Claudio Abbado - some favourite recordings

The death of Claudio Abbado, announced on January 20, 2014, robbed classical music of one of its very finest living conductors – perhaps even the finest.

His recorded legacy, principally for Deutsche Grammophon, Decca and Sony, is far too large to do justice to in the course of a single article, but I wanted to pay some thanks to this wonderful conductor for leaving with us some very special music making indeed. The records chosen below are not necessarily his best loved, but they have stayed with me for a number of years now.

Haydn

Haydn was not necessarily one of Abbado's premier disciplines, but if my memory serves me right the first recording of his I ever heard was the Clock symphony, no.101, made with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. This is a wonderful recording that enjoys Haydn's pithy humour in the second movement, the tick-tock of the clock beautifully done.

Another recording I remember well is the Symphony no.102 in B flat major, another of the London symphonies, which is brisk and purposeful in the Minuet, like throwing open the curtains on a bright spring morning. It is a shame DG didn’t manage to get all twelve of the London symphonies recorded in time, but the seven completed have some extremely enjoyable music making.

Schubert

Abbado's Schubert has exceptional clarity and, in the case of the Symphony no.9 – the Great – a deeply impressive symphonic breadth. The Symphony no.5 in B flat I found to be absolutely charming, but one of the jewels in Abbado's crown where Schubert is concerned is a rare recording of the complete music for the ballet Rosamunde, with a couple of crisply sung choruses – for shepherds, spirits and huntsmen alike – that go with some utterly charming ballet music numbers.

Mendelssohn

In his time at the helm of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1979 until 1987, one of Abbado's greatest achievements was a cycle of Mendelssohn symphonies and overtures. Players from the orchestra speak in hushed tones of the results they achieved together on those recordings, and listening to the evergreen accounts it is easy to hear why. The overtures have a particular sparkle, with Ruy Blas and The Hebrides particularly masterful offerings of light and shade.
Even better for me are Abbado's recordings of the Scottish and Reformation symphonies, both very good examples of 'Sturm und Drang' in Mendelssohn. The rustic second movement of the Scottish is an absolute delight, while the Reformation simmers a tension that is joyously released in the major key chorale at the end.

Brahms

Several commentators have – somewhat unkindly – poured scorn on Abbado's time with the Berlin Philharmoniker. Although it may not have yielded one benchmark recording after another, I have never found his recordings less than enjoyable. In the case of his Brahms, though, I return again and again to his direction.

I should stress this is not Brahms for the purist, necessarily, but I personally love the sheer refinement of these performances, the sleek approach to orchestral texture that makes the Berliners purr like a luxury German saloon car. There are rough edges when needed, but Abbado tends to take a long term structural view of the symphonies, presenting them in one long, unbroken phrase. In the introduction to the First this is consistently rewarding, but the lilting subjects of the Second benefit from this treatment just as well. The 'fillers' are excellent as well, the substantial choral pieces that are all too rarely heard, and a taut performance of the Tragic Overture that is especially strong.

Mahler

Abbado enjoyed a special relationship with Mahler's music that carried right through to his time with the Lucerne Festival, and some unforgettable live performances of the Second (Resurrection) and Third symphonies.

My abiding memory of his discs for Deutsche Grammophon is a live recording of the Symphony no.1, a relatively early outing on the label with the Berliner Philharmoniker, made in the Philharmonie in 1989. For me this piece in particular works best live, and the emerging dawn of the first movement is a wonderful experience, as is the high spirited outdoors music on offer elsewhere. As far as I can tell this was Abbado's first Mahler for DG, the start of an extremely auspicious discography for the composer.

Prokofiev

Abbado's earlier recordings find him enjoying more twentieth-century repertoire, and it is perhaps a regret that he did not spend more time with modern composers.

A couple of DG discs – of Kurtág, Stockhausen and Sciarrino among others – reveal what he could do in this field, but it is in the earlier giants of the twentieth-century that he really excelled in the 1960s and 1970s. This Prokofiev disc, made with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is highly revered, for it contains a Scythian Suite of formidable power, a demonstrative Lieutenant Kijé and a very deep performance of the cantata Alexander Nevsky.

Even now I feel as though I have just touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to looking at Claudio Abbado's recorded output, for there are many more gems – especially operatic – that I look forward to exploring further. For now, though, it is time to thank him for the music!

