in 1977, Pollini and Abbado's Bartók with the Chicago Symphony is searingly translucent in orchestrations that favor the winds, brass, and percussion over the strings and piano writing that encourages shock and awe virtuosity. But at the core of Pollini and Abbado's wholly unified interpretations is their essential musicality, and no matter how intellectual the performances, they always dance in their opening movements, sing in their central movements, and get deep down in the groove in their closing movements. With the spectacular playing of the CSO, this disc belongs in every collection dedicated to musical modernism, and as a bonus, it includes Abbado and the London Symphony's 1983 digital recording of Bartók's early "Two Portraits for violin and orchestra" with sweet-toned, sure-footed soloist Shlomo Mintz. (James Leonard)

Two of the most distinguished Italian musicians of our day collaborate in performances of Bartók concertos which in their exuberance sweep away any idea that this music might be forbidding. With the Chicago orchestra in superb form it goes without saying that both these performances provide breathtaking examples of virtuosity, Vet what comes over above all in both works is a sense of spontaneity, with rhythms in fast movements freely and infectiously sprung and rallentandos drawn out rather more than severe Bartókians might allow. Tile result is that both concertos, while conveying enormous power—and there the forward and full recording quality helps— seem to have far more jollity in them than usual, the bluff Bartókian sense of humour far outweighing Bartókian brutality. As I said in my original review, Pollini and Abbado "give performances with all the colour, warmth and lack of inhibition that one associates with Italian music-making at its ripest". On the one hand the folk basis of Bartók's inspiration comes out the more compellingly and on the other the dance rhythms with their syncopations have the occasional overtone of jazz. This is involving rather than detached Bartók, yet the Chicago strings in the pianissimo opening passage of the slow movement of the Second Concerto have a refinement and purity to make the non-vibrato effect ethereally beautiful. The recording is comparably vivid with occasional spotlighting of individual instruments. (E.G., Gramophone, March 1980)

Béla Bartók (1881 - 1945)
Piano Concerto No.1, BB 91, Sz. 83
1) 1. Allegro moderato - Allegro [9:10]
2) 2. Andante [7:53]
3) 3. Allegro molto [6:22]
Piano Concerto No.2, BB 101, Sz. 95
4) 1. Allegro [9:40]
5) 2. Adagio - Più adagio - Presto [11:48]
6) 3. Allegro molto [6:07]
Maurizio Pollini

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Claudio Abbado

2 Portraits, (Op.5) Sz. 37
7) 1. "Ideal" [10:12]
Shlomo Mintz

London Symphony Orchestra

Claudio Abbado

8) One Grotesque - Presto [2:08]
London Symphony Orchestra

Claudio Abbado

2007 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

1 CD ADD / DDD

477 6353 6 GGP

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Kronos Quartet MORTON FELDMAN Piano and string Quartet

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Or so the old Zen conundrum goes. Morton Feldman's music brings such riddles to mind, though it suggests the sound of the uninhabited forest rather than that of the falling tree. Unperturbedly quiet and comprised of only the barest of musical ideas, his pieces seem to have no beginning, no middle, and no end. A lifelong New Yorker, Feldman became part of John Cage's avant-garde circle. He followed his own lonely path, however, composing music that consistently avoided any dogma. Neglected by the musical establishment, it was only after his death in 1987 that Feldman's work attracted many advocates. Now he's something of a cult figure. Pianist Aki Takahashi and the new music gurus of the Kronos Quartet were among the few who had been followers from early on. In fact, the Piano and String Quartet (1985) was written expressly for them. This is Feldman at his purest and best: an ebb and flow of notes repeated with subtle variations creating a sense of timelessness where combinations of tones exist only for their beauty. It's like an 80-minute long exhalation. Play it at low volume in a dimly lighted room and let the sounds seep into your being. Om. (Andrew Farach-Colton)

Morton Feldman (1926 - 1987)

1) Piano and String Quartet [79:33]

Kronos Quartet:

David Harrington, violin

John Sherba, violin

Hank Dutt, viola

Joan Jeanrenaud, cello

with Aki Takahashi, piano

1993 Elektra Nonesuch

1 CD DDD

7559 79320-2

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Martha Argerich JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

