Last week I finally signed up for a streaming service. First two albums I clicked on were Yuja Wang: The Berlin Recital and Nemanja RaduloviÄ: BaĆÆka, both DG releases. Not sure why I chose them, except that I wouldnāt have jumped to buy either oneāwhich is why streamingās so attractive, of course. You can sample all sorts of things.
For better or worse, I donāt consider myself a huge fan of the late-Romantic repertoire that Yuja Wang embraces. But when I hear this:
it doesnāt simply take me back to my middle-school days, when I was learning that piece. It actually makes me feel like an eighth-grader again. What I mean is, it delivers the palpable excitement of that musicās grandeur, hauteur, and tension (for tension read fear, fury, and desire in all forms) just as if I were hearing it for the first time. Wang not only plays all the notes right, she gets a big sound out of the instrument, and she phrases so that a sense of coiled-spring intensity is always present.
These elements help define hotness, which has little to do with this performerās glamorous outfits. The term itself is seldom used in describing any classical music, probably because it connotes adolescent sexual appreciation (apprehension? awareness?), an activity considered irrelevantāoffensive, evenāas one ascends the slopes of the art-music value system. Carmina Burana is certifiably hot, the Art of Fugue certifiably not. Need I even ask which is the āgreaterā work?
Furthermore, hotness requires specific sorts of intensity, including textural simplicity, repetition (especially, driving or catchy rhythms) and sensuous intent at the Department of Melody. The trick is to balance these factors while maintaining a āseriousā faƧade andāthese daysāavoiding any whiff of exoticism (i.e., lingering stereotypes linked to Africa and the Middle East).
What else should you know about The Berlin Recital? Besides another Rachmaninov prelude and two of his Ćtudes-Tableaux, Ms. Wang includes a Scriabin sonata, three Ligeti Ć©tudes, and the magisterial Prokofiev Sonata No. 8 (full track listing here). It is the only work on her program that directly addresses romantic love, having been inspired by (and dedicated to) Mira Mendelson, a young woman Prokofiev met five years earlier and with whom he lived after his wife Lina was sent to a labor camp. In the first movement, lyricism dominates:
Recording quality seems fine. (Iām still fooling around with my streaming setup.)
Onward: Nemanja RaduloviÄ is a Franco-Serbian violinist of demonstrated ability in mainstream repertoire; with BaĆÆka he doubles down on the folk element. Heās working again with the Borusan Istanbul PO and conductor Sascha Goetzel, and the chemistry between them is obvious. Their main course is the Khachaturian Violin Concerto; for once I didnāt fall asleep in twenty seconds.
The album also features Khachaturianās very fine Trio for clarinet, violin, and piano, plus an arrangement of Rimskyās Scheherazade for chamber ensemble by Aleksandar Sedlar (the composer, not the footballer) who contributes two lively ethnic lollipops. Hereās his Savcho 3:
Like the Yuja Wang album, RaduloviÄās offering scores high points for energy, tunefulness, and repetition (and no, Iām not forgetting Wangās Ligeti moments, tuneful and repetitive in their own way). Both artists’ repertoire gets fewer points for counterpoint or ādevelopment.ā Their cover photos suggest Betty Boop and Niccolò Paganini, two sexual archetypes: Jail Bait vs. His Satanic Majesty, perhaps. From Liszt to “Leopold,” Romantic performers have adopted electric personae as a way to fix their iconic status in audiences’ minds. For women, however, effective visual presentation often meant styling oneself as a Chaste Priestess of Great Art: Clara Schumann, Angela Hewitt. In that sense Wang is bucking a deeply rooted tradition. And since weāre veering into pseudo-academic territory, perhaps we should analyze the finer points of hotness.
Really, there arenāt any. The more a piece of music occupies itself with heat, the less likely it’s got any fine points at all. Thatās okay, especially if your hot little number lasts less than, say, four minutes. (Savcho 3 clocks in at 2ā58ā.) Longer than that, we inevitably encounter the falling-asleep-in-twenty-seconds issue. Heat makes more of an impact when a bit of non-heat lurks nearby; as I recall, even the Sex Pistols occasionally sang about ennui.
