Christmas Music - Western and Eastern (Byzantine) Carols

Merry Christmas to all the friends of this blog! My very best wishes to you all! 

I was listening to BBC Radio 3 the other day, and I came across this very beautiful rendering of the famous Christmas song, "Silent Night". All I managed to hear was that the transcription was made by David Hill. So, if someone could give me more details about this transcription, I'd be most grateful!

I now remember another lovely Christmas carol which I often used to put on when I was a radio producer. It's called "Star Carol", and is composed by John Rutter. A melodious song, full of joy, light and... lightness!

What else?... Oh, let me not forget our own, Greek traditional christmas carols which my children sang on Xmas day, in our parish church, after the Christmas Liturgy. The melody is typically eastern -  actually this particular song that I have in mind has byzantine roots, so one can easily discern the typical byzantine modes. Here is a decent recording I found on the internet:

My best wishes for Merry Christmas!!!!!

Marc Andre Hamelin's cadenza on Liszt's 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody

This is such a fascinatingly original cadenza! I leave aside the technical bravura (which is, however, extraordinary), I'd like to concentrate on the music: Hamelin achieved to give new breathe to this work which (alas!) has suffered so many mediocre performances. 

His writting is brilliant, his ideas clear and well defined, his melodic choices are utterly original and daring. See how  the main themes of the Rhapsody here interlock  in  such an ingenious way! All in all, a masterpiece, this cadenza! I discovered, today, the score (on youtube) and I was able to admire, once more, the excellent work of this great pianist - undeniably one of the greatest in the world today. 

Here is the score:



 

Volodos Vienna Recital: An interesting review by the "Gramophone"

 I read today an excellent and well informed review written by Hariett Smith in the "Gramophone" magazine - possibly the best magazine on classical music. The review refes to Volodos's live recording of his Vienna Recital. I copy some of excerpts here below. (Needless to say, I agree with every word!)

"You can keep your Lang Langs, your Yuja Wangs, your Evgeny Kissins...I'd swap their collective virtuosity for one evening of Arcadi Volodos's consummate pianism. To my mind, he has produced nothing finer on disc than this live recital, captured in Vienna last spring.
[...]

But with this latest release we're once again reminded that Volodos is a one-off. He has Sokolov's genius for making even the unpianistic pianistic, yet without his occasional eccentricities. He has the steel, combined with the velvety sound, and the sense of a companionable relationship with his instrument of Gilels. Yet there's fire aplenty too -- witness his Dante Sonata, complete with the odd Volodosian touch (you'll recall from earlier discs that he likes to make pieces his own). No one quite achieves the incandescence of Ogdon in this work, as can be seen as well as heard in a terrifying vision of the work on an EMI DVD. But the sense that technically Volodos is in complete command, and that the piano is not in pain -- even at the most extreme moments -- is extraordinarily compelling. And through all the handfuls of notes he never loses sight of the work's form, the imperious left-hand theme that sweeps through the chorale-like texture done with complete assurance.

You couldn't be in Vienna without presenting a waltz or two, and here we get Ravel's skewed take on it (though less skewed than his post-war vision, La valse). Volodos is less perfumed than some -- Thibaudet (Decca) and Bavouzet (Chandos) in their different ways spring to mind -- but there's a wonderful warmth to his sound as well as a sensitivity to the pieces' inner workings that delights. He attains the balance between lyricism and a pungent neo-classicism every bit as effectively as Casadesus in his classic CBS/Sony reading.

Right from the start, this is an uncompromisingly programmed recital, Volodos plunging his audience into the strange hinterland of Scriabin. Whether in the insistent lopsided gait of the Danse languide or the deep-toned Prelude No 16 from Op 11, more sensuous than Pletnev's sharply characterised realisation, he is spellbinding. And in the Seventh Sonata Volodos is still more incense-laden and edgier than Marc-André Hamelin's beautifully etched reading, the sonorous bells building to a cataclysmic climax.

