Search - Boris Blacher, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Lawrence Leighton Smith :: Boris Blacher: Orchestral Variations on a Theme by Paganini

'Musique pour faire plaisir'

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 05/31/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"My title is stolen from a work by that light-hearted French master, Jean Françaix, but it applies equally to the playful orchestral music of Boris Blacher (1903-1975) on this CD, a reissue of recordings from the valuable First Edition series by the Louisville Orchestra that came out from the 1950s to the 1980s. That series, which had languished and then ceased, has now been revived by a group called Santa Fe Music Group, and we should all be grateful that they have not let this treasure trove of first recordings disappear. The works on this disc were recorded, in the order on the disc, in 1985, 1968, 1954 and 1966 under three different conductors of the Louisville Symphony.



Probably Blacher's best known work is his 'Variations on a Theme of Paganini' (1947) which uses that almost ubiquitous A Minor theme from Paganini's 24th violin caprice, the one used by Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Rochberg and Lutoslawski, among others. It is a brilliantly orchestrated, lighter-than-air confection that nonetheless displays masterful counterpoint and manages to satisfy both heart and mind. It is played with insouciance by the Louisville conducted by Lawrence Leighton Smith. This is followed by the 'Orchester Ornament' ('Orchestral Ornament,' 1953), conducted by Jorge Mester. This work is an illustration of Blacher's sophisticated use of 'variable meters,' a technique he pioneered in which metrical patterns are set out, much like twelve-tone patterns would be, and followed throughout. There is no sense of this being a trick or a gimmick, but rather, owing to Blacher's Stravinskian manipulation of meter, it motors along with both wit and unexpected tenderness, before the rather fierce ending.



'Studie in Pianissimo' (1953) is just that, an eight minute tour de force in which the dynamic is altered not by individual instruments playing louder or softer but by the addition to or subtraction of instruments from the orchestral mass. The performance, conducted by longtime Louisville music director Robert Whitney, might have been more effective if a world-class orchestra were playing, but one gets an idea, at least, from this 1950s mono recording, of what it could sound like with from a stronger group. I don't mean to damn with faint praise; this is a good performance by an orchestra used to playing new music.



'Orchester Fantasie' ('Orchestral Fantasy,' 1956), at twenty minutes, is the longest and weightiest work presented here. In five movements, it is also the most nearly atonal of the works. The thematic elements are so arranged that one usually has some sense of a tonal center. It is a set of free variations and frankly sounds more like Hindemith than Schönberg. It is marked by rhythmic and instrumentational inventiveness, and again one can hear Blacher's desire to make, first and most important, music to entertain rather than instruct. Wit abounds and there are occasional blatting trombones, violin slides, jazz licks and pastiches of dance tunes. Particularly brilliant is his use of solo winds. I was amused to realize that the expert principal bassoonist in some of these performances is the now well-known composer, Dan Welcher, who was a longtime member of the Louisville.



Before hearing this CD my only exposure to Blacher's music had been his Paganini Variations. The promise of that terrific piece is fulfilled in the three additional works, each of them worthwhile, presented here.



One must point out that although the Louisville First Edition recordings have primarily been of American works, this represents one of its valuable forays into music by non-American but otherwise worthy contemporary composers. And we can be thankful for that.



Scott Morrison"

Inventive in its middle-of-the-road modern language, and an

Discophage | France | 01/26/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This Blacher disc came as one of the unexpected good surprise of my on-going survey of the Louisville recorded heritage.



I knew the music of Blacher through various records, including the Herbert Kegel / Berlin Classics release featuring the same Paganini Variations played here by the Louisville Orchestra, The Concertante Musik from 1937 and the 2nd Piano Concerto from 1952 (Boris Blacher: Concertante Musik; Piano Concerto). The impression I was left with led me to rank him, in my private pantheon, certainly not among the leading 20th Century German/Austrian masters of modern music such as the Schoenberg-Berg-Webern Holy Trinity or Hindemith, and not even with composers with such uniquely personal voices and outlooks as Weill, Hartmann or Zimmermann, but rather among the second or even third-tier masters, in a broad category which would include composers such as (in decreasing order of preference) Eisler, Dessau, Krenek and Von Einem - composers who embraced modernism but not radically so, content to ride safely in the middle of that road and never developing a uniquely distinctive and unmistakably recognizable voice.



In fact I find the compositions on this Louisville disc better than that.



