This entry was written by our guest-blogger, composer Sean Hickey. Sean, who is Naxos’ Eastern Territory Manager, has a unique perspective on music and how to balance working a “day job” with the rigours of being a musician as well. A number of us at Naxos, myself included (although I compose popular music these days, having given up concert music years ago), play this balancing act. That said one of the great perks of working at Naxos is all the music you are exposed to.
I’ve been listening to a lot of new things lately, or music new to me. Huge reams of eye opening orchestral and chamber music. Lots of stuff I’ve never heard including great sets of symphonies of Tansman and Weinberg, two immensely talented composers that get scarcely a mention in the history books, if they’re mentioned at all. One of the greatest pleasures of working for Naxos is to sample an immense variety of music that’s largely been ignored, and to revisit some classics in some new recordings. To the former category I must include a new disc of works of Ernst Toch; a Greek composer new to me, Dmitris Dragatakis, and a mountain of a piece, Fred Rzewski’s The People United Will Never be Defeated!, performed by the amazing Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat. This is one of those seminal works that I was proud to know of, but embarrassed to admit I’ve never actually heard. All of the composition and pianistic virtuosity aside, I find the work immensely moving and it certainly seems to have a special resonance now.
To the latter category I would add a fine new recording of the Second and Third Symphonies of Karol Szymanowski, Antoni Wit leading the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra. This is perhaps the most vivid recording of his orchestral works since Simon Rattle’s landmark Third Symphony/Stabat Mater on EMI years ago.
Chamber and small ensemble music from the Baroque era is generally not something that interests me tremendously, but I’ve been bowled over the beauty of a new recording of the C.P.E Bach Viola de Gamba sonatas, recorded on the cello by cellist Dmitry Kouzov, accompanied on the piano and harpsichord by Peter Laul. Full disclosure: Dima is a great friend and has commissioned a concerto from me and I’ve had the immense benefit of working on the concerto with him directly. But perhaps what has most informed the recent pages of my work is the lyricism and subtle grace of his C.P.E. Bach recording. It has altered the very foundations of my new piece. Do check it out if you can.
Lastly, clarinetist David Gould will record a disc of American works for clarinet and string quartet for Naxos. The disc will include my Clarinet Concerto, commissioned by the soloist in 2007. I hope to be able to report more on this soon.
To some, Frederic Rzewski might seem like a composer full of contradictions. His music, after all, includes minimalist and quasi-serialist works as well as collage-type pieces. For example, we all discovered during the pre-concert chat with series producer Ara Guzelimian that Elliott Carter has been a long time friend and mentor to Rzewski. I was surprised. But Kyle Gann, in his essay to the program “Never Second-Guessing Rzewski,” notes “It is typical of Rzewski that he has refused to be limited by even the humanist realist aesthetic that he created. Like Stravinsky, he has shown contrarian fearlessness about walking away from styles his music has made popular. ”
When asked about music and politics, Rzewski stated “Music really can’t be political … theater, perhaps, can be.” And in works like Attica (1972), Spots (1986), and the newer Natural Things (2007) you can see how he brings music and theater together–beautifully. Attica, the earliest work performed, consists of a repetitive tonal sequence set against the intoned narration “Attica is in front of me” (a quote, according to the liner notes, taken from the statement of Richard X. Clark, one of the prison uprising’s organizers). While an extremely moving and beautiful work, I’m afraid that unlike most of the audience–and Times reporter Allan Kozinn–I was not as impressed by Stephen ben Israel’s narration (he was the work’s original narrator). I would be curious to hear of other reactions to ben Israel’s performance, as it was abundantly clear to me that I was absolutely in the minority on this.
