Emperor

National Review, August 11, 1997 by Ralph De Toledano

Mr. Toledano is the author of Frontiers of Jazz and many other books.

PETER Ilyich Tchaikovsky -- as composer of the Pathetique and, of the bravura 1812 Overture, with its pomp, patriotism, and pounding cannon -- represents to many the sometimes overblown Romantic movement in nineteenth-century Russia. But there is much more to his music -- reflecting as it does his inner torments, his conflicts over his homosexuality which led him into an impossible marriage, and his yearning search for God and the transcendent. This last meant much more to him than the critics reckon. In a letter to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, he wrote: "There is nothing like entering an ancient church, standing in the semi-darkness, lost in deep contemplation searching for an answer to the wherefore, when, whither, and why."

In his Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Tchaikovsky celebrated this search. The voice speaking to us through him is the Russian Orthodox liturgy. After the break between East and West, when the Latin Mass moved with the currents of Western music, the Orthodox musical tradition remained close to its roots in the Jerusalem Temple, at which the early Christians worshiped until its destruction in A.D. 70. The "echoes" or "tones" of the Hebraic ritual survived in Russia, and for a time in Spain, where they had been taken by Jews who migrated, beginning in the time of Solomon, on the ships of Hiram of Tyre.

You can hear this tonality in the Tchaikovsky work (Philips 446 685-2) and in Credo (Philips 446 089-2), religious music by various composers of roughly the same period. The Tchaikovsky St. John is in its concert version -- that is to say, it eliminates the passages in which the priest alone is given utterance; its chanting song is hauntingly beautiful, as are the pieces on Credo, sung by baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The St. Petersburg Chamber Choir under Nikolai Korniev gives moving performances on both recordings.

Mention Beethoven's piano concertos, and the usual reaction will be, "Ah, the Emperor!" -- much like the baker's wife in La Femme du Boulanger who rhapsodizes, "Ah, Rome! the Leaning Tower!" Of the concertos, No. 4 in G is by far the greatest, not only for its intrinsic merits but also because Beethoven put thumb to nose at the classicists by opening in violation of precedent with piano instead of orchestra, to great dramatic effect. I have heard the No. 4 in G many times, in concert and on disc, played by Schnabel, Serkin, Gieseking, and others, but it still brings me to my feet. The greatest recording has been by Paul Badura-Skoda, giving his rendition added validity by playing on a fortepiano of Beethoven's time.

But it was nevertheless with considerable interest that I put on my changer the CD reissue of the traversal by Emil Gilels, with George Szell conducting the Cleveland Orchestra (EMI 5 69506 2). Gilels carries excitement to the keyboard, and then piles on drama. The concerto has passages that respond to him. But he makes the andante of the second movement almost an adagio, and he takes too many liberties in dynamics and tempo in the third movement. I shall stick with my Badura-Skoda.

There has been a spate of recordings of Bela Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, but I find the CD issue by Esa-Pekko Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic among the best (Sony SK62598). It is also Bartok at his best, bringing together all the elements that had slowly developed in his music, but casting aside the "modernism" of his earlier work, returning to tonality and reaching into a rich folk heritage. It is coupled with Bartok's earlier Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta, a taut work whose fugal passages and second movement give emphasis to Ezra Pound's dictum that poetry and music must never stray too far from the dance. This work is not for everyone: for all the talk in the critical journals, atonality and extended dissonance are unappealing to many. But for some it may be just an exercise in listening, which in this case should hardly be a chore.

Claude Debussy was above all a French composer, but the great expositor of his music was a German, Walter Gieseking, who was an adornment to American music in the pre-war days. He strolls though Debussy's solo work for the keyboard, and strides when that is what the score demands. This album (EMI 65855, four CD discs in all) promises The Complete Works for Piano -- and the absence of one or two titles should not cause distress. Four CDs of almost anything, except perhaps for the music of the spheres, is too much to take at one sitting, but Gieseking, by the felicity of his interpretation, keeps us riveted. Judicious spacing, however, makes for better appreciation.

As a child in the International Zone of Tangier, I could from time to time, with head pressed to the heavy iron gates that guarded our place, hear the Maghrebi accents of a passing procession, reiterating the music that the retreating Moors brought with them from the Andaluz. Musica Andalusi, played by the Ensemble Ibn Baya (Sony SK 62262), brings this back, in a performance of the nuba --Mozarabic rhythms and tonalities which survive today in Morocco. Like old jazz, it is made up of subtly changing traditional forms, sung and played, and improvisational embellishment. This music is sometimes seemingly monotonous, but careful listening discloses that, like the blues of the Mississippi Delta, it is highly complex rhythmically and melodically. The songs recorded on this CD are lovely and exotic.