Vivace: Where unknowns mingle with megastars!

On this week's Vivace, we have the normal abnormalities.

At 7 am, we'll have a half-hour of musical megastars: a marvelous Mozart sonata for violin and piano performed by the great Isaac Stern and Yefim Bronfman, followed by a Beethoven work with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Itzhak Perlman and Lynn Harrell.

Just before 8 am, we'll celebrate the 155th birthday of this good lady, Mildred Hill, a Victorian-era spinster who was a Sunday-school teacher, church organist and pianist.  She didn't have a dazzling career, and she didn't write anything particularly noteworthy or memorable ... except for one short song.

At 8 o'clock, we have a dazzlingly unique version of a well-known favorite, cooked up by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet,

... and we'll round out the show with a Hoffmeister Clarinet Quartet and a sonata by Mendelssohn.

A cheerful start to your Friday is guaranteed, so, as ever, I hope you'll join me for Vivace, this Friday, 6-9 am, right here on WTJU-Charlottesville.  I look forward to the pleasure of your company.

Dussek Symphonies: Comfort Music

Dussek: Four Symphonies 
Helsinki Baroque Orchestra
Aapo Hakkinen, conductor
Naxos

Naxos' new release presents four smphonies of Franz Xaver Dussek, who was a close friend of Mozart. After hearing the works, that fact didn't surprise me. There's a distinct similarity in sound.

Dussek was one of several talented composers living and working in Bohemia in the 1760s-1770s,, and his music is very much of its time and place. Just like the early and middle symphonies of Haydn and Mozart, Dussek's are all in clearly delineated forms. And Dussek's melodies similarly drive steadily towards their cadence points, pause briefly, and start the process over again.

That's not to say these symphonies sound trite -- far from it. Dussek captures that same spirit of excitement one hears in Mozart's works of 1770's (when the symphonies on this release were written). Orchestration is light, and the music zips along, more concerned about elegant turns of phrase than expressing deep emotion. While Dussek follows the forms of the day, he does so with imagination. There's nothing cliche about these works, just a feeling of familiarity.

Three of the symphonies follow the three-movement fast-slow-fast structure of the early classical period. They're short, to the point, and entertaining. The last work on the disc, the Sinfonia in B-flat major (altner Bb3), is more substantial. It has four movements, and sounds more like Haydn than Mozart. The themes are a little more substantial, and more fully developed.

Aapo Hakkinen and the Helsinki Baroque Orchestra find just the right balance with this music. The ensemble is crisp, and plays with a lightness that keeps these works buoyant.

I found these symphonies thorough enjoyable. Comfort food isn't gourmet dining, but it makes you feel good when you eat it. Dussek isn't Mozart, but his music made me feel good when I heard it. So let's just call these symphonies comfort music -- and call this a positive review.

Review: Dussek Piano Concertos - undiscovered gems

Jan Ladislav Dussek as a brilliant pianist, and an accomplished composer. Like is contemporaries Mozart and Haydn, he strove for a clean structure in his music, even as his piano technique became more complex and expressive.

This re-release from Capriccio features two of Dussek's piano concerti, plus an additional oddity for piano and narrator (!). Pianist Andreas Staier is backed by the Concerto Koln. Staier performing on a fortepiano of the period. It's a good call -- on the fortepiano, you can hear the instrument being pushed to its limits. On a modern piano, with its wider range and more durable action, the solo passages would come off sounding a bit more sedate, I think.

The disc opens with Dussek's Concerto in G minor, Op. 49 from 1801. While the structure owes much to Haydn, the harmonies and solo passages look ahead to the piano works of Schubert.The orchestration is fairly perfunctory, but that's a common trait for works of this period. The ensemble was there to back up the soloist, not share the glory!

Although seemingly simple in construction, the melodies often take some unexpected twists and turns, especially in the slow movement. This concerto doesn't have the thundering pronouncements of Beethoven, but it is music by a master of the instrument speaking in a more refined, but nonetheless emotionally expressive voice.

The second work on the disc, the Piano Concerto Op. 22 sounds Mozartian -- and no wonder. Dussek wrote the work in 1793, when Mozart's concertos were well-known (and before Beethoven really got going). Once again, the structure of the piece is clean, while the piano falls all over itself in tumbling scales and arpeggios. But there's a purpose to it all. Dussek crafts some engaging music while he's dazzling us with his technique.

I have to admit I found the last work on the albut a little off-putting. The Tableau “Marie Antoinette” is a recitation (in French) of Antoinette’s demise with the scenes illustrated musically on the piano. Perhaps it works in live performance, but personally, I would have rather have just had the music and the text printed in the booklet.

Andreas Staier does a fine job. His technique is such that he pulls much more expression out of the fortepiano than many musicians can from a modern piano.
 
Tuneful and appealing -- recommended for the concertos.