Bruno Monsaingeon is best known for his films of classical musicians off-stage — Piotr Anderszewski musing on Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations or traveling round Poland on a train, Glenn Gould talking against the backdrop of resplendent Canadian landscapes, and so on. It’s therefore surprising to find him the director of a simple filmed concert — not his sort of thing at all, you would have thought.
The concert is by the prestigious Chamber Orchestra of Europe, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy, featuring Sibelius’ Violin Concerto (with Valery Sokolov as soloist) and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2. Two other Sibelius items, Rakastava and Valse Triste, top and tail the program.
In the event Monsaingeon doesn’t introduce any novelties. There are perhaps more individual instrumentalists highlighted than usual, though with still a lot of attention given to the well-known first violinist, Lorenza Borrani. But in the concerto the focus is almost entirely on Sokolov, and rightly so. His performance is outstanding, simultaneously sensitive and strong. This is a recording of the beautiful Sibelius concerto to treasure.
But the Schumann symphony is very good too, and benefits from the thinner textures from this 50-strong ensemble than you might be used to hearing. These give Schumann the extra clarity and bite he so needs. Ashkenazy, as always, is a delight, kindly and good-natured, though with the highest possible musical standards.
The Discovering Masterpieces of Classical Music series contains many attractive items, and the DVD featuring Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major is one of the best. It’s played by the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado and, as with all the other items in the series, you first get an illustrated analysis of the piece lasting around 30 minutes, then see the entire work performed without a break.
On this disk there are two analytical experts, musicologist and Brahms expert Wolfgang Sandberger, speaking in German, and then the soloist, Gil Shaham, speaking in English. More commentary is read by a female voice whose tones, as I’ve mentioned in previous reviews, are far too adolescently reverential to suit this otherwise critical and admirable project.
Also of interest is the outstanding performance of Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” in the same series. It’s again played by the Berlin Philharmonic under Abbado, and is an absolutely stunning performance. But it’s with a slight shock that you realize that this and the Brahms Violin Concerto were originally both part of the same remarkable concert, given in Palermo in 2002. Also more than slightly numbing is the fact that you can buy them together on the same DVD — the complete concert, in other words, but without the Discovering Masterpieces interpretative treatment beforehand.
Also included in the complete concert are Beethoven’s Egmont Overture overture and, to conclude, Verdi’s overture to I Vespri Siciliani (The Sicilian Vespers) — this last in tribute to Palermo, presumably.
Staying with the Discovering Masterpieces series, Giuseppe Sinopoli’s performance of Richard Strauss’ Eine Alpensinfonie (Alpine Symphony) is also recommendable. It’s never been a work that’s caught the popular imagination in the way Strauss’ tone poems such as Tod und Verklarung (Death and Transfiguration) or Ein Heldenleben (A Hero’s Life) have. But if we’re to believe the music scholar Habakuk Traber in his explicatory commentary on this DVD, then the Alpensinfonie is one of Strauss’ greatest masterpieces. It’s always nice to have one’s ears opened in this sort of way.
The Australia-born pianist Leslie Howard, nowadays resident in London, has not only completed his project of recording all of Liszt’s solo piano music, but has in addition added some extra CDs as previously forgotten works came to light. This extraordinary effort amounts to 99 CDs in all, and is registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest recording project ever completed by any artist. Hyperion issued all 99 in a boxed set last year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Liszt’s birth.
It’s impossible to do more here than simply hail the achievement, and one CD must stand as representative of the whole. Howard’s Liszt: Ballades, Legends and Polonaises was the second to be issued and contains much to savor.
And it’s arguable that a limited selection such as this CD is of more value to the ordinary listener than the pathless prairies represented by 99 disks. It certainly has some fireworks of the kind Liszt specialized in. Most memorable for me were the Second Ballade (in B Minor), a truly tumultuous foray that makes you think Liszt was trying to make the piano do things it had never done before, as indeed he was, and the Legend of St Francois de Paule Walking on the Waves, a showpiece of literalism where the sea rolls and breaks in the left hand while the saint strides, confident and unconcerned, in the right.
Howard is equal to the best when it comes to Liszt, and more or less any CD in this huge sequence is probably as good as any other. All 99, however, are surely only going to be of interest to music libraries and professional pianists.
Sibelius, Schumann
Violin Concerto/Symphony No. 2
Ashkenazy, Sokolov
EuroArts 3078748
Brahms
Violin Concerto
Abbado, Shaham
EuroArts 2056078
Brahms, Dvorak
Violin Concerto/Symphony No. 9
Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado
EuroArts 2051958
Richard Strauss
Alpensinfonie
Sinopoli,Sachsische Staatskapelle
EuroArts 2056138
Liszt
Complete Solo Piano Works
Leslie Howard, piano
Hyperion
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated