CPO diaries

[ritter]

Indeed, CPO has been really inventive in making obscure repertoire to the record collector.

In my collection, these sets hold pride of place:



The Milhaud symphonies haven't had a very enthusiastic reception here in GMG (have they, @Karl Henning ?  ) but it's certainly a good thing to have access to all of them in one set.




TBH, I have this a singles (except for the Second Symphony, which I only have in the Zagrosek recording on Decca's "Entartete Kunst" series).

[The new erato]

cpo has a great series of baroque opera under the supervision of Stephen Stubbs and Paul O'Dette from the Boston Baroque fetival. This is just one example:

[Brian]

This disc contains three unnumbered quartets, in G, A, and E minor. Newspaper articles of the time suggested that Mayer ultimately composed 14 quartets, of which 7 survived, the latest from 1858. (The later ones seem to be the lost ones, which is a pity.) The numbering/exact years are unknown, though in some cases we have info on premiere performances.

The music, to my surprise, is very Haydnesque. Not to mean witty and sunny, but more like the "serious" mature Haydn groupings. The craft is serious, the music has integrity, the parts are all in nice conversation. You could also compare it to Mendelssohn's quartets, but the early ones only, not the fire or complexity of Op. 80.

Although I doubt I'll listen to these as often as I do the Mendelssohn or Cherubini quartets, they are very pleasant and it'll be nice to see this cycle completed.

[JBS]

Good @Florestan music:
High Viennese Classical style, perhaps not on the level of WAM or FJH, but not far below them.
Well done by the performers. Sonics are crystal clear.

I suppose I should read the liner notes for more information, but I've had a hard week at work, and this music, and the Pinot Grigio I'm drinking, are all the stress relief I need.

[Brian]

There are no rules for erudition in this thread  that sounds lovely and is on my list for next week, thank you! The violinist's name is very familiar...

[Florestan]

Good @Florestan music:
High Viennese Classical style, perhaps not on the level of WAM or FJH, but not far below them.
Well done by the performers. Sonics are crystal clear.

I suppose I should read the liner notes for more information, but I've had a hard week at work, and this music, and the Pinot Grigio I'm drinking, are all the stress relief I need.

IIRC, one of his violin concertos was attributed to Mozart for a long time, which speaks volumes about their quality.

[Brian]

A tiny bit of false advertising here, as the CPE Bach work is actually one of the cello concertos (in B flat), arranged for viola by the soloist. It's still lovely, of course, and Mathis Rochat is an appealing soloist, with a direct, slicing style that remains tonally pretty. From Johann Gottlieb Graun, we get a true viola concerto and a double concerto with viola and violin. All three pieces fit comfortably together on the disc, with stylistic similarity, and all three are well-written. The stylish playing of Rochat and his small string orchestra accompaniment (with rather prominent harpsichord) are definitely pleasing enough to make this worth an hour of your/my time.



Music for two pianos was a constant throughout Carl Reinecke's career, and this three-CD box spans from Op. 6 to Op. 275. There are three formal sonatas, several orchestral transcriptions, and a whole lot of theme-and-variations type works. The highlights of CD1 are the opening and closing variation tracks, the first one a fresh youthful charmer and the second based on a minor-key Bach sarabande.

CD2 starts with a series of miniatures, highlighted by a scherzo "in canon" (barely) and a swirling, up-and-down darting Impromptu in a very cheery mood. (I could imagine it as a very long encore at a two-pianos concert, or a showoff piece for teenage prodigies.) Then we get the second of the formal sonatas. This is by far the biggest, at 24 minutes, and in C. It starts off in a pensive, Brahmsian mood, but don't expect autumnal profundity; it eventually settles into a little lighter vein. The finale's more rigorous counterpoint brings back Brahms as a reference point in its development section, but not for long.