Beneath the Surface #1 – Kabalevsky: Cello Concertos nos.1 & 2

Composer: Dmitri Kabalevsky (Russian, 1904-1987)

Works: Cello Concerto no.1 in G minor Op. (1949); Cello Concerto no.2 in C minor Op.77 (1964); Suite from Colas Breugnon, Op.24 (1938)

Performers: Torleif Thédeen (cello), NDR Radiophilharmonie Hannover / Eiji Oue, Adrian Prabava (conductors)

Label: CPO

Background and Critical Reception

Dmitri Kabalevsky was born in St Petersburg, and studied piano and composition at the Moscow Conservatory where his teachers included Miaskovksy. An uncredited obituary from the Musical Times, quoted on Wikipedia, describes his music rather uncharitably as 'popular, bland and successful'.

Kabalevsky wrote a lot of music for his first instrument, including four piano concertos and a large amount of solo piano music, but he was also comfortable writing for strings. As well as the two Cello Concertos there is a single-movement Violin Concerto, while his chamber music includes two String Quartets and numerous works for violin and cello with piano accompaniment.

He also completed a number of stage works, of which the three-act opera Colas Breugnon, completed in 1938, is the best known, with its overture often extracted for concert performance or compilation discs.

In my experience Kabalevsky has often been tagged on to the coat tails of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, as he writes in a style that can sometimes be seen as derivative of them. Thankfully some record companies, Naxos, Chandos and CPO in particular, have moved to rectify this with recordings of the concertos and chamber music.

Thoughts

My immediate thoughts of this disc and its music are very positive. The two Cello Concertos are very different animals. The first is quite playful, the cello writing sometimes carrying the influence of Tchaikovsky, but it also has a soft centre that reveals itself fully in the elegiac second movement, where Torleif Thédeen really invests a lot of passion into his playing. The pizzicato theme that begins the first movement is nicely done and establishes the good spirits of the piece, while the finale zips along, a little elusive at times but working through to an enjoyable conclusion.

By contrast the second concerto is a brow-beaten work that begins rather ominously. It has a greater depth of feeling than its companion and has a largely stern expression, too, turning in on itself as the cello keeps its own private company – as if marking the passing of a friend. Played without a break, it begins ominously over low double basses, before cutting abruptly to a jagged scherzo. The woodwind eventually calm this down before the main subject returns. The second movement melts, the emotional centre of the work, before the last movement - largely energetic - moves towards a major key. Kabalevsky still manages to charm in the faster music, his melodic invention strong as ever.

The extra 'filler', the Colas Breugnon Suite, is good fun. While not as emotionally rewarding, it still has a strong energy and a frothy mood that makes it easy to listen to – and there are once again a number of good tunes, tempered by a tragic element that surfaces in the third movement, marked Fleau Publique. Adrian Prabava conducts a good performance and enjoys the humour the score has to offer.

Verdict

This is an excellent disc from CPO, extremely well played and recorded, although the booklet notes have a rather loose translation at times. The music itself is confidently written, and Kabalevsky proves to be an extrovert composer with a keen sense of structure and melody who rarely outstays his welcome. The two concertos complement each other very well, one humourous and the other ravaged, and while the Suite may stretch its ideas out a little it still manages to charm. Fans of Shostakovich or Prokofiev are urged to try it out!

Further Listening

A Spotify playlist containing the Cello Concertos, the Piano Concerto no.2, the Cello Sonata and the Overture to Colas Breugnon can be found here.

Next week's listening - Dukas: Velléda, Polyeucte and The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Prokofiev - Man of the People?

So runs the title of a two week festival dedicated to the composer and headed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, using the South Bank as its hub. The question posed is a pertinent one, as festival director Vladimir Jurowski looks in to Prokofiev;s output in fine detail, largely shunning the crowd pleasers in favour of some of the more supposedly 'difficult' corners of his published works.

Jurowski's point is a valid one, that the composer of Romeo and Juliet (recently encountered for the first time by viewers of The Apprentice!) has a lot more up his sleeve than the strongly melodic style we already know and love. Whether public exposure to works such as the Second Symphony or the music to Chout will change consciousness remains to be seen, but the attendance for the second of four orchestral concerts in the Royal Festival Hall indicated a keen interest.

Topping the bill for this work was the Sixth Symphony, of which more later, but first there was the relatively awkward lyricism of the Symphonic Song. This 15-minute work seemed to fall between forms, a lettercard rather than a postcard, one whose most attractive moments were sweet but also one whose section of conflict was more industrial and discordant. The final 'achievement' rang rather hollow as a result, but the feeling remained that this was a work Prokofiev needed to write to ease his transition from the avant-garde works of 1920s Paris to red blooded ballet scores such as Romeo & Juliet and Cinderella.