I was only acquainted with Rzewski’s piano works before this concert, and it was wonderful to see he treats other instruments. I absolutely loved how he uses the human body as an instrument. For example, in Natural Things (commissioned by Opus 21), Rzewski has the string players breathe and/or sigh as they play glissandi. He also has the performers clap and stamp, creating a choreography, which then becomes part of the music, and use their voices creatively–talking, whispering, layering dialogue contrapuntally. I found his use of non-musical objects refreshing and fun: cans, a megaphone, and even a basketball in Spots. (Does anyone know if both Spots and Natural Things were both orchestrated by Richard Adams, composer and founder of Opus 21? I know they mentioned he had arranged one of the pieces.)
For my taste, I did not care for the 2008 piano work War Songs. It seemed more like a work-in-progress to me, and one which didn’t yet have an emotional center.
Finally, I was somewhat baffled by the instrument set up for a work I dearly love, Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which Rzewski and Stephen Drury performed in a two-piano arrangement from 1980. I asked Jed Distler about this in an e-mail, and he assured me that it was “arbitrary.” If that is the case, and the set-up was meant to cut down on the time moving other instruments out of the way, I think it didn’t serve this arrangement well. Usually with two-piano works, pianos are arranged closer together so that both artists can communicate in some fashion. Clearly, the sonorities called for in Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues would make a very close arrangement of the instruments impractical. However, the pianos were so far apart, it seemed as if both players had to guess at each other’s breathing. I’m also not sure the arrangement gave them the sonic quality they sought. Any thoughts from others who attended the performance would be welcome here.
On a different, but related note: We’ve gotten a lot of wonderful comments about pianist Ralph van Raat’s recent Naxos recording of The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Naxos 8559360). However, many people have requested the timings for all of the variations. Ralph sent them to me in an e-mail last week, and they are pasted below:
Timelist Rzewski’s People United… Theme (0.00-1′35″)
UNABRIDGED VERSUS ABRIDGED. It is a discussion as old as audiobooks.
It is partly about simple commerce – unabridged audiobooks can seem high priced, though the hours fly by. But it is also about convenience: I think there is still a place for abridged texts, for not everyone wants to listen to twenty-eight or thirty hours of a novel.
However, I am glad to say that the advent of downloads, and a greater appreciation of the full work, has seen the audience for unabridged texts on audiobook grow.
This has resulted in trips down memory lane for me, because I find that not only are we doing novels which we did in abridged form in the early years of Naxos AudioBooks, but we are recording them, often, with the same actors – though sometimes a new voice takes up the baton.
It is a coincidence that we are releasing new unabridged recordings of these masterpieces with the original readers, but in both cases, the abridged recordings were the first to introduce us to readers who have featured regularly on Naxos AudioBooks in the decade and more that followed.
To The Lighthouse was the first recording we made with Juliet Stevenson, and I well remember her coming into the studio with the script and putting it on the table. I glanced down and saw that there wasn’t a mark on it. Of course I knew she knew the book, but I wondered quietly to myself, ‘Crumbs, is she going to sight - read Virginia Woolf?’
I need not have worried. Ms Stevenson read as consummately as it sounds on the CD, not once… NOT ONCE making an error over who is speaking, though occasionally one needs to be halfway through a sentence before the context explains clearly who it is.
When I asked her afterwards, she explained that she rarely marks a script. ‘I don’t need to… I just seem to remember when I prepare it,’ she said. That was in 1995, and I still recall her words.
Her reading had a profound effect on me because the subtlety of her presentation made Virginia Woolf come alive to me in a way she never had on the page, and she went on to do the same with many other works, including many of the Jane Austen novels and evenLady Windermere’s Fan.
It is ten years on and more since that first day and I was intrigued to find out if the decade would make a difference.
I am glad to report that the answer is an emphatic no. There is a slightly more leisurely tempo which is required from an unabridged reading, but the ebb and flow of event, enquiry, inference and surprise remains the same. Why, I have to ask myself, did we wait so long to ask Juliet Stevenson to do the full version?
And the same applies to Garrick Hagon’s Tom Sawyer. When I presented the abridged version to the sales team in the mid-1990s, I played the opening, with Tom’s aunt expressing all her frustration with the boy she loves regardless of the exasperation he causes her. The salesmen were entranced by the voice of the aunt which opens the book, and Tom’s little ploy which allows him to slip past his persecutor without feeling the weight of the switch.