This disc ends with two 10-minute curiosities: a concert paraphrase of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 19, and a "Dramatic Fantasy Piece." The Mozart piece freely mixes up all the themes, not at all attempting to recapture the original dramatic arc. It's a genial little piece. The Dramatic Fantasy, on the other hand, finds Reinecke attempting to do brooding, emo, and eventually heroic/grandiose. This is not his usual language, but I find the result rather endearing.

CD3 starts with "Prologue solemnis," a quasi-religious sounding slow hymn with a main melody that sounds, a little bit, like the old folk tune "rock-a-bye baby." The faster middle section sounds a little bit like an orchestral piece that has lost its color and contrapuntal clarity in the reduction, although I still like it. The Sonata on this disc is a shorter, more modest one (less than 15 minutes), mostly rather leisurely and amiable in tone. Only the short final "Vivace" picks up the energy.

Zur Reformationsfeier Overture is, I assume, an orchestral transcription. It shares the big theme from Mendelssohn's Reformation Symphony, in a somewhat more reticent, less heart-on-sleeve phrasing. (I don't know the original hymn well enough to know whose version is "authentic.") After five minutes of increasingly elaborate, contrapuntal variations on this Big Tune, the music abruptly stops, then turns to another hymn tune. After this reprieve, the original tune returns along with interjections of Handel's Messiah's "Hallelujah." The two pianos basically duel it out, one playing Handel, the other playing Not Handel. It's super earnest, but very entertaining.

After that, we get a couple light little finales to round out the set: a scene of Mediterranean tone-pictures (including a "Neapolitan mandolin serenade") and Improvisations on a Gavotte by Gluck.

Reinecke's total sincerity, craftsmanship, and commitment to two equal partners really make his two-piano music consistently enjoyable. Although none of this is as memorable or personal as the Schubert masterpieces, it's music I'd happily return to a few dozen more times.

-

I also listened to the Eck concertos album above today, and enjoyed that too.

[Brian]

Usually I read through CPO's booklets for this diary, but Qobuz didn't upload this one.  Wilhelm Berger lived from 1861-1911 and seems to have been heavily influenced by the German romantic mainstream. The Konzertstuck is a 30-minute one-movement piano concerto in a seemingly gigantic sonata form, that starts quietly and peacably and takes on occasional Brahmsian sounds and qualities (influenced especially by the major-key material from the first movement of Brahms' First Concerto). I thought it was reasonably entertaining, and although generally not too dramatic, it does have a grand flourish for an ending.

The Symphony No. 1 is a 45-minute pastoral work in B flat. I'd say it's "epic", but only in length - there's really nothing challenging or unusual or especially interesting in the span of the piece. It's just nice, agreeable background music, in the mid-romantic style of Bruch, Joachim Raff, or Johann Svendsen (though I definitely prefer the much more tuneful and youthful Svendsen symphonies). The fact that Berger's lifespan is almost exactly the same as Mahler's is remarkable because they sound like they come from different centuries. But again, it was very pleasant and cheerful and I used it as background music while getting some work done. A few years after this, Berger wrote his Symphony No. 2 in B minor; one has to assume CPO will record this shortly, along with his other orchestral work, a theme and variations.

This strikes me as a perfect "average" of a CPO recording: well played, well recorded renditions of music that is forgotten for good reason, but pleasant enough to revisit and play in the background.

After my encounter with Wilhelm Berger, I decided of course the natural next thing to do would be...



I can't remember if I've heard this music before, but if so, it was way back in 2008 or 2009, when my university library had copies of every CPO CD. Peterson-Berger was a Swedish composer strongly influenced by the high romantic influences of both Wagner and nationalism (especially Grieg). He wrote folksy Swedish-inspired things, several volumes of Lyric Pieces-like piano miniatures, and a series of large symphonies. In later life he became a music critic who deplored modernism and serialism, and lived alone on an island house with, according to Wikipedia, "his butler and his cats."

