Two More of Naxos's Buxtehude Cycle

Buxtehude: Organ Works, Volume 3
Wolfgang Rübsam, organ
John Brombaugh organ, Central Lutheran Church, Eugene OR (1976)
Naxos 8.555991



Buxtehude: Organ Works, Volume 4
Craig Cramer, organ
Paul Fritts organ, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma WA (1999)
Naxos 8.557195

***

Here are two more from Naxos's ongoing cycle of Buxtehude's organ works. I've been acquiring the discs rather in inverse order, starting with Julia Brown's fabulous later releases, Volumes 5-7, recorded on the magnificent Martin Pasi organ at St. Cecelia's Cathedral in Omaha. Now we have the two releases prior to Dr. Brown's involvement, Volumes 3 and 4, recorded by two different organists on yet two different organs. I'm always of two minds about this releasing of a composer's complete works played by several interpreters: on the one hand, it introduces a variable into the survey, which can be distracting to a new or fussy listener; but on the other, it ensures the whole cycle gets completed, and Naxos has been quite inspired in its choices. (Though for my money, I'd be very happy to have the whole cycle by Julia Brown on that Pasi organ!)

Volume 3 is from native German, and former teacher at Northwestern University outside Chicago, Wolfgang Rübsam. Mr Rübsam happens to have acted as producer for the other volumes in this set--as well as quite a number of other organ recordings from Naxos--and many of the performers on these discs have studied with him, including Julia Brown. Based on her glorious performances and a really excellent set of the six organ sonatas of Felix Mendelssohn by another student, one Stephen Tharp, Mr. Rübsam's involvement seems entirely welcome in any capacity. Rübsam himself released a complete Buxtehude cycle in the early '80s on the Bellaphon label, as well as Bach's complete organ output for Naxos (among many other releases).

His playing is characterized by extreme liveliness and virtuosity with a pointedly non-metronomic pulse. This makes for vibrant interpretations, reminding me at times of Glenn Gould, except that Rübsam is more concerned with authenticity than Gould was. Parts of his Bach are among my favorites, though often I feel aware of the artist as well as the composer, which is perhaps not to everyone's taste (in this he is like Gould or Horowitz; there are two geniuses in the room). But he's damn persuasive with his approach, and whatever I think going in he almost always wins me over. To my ear, his quite flexible time seems to work better with Buxtehude than with Bach, and this particular Buxtehude disc really comes alive under his touch.

His instrument of choice is a 1976 John Brombaugh instrument from Central Lutheran Church in Eugene, OR. It has a fairly mild non-equal temperament and makes a very appropriate and pleasing sound. This is really excellent Buxtehude.

Volume 4 comes from Craig Cramer, the Professor of Organ at Notre Dame University. As with Julia Brown, I fancy I hear some of Rübsam's irrepressibility and exuberance in Mr. Cramer's playing (the little devil sitting on the organist's shoulder saying "let yourself go a little!"), though perhaps turned down a notch or two. But if his approach is slightly less adventurous, this is still quite lively playing, and Mr. Cramer is solidly in control. His disc contains mostly chorale treatments, with a couple of Buxtehude's multipartite Preludes / Toccatas mixed in, and it's a wonderful disc.

The instrument is the 1998 Paul Fritts organ at Pacific Lutheran University, the same organ we've heard in George Ritchie's Bach cycle and the Joan Lippincott recording of Bach Preludes and Fugues (reviewed below). Again, it's a first-rate organ for the repertoire, and the recording quality is everything we've come to expect from Naxos.

Though their approaches are not precisely the same, they are both eminently worthy of the repertoire, and Naxos has done as good a job of pairing here as we have a right to expect. With Julia Brown's volumes, this shapes up as a cycle to have.

Two Recordings of Bach

Weimar Preludes and Fugues
Joan Lippincott, organ
Paul Fritts, University of Notre Dame, IN (2004)
Gothic Records G-49260 (2008)

• BWV #s 532, 534, 537, 539, 542, 543, 545

Preludes and Fugues
Joan Lippincott, organ
Paul Fritts, Pacific Lutheran University, WA (1999)
Gothic Records G-49202 (2002)

• BWV #s 541, 544, 546, 548, 572, 769

***

Joan Lippincott is the former head of the organ department at Westminster Choir College, where, along with the Curtis Institute, she undertook her own studies. She specializes in Bach, but has recorded a fairly broad repertoire. After a distinguished teaching career, she now makes her living as a concert organist.