One of the hardiest musical myths to survive the test of time is the notion that Bach's music languished in obscurity from his death in 1750 until Mendelssohn's historic performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. Certainly pianists had never forgotten him (though it must be admitted that he was a comparatively late discovery for no less a master than Mozart, who then went on to compose his own preludes to a number of Bach's fugues). For Chopin, Mendelssohn and Liszt, Bach was a lifelong figure of adoration, and his influence on Chopin (who knew and played the entire Well-tempered Clavier from memory) is evident in the rich polyphony which characterizes so much of his music. That such a great interpreter of Chopin as Martha Argerich should also excel in the music of Bach is therefore no cause for surprise.
What may surprise those coming for the first time to this Bach recital - originally released in 1980 - is the way she plays it. She is most famous, after all, as a virtuoso in the great Romantic tradition. Far from being a "romantic" Bach player, however, like Nikolayeva, Barenboim, Cortot, Samuel Feinberg or Pablo Casals (who also knew all of The Well-Tempered Clavier from memory), Argerich is a Bachian stylist to the manner born - and a stranger to fashion. In its impeccable textural clarity, its almost total avoidance of the sustaining pedal, in its irresistible rhythmic drive and infectiously buoyant phrasing, her Bach playing has more in common with that of Glenn Gould, though with none of its attendant eccentricities. At the same time, it has a simplicity reminiscent of Richter or Horszowski at their most searching and profound. Rubato is kept to a minimum, and though the dynamic range is wide, specifically pianistic colouring is generally abjured in favour of a lean, layered texture which illuminates Bach's matchless polyphony while never making a point of it.
Nor has Argerich any trace of the narcissist; indeed some listeners may find her Bach almost ascetic in its stringent self-discipline. Like Gould, she is capable of the most ravishing sonorities, but again like Gould, she will often choose not to deploy them. There are long stretches of the A minor English Suite, for instance, when her tone is deliberately hard and percussive (without ever quite reaching stridency), the driving force being primarily the alliance of phrasing and articulation, aided by a degree and intensity of volume which may well strike the purist as excessive. Certainly she is never guilty of harpsichord impersonation. If her highly idiomatic piano-playing here has any non-pianistic models, they would seem rather to be the clavichord, with its intimacy and unsurpassed suppleness of inflection, and the organ, at which Bach was often at his mightiest. Yet there is never even a hint of what might be called hyphenated Bach (as in Bach-Liszt, Bach-Busoni, Bach-Tausig, Bach-Grainger etc. - the Bach presented to the 19th-century and the first quarter or so of the 20th). As ever, she takes her cues entirely from the music at hand - music whose lack of expressive markings is all but total.
Among Argerich's greatest and most mysterious gifts is her uncanny ability to integrate highly disparate material so that it coheres, as if by magic, into a single artistic entity. Every bit as remarkable as the variety of her approach to any given theme or section is the subtlety and effectiveness of the transitions between them. This is perhaps especially evident here in her playing of the C minor Toccata. Yet variety for its own sake is never her prime goal. She never plays for "effect". In the best and most enlightened sense, one feels - certainly in her Bach-playing - that the audience is the least of her concerns.
When all is said and done, however, the term "Argerich's Bach" (or "Argerich's anything else", for that matter) is at best a journalistic generalization, since her playing of every work - indeed of every theme or section within a work - is conceived so intensely from within, and thus resists categorization. She is never academic or self-consciously "intellectual", though her playing is infused with a formidable, sometimes even intimidating intelligence. While she possesses a tonal palette of extraordinary range and subtlety, she never indulges in colours or rhythmic silhouettes for their own sake. In her Bach, as in her Chopin, the variety and application of her multi-faceted rhythmic vocabulary, like the depth of her polyphonic awareness, ensure a continually changing landscape. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more evident in the present recital than in the near-obsessive C minor Toccata, whose potential for monotony has felled many an otherwise excellent performer.
This is Bach playing of luminous concentration, embracing a universe of experience comparable with Beethoven but seldom even hinted at by other performers. And this immensity of vision derives entirely from the music, and is never in any degree imposed upon it. Like so much of what Argerich does, her playing here, for ears and minds not imprisoned by preconception, is as revelatory as it is unmannered. To do so much without even a hint of didacticism or idiosyncrasy is no mean feat. (Jeremy Siepmann)