The Paganini Variations from 1947 are Blacher's most famousand oft-recorded composition but, as is often the case, I don't find it his best. The interest of Blacher's take on Paganini's famous 24th Caprice is that the original theme is so famous (witness Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Lutoslawski and many others) that the composer can, in his elaboration upon it, stray pretty far from it, to the point of making it almost unrecognizable. But overall the piece's language is brilliant and colorful but not very inventive, a run-of-the-mill and mild-mannered modernism that would justify my preconceptions. There are no major differences between Leighton-Smith's approach and Herbert Kegel's, most variations even compare to the second except for a few of them, but Berlin Classics' 1980 recording does have a marked edge in terms of sheer sonic presence and, consequently, of dramatic impact over the 1985 Louisville recording. Also, contrary to the Berlin disc, the individual variations do not get separate cues. As many of them develop organically into the next one, you will find it difficult to spot the new one just playing by ear. Here's a tracking:



(1)0:17 (2)0:50 (3)1:25 (4)2:25 (5)3:17 (6)3:36 (7)4:09 (8)4:47 (9)6:39 (10)7:22 (11)8:45 (12)9:25 (13)10:01 (14)10:48 (15)11:22 (16)12:53



The other pieces on the disc - all premiere recordings and, for the Study in pianissimo, a Lousiville commission as well - are much more daring and inventive.



The liner notes insist on what is supposedly Blacher's main claim to fame - not the Paganini Variations, as one would have expected, but his composition method called "variable meter", by which Blacher, from the 1950s on, sought to organize his rhythmic architecture by using regular progressions of the metrical signatures (or number of beats per measure), following simple arithmetic or more complex geometric rules. But insisting on this aspect is, I find, besides the point - what the cook does in his kitchen is none of the eater's concern, who only cares about what he gets in his plate and how that tastes in his mouth: and such progressions are not what primarily jumps to the ear.



Studie im Pianissimo (1953) is, as its name indicates, a remarkable short (8') etude in which the orchestra is confined to the pianissimo nuance. Dynamics are given by shifting the weight of the orchestra, from solo to tutti, starting very pointillistically, building up to whiffs of musical phrases, at times agitated like a ghostly wind, and ending in a chord made up of all twelve tones. You could be in Schoenberg's Farbenmelodie from the Five pieces opus 16. It is terse, enigmatic and hauntingly fascinating. Too bad the 1954 recording deprives it of some of its color and hence impact.



Orchestral Ornament (1953) is delicately chamber-like in its orchestration, and the moods go from the two longing slow movement to the agitated and motoric fast ones, vaguely bringing to mind some of the chamber pieces written by Henze in the same years, or perhaps some of Stravinsky's neo-classical utterances (Octet for winds, Symphony in Three Movements, Rake's Progress). It is alternately subtle and dynamic, masterfully crafted.



The same subtlety of chamber-like orchestration pervades the Orchester Fantasie from 1956, and the piece is full of ear-catching touches of orchestration, such as the scurrying repeated notes passed on to each other by the various string sections, and the upwards brass (trombones, I think) glissandos in the Presto (track 8), and later in the same movement the downward sul ponticello scales followed by similar ostinatos played by woodwinds and brass. The short and terse adagio is a plangent dialogue of chromatic melodies played by solo viola, cello and violin against ghostly upward and downward woodwind scales (a gesture typical of Alban Berg), and the ensuing Vivace is rhythmically robust, brassy and dramatic (vaguely anticipating Lutoslawski's final compositions), with again many subtle touches of orchestral color. There are moments of searing lyricism in the coda, which rises to a climax of dramatic intensity.



Surely nothing in these three works is earth-shattering, but they are full of unexpected and ear-catching musical events, which unfailingly grab one's attention and make one want to investigate more of Blacher.



Studie im Pianissimo first came out on Lou 545-07, one of the first LPs to be released by the famous Louisville First Edition Records label. It was paired back then with Persichetti's Symphony for Strings (now on Vincent Persichetti: Serenade No. 5, Op. 43; Symphony for Strings, Op. 61: Symphony No. 8) and Robert Sanders Little Symphony #2 (not reissued).



Unlike the Variations, the various sections of Orchester Ornament and Orchester Fantasie, though played without break, are commendably cued. The latter was recorded in 1966 and comes in vivid stereo. It was first published on LS671 with Panufnik's Rhapsody (now on Andrzej Panufnik: Nocturn / Rhapsody / Symphony 2). Orchester Ornament came in 1968 on LS685 with Poulenc's "Deux Marches et un intermède" and Milhaud's "Cortège Funèbre" - only the latter has been reissued, on Darius Milhaud: Ouverture Méditerraneénne; Kentuckiana; Cortege Funebre; etc.). Finally, the Variations came on LS792 with Charles Wuorinen's "Magic Art" (not reissued).



TT is an acceptable 56+.





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