These two recordings showcase Preludes and Fugues from two different periods of Bach's life: the youthful exuberance of his Weimar years, and the more polished weight of his Leipzig period. Care has been taken to select instruments appropriate to the resources which Bach had available when writing the pieces, in an effort to bring us as close as possible to the sound and spirit of Bach's creation. Both instruments are from the Tacoma, WA builder Paul Fritts and Company. For the Weimar disc Dr. Lippincott has chosen a well-developed two manual and pedal instrument from 2004, installed at the University of Notre Dame; and the Leipzig disc gets a larger (and much-recorded) three manual and pedal instrument from 1998 installed at Pacific University in Tacoma, WA in 1999. Both are beautiful, impressive instruments that give us the clear and vibrant, pure-organ sound representative of the state of organ building of Bach's day, and both are in sympathetic acoustics--the Notre Dame instrument particularly so.

Dr. Lippincott's interpretations remind me a bit of the late, great E. Power Biggs, in that they seem at their best like a spotlight trained on the score, a rare glimpse into the composer's brain. This is abstract music, written for the glory of its peculiar sound and for the joy of triumphing over the rules of counterpoint, and Dr. Lippincott has an obvious affinity for this repertoire. She finds the inspiration from within the pieces, rather than imposing it from without. On the whole, I think the CD of the Weimar pieces is the more successful of the two. The Notre Dame organ is not large (35 stops on two manuals and pedal) but the divisions are very well developed, and it produces an especially harmonious sound. The acoustic in the recital hall helps, being almost cathedral-like in its scope. Dr. Lippincott's performances here are spot-on, among the best of these pieces I've heard.

The other disc has some of my favorites of Bach's output, some really excellent pieces--BWV 572, 541 and 544 are among my most beloved music in any genre, and the Canonic Variations, BWV 769, come off especially well. The PLU organ (54 stops over three manuals and pedal) is similarly brilliant, another Fritts masterwork. But there are several rough edges among the selections, the occasional missed note and the like, and the disc doesn't hit its mark quite so squarely. The opening piece especially--the Piece d'orgue in G Major BWV 572--has several distracting moments. There is a rather glaringly misplayed pedal passage about halfway through, and a peculiarly absent-minded-sounding release before the final section. And in this piece particularly (though I must be careful not to declare an error something that merely grates on my personal tastes) my old nemesis flexible winding rears its head quite excessively. At times it sounds like a small child jumping rhythmically on the bellows.

(I feel a digression coming on.)

Looking at the CD's notes, I see that the Professor of Music and Organist Emeritus of Pacific Lutheran University (and contributor to the notes) is one David Dahl. It strikes me now that I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Dahl during a cross-country motorcycle trip I took in 1982. I rode into Eugene, OR and went in search of the shops of the organ builder John Brombaugh. Not finding anyone at the shop, I was pointed in the direction of a recent Brombaugh installation in town, and went to the church to look around. There I found an organ lesson in progress, a student working on the Adagio of Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564, taught by none other than (I presume) this same David Dahl. When the lesson ended, Dr. Dahl--whom I'd never met nor heard of--was very kind to talk with me for quite a while about the Brombaugh organ. One of the items we discussed was the organ's prominent flexible wind supply (the degree of flexibility of which, if memory serves, could be adjusted with a switch or drawknob), which Dr. Dahl was quite a proponent of. I remember he asked me to sing a note, and then he shoved back on my shoulder and we noted the quaver in my voice. His point was that music-making is a living thing, and we all react to what is going on around us. Sounds sensible enough, and (honestly grateful though I was for his time and attention) it wasn't until a couple hundred miles down the road that it struck me that we don't push each other around during a choir performance! The analogy just didn't really hold water for me, and it still doesn't; flexible winding, beyond a certain minimal point, just sounds like a wind-supply defect--a result perhaps of technical limitations from antiquity--that has been mistaken for something sonically beneficial.

But I've carped about that quite enough, I think. It hardly stands as much of an impediment to appreciating these performances. I think the glitches I note (if indeed they are glitches) would only attract the attention of the devotee, and they needn't deter anyone sampling these recordings. I see that Dr. Lippincott has most of the rest of Bach's output available on the Gothic label; I look forward to hearing more.

There are many excellent CDs of this repertoire, and these are worthy additions to the catalog. They showcase one of our country's great concert organists and some really great and artistic American organs. With my small reservations noted, I'm happy to add them to my collection.

