\n<\/p>\n
Janine Jansen, violin; Oslo Philharmonic; Klaus M\u00e4kel\u00e4, conductor (Decca)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
While the 28-year-old conductor Klaus M\u00e4kel\u00e4<\/a> makes an impact both polished and visceral in the concert hall, the recordings he\u2019s put out thus far in his meteoric career haven\u2019t shown him to his best advantage. There has been blunt, inert Stravinsky with the Orchestre de Paris and a politely listless cycle of Sibelius symphonies with the Oslo Philharmonic. (He will soon depart those ensembles to lead starrier ones: the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.)<\/p>\n Now, for the first time, the focus of one of his albums is not squarely on him, and it\u2019s the best of the middling bunch. The violinist Janine Jansen stays in the spotlight in concertos by Sibelius and Prokofiev (his First) with M\u00e4kel\u00e4 and the Oslo orchestra. Without ever seeming indulgent, Jansen can be alternately wispily delicate and thrillingly forceful, but always songful and human. In the Prokofiev, she\u2019s just the right mixture of playful and sinister, and suavely intimate in the urbane third movement. The players sound excellent, led by M\u00e4kel\u00e4 with a kind of passionate moderation, an effectively reined-in fire. The grandeur of the Sibelius concerto\u2019s finale builds steadily, and the end of the Prokofiev\u2019s first movement has the candied atmosphere of a fairy tale. ZACHARY WOOLFE<\/p>\n Jennifer Koh, violin; Boston Modern Orchestra Project; Gil Rose, conductor (BMOP\/sound)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The pianist Vijay Iyer, an acclaimed figure in improvised music, also composes works \u201caround\u201d the classical tradition, as he puts it in the notes for this first recorded collection of his orchestral music. There is nothing programmatic or explicitly political, but all the pieces reflect, in some way, the tensions of the era in which they were created, from 2017 to 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The largest work is the half-hour \u201cTrouble,\u201d for violin and orchestra, written for the brilliant Jennifer Koh. It can be heard as a meditation on the relationship of individual to collective: Unlike a traditional concerto, Koh\u2019s nuanced and highly varied sound spinning into and away from a spacious orchestral texture. There is a collective sense of mourning in the third movement, an agonizing memorial for Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man<\/a> murdered in Detroit in 1982. And in the long, final movement, \u201cAssembly,\u201d various musical strands come together \u2014 at first uncertainly, but ultimately in triumph.<\/p>\n \u201cCrisis Modes,\u201d for percussion and strings \u2014 which Iyer calls \u201can S.O.S. from this scarred planet\u201d \u2014 boasts a ghostly middle movement rife with Bartokian night sounds. Minimalism is an audible touchpoint for the orchestral piece \u201cAsunder,\u201d which has a buoyancy that transcends the darkness of its time. The collection leaves you leave grateful for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project\u2019s usual confident performances, and wanting to hear more from Iyer the composer. DAVID WEININGER<\/p>\n Ausrine Stundyte, John Lundgren, Nikolai Schukoff, vocalists; Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra; Marc Albrecht, conductor (Pentatone)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Alexander von Zemlinsky lived at the hinge of late Romanticism and early Modernism. While his music has languished, long after being banned in Nazi Germany, advocates have mounted a successful rediscovery campaign in recent years. One opera, \u201cEine Florentinische Trag\u00f6die\u201d \u2014 a love-triangle yarn based on a German translation of Oscar Wilde\u2019s \u201cA Florentine Tragedy\u201d<\/a> \u2014 has emerged from that.<\/p>\n Marc Albrecht, the conductor on this recording from the Dutch National Opera, is a devotee of Zemlinsky\u2019s period, and makes the most of his task here. Several other strong takes on the work have emphasized Romantic sweep. But Albrecht lingers on some of the music\u2019s acidic qualities. Throughout, insinuating riffs for oboes, clarinets and trumpets are allowed appropriate space to offer their cutting remarks.