Consider, then, Berliozās Harold en Italie, a four-movement symphony with viola obbligato and a useful, practical share of intensity. Itās not how hot you are, itās how you ration out the heat. In the first movement, we meet our hero via his very own idĆ©e fixe, but heās clearly in a reflective, moody frame of mind:
Things pick up later in the movement, helpfully labeled āScĆØnes de mĆ©lancolie, de bonheur et de joieā). Hereās some of that:
Movements 2 and 3 give themselves over to Pilgrims Chanting Evening Prayers and a Montagnard Serenading His Sweetheart. Perhaps Movement 4 (āOrgie de brigands,ā marked Allegro frenetico) compensates. In it, poor Harold is completely overwhelmed. You can hear the entire work in the video below; it starts at 44:00. To hear just the final movement, skip to 1:14:20.
Letās be clear: all of Harold en Italie is well-made and enjoyable even if itās not brimming with hottitude. Nor does it brim, incidentally, with anything related to George Gordon (Lord) Byron, whose Childe Haroldās Pilgrimage was Berliozās ostensible literary source. Donald Toveyās 1930-ish essay tells us that
No definite elements of Byronās poem have penetrated the impregnable fortress of Berliozās encyclopaedic inattention. Many picturesque things are described in famous stanzas in Childe Harold; but nothing remotely resembling Berliozās Pilgrims March, nor his serenade in the Abruzzi. . . . On the other hand there is no trace in Berliozās music of any of the famous passages in Childe Harold.
Tovey also gets picky about Berliozās self-proclaimed role as Wild Man of Music:
Mendelssohn declared that what he found so Philistine about Berlioz was that āwith all his efforts to go stark mad he never once succeeds.ā . . . [A] large part of Berliozās charm consists in his earnest aspirations to achieve the glamour of a desperate wickedness against the background of his inveterate and easily shockable respectability.
So, even Berliozās intermittent rambunctiousness could be dismissed as inauthentic. Fear not, dear reader: in Berlioz and His Century, Jacques Barzun cited mitigating factors: the Orgie de brigands was
a cultural symptom. . . .The brigand of Berliozās time is the avenger of social injustice, the rebel against the City, who resorts to nature for healing the wounds of social man. . . . InĀ HaroldĀ [Berlioz depicted] the release of violence and vulgarity. . . .as a needful antidote to the repressions of conventional life.
Hector and George, soulmates in spite of their differences. Weāve been listening to violist Tabea Zimmermann and Les SiĆØcles (FranƧois-Xavier Roth, conductor) on a new Harmonia Mundi recording. Itās terrific; I warmly recommend it. If thereās such a thing as Viola Hotness (warm, supple sound), Zimmermann owns it. Roth provides exquisitely caffeinated support. (Yes, they’re the folks in the video.) The album is filled out withĀ Les Nuits dāĆ©te,Ā which further emphasizes Berlioz’s classicism.
In conclusion: remember that not everything loud, fast, and repetitive is therefore hot. Iām thinking of my earliest encounters with Le Sacre du printemps. The Scottsbluff Public Library possessed an LP of Stravinskyās performance for Columbia, whichāas a ninth-graderāI checked out repeatedly over a six-month period. I didnāt āgetā it. Everything Iād read about Le Sacre had led me to expect wild, scandalous, deeply sensual and transgressive sounds. But Stravinsky as conductor stripped the music down to its bare, cold bones. Yes, it was fairly loud, fast, and repetitive. (Also, not surprisingly, quite scratchy.) But it felt cerebral, not hot. Years later I got ahold of Bernsteinās Sacre, definitely hotter.
So todayās closing exhibitsāintense, engaging, not hotācome from Górecki: Complete String Quartets 1 (Tippett Quartet, Naxos). Do you know Henryk MikoÅaj Górecki because of his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs? Here is music colder, yet stronger. Its ice will get into your bones. Hope thatās a good thing. Hereās an excerpt from the earliest work in vol. 1, Genesis I: Elementi, for string trio:
It dates from 1962, followingĀ Górecki’s return from youthful adventures in Paris. Clearly he had absorbed the new language being developed by Boulez and others. Elementi presents a virtual catalog of avant-garde sounds and techniques, but it also succeeds brilliantly as pure musical narrative. The three string quartets, written between 1988 and ā95 for Kronos, are among this composerās most important music from later years; the first two are given here. An excerpt from the second, subtitled Quasi una fantasia:
Well, so much for hotness. Time to put away those old Carly Simon album covers and cultivate more wholesome thoughts. Iāll be back with uplifting music to match.
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