Blacher Orchestral Works
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Boris Blacher
Label: Ondine
Magazine Review Date: 7/1998
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 55
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: ODE912-2
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Concertante Musik |
Boris Blacher, Composer
Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Boris Blacher, Composer Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor |
Fürstin Tarakanowa |
Boris Blacher, Composer
Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Boris Blacher, Composer Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor |
(2) Inventionen |
Boris Blacher, Composer
Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Boris Blacher, Composer Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor |
Music for Cleveland |
Boris Blacher, Composer
Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Boris Blacher, Composer Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor |
Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Orchestra |
Boris Blacher, Composer
Berlin Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Boris Blacher, Composer Dmitri Ashkenazy, Clarinet Vladimir Ashkenazy, Conductor |
Author: Michael Oliver
I am almost convinced that if you had telephoned Boris Blacher, whistled a couple of notes and asked him to make a satisfying piece of music from permutations of them he would have done it. The second (and final) movement of his Clarinet Concerto is a set of variations on a not particularly complex chord. Like much of Blacher’s music it is fast, rhythmically alert and light on its feet. His very restricted material leads not to monotony but to fertile fantasy until the music reaches a slower middle section, lyrical and quiet, the soloist almost unaccompanied, in which there is a real sense that every note has meaning, purpose and a reason for being there.
This absorbingly planned disc demonstrates how he arrived at that point of masterly economy (the Concerto, written in 1971, counts as a fairly late work: Blacher died, at 72, four years after writing it). The Concertante Musik, from 1937, was his first success, and was once widely played. No wonder: redolent both of neo-classicism and of jazz, sounding at times like athletic Hindemith, it has strong, syncopated rhythm and clean textures; it is catchy and is scored with exuberant brilliance. The Suite from the opera Princess Tarakanowa (premiered, amazingly, in Germany in 1941, when Blacher was a known anti-Nazi and an acknowledged admirer of such ‘degenerates’ as Stravinsky, Bartok and Berg) adds a rather Shostakovich-like astringency (a strutting, menacing march) and touches of melodic grace and of an appealing expressiveness that was not obvious in the Concertante Musik. With the post-war works Blacher’s preoccupation with extreme economy, making endlessly resourceful use of brief motifs, is obvious in the rather bony Two Inventions, more impressive and more entertaining still in the Music for Cleveland, in which great variety of texture, including a lot of vividly brilliant brass-writing, is drawn from and palindromically retreats to a deliberately un-theme-like 12-note cell. His music is open, even bare in texture, but it is anything but arid. The Clarinet Concerto, in particular, is an entrancingly inventive work by a composer who clearly hated using ten notes when one perfectly placed one would be at least as effective.
Both Ashkenazys, father and son, have clearly fallen for this lean, clean and invigorating music: those adjectives would do very well for these performances, which have been no less cleanly recorded. '
This absorbingly planned disc demonstrates how he arrived at that point of masterly economy (the Concerto, written in 1971, counts as a fairly late work: Blacher died, at 72, four years after writing it). The Concertante Musik, from 1937, was his first success, and was once widely played. No wonder: redolent both of neo-classicism and of jazz, sounding at times like athletic Hindemith, it has strong, syncopated rhythm and clean textures; it is catchy and is scored with exuberant brilliance. The Suite from the opera Princess Tarakanowa (premiered, amazingly, in Germany in 1941, when Blacher was a known anti-Nazi and an acknowledged admirer of such ‘degenerates’ as Stravinsky, Bartok and Berg) adds a rather Shostakovich-like astringency (a strutting, menacing march) and touches of melodic grace and of an appealing expressiveness that was not obvious in the Concertante Musik. With the post-war works Blacher’s preoccupation with extreme economy, making endlessly resourceful use of brief motifs, is obvious in the rather bony Two Inventions, more impressive and more entertaining still in the Music for Cleveland, in which great variety of texture, including a lot of vividly brilliant brass-writing, is drawn from and palindromically retreats to a deliberately un-theme-like 12-note cell. His music is open, even bare in texture, but it is anything but arid. The Clarinet Concerto, in particular, is an entrancingly inventive work by a composer who clearly hated using ten notes when one perfectly placed one would be at least as effective.
Both Ashkenazys, father and son, have clearly fallen for this lean, clean and invigorating music: those adjectives would do very well for these performances, which have been no less cleanly recorded. '
Explore the world’s largest classical music catalogue on Apple Music Classical.
Included with an Apple Music subscription. Download now.
Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Events & Offers
From £9.20 / month
SubscribeGramophone Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Events & Offers
From £11.45 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.