Double Bass Concertos

There are many more famous and - by virtually all measures - objectively better 19th-century concertos than Giovanni Bottesini's 1853 'Concerto for Double Bass and Orchestra in B Minor', but this relatively obscure piece has brought me more pleasure than Beethoven's 'Emperor' piano concerto; or Brahms' for the violin; or Dvořák's for the cello, etc. There's something about the way he makes the lugubrious voice of the bass sing so sweetly that never fails to delight me.

Part of the piece's charm for me, is its brevity - it clocks in at 16:13 on this recording. The first two movements have wonderful yearning melodies which aren't allowed to outstay their welcome, while the shorter third wraps things up in a brisk Allegro finalé. Also on this disc is Bottesini's later and longer F sharp minor concerto, a work I've never enjoyed as much as the B minor one. Rounding out the disc is a further charming piece: a 'Gran Duo Passione Amorosa' for two double-basses and orchestral accompaniment.

Bottesini was an accomplished all-rounder who won the soubriquet of 'the Paganini of the double-bass' as a soloist; who enjoyed success in his day as an opera composer; and who was a sought-after conductor, notably brandishing the baton at the première of Verdi's Aïda. The soloist here is Bogusław Furtok, playing with the Radio-Sinfonie-Orchester Frankfurt under the direction of Stephan Tetzlaff. I love the sound of the playing & of the recording, though can't claim to be a reliable judge of either.

Comments

Complete String Quartets

While the string quartets of Nikolai Yakovievich Myaskovsky (1881-1950) were all published in the Soviet era, a few of them had pre-revolutionary origins. Two quartets he wrote in 1911 and '09 while a conservatory student re-surfaced some twenty years later designated as Quartets Nos. 3 and 4. An even earlier "schoolboy" piece was later re-worked more radically as Quartet No. 10, premiered in 1945. Myaskovsky partook of an ample share of the turmoil and tragedy of his times: he was wounded and shell-shocked after service on the front line in World War I, and his father, who had been a high-ranking military engineer, was brutally murdered by a revolutionary mob. Despite that, his music, even at its most sombre, hasn't the black bile or biting sarcasm of Shostakovich's, or of his friend Prokofiev's. Of the works collected here, in excellent early '80s performances by the Taneyev Quartet, only Quartet No. 1 has any significantly metallic tang of early S...

Ein Schattenspiel, etc.

Georg Friedrich Haas is a contemporary Austrian composer of "art music". "Haas's style recalls that of György Ligeti in its use of micropolyphony, microintervals and the exploitation of the overtone series; he is often characterized as a leading exponent of spectral music" says wikipedia. Only a relative few of his many compositions have been issued on CD - many more of them can be found on YouTube. On this 2020 disc are three of his works in which standard classical instrumentation is augmented and altered by "live electronics". Two are string quartets and one is for solo piano. Is a string quartet still really a quartet if there are meanwhile some other people with laptops busily twizzling the sound? There is a live performance video of the 'String Quartet No. 7', the first work on the disc, where the JACK Quartet are supplemented by a trio of sound boffins to realise the composition. Whether it's properly a quartet or a septet is neithe...

Influencías

In my original blogging days, I would occasionally run giveaways to offload unwanted books or CDs to whomever claimed them. Sometimes the recipients would offer to send me something in return. It was in this way that, ca. 2007, a Catalan correspondent sent me Influencías: a CD of perfomances by the Barcelona-based Cuarteto Casals. The CD begins with Maurice Ravel's renowned string quartet: I hadn't known the piece before receiving this disc, but I was sold on it by this fresh & bright performance. Next is a quartet called 'Vistes al Mar' by the Catalan composer Eduardo Toldrá. Its evocative maritime movements are prefaced by recitations of poems by Joan Maragall, a Catalan author whose works directly inspired the piece. Lastly there's an arrangement of Joaquín Turina's atmospheric 'Oración del Torero', originally composed for a lute quartet. I'm on the fence about the cover photo: it's a well-composed picture & not a bad idea, but with 2...

This is a Recording

Search This Blog