Symphony No. 1 is surprisingly like Wilhelm Berger's Symphony No. 1: about 40 minutes long, in B flat, with an epic structure that is mostly pastoral in actual sound. However, Peterson-Berger starts to reveal difference as the music moves along. His heroic tale has movement subtitles like "Between the feuds," and his orchestra is larger, with especially strong parts for trombones and tuba, plus some added percussion. This lends solemn heft to passages about "strife" and the hero's death. The finale ("Toward new beginnings") is more folksy and light, with a glittering conclusion. All in all, it's an entertaining piece.

The suite Last Summer is a half-hour sequence of pretty late-romantic nature pictures, sometimes with rather evocative impressionist scoring (like the piano and harp in the final piece, "Mountain Stream"). It sounds like it could have been written for an early movie. Because of the form, there's not really a narrative - just a sequence of colorful episodes. Peterson-Berger's orchestration is expert. I rather liked it.

Symphony No. 2 begins where the First left off, with a similarly mystical/spiritual feeling to the introduction. The main allegro has a more down-to-earth feeling, and I really like the dancing, tuba-thumping second subject around the 5' mark, which then slips into love-scene-type music. This is a symphony where the colors are so vivid and bold that you can imagine your own program. (My partner likes to imagine a movie in her head when she's at the symphony, and this piece would be good for that.)

The second movement starts with an absolutely delicious "exotic" episode full of pealing horns, clapping tambourine, and (yes) xylophone solos! This portion is structured like one of the big Mahler scherzos, with fundamentally a classical structure, but adding lots of little mini-episodes and bonus bits in between the traditional A-B-A. At three minutes, the main party subject suddenly yields to a slow episode and at 7', a wild new harmony arrives with glockenspiel and bass clarinet. At 10' we get confirmation of the structure when the scherzo returns, this time developed in new directions with new ideas. (I think...my memory isn't that good anymore  ) This movement is an absolute epic, and it builds to a sizzling finish that sounds like a cross between Rimsky-Korsakov and Nielsen in the best possible way.

After all that exuberance, it's no surprise that the finale begins slowly and calmly. The peace lasts for only about two minutes, after which Peterson-Berger reprises fast material in a more traditional, conventional romantic language. It's as if he's saying "we're back from the exotic climates now." The symphony ends with a rather questing, slow-but-intimidating tone that sounds rather like a beginning instead of an ending. (It's a quiet ending!) Maybe he's preparing us for Chapter 3 in his symphonic odyssey. Overall, this is a very interesting work I'll return to several more times, one that reminds me somewhat of the big Stenhammar masterpieces, and one that has an interesting structure with all the fun stuff packed into the middle.

After this, the second CD is rounded out with three short works. The Romance is a 12-minute violin and orchestra piece with a similar heroic/mythic tone. The violinist gets to sound bold and extroverted and romantic, and the center of the piece offers some of the tenderness and lyricism you'd expect from the title. Having the great Ulf Wallin around to play this short piece is like having Christopher Walken pop in to read two lines of your movie. Must be nice!

The short pieces that end the CD, an "Oriental Dance" and processional march-like opera prelude with occasional wedding-march feelings, are nice light fluff with glittering orchestration.

The opening gesture of Symphony No. 3 is not promising. It's a very short three-note cell and makes me think "there's going to be a whole symphony about this?" But then the orchestration - including a very prominent piano - starts to pull things in a more mysterious, less predictable direction. I'll be honest - I know for many GMGers No. 3 is their favorite Peterson-Berger symphony, but for about 15 minutes I got distracted working and forgot to take any notes. The symphony does have cyclical elements, as that opening gesture returns in the finale's development, but I did feel like WPB's imagination was more limited here compared to No. 2, in terms of structure, harmony, and orchestration. The quiet ending seems abrupt.

The Earina Suite is a 20-minute romantic chunk that also finds WPB becoming more conservative in his melodies, harmonies, and soundworld. It's pleasant, but instantly forgettable. The Chorale & Fugue is quite nice and short, with the chorale delivered by brass.

I'll resume the cycle with interest in weeks to come (there are five symphonies) - for now, going to change up my listening diet with something baroque.