DISCOVERIES | RECORDINGS REVIEWED DAVID OLDS Spending time at the family cottage in the Haliburton Highlands this summer with my mother I was reminded of her favourite adage “You can’t have too many mushrooms.” This came to mind as I was listening to the CD Ravel | Jurecka by the Venuti String Quartet (venutistringquartet.com) when I realized you also “can’t have too many recordings of the Ravel String Quartet,” especially when it’s played with such joie de vivre as it is by this Toronto-based ensemble. Dating from 1903, the quartet is a relatively early work written when the composer was 28 years old. A forward-looking piece, especially in the assez vif – très rhythmé second movement with its extensive use of pizzicato, Ravel’s quartet is rooted in turn of the century late romantic sensibilities. Two decades later, Ravel was exposed to the St. Louis style of blues and jazz music as performed by W.C. Handy, who was based in Paris at the time, and incorporated this influence into the Sonata for Violin and Piano (1923-1927). In a similar way, Toronto multi-instrumentalist, polystylist, composer and arranger Drew Jurecka, founding member of the Venuti String Quartet, draws upon jazz in his String Quartet in D that opens the disc. The initial Allegro moderato begins with pizzicato in the lower strings, perhaps in homage to Ravel, with a lovely lilting unison melody in the violins, followed by a rollicking Scherzo that features some string-scraping percussion effects. The third movement, Indigo, brings to mind Porgy and Bess, and the Fast Swing finale is reminiscent of the quartet’s namesake, iconic jazz violinist Joe Venuti. Jurecka is joined by Rebekah Wolkstein (who takes first desk in the Ravel), violist Shannon Knights and cellist Lydia Munchinsky in a captivating performance of a welcome addition to the quartet repertoire. The disc ends with a breath-taking tour de force called The Spider, a tribute to Carl Stalling of Looney Toons and Merry Melodies fame, co-written by Jurecka and long-time associate, guitarist Jay Danley. Hold on to your hat! The latest release by the Miró Quartet, aptly titled Home (pentatonemusic.com/product/ home) explores various aspects of feelings associated with their (our) sense of belonging and place. It represents the group’s artistic home, firmly rooted in the American soundscape and musical tradition, and the commissioned works also investigate the composers’ understanding of the word. Kevin Puts’ 2017 three movement work that gives the CD its title, is a response to the civil war which displaced more than 13 million Syrian Nationals and sparked the European Migrant Crisis, and to subsequent events including the US border crisis and Russia’s war on Ukraine. It’s an expressive three movement work that “confronts the idea of what being forcibly driven from your home by violence might mean and feel like.” Caroline Shaw wrote Microfictions [Volume 1] during COVID restrictions while confined to her apartment in NYC. Inspired by science fiction writer T.R. Darling’s Twitter-based short stories, Shaw took those same character limit restrictions and created her own brief vignettes as introductions to six movements for string quartet. We hear her reciting these to accompany the Miró performance. The longest work on the programme is Samuel Barber’s gorgeous String Quartet in B Minor (1936, rev.1943). Violist John Largess’ program note tells us this work is “a dramatic, powerful and intense piece, uniquely American, but also universal in its message” and the Miró’s performance reinforces his perspective. Of course, it is the third movement of Barber’s string quartet that is most familiar as the standalone Adagio for Strings. In a review some years ago I chastised a young Canadian string quartet for only including this excerpt on a disc that had room for the whole quartet, so I’m pleased that the Miró have presented the complete work here. However, Home also includes a similarly iconic excerpt known as “Lyric for Strings,” the Molto adagio movement from George Walker’s 1946 String Quartet No.1. Fortunately a recent recording by the Catalyst Quartet – Uncovered Vol.3 – includes the quartet in its entirety and I was happy to seek it out. Home ends gently with William Ryden’s arrangement of Harold Arlen’s Over the Rainbow. You can find a wonderful video performance on YouTube entitled Miro Quartet’s “Over the Rainbow” Celebrates Hometown of Austin, TX. There’s no place like home! Since its founding in 2006, Quatuor Béla have been touted as the enfants terrible of French string quartets. In addition to a commitment to traditional quartet repertoire they specialize in the most significant quartets of the 20th century and have been instrumental in the continuing development of the genre commissioning and performing works by Saariaho, Drouet, Stroppa, Mochizuki, Leroux and Platz to name just a few. Benjamin Britten (lepalaisdesdegustateurs.com) is their latest release, two CDs including Britten’s three numbered string quartets and a strikingly effective bare bones transcription by first violinist Frédéric Aurier of Les Illuminations with soprano Julia Wischniewski. Aurier also wrote the detailed and insightful liner notes which provide context and analysis of the works presented. I particularly like the way he relates the string quartets to Britten’s operas. The first two were written while the world was in the throes of the Second World War; String Quartet No.1 in 1941 while Britten and his partner Peter Pears were sheltering in the USA (they returned to Britain in 1942) and String Quartet No.2 in 1945. Although ostensibly written to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Henry Purcell’s death, the second quartet also incorporates the feelings of devastation Britten experienced while visiting Germany with Yehudi Menuhin after the armistice to perform for liberated prisoners and emaciated survivors from German camps, including the notorious Bergen-Belsen. The three-movement work concludes with what Aurier calls a “bewildering” Chaconne with its theme and variations, a theme “which has its operatic twin in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw.” Aurier goes on to say that “Though the tribute to Purcell is real, it is a Beethovenian force that drives the piece” and the repeated final chords are indeed reminiscent of that master. Three decades would elapse before Britten returned to the form, and the String Quartet No.3 (1975) was his final completed instrumental work. It is closely linked to the opera Death in Venice written shortly beforehand and it ends peacefully, the work of a composer facing his own imminent death. Here, as elsewhere in these impeccable performances, Quatuor Béla captures every subtle nuance and dramatic cadence with aplomb. Les Illuminations was begun in England in March 1939 and completed a few months later in the United States. It was originally scored for soprano and string orchestra, but within two years of its premiere Britten conducted Pears in the tenor version which has become more often performed. But as Britten’s biographer David Matthews wrote, the work is “so much more sensuous when sung by the soprano voice for which the songs were conceived.” Wischniewski certainly brings sensuousness and passion to fore here in a spectacular performance. The texts are selected passages from poems abandoned 36 | September 2024 thewholenote.com
