JOAQUÍN TURINA : Piano Quartet, Quintet & Sextet (Menuhin Festival Piano Quartet • Paul Coletti) (1994) FLAC (tracks), lossless

Claves continues it series of recordings dedicated to Joaquín Turina (together with Granados, de Falla and Albéniz one of Spain’s most important modern composers) with its release of Vol. IV of the Turina Edition. Like Vol. III, this recording contrasts chamber music from different periods of Turina’s life – for the most part with the first representative recordings of these works.

These compositions vividly illustrate Turina’s development from a rather conservative style to his unique, highly personal incorporation of Andalusian colors with French impressionistic techniques: starting with the traditional Piano Quintet, Op. 1, proceeding to the highly pictorial Piano Sextet, Op. 7 «Scène andalouse» and climaxing with the Piano Quartet, Op. 67. The Menuhin Festival Piano Quartet (with guests) brilliantly performs this unique Spanish music. Claves

Joaquín Turina (1882-1949)

1-3    Piano Quartet, Op.67

4-7    Piano Quintet, Op.1
Christine Busch - Violin

8-9    Piano Sextet, Op.7, "Scène Andalouse" for Viola Solo, Piano & String Quartet
Paul Coletti - Viola Solo
Christine Busch - Violin
Anna Barbara Duetschler - Viola

Menuhin Festival Piano Quartet :
Piano - Friedemann Rieger
Violin - Nora Chastain
Viola - Paul Coletti
Cello - Francis Gouton

FRANZ LISZT : Harold in Italy (Leslie Howard) (1998) APE (image+.cue), lossless

Liszt’s staunch friendship and support for Berlioz was reflected in many practical ways—from his piano transcription of the Symphonie fantastique in 1834 to the Berlioz week in Weimar in 1855, in several smaller transcriptions and the arrangements of Harold en Italie, and in reviews and articles, especially the lengthy document Berlioz und seine ‘Harold-Symphonie’, Liszt tried to popularize Berlioz’s works, which were widely held to be bizarre and intractable. From their first encounter in 1830, the two men had seen eye to eye on most matters musical, aesthetic and religious, and Berlioz expressed himself very content with the fate of his music in Liszt’s hands, whether playing, transcribing or conducting.
The only mystery which surrounds Liszt’s transcription of Harold in Italy is why, having produced it so promptly, he took so long to publish it. As with the Symphonie fantastique, it is also clear that Liszt’s version was made before Berlioz effected some slight alterations in the score prior to publication—as so often with Berlioz, there was a considerable delay between composition and performance and the appearance of the printed work, and Liszt’s version preserves the original text. Thus the viola is heard in several notes just before the final chorale in the Pilgrims’ March which no longer feature in the score, and Liszt has allowed the viola to participate in the Allegro assai sections of the Serenade with double-stopped chords in imitation of a piper’s drone. However, Berlioz’s brilliant second thought of foreshortening the repeated chords by half a bar at a time in the peroration of the first movement (four occasions) has been adopted in this performance in accordance with his published score.

Although Liszt’s partition could scarcely be called chamber music, it is undeniable that, without Berlioz’s orchestration, the viola part is heard to much greater advantage than is usually the case, and from time to time a real chamber music texture emerges, leaving one to regret that Liszt expressed himself relatively little in the medium, and then usually in transcription. Liszt seems to have thought of the piece as a piano transcription of the same stamp as that of the Symphonie fantastique, and the demands upon the pianist are similarly acute. (Liszt did make a solo piano version of the second movement of Harold, which is recorded in this series on Volume 5.) At any rate, Paganini, who declined to play Berlioz’s original because he felt that the viola had too little to do, might have felt less oppressed by Liszt’s version, at least in the first three movements. And, as with the Symphonie fantastique, Liszt is fully in tune with Berlioz’s ideas of programme (they were both completely enamoured of the works of Byron) and colour. Berlioz’s original is too well known to require further description, but it will be observed that Liszt was not tempted to alter the degree of participation of the viola in the final movement, even though, at the entry of the menacing trombones and Liszt’s extravagant tremolo which covers over half the keyboard in its attempt to recreate the violin parts of the original, the pianist could well have used some assistance.
More Notes of Leslie Howard