Formally the Fifth Piano Concerto was stranger still, cast in five movements and possessing some oddly oblique melodies, ones that shouldn't work – but which somehow remained in the head throughout the interval. The balance between piano and orchestra worked well here, with Steven Osborne an undemonstrative soloist while the barbed dialogue between piano, woodwind and percussion was at its height. The final Toccata summed things up succinctly, a helter-skelter dash to the finish that crashed in to a wall at the same time as the harmony reached G major. It was a strange but effective end, the sort of signing off Prokofiev does rather well, yet on this occasion it was one that puzzled and pleased the audience in equal measure.

After this slightly uncomfortable but strangely uplifting exuberance we entered a completely different emotional world for the Sixth Symphony, a work written in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. This is arguably Prokofiev's finest symphonic achievement, even with the carefree Classical and resilient Fifth symphonies taken into account.

The chilly disposition of the opening is slightly melted by a theme whose roots appear to be in chant, inviting parallels with Rachmaninov's almost obsessive use of the Dies Irae melody but making a strongly elegiac impression. Around this the colouring of brass and wind in particular are highly original, and the London Philharmonic trombones and tubas were superb, conveying their lines as if they were anguished cries of torment. The piano, too, lends a sharper edge to the music, adding extra punch to the rhythms.

Jurowski was rather cool in the first two movements, especially in the Largo second movement where some freedom with the tempo would have heightened the expression of what is already a powerful, fraught melody. The finale however carried maximum impact, its opening theme one of Prokofiev’s delightful flights of fancy but one that finally turns sour. When it did the full power of the orchestra could be unleashed, the impact a sudden slap in the face for the earlier forced jollity. In this single gesture, the culmination of a pot boiling over with repressed feeling, Prokofiev shows himself to be a man of the people indeed, expressing in full the torment felt in the immediate aftermath of war.

Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes

If you are in any way connected with 20th century classical music, the Diaghilev exhibition running for the rest of the year at London's Victoria & Albert museum is a mandatory visit.

On a walk round the generously filled tableaux, a vivid picture emerges of life on and off stage with the Ballet Russes in Paris, and it was certainly no place for shrinking violets or introverts!

There are many great things to see in the exhibition, but none have the impact of the backdrop used for later performances of Stravinsky's 'Firebird'. Walking round the corner to see this huge piece of cloth is a genuinely breathtaking moment.

What also becomes clear is the sheer number of ballets commissioned and staged by Diaghilev, and all are given plenty of exposure here. As well as the obvious examples - the Stravinsky trilogy of 'The Firebird', 'Petrushka' and 'The Rite Of Spring', Debussy's 'Jeux' or Ravel's 'Daphnis et Chloé', there are other startling pieces of modernism. Erik Satie's 'Parade' features strange, mechanistic figures, two of which stand silently towards the end of the exhibition. Prokofiev's 'Chout', a noisy rabble of a piece, is represented by garish costumes, while other composers we might consider minor are also covered - Liadov, Hahn, Nikolai Tcherepnin and Florent Schmitt all writing stage works for the impresario.

There are more artefacts, with commendable space given to Diaghilev's love of arranging 'old' music. One of the masters in this discipline, Respighi, is represented by a florid letter, while there is a page from 'The Firebird', a backdrop from Milhaud's 'Le Train bleu', and four murky impressions of the 'Rite' itself. A beautiful blue background adorns the design for Stravinsky's 'Apollo', while blazing oranges and yellows stand behind Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Golden Cockerel'.

Inspired by the exhibition I turned to Spotify for a musical complement, which can be found here as a playlist:

http://open.spotify.com/user/benjammin22/playlist/594U5AK8jXv3KPxQvCnbCB

On listening to this it was a delight to rediscover the melodically attractive Poulenc suite for 'Les Biches' and Igor Markevitch's masterly conducting of Rimsky's brilliant suite for 'The Golden Cockerel'. Even without the obvious figures of Stravinsky, Ravel and Debussy, these two alone show how Diaghilev was capable of bringing out the best from his composers.

As something to brighten up the Autumn and provide creative inspiration, this is an hour incredibly well spent - and I will certainly return for more before the exhibition ends in January.