Alban BERG (1885-1935)
Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op.5 [7:12]
Olivier MESSIAEN (1908-1992)
Quatuor pour la fin du temps [48:16]
Oleg Kagan (violin); Eduard Brunner (clarinet); Natalia Gutman (cello); Vassily Lobanov (piano)
rec. 1988, State Pushkin Museum of Visual Arts, December Evenings Festival
MELODIYA MELCD1002310 [55:34]
In June 1913 Alban Berg visited his teacher Arnold Schoenberg
in Berlin, having just completed the Four Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, Op.5.
The critical reaction from the master left Berg reeling. Schoenberg felt that
his student should not pursue the course of minimalism as his other student,
Webern, had done, but would be better served working in extended orchestral
forms. Despite severely knocking the young composer’s confidence, the
four pieces were premiered in Vienna in 1919 at Schoenberg’s Society
for Private Musical Performance. Berg never travelled that road again.
Cast in the atonal mode, the Op. 5 pieces total 63 bars, with each movement
lasting between one and three minutes. Yet within this short duration Berg
explores a myriad range of expression, with the technical demands on both
players unforgiving. For the clarinettist, he employs such effects as flutter-tongue,
sub-tones and stop-tongue staccato, all of these adding light and shade to
these imaginatively constructed pieces. They seem more romantically forged
than Webern’s efforts - not as angular or pointillistic. The second
piece, for instance, is quite lyrical. The Swiss clarinettist Eduard Brunner,
then a player with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the pianist
and composer Vassily Lobanov, deliver stylish and idiomatic performances,
always sensitive to the rhythmic and dynamic flux of this complex music.
In 1940 during the German invasion of France, Messiaen was captured and interned
in the POW camp Stalag VIIIA in Görlitz, Silesia. A sympathetic guard provided
him with manuscript paper. Utilizing what instrumental forces he had to hand
(clarinet, violin, cello and piano), he composed what is probably his best
known work, Quatuor pour la fin du temps. Its eight movements take
as their inspiration a vision from The Book of Revelations, Chapter X: "And
I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven". Against a backdrop
of war, death, cold and famine, the work reflects how the composer coped with
this appalling situation and how he made sense of his condition in the light
of his strong Catholic faith. The eight movements consist of four for the
complete quartet, one solo, two duets and one trio.
The players give impassioned accounts of the movements, and capture the mysticism
and exoticism of the score. The birdsong in nos. 1 and 3 is eloquently portrayed
with fervour and conviction by Eduard Brunner. Natalia Gutman and Oleg Kagan
offer sublime and deeply meditative accounts of the two Louanges. Kagan’s
ethereal performance has a certain added poignancy, as he died only two years
later, at the early age of forty-three. Throughout the Quartet, perfect ensemble
is achieved, and one cannot fail to be moved by such committed playing. Sound
quality is first class.
The recordings were made at the December Evenings Festival that takes place
each year at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. The festival was
initiated in 1981 by Sviatoslav Richter and Irina Antonova, the museum’s
director. Since that time it has been an eagerly anticipated annual event.
Richter assembled distinguished friends and musicians to perform chamber music,
and he himself would give solo recitals and accompany lieder. Kagan and Gutman
were mainstays of the festival. Richter died in 1997, yet the concerts continue
to thrive to this day.
Stephen Greenbank
|
Support us financially by purchasing
this from
|
|
 |
 |