A finale and several preludes
Mr Lapin | Ohio, USA | 09/04/2009
(3 out of 5 stars)
"This is a fitting CD finale for conductor Erich Kunzel, whose death was (as I write this) just a couple of days ago. Kunzel was much concerned with music education of young people. He was solidly behind the expansion of Cincinnati's School for Creative & Performing Arts, soon to be the US's first and only K-12 performing arts public school. Collaborating with Christopher O'Riley and his "From the Top" public radio program on a recording of young musicians must have been a completely natural move for him.
So. We have here the musical efforts of 6 instrumentalists and a composer, all under 20. Of course none of them (yet) has the kind of life experience that a fully mature artist can communicate through musical interpretation, but for at least some this may be the prelude to a career.
Composer Stephen Feigenbaum (FY-gen-baughm? FEE-gen-bom? You tell me) composed his Serenade at the age of 16. He says that he "decided to restrict the work's language to that of the late Romantic period ... Mahler and other composers of his age." I'd say he's been listening to Tchakovsky about as much as Mahler, but I also hear hints of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll and, in a repeated descending motive, the old pop chestnut, Heart and Soul! If this young fellow stays focused on his strengths, I predict his pockets will jingle with filmscore commissions in a few years' time.
Seventeen year old pianist Ji-Yong, from Midland NJ, already has the bravura to attack the Grieg. Regrettably, we get to hear her play only its first movement. What will she do with it once she's subdued it? She has a nice legato touch, though to my ears the Pops sing a little more believeably.
Hilda Huang seems to be tilting toward a Baroque keyboard specialty, with studies in harpsichord. I'd like to say she's channeling Glenn Gould in the Bach BWV 1056 concerto, but I'm not sure, as I can't hear much past the Pops' turgid accompaniment. Every time I've heard Kunzel aim his baton at anything prior to about 1800 (which hasn't been often), the music has fallen, mortally wounded. I rather wish that Telarc had dispensed with 2 of the Bach's 3 movements and made room for, say, more of the Grieg concerto. Someday, I'd like to hear this 12 year old with a real Baroque orchestra.
I'm not much of a Russell Peck fan, so I'll let someone else pass judgement on saxophonist Corey Dundee. Let me hear him in the Ibert concertino or the Debussy rhapsody, and we'll talk.
If you know Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies, be prepared to hear things you've heard before in David Popper's Hungarian Fantasy. It's all showpiece and 16 year old cellist Matthew Allen, who's already a tenured member of the Tallahassee Symphony, is fine with that. He has a wee intonation slip or two, and could probably let himself swallow a bit more of Popper's slurpy syrup, but he sure nails those double stops.
Caroline Goulding has been making waves since she was about 14, and she doesn't disappoint here. The engineer of this recording went backstage after hearing her in a solo gig with the Cleveland Pops, and eventually signed her up (Telarc has just released her first solo CD with pianist Christopher O'Riley). This 17 year old from Cleveland Heights, Ohio studies with the noted teacher Paul Kantor at CIM. She already has a prodigious technique, and her playing shows a surprising emotional sophistication for a 17 year old. Regrettably, the piece she plays here, the early and little-known Mendelssohn d-minor concerto for violin and piano, isn't the best vehicle to demonstrate her strengths (or anybody's, for that matter).
Pity that Ms Goulding didn't get the concerto that 14 year old Chad Hoopes got. Hoopes is from the same general area, Shaker Heights, Ohio, but doesn't seem to have the same depth of understanding of the music that Ms Goulding had when she was his age. His reading of the finale of the Bruch g minor strikes me as competent but wooden. I don't particularly need to hear him play the rest of this concerto.
As for the recording quality, it's nice and clean, but it makes me wonder (again) what Concord were thinking when they dismissed Telarc's iconic producer and engineer, Robert Woods. Had he been in the control room, he might have tapped engineer Tom Moore on the shoulder and reminded him that, in real life, a piano is usually considerably narrower than the orchestra.
Now, who might be the intended audience of this disc -- other than the relatives and schoolmates of the kids involved, that is? If your interest is solely in the works programmed here, I have to say that there are other good choices. But there's something to be said for buying this as symbolic support for music education and for these specific kids. I suspect that Erich Kunzel fans will want it simply for the fact that it's his last recording for Telarc.
"
Amazing Performances
Bea | 09/12/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The classical music world is in good hands. Amazing performances by these young people, especially the cellist."
Track Listings (9) - Disc #1