<\/p>\n As the merchant Simone, the baritone John Lundgren doesn\u2019t start out at full blast. Instead, he acts the part: At some junctures, he\u2019s batted around effectively by his wayward wife and a calculating prince; at others, he brings a deluded air to some high notes, while saving his most sincere ardor for the goods he\u2019s advertising, or the money he might earn. Pentatone\u2019s booklet<\/a> includes the German libretto and the English text, side by side. All in all, Wilde\u2019s drama \u2014 once critiqued for its quick twists \u2014 thrives anew in the frothy-then-turbulent sonic baths of these forces. SETH COLTER WALLS<\/p>\n Paul Wee, piano; Swedish Chamber Orchestra; Michael Collins, conductor (Bis)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Say this for Adolf von Henselt\u2019s Piano Concerto, it had a decent start: Clara Schumann was the soloist at its 1845 premiere, and Felix Mendelssohn was on the podium. There was a time, too, when the work attracted great pianists like Liszt, Busoni and Rachmaninoff. But for the past century or so, only a handful of musicians possessing an inquisitive mind and a technique equal to that of the composer \u2014 \u201ca god at the piano,\u201d said Clara\u2019s husband, Robert \u2014 have given it a try. It has previously received three recordings, including one from Marc-Andr\u00e9 Hamelin<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Paul Wee\u2019s new account is extraordinary. A lawyer who plays the piano part time, he makes the concerto\u2019s absurd, unceasing difficulties seem entirely manageable \u2014 so much so, that only if you consult the score does its formidable hidden challenges become as imposing as its attention-grabbing double octaves. Just as in Wee\u2019s earlier recording<\/a> of Liszt\u2019s transcription of the \u201cEroica\u201d Symphony<\/a>, the sensitivity of touch and the depth of characterization are as remarkable as the virtuoso thunder; note the pliant shaping of the left-hand accompaniment in the slow movement. He is scarcely less impressive in Hans Bronsart von Schellendorf\u2019s showier, later concerto, combining to gobsmacking effect with the energetic Swedish Chamber Orchestra in its romping finale. DAVID ALLEN<\/p>\n Donald Berman, piano (Avie)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Like all notable performances of Charles Ives\u2019s Second Piano Sonata, \u201cConcord, Mass., 1840-1860,\u201d a tribute to Transcendentalism, Donald Berman\u2019s revels in capaciousness.<\/p>\n The sonata includes florid experimentalism (in the first minutes of the \u201cEmerson\u201d movement), as well as more inward moods of contemplation (as in the finale, \u201cThoreau\u201d). Elsewhere, you can find traces of parlor-song amiability (\u201cThe Alcotts\u201d) and ragtime-influenced abandon (\u201cHawthorne\u201d). Ives even makes space for European echoes, quoting and transmuting the opening of Beethoven\u2019s Fifth Symphony and the wedding march from \u201cLohengrin.\u201d<\/p>\n Berman, the president of the Ives Society, handles the exceptional variety of styles wonderfully; he doesn\u2019t shrink away from difficult density, nor does he offer short shrift to melodic beauty. He also absorbs the optional part for flute, near the end of \u201cThoreau,\u201d in his piano solo rendition.<\/p>\n Most notably, Berman celebrates Ives the tinkerer. Ives oversaw two published editions of the \u201cConcord,\u201d decades apart. Berman replaces the first pages of the revised \u201cEmerson\u201d movement with passages from the \u201cFirst Transcription from \u2018Emerson,\u2019\u201d which Ives wrote between publishing the \u201cConcord\u201d versions (and later noted might be preferable to both introductions). Some extremities of register and gesture may seem shocking, but to my ear, it\u2019s a rewarding, alternate Ivesian idea, one that seems in league with the churning imagination of contemporary American jazz styles<\/a>. SETH COLTER WALLS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nVijay Iyer: \u2018Trouble\u2019<\/h2>\n
Zemlinsky: \u2018Eine Florentinische Trag\u00f6die\u2019<\/h2>\n
Henselt and Bronsart: Piano Concertos<\/h2>\n
Ives: Piano Sonata No. 2 and \u2018The St. Gaudens\u2019<\/h2>\n