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)
1 Toccata in C minor, BWV 911 [11:00]
Partita No.2 in C minor, BWV 826
2 1. Sinfonia (Grave adagio - Andante) [4:20]
3 2. Allemande [4:18]
4 3. Courante [2:08]
5 4. Sarabande [3:54]
6 5. Rondeaux [1:17]
7 6. Capriccio [3:03]
English Suite No.2 in A minor, BWV 807
8 1. Prelude [4:27]
9 2. Allemande [2:56]
10 3. Courante [1:32]
11 4. Sarabande [4:08]
12 5. Bourrée I & II [3:55]
13 6. Gigue [3:20]

Martha Argerich


2000 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg
1 CD ADD
463 6042 2 GOR The Originals


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Takemitsu IN AN AUTUMN GARDEN

"I'd like to develop in two directions at once," Toru Takemitsu once explained; "as a Japanese I want to develop in terms of tradition and as a Westerner in terms of innovation. Deep down inside me I'd like to preserve two musical genres, each in its own legitimate form. But, in my own view, there are so many different compositional processes that setting out from these fundamentally irreconcilable elements is only the first step. I don't want to lose their fruitful opposition; on the contrary, I'd like these two blocks to compete with each other. In this way I can prevent myself from becoming cut off from tradition and, at the same time, forge ahead and look to the future with each new work. I'd like to produce sounds that are as intense as silence."
This mediation between East and West and between Far Eastern and Western views on art is entirely typical of the work of Toru Takemitsu. It was initially very difficult for him to find an internationally acceptable, modern language that did not involve abandoning the Japanese tradition and, with it, his musical roots, and he first had to distance himself, physically and aesthetically, from his native Japan before he realized the importance of Japanese culture for his own work. Only when he had left Japan and was living in Europe did he discover his own individual idiom in the form of a language that combined Far Eastern thinking with the achievements of the Western avant-garde.
Toru Takemitsu was born in Tokyo in 1930 and died there in 1996. He is generally regarded as one of the leading Japanese composers of the 20th century. Although he generally wrote for Western instruments and was considered a representative of the avant-garde movement in music, his aesthetic outlook was essentially Japanese. The phenomenon of breathing forms the inspiration behind his music and determines its textures. As a result, there are no rapid tempos in his otherwise multifaceted oeuvre, and his works are distinguished less by their developing structures than by static, associative processes.
This is especially true of the group of pieces in which Takemitsu used Japanese instruments. Here one thinks above all of November Steps (1967), in which he contrasted the traditional biwa and shakuhachi with a classical orchestra. In the tenth of the work's eleven sections there is an extended cadenza for both solo instruments. Both soloists are given certain figures to play, but these can be played in any order. Here Takemitsu was not aiming to fuse Eastern and Western musical practices within a single work. Rather, he juxtaposed the various aesthetic programmes that determined his thinking at this particular time.
But by the time that he wrote Autumn six years later, he was more concerned to effect a rapprochement between two such different worlds. By investing tone colour with a central importance, he aimed to achieve a timbral and stylistic balance between soloists and orchestra (the work is scored for the same resources as November Steps) and also between East and West. A number of Takemitsu's chamber works are likewise scored for traditional Japanese instruments. Eclipse (1966) was written for biwa and shakuhachi, Voyage (1973) for three biwas. The Japanese idiom emerges far more clearly from these works than from Takemitsu's contemporary pieces for traditional Western instruments, even though he continued to use the most advanced technical and stylistic devices here. Sound was conceived as a living force in a permanent state of change and yet - like breathing - it does not develop in the direction of a fixed goal, but prefers instead to adopt a cyclical approach to form.
Within the framework of Takemitsu's oeuvre, In an Autumn Garden (1973) occupies a special place. An exceptional piece by any standards, it was written for a traditional gagaku orchestra, with the result that the aural impression that it creates is correspondingly "authentic". Within its six sections, the composer unfolds a panorama in sound, drawing in part on the long tradition of Japanese court music, with its profoundly ritualistic character, while also revealing elements that are typical of the composer's own musical thinking: the subtle approach to tone colours that flow into each other, the tender and at the same time expressive harmonic writing and a good sense of large-scale dramatic structures. Nowhere did Takemitsu come closer to traditional Japanese music than in this particular piece.
Takemitsu once summed up his compositional creed as follows: "What I don't want to do is use my control to set sounds moving in the direction of a particular goal. Rather, I'd like to release them, if possible without controlling them. It would be enough to collect the sounds around me and then gently set them in motion. To move sounds around, as though you were driving a car, is the worst thing that you can do with them." (Martin Demmler)

Toru Takemitsu (1930 - 1996)
1) In an Autumn Garden for Gagaku orchestra [16:02]
Music Department
Imperial Household

2) Voyage for three Biwas [15:30]
Kinshi Tsuruta

3) Excerpt from "Autumn" [14:22]
4) 10th Step (Variation) from "November Steps" [9:23]
5) Eclipse for Shakuhachi and Biwa [16:07]
Kinshi Tsuruta
Katsuya Yokoyama

2002 Deutsche Grammophon 20/21 echo Series
1 CD ADD
471 5902 5 GH

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boulez ...explosante - fixe...

