Ferenc Fricsay Conducts
Margrit Weber, piano.
South Germany Rundfunkorchester/Ferenc Fricsay
SWR Classic 19070
Total Time:  72:55
Recording:  (****)/****
Performance: (*)***/****

Hungarian conductor Ferenc Fricsay (1914-1963) studied music with some of the most well-known composers of his native land: Bartok, von Dohnanyi, Kodaly, and Weiner.  His first appearance as a conductor was at the age of 15 when he substituted for his father who fell ill.  He would succeed him as conductor of the Young Musicians Orchestra only a few years later.  His early career almost came to an abrupt end first for his being accused of using Jewish musicians, and then be marked as a Jew.  Before the Gestapo was able to arrest him, he fled with his family to Budapest.  After the war, he embarked on a series of international engagements with performances in America with the Boston and San Francisco symphonies.  He was briefly the conductor of the Houston Symphony, a post he began in 1954 and shortly resigned from due to potential issues with US tax policy.  He would eventually serve as conductor of the Munich Court Opera.  Throughout his career he was a noted interpreter of Mozart, Beethoven, and modern Hungarian masters.  Fricsay was also one of the few conductors to eschew the use of a baton.  After a triumphant concert with the London Phiharmonic in December, 1961, he was forced to step down from the podium due to complications from stomach cancer, to which he succumbed a little over a year later.  Taken truly at the height of his powers, his recorded repertoire has always been a source of critical acclaim, especially the recordings he began making with Deutsche Grammaphon in the 1950s.  Some may also know that it is his performance of the Beethoven 9^th that so prominently figures in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

This new SWR Classic release is taken from the live concert with their radio orchestra on October 10, 1955.  It was part of a series of “light classics” concerts in Stuttgart, though this particular program seems to have a few more serious works than one might otherwise expect.  It is notable for its general program, including some pieces that have sort of fallen out of the repertoire.  Margrit Weber is featured in two pieces here by Richard Strauss and Honegger.  The Strauss she had recently recorded with Fricsay for Deutsche Grammaphon so will be of certain interest to those who own, or recall that recording.  She also recorded the Honegger with the Berlin RIAS orchestra.  Those performances are part of a Deutsche Grammaphon boxed set of Fricsay’s recordings.  The ones here having been made shortly after those studio sessions and are informed by those performances with perhaps a slight edge as a result of their being in concert.  The piano is pretty overwhelming at times in the sound picture.  There also seems to be some deterioration of the sources for the Strauss, especially.  That said, Weber’s performance is still quite excellent.  The Honegger fairs better overall, perhaps due to its clean, and crisp textures.  The articulation here is very tight throughout and the music has great forward motion and a sense of playfulness.

Of greater interest will be these performances of Ravel’s Bolero and Kodaly’s Galanta Dances.  The former as a more unusual choice, but one that balances a less familiar work by Honegger with the more popular piece.  The latter because of Fricsay’s more intimate and assured approach to Kodaly’s music which comes through here.  The album opens with a rarer performance of the overture to Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims to kick things off nicely.  The program then shifts to the two longer works, the aforementioned Strauss and Kodaly.  Fricsay evidently also liked the ballet music for Bernd Zimmermann’s Algoana and included the Brazilian portrait, “Caboclo” on this concert for a nice contrast.  It is a more acerbic exploration of extended harmony and folk rhythms (an almost languid Bernstein-esque piece).  The Ravel gives the soloists of the orchestra a chance to shine a bit more.  Here there are a few intonation issues along the way and this is where the drier acoustic is not helpful, but it does give a sense of the way Fricsay delineates and brings out lines in the orchestra, finding more connections perhaps to the Honegger performance on the album.

Apart from the 19^th Century Rossini overture, Fricsay’s is a decidedly modern “light music” program.  With the exception of the Ravel, most all of these pieces have been essentially sidelined to the periphery of concert programs.  But it also is a fascinating program of folkish pieces, post-romanticism, Les Six blends of modernism and jazz, and the last vestiges of Impressionism.  The performances are quite good, with a few minor ensemble issues here and there, but nothing distracting.  Sometimes the piano sound feels a bit wobbly in the Strauss.  The album is in mono so that often makes the percussion a bit less ambient.  Otherwise, those who admire Fricsay’s work will certainly want to explore this release.  Even for the casual listener this is a great program of music.