A 1/20th Full Cup

Scarlatti: Sonatas
Mikhail Pletnev, piano
Virgin Classics, 7243 5 61961 2 4 (2 CDs)

***

As promised, here we have a double CD set of Russian pianist Mikhail Pletnev playing 31 Scarlatti sonatas, providing us with a nice contrast to the Scott Ross harpsichord versions reviewed below. As I mentioned in that post, the suitability of the piano for all 555 of Scarlatti's sonatas is questioned, at least by some. And I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough to clear the air on these matters. But between the Hungarian Andras Schiff, Horowitz and now Pletnev, I must have 50 or more of the sonatas recorded on modern grand piano, and the pieces seem certainly not worse for wear for this instrument choice.

Which is not to say there is no difference. None of these artists seeks to make their piano sound like something other than what it is. Pletnev is of the first order of pianists, a top shelf technician with a broad repertoire. He uses his instrument's full resources to bring us these pieces, taking advantage of the piano's great dynamic range, clarity and expressive potential to shape lines and emphasize contrapuntal interplay, and indeed to differentiate emotionally between pieces. Some pieces, like K. #s 24, 386, 141 and 113 pass at a perilously fast pace; not gratuitously fast, but a pace which requires deft skill (and the piano's perfected double-escapement action) to pull off. Other pieces are presented more luxuriously, though never self-indulgently. Pletnev has chosen a number of more familiar sonatas (K. #s 27, 380, 96, the hauntingly beautiful K.87--a favorite of Horowitz's) mixed in with the inevitably lesser-known numbers.

It makes for a satisfying recital, and a great summary of Scarlatti on piano. It doesn't substitute for these pieces on their intended instrument, but Scarlatti, like Bach, translates very well to other media. I think a strong argument can be made that the piano is the dominant keyboard instrument of our times (harpsichords having become quite esoteric), and we exclude repertoire from it to our own detriment. Certainly I'd rather have Scarlatti's work become better known via the piano than not to hear him at all.

The recording, from 1995, is fairly close, natural and quiet.

An Embarassment of Riches

Domenico Scarlatti: The Keyboard Sonatas
Scott Ross, Harpsichord
Warner Classics, 2564-62092-2, 1986

***

In the process of updating some stuff in my iTunes, I threw out the MP3 files of Scott Ross's set of 555 Keyboard Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and re-ripped them into AAC format (slightly smaller files, and a bit better sound). This requires going back through and renaming everything, since I virtually never get correct titles off of the CD Database (and certainly not titles formatted to my taste). What really drives me crazy is that SOMEBODY bothered to submit these track titles to the database, and yet they have no consistency from one disc to the next, and are often a semi-intelligible scramble--no composer listed, artist's name listed as composer, instrument listed as piano, genre as rock or pop. And these are the only track name options available in the database (if there are several, they will prompt you to pick which one you want), so someone actually submitted them in this haphazard fashion! Why bother? Virtually anyone will have to reenter all this stuff in what is a fairly tedious and laborious process.

(I really shouldn't complain too much, as I've kind of developed my own formatting over the years, and so much of the typing would have to be done in any case. The words "major" and "minor" are omitted, replaced by upper or lowercase letters; the words "in" and "for" and other superfluities are dropped from titles; unless it's not obvious, the instrument gets deleted. So Piano Sonata No. 5 in c minor, Op. 5 becomes Op.5 Sonata 5c. Or Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings No.1 in F Major, Op. 77, First Movement: Andante becomes Op.77 Harpsichord Concerto 1F / 1--Andante. Takes much less space. But this means that I have a perpetually unfinished editing task facing me, as everything on my iTunes has to get the treatment.)

How easily I get off track. My point was to talk about Scarlatti. He's one of the Big Three born in 1685 (along with Bach and Handel), and is remembered chiefly for his huge output of sonatas for the harpsichord. Though Italian by birth, he became the official composer of the Spanish Queen Maria Barbara, and wrote his huge number of sonatas for the queen's tutelage (she was obviously a pretty accomplished keyboardist). Scarlatti himself seems to have been a spectacular player, even besting the brilliant Handel in a contest at the harpsichord (though Handel was judged the superior at the organ).

The fascinating thing is what Scarlatti accomplished with such a restricted palette. I love the sound of the harpsichord, but it's a limited instrument in its expressive capacities. It has some tiered dynamic control, but it's quite rudimentary compared with, say, a piano (harpsichordists would argue this, I'm sure; but the harpsichord's limited dynamic control is indisputable). The clavichord--said to be Bach's favorite instrument--is a much closer historic analog to our modern piano, but it was unable to produce the volume necessary for anything more than small salon performance. A larger room or concert hall required a more powerful instrument, and the harpsichord was the best the period had to offer. The comparatively thin sound produced by plucking the strings actually makes for great harmonic development, and harpsichords are almost always tuned to a non-equal temperament. So the instrument can produce a rich and very satisfying sound. But it's very much a sound of a particular era in music history, and the music written reflects the limitations of the instrument (nobody tries to play Chopin or Rachmaninov on a harpsichord).