Waldszenen is perhaps the finest jewel here, with Volodos bringing his story-telling genius to every piece. Its outwardly unassuming nature is deceptive, as the many great pianists who've been drawn to it have shown. But Volodos is absolutely up there with the best of them, Richter and Pires included. Just sample the rapt wonder he brings to "Einsame blumen" or the combination of eeriness and an almost Bachian purity of No 4, "Verrufene Stelle". His leave-taking, too, in No 9 couldn't be more poignantly done, without a trace of heart-on-sleeve emoting, which makes the wistfulness all the more eloquent.

The encores are supreme, from Volodos's Bach/Vivaldi Sicilienne, which is informed by a restrained beauty worthy of Gilels, a Tchaikovsky song rendered glorious even without voice yet its piano roulades never taking the limelight, and, finally, a telling return to Scriabin. The engineers have done wonders, in spite of the live conditions, and I'd be surprised if I heard finer piano playing this year.

Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto with Richter: Leinsdorf or Maazel?

There are several recordings of Brahms 2nd PC with Richter. Two of them are in my view the best: one with Erich Leinsdorf and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the other with Lorin Maazel and L' Orchestre de Paris. Richter did not particularly like his Leinsdord recording but he is not to be taken too seriously as he did not like most of his recordings apparently! 

I personally think that both recordings are excellent indeed, but I am particularly fond of the second one (Maazel), for rather subjective reasons: I was at school when someone in my class gave me a cassete with this recording and I fall in love with it! Richter's sound is so identifiable there, so unmistakably his! Maazel has done a splendid job with the orchesta - which is particularly crucial in this concerto, a work that I think could be considered as a "symphony" with the participation of the piano. 

Richter has played this concerto pretty early in his carrier and has performed it dozens of time. (I was thinking the other day, in what ways the approach to a work can evolve, if performed so many times! I normally manage to play a work (in public) two, maximum three, times. How my performance would be after, say, 50 times? I just cannot imagine!). 

Prokofiev and Mozart: a thought while listening to Prokofiev's 2nd Violin Concerto

David Oistrakh plays this Concerto spendidly! (EMI, with the LSO). And, while listening, for some reason, Mozart came to my mind. Mozart and Prokofiev do have something in common - an extremely rare talent to compose beautiful melodies. But, while Prokofiev is for me the personification of inventivenness,  originality and genius, with Mozart I always have this unmistakable feeling of the Divine, which I don't feel with the former's music. A subjective (and therefore possibly wrong) view...

Ravel Piano Concerto: Michelangeli's miracle!

I was listening today to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G,  in this miraculous Michelangeli’s rendering. What an extraordinarily beautiful concerto! What a harmonious combination of power, rhythmical strictness and melodic poetry!

As regards the Second Movement (Adagio Assai), I think that one would agree that rarely has music managed to express such profound and personal feelings as is the case with this movement. Michelangeli in this famous recording, achieves a musical perfection: the solo melody in the beginning of this movement is marked with such restraint emotion, an emotion, that is, which is not “outstretched” and over-the-top; the great pianist manages to control his sound and, eventually, achieves to eliminate his own presence allowing the sublime melody to speak for itself. Seldom in the recording history has such a prodigious result been achieved.

I have practiced this Concerto in the past and would love to play it at some point; I fear though that this will probably never happen. (I now remember a friend of mine who did play this work and was telling me that she was playing the Adagio Assai with tears in her eyes).

Richter on Rachmaninoff's Prelude

I often read parts of Sviatoslav Richter's diaries (from "Richter the enigma") - and whenever I do, I always find interesting things. Today, I read an entry made in 31.1.1977, about Rachmaninoff's F sharp minor Prelude - one of my favorite. I copy: "R's F sharp minor Prelude is a sombre and poetical piece. Neuhaus thought it was the best of the whole collection. In it you feel the freshness of a Russian evening beside a pond from which mist rises up. Levitanian atmosphere." 

The problem with this piece (as is the case, sadly, with many others - including the G minor prelude) is that it has "suffered" dozens of mediocre performances; I wonder if Richter himslelf has played it, I would be very interested to listen him depicting in sound the image that so beautifully describes above. 

I personally am very fond of Sokolov's live recording of the piece. It manages to set and convey the right atmosphere.