y Arthur Rimbaud at the age of 20, later published under the same name as the song cycle. Although the poems are not included in the booklet, the notes give a synopsis of each of the nine movements. As for the “de-orchestration,” Aurier tells us that “as in any reduction, something is lost… a smoothness, a density, a quiet force. And something is gained… a sharpness, details, the quintessence of the speech, the articulation and the urgency of the music perhaps. We wanted this version to be faithful, dynamic and expressive, more raw perhaps, but connected with the Rimbaldian delirium.” Mission accomplished. I find myself wondering if recordings of Bach’s cello suites are like mushrooms, because they seem to keep popping up, and also because it seems that I “can’t have too many” of them. The suites are so ubiquitous that virtually every cellist plays them, throughout their life, and most professionals record them at least once. Two new recordings came my way recently. Henrik Dam Thomsen, principal cellist of the Danish National Symphony Orchestra since 2000, has just released his well considered version of J. S. Bach – Six Suites for Cello Solo (ourrecordings.com) with an excellent introductory essay by Jens Cornelius which incorporates historical information about Bach and the suites and includes extensive quotes from the performer and a description of the recording venue (Garnisons Kirke, Copenhagen). Thomsen says of his own personal journey to this point, “I have just turned 50, and for 40 of those years I have studied the suites. So a long musical journey underlies the way in which I play them today. As a cellist one goes through various phases with regard to the suites. When young, one is strongly influenced by one’s teachers. This is followed by a phase where one makes the music one’s own and attempts to discover what means something special for oneself. And in my case this has already been a very long period. I have played Bach at numerous concerts over the years, and at the same time the suites have been my daily practising therapy.” He goes on to talk about the choices one has to make today in considering historical instruments and performance practices and how this has influenced him. His ultimate decision was to use his usual instrument – a 1680 Francesco Ruggieri built five years before Bach was born – while eschewing gut strings for modern ones and using a conventional bow. He also chooses to play the final suite on this instrument, despite it having been conceived for a five-string cello. The result is a warm, confident, at times exuberant and a very welcome addition to the discography. I’ll leave the last words to Thomsen: “Today, Bach is like some huge tree, and the interpretations of his music are like a million leaves on that tree. To record Bach’s music is a profoundly personal thing, but when I come with an attempt at an interpretation, all I do is add just one more leaf to that huge tree which is Bach.” In 2002 Montreal-born French cellist Jean- Guihen Queyras (jeanguihenqueyras. com) was awarded the City of Toronto Glenn Gould Protégé Prize as selected by that year’s laureate Pierre Boulez. In 2007 Harmonia Mundi released Queyras’ first recording of Bach’s cello suites. Later this month HM will release JS Bach – Complete Cello Suites (The 2023 Sessions), Queyras’ 36th recording for the prestigious label. This latest version follows a dance collaboration with Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Mitten wir im Leben sind / Bach6Cellosuiten (2017). After nearly a hundred performances of the dance work, Queyras returned to the studio to record his current interpretation of these masterworks. Obviously influenced by his experiences with the dancers – each of the suites is comprised of a prelude and five dance movements after all – these performances are flowing and fluid. In the booklet Queyras discusses his approach and influences. Like Thomsen, Queyras speaks about how the suites are a lifelong project: “Bach’s Cello Suites do indeed accompany us, cellists, throughout our lives. We encounter them while still very young, by tackling the less technically challenging movements. For me, it started with the Bourree from the third suite. I was 10 years old. My connection to the Bach Suites began there, and this music has never left me since. When you are quite young, you play it spontaneously, you celebrate life. Then in adolescence, you start to question yourself, to go through moments of genuine doubt. At the age of 17 or 18, you turn to the great masters of the past, to their countless recordings that have set the standard, and you ask yourself: How should I do it? What could I add to all this? When I was in my twenties, I had a tendency to sink into deep thought and serious questioning... And in Bach, I found a source of support. [...] When I went into the studio to make this second recording, my idea was to say, I am letting the passage of time do its work. The recording I am making today will be what it is because it is nourished by everything I have experienced during the 17 years that separate the two sessions, especially by the experience of Mitten. […] I wanted to open up new avenues and to focus even more on the harmonic movement. Harmony is the framework that allows the melody to soar. That is also how jazz musicians approach their charts. In this new recording, I tried to go further in these flights of imagination…” Queyras goes on to say that he was also influenced by a viola da gamba recording by Paolo Pandolfo and wanted to incorporate some of the gestures specific to the gamba. I find that particularly noticeable in the haunting melancholy of the fifth suite and in the sixth with his use of ornamentation and the way he manages to create the impression of a hurdy-gurdy. Like Thomsen he chooses to use his “usual” four-string instrument for this suite, a Gioffredo Cappa cello dating from 1696. We invite submissions. CDs, DVDs and comments should be sent to: DISCoveries, The WholeNote c/o Music Alive, The Centre for Social Innovation, 720 Bathurst St. Toronto ON M5S 2R4 or to discoveries@thewholenote.com. www.acisproductions.com thewholenote.com September 2024 | 37 Acis Quarter Page-OL.indd 1 8/16/24 10:55 AM
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