Pierre Boulez's music belongs in the energetic state of a trapped bang, where ideas - mere musical instants - can have implications that run on through great lengths of composed time, through many decades in their composer's career, and indeed through our own lives after we have heard them. That, after all, is the nature of classics, and Boulez has never been in any doubt about his responsibilities in that direction.
Along the line of his own output, Notations leads on into the first Improvisation sur Mallarmé, where two of the set (nos. 5 and 9) are adapted to make interludes, and then into Notations for large orchestra, a sequence of extended transcriptions begun in the late seventies. The original 1945 miniatures for piano, presented here, are seeds - of these works, and even of all Boulez, since Notations is the earliest composition he has published, and since, too, it provides so many snapshots of his emergent musical personality: resonant sonorities and abrupt gestures, an alternation between suppleness and intense stampede, and, not least, a dialectic between fixity (stubbornly repeated notes, the returning intervals of a twelve-note series rotated from piece to piece, ostinatos) and explosiveness.
To turn now to the second book of Structures (1956-61) is to turn from seeds to luxuriant jungle. In the interim, the first book of Structures (1951-2) had been started as a severe exercise in following up the twelve-note principles of Notations, but during the course of writing it Boulez had discovered how the two-piano medium offered the opportunity to follow not one ruthlessly determined time-track but two fluid ones. The series now is in the background: scintillating arpeggios, held resonances and rapid toccatas present its resultant harmonies, often echoing between the keyboards. The harmonies are static; what propels the music is the energy of executing them (Mallarmé, in that first Improvisation, had spoken of a swan held flightless in a frozen lake) and the repercussions between the two players.
In the first chapter the musicians proceed more or less together, through tussles, slides and greetings to land unanimously, twice, on the same note: B flat - the note last heard topping the cluster at the end of Notations. The second chapter opens with filigree collapsed into chords, which resonate in the bass through the use of the sostenuto pedal to release strings. But this sparse music is colonized by returning arpeggiations, including two immense cadenzas on the first piano: one at the top of the keyboard, the other at the bottom. As the composer put it in a note for the first performance, which he gave with Yvonne Loriod at Donaueschingen in 1961, the second piano “plays consistently similar - although varied - textures in a middle register; the other, which is added, is entrusted with a series of 'moments'; it presents extremely differing textures and oscillates between registers which lie far apart from one another." The comparative freedom of these inserts is enhanced by their internal flexibility in matters of tempo, dynamic and ordering, all of which may be left to the player's momentary discretion, so that while “one piano stays quiet, even indifferent, the other displays a definite, an excited character."
The dialogue between rule and imagination, basic to Boulez's thinking, found a new model some ten years later in ...explosante-fixe..., which was published as a composition kit, proposing performance by instruments moving through a cycle of six “Transitoires" (numbered II to VII) to arrive at an “Originel", all notated in sketch form. The “Transitoires" here are derivatives; the "Originel" presents the elemental material, focused on the note E flat (in German “Es", and so the initial of Stravinsky, to whose memory the piece was inscribed). That note was the hub of concentric ripples: first the “Originel", expanding the note to a melodic formula; then the “Transitoires", making a set of variations on the formula; and finally the complete work, which would be a grand elaboration of the given components.
During the early seventies Boulez took this project along divergent paths: towards fixity in Rituel for orchestra, towards flexibility in a sequence of essays for instruments and electronics under the title ...explosante-fixe.... Some of those essays bore permanent fruit: out of a flute part came Mémoriale for flute and octet (1985) and out of a violin part the solo Anthèmes (1991). But the central enterprise waited until 1991-3, when the composer produced the present version for facilities at IRCAM: a solo flute and two accompanying flutes, all subject to computer transformation, and an unmodulated chamber orchestra similar to the one he had used in Répons against six electronic percussion soloists.
The concentricity of the ...explosante-fixe... material (note - formula - derivatives - work) is the condition too of the scoring, where the principal flute is caught as if in a hall of mirrors, its line imitated in what the other flutes play, and then in the contributions of the larger ensemble, among which a trio of violins has a special prominence in “Transitoire V". The play of reflections creates a labyrinth, and the soloist, like Ariadne, leads the way out, following a thread of derivatives that will lead to an exit point on the focal note. In “Transitoire VII" this is A flat, in “Transitoire V" A natural (intensively repeated as the sections reaches its end). In “Originel" - a rescoring of Mémoriale - labyrinthine recircuiting is replaced by a slow wave between activity and cadence, each cadence falling on to the inevitable E flat. But each movement's journey - a journey of journeys, where every melodic wander is at once an object of reflection and a step in the larger traverse - is a voyage with its own justification, as well as being part of the greater trek that is the entire work: the three movements we hear, linked by purely electronic “Interstitiels", and the notional other five, undeveloped from the original sketch. Electronic transformation not only alters the flute tone but magnifies it, so that these movements, especially the “Transitoires", sound as if from and through a wall of flute. It is as if Structures II were beginning to congeal: the tempo, though still fluid, prefers a walking pace (pointing up the journeying); speed and instrumentation bring forward the harmonic sophistication that, too, Notations had announced. (Paul Griffiths)