Garrick Hagon has read many books for Naxos AudioBooks since then, including the unabridged Huckleberry Finn, Classic American Poetry and Classic American Short Stories. He has become one of the leading American voices living in the UK (though actually Canadian by birth) and spends as much time directing audiobooks as acting (he is Philip Pullman’s preferred director!) – he directed our unabridged multi-cast versions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books.
Once again, the luxury of having the unabridged text to work with (and what a wonderful text) meant that Garrick could take time with the humour and rumbustious fun… and as musicians know, you can take time without going more slowly!
This month also sees a third unabridged version of a major classic novel which we did in abridged form years ago. Anna Bentinck presents Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and it took her back to the familiar world (for her) of the English West Country.
Finally, there is more unabridged work from marathon reader ‘War and Peace’ Neville Jason, who continues his Arthurian saga care of T. H. White.
Unabridged recordings do take more time… but one savours them all the more.
HOW IMPORTANT – HOW TRUE? – are newspaper/magazine reviews of new audiobooks? After all, they are but one person’s response to a book and its performance.
Since we began, Naxos AudioBooks has received a continuous stream of good reviews, and 2008 has been no different: there have been numerous plaudits worldwide, but particularly in the UK and US.
I have a special interest in reviews for a number of reasons. Before starting Naxos AudioBooks, I was a classical music journalist, mainly writing about music generally but also reviewing the latest CDs for a number of magazines. Now, of course, I am more on the receiving end – but this has given me (I hope!) a balanced perspective.
The leading UK vehicle for classical music CD reviews is Gramophone. It has a worldwide reputation for the authority of its comments, but there are also other magazines – in Germany, France and Japan, for example.
Regrettably, the audiobook world has only one magazine with a similar standing: Audiofile magazine, based in the US and run by its enthusiastic editor Robin Whitten. Its monthly survey of the medium is de rigeur for anyone who listens regularly. But it is mainly the once-a-week newspaper reviews – often just 40 words! – that highlight new recordings for the general public. It is good, of course, that newspapers allot the subject some space, but they hardly touch the breadth and depth of what is going on.
We who love audiobooks know the power of this medium in presenting literature great and small, and we can only mourn the fact that more people don’t know about it. By its very nature, we rarely see the effect it has on its followers.
However, at the Sunday Times Oxford Literature Festival early this month, I did see the effect of the spoken word on an audience of people who mostly, I presume, do not regularly listen. Frankly, when Marcella Riordan and Anton Lesser got up to read the words of Joyce and Milton, the audience was spellbound.
Don’t take my word for it. Here is Susannah Herbert, Literary Editor of The Sunday Times, in her round-up of this year’s Festival
Although it was tempting to treat the festival like a non-stop conversation, even the most argumentative fell into awed silence at the great actor Anton Lesser’s readings from Paradise Lost and Marcella Riordan’s performance of Molly Bloom’s monologue from Ulysses, two highlights from the Naxos AudioBooks strand. Both events took place in the Christ Church upper library – surely the most beautiful book-lined room in Oxford.’
Now, this was more reportage than a review, but it was exactly what happened: the audience reaction was unequivocal, and by the interest shown in the CDs on sale at the end, I think more people now appreciate the magic of audiobooks.
Something else also prompted me to muse on this topic of response and reviews: it was the recent article in The Times – by its regular audiobook correspondent Christina Hardyment – about three recordings of the great medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (You can see the full review on our Gawain page.)
Now, Ms Hardyment is herself a medieval historian – she has written one of the finest biographies of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur – so her response to new recordings of Gawain are of particular interest.
Unlike Malory, who wrote in an English which presents few difficulties to the twenty-first-century ear, Gawain does need a translator; in her article, Ms Hardyment discusses the three audiobook versions now available: Tolkein’s version read by Terry Jones, Benedict Flynn’s new version made for Naxos AudioBooks and read by Jasper Britton, and Simon Armitage’s version read by the poet himself on Faber. It is an exemplary review for it compares both the texts and the performances with particular clarity.