One aspect of Bach's musical genius is his ability to produce really profound things while working within the restrictive contrapuntal forms. It's as though he needed some obstacle to overcome for his expression to take wing. And there's an element of this in Scarlatti's achievement. His Sonatas are virtually all written for the harpsichord, almost all are bipartite, and they fall stylistically within a fairly narrow range. Well, one would think that the limits of this formula would be quickly reached. And yet he managed 555 of them! That's an unbelievable number of a single type of composition. There seems to have been no limit to his ability to find new themes and fresh ways to assemble them. And each one is a gem unto itself.

Thanks to Horowitz and others, these sonatas are heard more and more from pianists. (I remember the CD notes of a perfectly horrid recording of Scarlatti Sonatas by the pianist Alexis Weissenberg wherein he wrote that only 15 or so of the 555 are suited to the piano. I have considerably more than 15 recorded on piano, and they sound great, thanks.) But the harpsichord does have its charm and an undeniable correctness with this repertoire, and the late Scott Ross is a most persuasive proponent of the literature. He uses several different instruments in the course of the cycle, so that one's ear gets a bit of variety. Just the same, one is unlikely to sit down for all 555 of them; this set--on 34 discs--takes a day and a half of continuous play to run its course! So the "variety" angle is a bit moot. (I read that the whole recording enterprise required over 8,000 takes!)

I bought the original release of these CDs on Erato Disques 20-some years ago, but I see they're still available from Warner's catalog as a budget release. If you're a collector, I simply can't imagine anyone topping this effort and I highly recommend the release. I have a number of other very persuasive exponents of this music--Andras Schiff and Trevor Pinnock, both on some older recordings; and I've ordered a more recent Mikhail Pletnev recording that shows great promise--but Mr. Ross holds his own on a case-by-case basis, and offers exhaustive completeness to boot.

The recordings are almost 25 years old now, but they could have been recorded yesterday. The sound is excellent.

So I've hours of work at my computer here to re-input all the information for this release. At least I've got some really engaging music to keep me company.

Livin' the High Life

Steve Winwood
Nine Lives (2008) (plus Back In the High Life--1986)
Sony Records

***

I remember Steve Winwood from my college days. He was pretty prominent on radio at that time, and with his past group affiliations it seemed like he might already be in the latter part of his career. It wasn't that he didn't sound current, but there was something old style about his singing. He was a rock update on a horns and Hammond rhythm and blues style. I never owned any of his music, but I knew of the guy, at least while he was current. And then there was no more new stuff, and I came to feel that his career was maybe over or he had moved on to executive matters, like producing other artists or some such.

Not so fast, it seems. With Nine Lives, he gives us a fine studio recording, his first in five years. Since I had no other music by him, I decided in picking up his new CD to also snag an album from when he was more prominently in pop culture's radar, and chose 1986's Back In the High Life.

The new album does not stray too far from the blue-eyed soul sound for which he is renowned (though he is an experienced keyboardist in jazz and other genres). His voice is immediately recognizable, sounding like the back-of-the-throat belting of an older black man--kind of like Bill Withers: soulful and rich and from the street. I'm reminded (though not stylistically) of the first time I heard Christina Aguilera, whom I was convinced could not possibly be white: I just didn't think skinny British white guy when I heard Winwood sing.

He seems always to be surrounded by able musicians, though one of the banes of an iTunes purchase is that there are no CD notes accompanying. And finding the roster of musicians online has not proven very easy. (Allmusic.com has a listing of musicians, but it's so unspecific that it's of little use). So I'm kind of in the dark about who helped him on his albums.

Nine Lives sounds more relaxed than his older material, maybe as befits someone older and wiser. Winwood's voice is older, but it's clearly the same musical mind attached, and there's a more acoustic sound to the new album. Back In the High Life, though polished and professional, sounds much more processed. Nine Lives begins with the basic R&B wail I'm Not Drowning, basically just the singer and his guitar, and proceeds from there through a range of moods, from the dreamy Fly to the grittier Dirty City, which prominently features Winwood's former Blind Faith bandmember, Eric Clapton. This is a good, honest record from a journeyman musician whose command of his craft lets him not work so hard at it.

