Penderecki/Szymanowski/Panufnik
Atma Quartet
Accord 252
Total Time:  46:32
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

For their debut album release, the recently-formed Atma String Quartet has chosen three works from their homeland.  The Polish quartet is tackling three works by some of Poland’s greatest 20^th Century composers.  Each work presents a unique musical approach and the sort of highly personal language that creates an intimacy always found in a composer’s chamber music.  The pieces here span almost a century of musical history, though two are more recent pieces.

The album begins with the second quartet of Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937).  Perhaps the second great Polish composer of note after Chopin.  His music slowly began to gain more attention beyond his homeland as the 20^th Century came to a close.  The 1927 quartet followed on the heels of his impressive Stabat Mater setting and the more familiar Mazurkas, Op. 50.  The work was submitted to a competition organized by the Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia.  Szymanowski’s work would lose out to Bartok and Casella.  It would be several years before the quartet would be published but its 1929 Warsaw premiere was evidently impressive.  The piece is tightly constructed and cast in three movements.  The first is somewhat like a sonata-allegro structure with two thematic ideas and a recapitulation of sorts.  The lyrical first idea has a rather haunting quality to it.  Szymanowski’s aesthetic blends a modernist harmonic sensibility with an almost impressionistic exploration of color.  It is in this latter quality where some of his more beautiful, personal writing appear.  The central movement is a colorful scherzo which opens with a burst of dissonance and pizzicato in a movement that also seems to find its rhythms in folk music. In the finale movement, we move into emotional depths with an intense “Lento” that culminates in a fugato.  The music becomes more and more emotionally intense as it progresses in an excellent dramatic conclusion.  The Atma Quartet manages to capture Szymanowski’s lyrical writing and dramatic intent perfectly shifting to bring out the bursts of intense emotional energy that occur in the work.  It makes for an impressive start to the release.

At the center of the release is one of the last works of Andrzej Panufnik (1914-1991).  His String Quartet No. 3 (1990) bears the subtitle “Paper Cuts” and is drawn from a folk art of Poland where abstract designs are created with paper.  The piece is cast in five brief movements (the whole work barely times out at ten minutes).  Each movement focuses on a specific technique or performance requirement.  The opening slow movement is based on a rhythmic canon structured on the harmonics of the note “G”.  The focus here is on control of dynamics and challenges the performers to not stress any given note.  Lyrical writing is set against rhythmical challenges in movement two.  A playful scherzando follows that explores pizzicato and dynamic “terraces”.  Speed and ensemble become the focus of the fourth movement marked “prestissimo possibile”.  The final movement, in arch form, explores the lower registers with swells of dynamics from pianissimo to fortissimo.  The result here is an equally abstract musical essay of intense writing that falls in that atonal modern realm, though the result is not perhaps as cerebral as it might sound in this often tight-knit set of musical explorations.

Finally, the group presents Krzystof Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 3 (2008).  The subtitle, Leaves of an Unwritten Diary, helps the listener enter into this rather episodic work that feels like the composer pulling together random thoughts and remembrances that the quartet is paging through.  There is this sense of discovery and memory being placed hand-in-hand here.  In some respects, this is the most traditional sounding of Penderecki’s work.

The Atma Quartet tackles each of these pieces with an extremely-commanding attention to the sort of detail required.  They manage to also set apart each work in a way that helps it stand out as an unique musical voice.  This is not just a series of clinical musical experiments.  The Panufnik could certainly come across that way but does not here.  The Penderecki is a work that stretches the group well with the sort of attention to rhythmic detail, already well displayed in the previous works, coupled with a perfect intonation, especially in the extreme registers.  The tightness of the ensemble also is a mark of great things to come from this group in this very impressive debut of important works in the repertoire.

Strauss: Concertante Works
Julie Price, bassoon; Tasmin Little, violin. Michael McHale, piano.
BBC Symphony Orchestra/Michael Collins, clarinet
Chandos 20034
Total Time:  76:53
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

For fans of Richard Strauss’ music, this new Chandos release will fill in a host of gaps of marginalia in the composer’s vast output.  The album pulls together four fairly rare works that will be unfamiliar to most listeners, apart from the Burleske for piano and orchestra which opens the album.  The other real draw here will be one of these last performances by violinist Tasmin Little of the violin concerto as the virtuoso plans to retire from performing.  All but one of these pieces comes from early in Strauss’ output.

Strauss’ Burleske (1885-86) is in the grand Romantic tradition and is like a mini-concerto of sorts.  Michael McHale tackles this piece well with gestures that sometimes feel more Rachmaninov-like in the opening bars.  The performance is overall quite good making for a strong opening to the album that can hold its own against others in the catalog.

The other three pieces though are going to be the more intriguing for Strauss fans.  The quite intimate Duett-Concertino, TRV 293 (1947) is a charming piece.  The clarinet and bassoon take on character-like dialogue with rather beautiful writing for both.  While there is no program, Strauss had a mild suggestion of a fairy (the clarinet) and a bear (the bassoon) that might have only been the germ of what would evolve into this little work.  Written toward the end of his life, the piece has a very conservative tonal palette.  The gestures are still quite like his other mature works, but they have been tamped down in a piece that spins along.  To see just how “old-fashioned” the piece is one need listen no further than the beautiful clarinet Romanze, TRV 80 (1879) which has a rather Mozartean quality.  It is from his earliest days of composition when he was still not quite writing music enraptured by Wagnerian harmony.

The more substantial Violin Concerto in d, TRV 110 (1881-82) was composed for his violin teacher, Benno Walter.  Walter would perform this in a piano reduction form to some appreciation and then in 1890 again in its orchestral version.  This too is a fairly convention work in the tradition of Brahms.  A traditional opening movement features some beautifully lyrical writing and a little rhythmic interest along the way.  The orchestral writing stays fairly traditional but is already quite competent.  There is a brief slow movement and a rondo finale.  For those who know the Strauss of the tone poems and grandiose symphonic chromaticism, this will seem almost anachronistic.  Fortunately, it has Tasmin Little to advocate for the piece giving it as fine a performance as one would hope.

This collection of conservative Romanticism from a composer known more for his expansive chromaticism and orchestral color will be a place to hear some of the ways this later style evolved.  For those who dislike that distinct Strauss style, this will be some pleasant and engaging Late-Romantic music that is firmly in line with other music of the 1870s and 1880s.

The performances here are all quite excellent.  Michael Collins finds gorgeous tone for the clarinet pieces where he is the soloist.  He also is on the podium to provide a larger continuity to the approach in all these works.  The BBC orchestra is in top form as well and captured in an excellent sonic picture with the violin being imaged a bit forward.