Because Naxos AudioBooks is a label dedicated primarily to the classics, our recordings are often competing with others (take, as a recent example, Cranford, or our Austen and Dickens titles). I am glad to say that much of the time they are matched very favourably (though it would be inelegant to trumpet this too much).
This weekend has in fact been busy for Naxos AudioBooks reviews. In addition to Christina Hardyment’s article in The Times, Sue Arnold was saying nice things in The Guardian about two new Naxos AudioBooks recordings: David Timson’s final volume of the Sherlock Holmes canon (Timson’s portrayal is regarded as ‘brilliant’) and the multi-voice abridgement of Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White.
The bottom line is that it is always pleasing to receive affirmation!
For the next few weeks, I’ve invited some Naxos artists to contribute to our blog on Sequenza21.
Cellist Dmitry Kouzov has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Russia with orchestras, in solo and duo recitals, and in chamber music performances. He also is the youngest member of the cello faculty at The Juilliard School. Naxos recently released his first recording, which was devoted to gamba sonatas of C.P.E. Bach.
A few days ago I was pleased to see my recording of C.P.E. Bach gamba sonatas released on Naxos (8.570740). This, I think, is one of the first recordings of these wonderful masterpieces on a cello. Since this wonderful music is generally unknown, I thought I would say a few introductory words about it.
It is very likely that these three sonatas were written for one of the most prominent virtuoso gambists of his time, Ludwig Christian Hesse (1716-1772), during the time when Carl Philipp was serving at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin. These works are excellent representations of the composer’s style, which was considered somewhat revolutionary for his time. It is particularly interesting for me that these sonatas—which already showed important features of the classical sonata form (which C.P.E. really helped to develop)— are written for gamba, which was slowly falling into disuse as a concert instrument. The matter of choosing a somehow “old-fashioned” instrument for a rather progressive composing style likely had occurred because of a certain conservatism in musical tastes at the court of Frederick the Great. Prussia was a place where the genre of gamba and keyboard sonata remained alive longer than anywhere else.
I think that these sonatas sound as good on a cello as on a gamba (that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to play and record them), but what is most important for me is that these beautiful, expressive, and inventive works should find a place in cellists’ regular concert repertoire.
Naxos Music Library Jazz is a streaming audio database created and distributed by Naxos, “The World’s Leading Classical Label.” Although the content is not Classical by any means, it does represent the great Jazz Classics typified by the Fantasy Label as well as other, more contemporary selections from the likes of Prophone, Proprius and Naxos’ own, Naxos Jazz.
The collection was originally built around and anchored on the great Fantasy Jazz label, “The World’s Mightiest Jazz Catalog, and the Very Best of Blues and R&B.” Established in 1949, Fantasy was initially a great producer of early Jazz from the likes of Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. Later under new ownership, Fantasy branched out into more genres and began acquiring other well known Jazz labels. This Jazz juggernaut would eventually build a collection featuring not only Jazz, but great early Rock, R&B and even Spoken Word from notable beat poets such as Alan Ginsburg.
Today, Fantasy is owned by Concord Music Group and boasts catalogs from Prestige, Bluesville, Riverside, Milestone, Debut, Stax Records, Contemporary / Good Time Jazz, Pablo, Specialty, Takoma and Kicking Mule…. quite a notable collection.
These titles, along with the catalogs from Naxos Jazz, Proprius, and Prophone come together to make a formidable collection of nearly 23,000 tracks of music. This service is available for individual, and institutional subscriptions and is very affordably priced. Simply put, you will not find a Jazz collection of this diversity and breadth anywhere. With titles spanning more than 50 years, this collection a must have for any Jazz enthusiast!
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UNABRIDGED VERSUS ABRIDGED
It is ten years on and more since that first day and I was intrigued to find out if the decade would make a difference.
Naxos Music Library Jazz
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