Pierre Boulez (1925 - )
Notations
1) 1. Fantasque - Modéré [1:00]
2) 2. Très vif [0:22]
3) 3. Assez lent [0:56]
4) 4. Rythmique [0:31]
5) 5. Doux et improvisé [0:51]
6) 6. Rapide [0:26]
7) 7. Hiératique [1:25]
8) 8. Modéré jusqu'à très vif [0:45]
9) 9. Lointain - Calme [2:21]
10) 10. Mécanique er très sec [0:20]
11) 11. Scintillant [0:38]
12) 12. Lent - Puissant et âpre [1:08]
Pierre-Laurent Aimard

Structures pour deux pianos - Livre II
13) Chapitre I [9:00]
14) Chapitre II (Pièces 1-2, Encarts 1-4, Textes 1-6) [13:05]
Pierre-Laurent Aimard
Florent Boffard

15) ... explosante-fixe ... [36:43]
Ensemble Intercontemporain
Pierre Boulez
Sophie Cherrier
Emmanuelle Ophele
Pierre André Valade

2005 Deutsche Grammphon 20/21 echo Series
1 CD DDD
477 5385 8 GH

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Carolin Widmann / Simon Lepper PHANTASY OF SPRING

While she made her much-lauded ECM debut with a thought-provoking account of Schumann’s violin sonatas last year, German violinist Carolin Widmann’s reputation as a pioneering interpreter of contemporary music is spreading continiously. “The new record brings me back to my roots”, says Widmann. Teaming up with Simon Lepper, one of Britain’s foremost lied accompanists and a particularly fine chamber musician, she now presents a most varied spectrum of 20th century duo literature. “For more than a year we worked on the repertoire selection. We were looking for really strong pieces, both emotionally and with regard to compositional complexity.” By exploring the acoustic and expressive conflicts between the stringed instrument and the well-tempered keyboard, all four masters are preoccupied with unconventional duo constellations. Schoenberg’s late “Phantasy” of 1949 was conceived for solo violin with the highly complex “accompaniment” being added only afterwards, whereas Zimmermann’s vigorous sonata (1950) was later elaobrated into a fully-fledged sonata (which Thomas Zehetmair plays on a Zimmermann disc released last autumn on ECM). Seperated, yet integral monologues mark the two experimental works from the mid-seventies in which dissimilar pacings, gestural and harmonic differences are examined in most fascinating ways. Uncomprominsing and fiery renderings make for adventurous listening experiences throughout.

Morton Feldman (1926 -1987)
1) Spring of Chosroes [14:05]
Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918 - 1970)
Sonate für Violine und Klavier
2) I Sonata [4:36]
3) II Fantasia [5:39]
4) III Rondo [4:32]
Arnold Schönberg (1874 - 1951)
5) Phantasy for violin with piano accompaniment, op 47 [10:01]
Iannis Xenakis (1922 - 2001)
6) Dikhthas [12:50]

Carolin Widmann, violin
Simon Lepper, piano

2009 ECM
1 CD DDD
ECM New Series 4763310

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