Direct Contact
Roberta Rust, piano.
Navona Records 6229
Total Time: 68:48
Recording:   ****/****
Performance: ****/****

Roberta Rust teaches at the Lynn Conservatory of Music in Boca Raton, Florida.  Her debut album with Navona collects music from eight contemporary composers with music spanning across seven decades.  There are also more personal connections that the pianist brings to each of these works either through direct contact with the composers, or as important works in her own development as a performer.  The music provides a snapshot of 20^th Century piano music and its many musical expressions across North and South America.  The program is filled with engaging musical discoveries in excellent performances that make a perfect case for all the music here.

The album opens with a somewhat uncharacteristic excerpt from George Rochberg’s Carnival Music (1971).  “Blues” has a very Gershwin-esque piano style that only slowly begins to unravel into more contemporary language in its final bars.  Two works by Michael Anderson (b. 1989) follow.  Thirteen Plus 4 (2005) builds on the sort of expanded jazz harmonies of the opening selection providing a nice transition into a piece that is more restrained, much more like a late night jazz reflection.  The same can be said of the first movement from the composer’s Sonata (2008) which has a rather compelling melodic idea with beautiful harmonic writing in this equally contemplative piece.   In a somewhat similar vein, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Lament (1999) was composed in response to Judith Arron’s death, a person whom the composer held in high esteem for her work in the redevelopment and rebirth of Carnegie Hall.  The music has this rather intense expressive style that seems to reach out in askance.  Chromatic shifts in the melody add this pained quality to the music set against Zwilich’s somewhat romantic musical gestures in what is a very intimately personal work.  There also seem to be some additional veiled musical references that are like passing memories.  The oldest selections on the album come from the composer’s husband, Philip Evans (b. 1928).  First is one of his first compositions, the Minuetto (1939), a more traditional piece of Neo-Classical influences, but a most gorgeous primary melody.  It is then followed by two selections from his Suite 1945 (“Sarabande” and “Aria”) which are more modernist in tone in a Bartok-ian way, though Evans’ music still has a rather engaging melodic content that blends traditional harmony within Bartok’s piano style.  Thomas McKinley’s Fantasy Pieces (2005) are two more intense and expressionistic works that have a tight construction in a couple of very brief pieces.  Three of John Sharpley’s Four Preludes (1998) conclude this album.  The first, “Reflection”, is an aptly-named restrained piece.  The other two are in the tradition of Ives-like quotation of American popular tunes and hymnody extrapolated into more modern sounds within the composer’s personal musical language.

In addition to the host of selections by American composers, Rust has included music from Cuba and Brazil.  Leo Brouwer’s Diez Bocetos (2007) was inspired by Cuban artists and in at least two of the pieces require the performer to improvise.  Rust has chosen three of the pieces: nos. 4, 5, and 7.  For the seventh, she incorporates a Bach theme in between the habanera framing sections in a moment that has a somewhat jazz-like sensibility.  Brouwer’s music always has a delightful combination of rhythmic excitement that can be heard in these selections which shift between mostly tonal harmony and forays into the slightly more dissonant.  The other music from South America is by the Brazilian composer Almeida Prado (1943-2010).  Rust gave the premiere of his 1986 work Halley.  The three-movement piece was written to the year the famous named comet appeared again near Earth.  Prado studied with Boulanger and Messiaen and his music reflects some of the latter’s aesthetic.  The first movement begins with an exploration of the lower nether regions of the piano.  The music is more atonal with intriguing clusters of sound out of which emerge different motivic threads.  It represents a more advanced tonal sound palette that is eased by the descriptive connections of the music.  There are moments where the music shimmers almost like an Impressionist piece before returning to its more angular lines.  Each movement is an exploration of motive and unique colors of the piano.  A host of grand gestures also make for a rather dramatic work that requires more virtuosic demands which Rust handles well.  This is especially true of the way the music shifts in tone from the more dissonant to the more sparkling aspects, from dark rumblings to final ethereal evaporation.

Rust’s performances here are beautifully captured by the sound of this recording.  The piano has the perfect presence and this further enhances her delicate performances of the lyrical music on this album.  This is an excellent collection of pieces all well worth hearing and further exploring for anyone interested in accessible contemporary piano music.