But my real revelation is with that earlier album. There are four or five songs on Back In the High Life that still receive regular airtime, songs with which I've been more or less familiar for years. But to hear them in good fidelity and collected into a group--and to pay close attention to them--makes the album seem a more impressive accomplishment than I realized. From some inspired playing from all corners (by whomever--thanks again, iTunes), to really delicious soul grooves, the album just delivers the goods in a satisfying way. If you weren't a fan of this kind of music, here is the album that will make you into one. As a drummer, I'm especially taken with the really fabulous turns on the title track (with sections played in the style almost of a military march) and the utterly infectious Freedom Overspill. Add in a remarkable turn by vocalist Chaka Kahn in Higher Love, and the unmistakable backing vocals of James Taylor (also on the title track--something I had felt sure of for years, but only confirmed with some web digging after buying the album), and the result is an album which most pop artists dream of: a collection of feeling songs, brilliantly played, which stand the test of time.

Together, these two make an impressive pair of releases. The musical world is better for having Steve Winwood in it.

A Lawes Unto Themselves

William Lawes: Consorts in Four and Five Parts
Phantasm (plus Sarah Cunningham)
Channel Classics CCS 15698

Works for Five Voices:

• Set in a
• Set in F
• Set in c
• Set in C
• Set in g

Works for Four Voices:

• Fantazy in c (VdGS #108)
• Aire [Fantazy] in C (VdGS #111)
• Aire in c (VdGS #109)
• Aire in C (VdGS #112)
• Aire in c (VdGS #110)
• Aire in C (VdGS #113)

***

Phantasm are a quartet of viols comprised of Americans Laurence Dreyfus and Wendy Gillespie, the Scot Jonathan Manson and Finn Markku Luolajan-Mikkola. Founded by Laurence Dreyfus in 1994, the group have been the Consort-in-Residence at Oxford University since 2005, and have won numerous awards, including a Grammophon Award for Best Non-Vocal Baroque Performance with their very first CD, 1995's recording of Purcell's Complete Fantasies for Viols (Simax - PSC 1124). They now have 11 recordings to their credit, including works by Byrd, John Jenkins and Orlando Gibbons among others.

This present release dates from 1999, and is one of two discs featuring music of William Lawes (1602-1645). This disc covers Consorts written for both four and five voices (for which the quartet is supplemented by Sarah Cunnningham).

There's a magnetism in the plaintive, organum-like sound of a group of gambas, something that taps into the foundation of musicality itself. After the human voice, these instruments provide about the most basic example of a sustained, blending tone, which then leads to an essential exposure to harmony and the fundamentals of counterpoint and voice leading. I find the gamba family sound much more appealing in general than the violin family, not because of its period-correctness but because it's a purer tone with a more interesting articulation. And it doesn't escape me that many of these pieces would translate very well to the organ (just as Fretwork so beautifully translated Bach's organ works to a gamba ensemble). Some of the sets are lugubrious and solemn, while others are quite rollicking, and would be fun to play (and see played). Belaboring a point I've made on numerous occasions before, here is yet another specialized niche musical concern based in or around London, a place which already sports the aforementioned Fretwork. You gotta love the place.

These pieces are perfectly played. I'm eager now to look into both their companion volume to this one of Lawes' Six-Part Consorts, as well as a couple volumes of John Jenkins. High marks on this one.

More Youthful Splendor

Heavenly Harmonies
Stile antico
Harmonia Mundi, HMU807463
2008

Music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd

***

This is the second release by young British vocal group stile antico. Their first, 2007's Music for Compline, heralded the arrival of a spectacular group of young singers specializing in the great choral works from England's Tudor period.

This present effort builds on every success of that first thrilling release, contrasting the simple hymn tune settings of Thomas Tallis with the more elaborate contrapuntal essays of William Byrd. It's an excellent contrast, though I find I'm especially taken with these very direct tunes of Tallis. Like Bach's fantastic harmonization of the Lutheran hymns with which he worked daily, there's a sense here of Tallis reaching out across hundreds of years, bridging time and style and circumstance to make an eternal musical statement. The Byrd is lovely too, of course--and as flawlessly presented--but his manner is a bit more ornate and, like the floridness of Shakespeare's language to our modern ear, takes a bit more acclimation. This is meant as no criticism, and the toggling between the two styles seems most effective.

The group seems a bit more closely recorded on this CD. The room is there, but in a supporting role. The benefit is that of being able to hear the individual voices--the singers sound almost as though they were collected in your music room for a private concert; but this intimacy comes at the cost of a touch of mystery and atmosphere. But in the Tallis especially a chamber sound seems very appropriate.

As with Music for Compline, I cannot but note how beautifully these young men and women blend together, and how mature and searching their interpretations are. In that they work without the guiding vision of a conductor, this sense of unity seems even more impressive.

I look eagerly forward to their next offering.