Tír Na HiFi

It has been a long time since I listened to Rachmaninov's Second and this is a very fine recording:



Evgeny Rachmaninov
Symphony No. 2
The Rock
State Symphony Orchestra of the Russian Federation
Evgeny Svetlanov

Over the past few nights I've been listening to a striking disc on the Ambronay label of Beethoven's  6th and 15th string quartets as played on period instruments by Quatuor Terpsycordes.  These are subtle, low-key, undemonstrative performances that don't immediately grab one's attention but only relinquish their substantial rewards over repeated listening sessions.  The performers' instruments don't have the sheer physical presence of modern instruments but, rather like listening to a Beethoven piano sonata being played on a fortepiano, what is lost in dynamic range is regained tenfold in emotional intimacy, a quality that is vital to a performance of Opus 132 in particular.

Structurally, it's the same piece of music but, shorn of demonstrative playing and exaggerated tempi, it is presented by these musicians as a more human response to Beethoven's internal condition; initially wounded and dazed and, over time, emerging into a more resurgent and exultant state.  Other versions may project more of a sense of outward drama but few display such a sense of  inward trauma. 

All five movements of this masterpiece are characterised in this recording by a sense of narrative clarity and textural transparency allied to a lightness of touch in the group's articulation.  The delicately shaped phrasings of the players concentrate one's mind and evoke a sense of humility and serenity.  This is intensely private music-making of sensitivity and grace that I find extremely rewarding.

In the first two movements I hear more of a sense of ambivalence and frustration and hesitancy and fragility, the anguish of the composer painfully apparent yet never unnaturally exaggerated.  It is set down by the performers plainly and simply.  The performance of the exquisitely beautiful third movement is quite sublime.  Patient yet deliberate in its choice of tempi, the group linger over this music lovingly as they carefully trace the emotional arc of the convalescent on his sickbed in a state of pious contemplation as he progresses from emotional stasis to redemptive grace.

The sudden shift in moods between the third and the the final two movements is reflected clearly as "the fruits of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering" (to recall T.S. Eliot's words) in the musicians' collective projection of a more gradually achieved sense of transition - not so abrupt or abbreviated as other groups but more indicative of a sense of ebullient playfulness.  Listening to the Quatuor Terpsicordes play the final movement, one becomes keenly aware of a spirit of anxious yearning underpinning this music that is progressively interrupted by moments of uncertainty and hesitation yet which gradually coheres and resolves to a bittersweet affirmation of the human spirit refracted by valedictory shadows of encroaching mortality.

mcq wrote:Over the past few nights I've been listening to a striking disc on the Ambronay label of Beethoven's  6th and 15th string quartets as played on period instruments by Quatuor Terpsycordes.  These are subtle, low-key, undemonstrative performances that don't immediately grab one's attention but only relinquish their substantial rewards over repeated listening sessions.  The performers' instruments don't have the sheer physical presence of modern instruments but, rather like listening to a Beethoven piano sonata being played on a fortepiano, what is lost in dynamic range is regained tenfold in emotional intimacy, a quality that is vital to a performance of Opus 132 in particular.

Your description has me intrigued Paul.

Earlier, double Brahms on vinyl....

Finishing with this wonderful CD....





The Sextet is beautifully played especially the expressive slow movement and the outer movements are played with assured energy and drive. The plaintive and melancholic music of the Trio is also beautifully and sensitively played.

This evening I've been listening to the Jerusalem Quartet's intoxicating performances of Schumann's Piano Quartet and Piano Quintet (available on the Harmonia Mundi label).  Composed during 1842 following sustained study of the classical chamber repertoire and which formed part of an astonishingly productive year that also included the composition of the string quartets, these are among Schumann's most formally complete achievements and represent a vivid outpouring of emotions direct and unquenched from the composer's heart.  A year that had begun with the composer incapacitated by debilitating bouts of depression would see him ultimately sublimate his mental anguish into some of his greatest creative statements.  The Jerusalem Quartet deliver emotionally charged performances that evoke sensations of pain and loss intermixed with the most lyrical tenderness in the listener's mind.   

That these works were written over a brief period of two months seem to indicate the composer's belief that a more protracted composition period would severely dilute the emotional impact of these works.  The Jerusalem Quartet are particularly successful in articulating a sense of fearful tension that appears to underpin these works.   What is really striking about these chamber masterpieces is the chameleonic sense of alternating emotions that modulate between grand statements that are symphonic in aspiration to whisper-quiet interludes of suspended, twilit beauty.  It is Schumann's significant achievement that, despite this, the works retain a sense of narrative clarity and internal order that is quite remarkable.

I came to Schumann very late Paul as it took me many years to come to terms with his music but interestingly I find his chamber music to be most accessible.

A lovely start to a Saturday!

on vinyl....double Stravinsky....

fergus wrote:on vinyl....double Stravinsky....

Stravinsky's music is marvellous. I am particularly fond of Petrushka and Abbado's recording with the LSO is well worth having.
Fergus listening to Stravinsky who would have thought it? And conducted by Maestro Abbado too. :)