Frank Martin.

Polyptyque, for Violin and two small string orchestras.
Etudes for String Orchestra.
Sonata da Chiesa, for viola and string orchestra.

Munich Chamber Orchestra/Hans Stadlmair; Gottfried Schneider, violin;
J. Reiber, viola d'amore.
Koch Schwann: Musica Mundi 3-6732-2  Total time: 60:27 (Budget price)

An outstanding CD: despite my limited patience for all-strings music,
it's bowled me right over.

This music is mostly new to me, although the composer is not.  For a few
years now, I've been a firm fan of Frank Martin (it rhymes! ...he's Swiss):
of his Petite Symphonie Concertante, the concertos for Cello, Violin and
Harpsichord, his Ballade for Piano and Orchestra, the Concerto for 7 Winds,
Timpani, Percussion and String Orchestra, the Piano Concertos, and much
more.

This disk may come to rank for me beside my "discovery" last year of the CD
with Shostakovich's first Violin and Cello Concertos, featuring Oistrakh
and Rostropovich (a Sony: Materworks Heritage re-release of premiere
performances from the 50s).  While it's music of a very different kind,
that was my favourite CD release of 1999--despite the latter half of it
being in mono, and all of it being nearly as old as me.

This one I consider my 'big find' disk of 2000, to date.  Let me tell you
why:

The Polyptyque is a highly unusual composition for violin and two small
string orchestras, the result of a commission by Yehudi Menuhin and Edmond
de Stoutz for a Violin Concerto.  Martin didn't feel he had one "in" him,
but after seeing a polyptych of religious tableaux, he was inspired to
produce this work.  After hearing it, one does not lament that he didn't
attempt a second standard Violin Concerto to follow his first blazing foray
in the genre.

The 25-minute-long Polyptyque, which Martin composed in 1974, the last year
of his life, makes a very deep impression.  It consists of six movements or
Images, each one corresponding to an icon in a sequence of six wooden
panels depicting events in the life of Jesus.  These Images are:  Image des
Rameaux (Palm Sunday); Image de la chambre haute (The Last Supper); ...de
Judas; ...de Gethsemani; ...du Jugement; and ...de la glorification.

Martin's big challenge, as I see it, is to devise some symmetry between
these parts to strike some coherent, balanced whole; at the same time, he
must render music to suit each icon or motif.  That is, having turned his
back on the fast-slow-fast concert structure, Martin must provide something
that will coalesce artistically.  To ratchet up the challenge even higher,
its parts must somehow musically reflect some of those defining moments for
the West when God presumably lived incarnate.  Ambitious, or what?

The opening Image is brilliant and memorable.  Martin uses the two small
string orchestras to great effect.  Aside from the solo instrument's
delicate lyricism, this Image works especially well due to the exquisite
thematic interplays, musical echoes and inversions from violin to both
string groups and back.  The violin represents Jesus, and this Image
convincingly evokes a calm Christ amid the busy crowds: seemingly bustling
and inquisitive at first, at the violin's gentle prompting the throngs
build towards a very satisfying musical convergence.

The CD's liner notes in German, English and French are brief but
illuminating (albeit imprecise: Polyptyque is consistently misspelled
Polyptique, and the four Etudes are not named).  Martin's own comments on
this work are cited, and they indicate that he's not trying to depict the
Images, as much as to evoke feelings appropriate to each scene.  Indeed,
all six parts of the work cover a wide range of moods and emotions:
dynamic, rhythmic, almost desperate (the diabolical third Image); delicate,
often solo violin playing that's meditative, sometimes almost brooding (the
second, fourth and sixth); and driving and fiery (the fifth Image, with its
mounting sense of inevitability).  While the closing hymn of praise is
subtle and engaging, it does not quite connect for me.  My feeling is that
something more virtuosic is required.  I look forward to another version
before resolving that Schneider's approach is too subdued, thereby failing
to convey all that Martin envisaged for his culmination.  Unfortunately,
for now, there seem to be no other interpretations on disk.

It would be overly restrictive to limit one's grasp of this work through
the iconographic program--as Martin's own words suggest.  That is, this
music also stands independent of the rich context that the polyptych Images
provide.

The use of two string groups and solo violin results in a lighter
overall texture than one finds in a conventional concerto.  Also, the
brevity of each Image--ranging in length from just over two to not quite
six minutes each--also prevents this work from achieving the grandeur and
drama that one normally expects from the concerto form.  All the same, this
is no mere suite for strings, but a composition of great power standing
beyond the scope one might expect of its unusual shape, or the instrumental
ensemble.  Framed within purely musical terms, this lead piece of the CD
is, to me, a ravishing work.  Despite the reined-in reading of its last
Image, Martin's Polyptyque shines through as a 20th century masterpiece.

The Etudes for String Orchestra (1955-56), is a more conventional
composition, yet outstanding all the same.  It is another tour de force for
Martin's remarkable gift for counterpoint, and it includes a felicitous
pizzicato movement that can comfortably keep company with Bartok's,
Korngold's and Ravel's most brilliant efforts.  The Etudes is the only work
on this CD with which I was already familiar; I have a copy of Ansermet's
version, with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, on London/Decca
(448264-2)--a fine double set, by the way, essential to any Martin fan if
only for its well-known version of the Violin Concerto, featuring Wolf.
Schneiderhan.

 From the Overture onwards, Ansermet seems to have grander ambitions for
the Etudes than Stadlmair.  His vision is larger-boned, somehow more
massive yet briefer overall, and always shows a clear sense of which
musical lines to favour, and just when, to bring out Martin's counterpoint.
This is especially true in the second, 'Pour le pizzicato' movement, whose
elaborate rhythmic fluctuations are nuanced to far greater advantage.
Ansermet also very effectively teases out the movement's jazzy
inflections--which can also be found, in richer octane, in Martin's great
Cello Concerto of 1965-66.

Stadlmair's players may highlight more of this movement's mischief, but
at the expense of Martin's elaborate harmonic interplays, which reach far
beyond wit and smoothness.  And, as clearly in the third movement, 'Pour
l'expression et le sostenuto,' as in the Overture, Ansermet reveals a
dramatic depth that Stadlmair all but glosses over.  All told, I prefer
Ansermet's vibrant rendering of the Etudes to Stadlmair's, whose take is
often graceful and delicate, yet strikes me as occasionally blurred and
thin by comparison.

The Sonata da Chiesa, for viola and string orchestra, is a 1938 piece
for viola d'amore that Martin subsequently arranged for orchestral
accompaniment.  This interpretation is indeed da Chiesa: it clearly is of
and belongs in Church.  There is a third version for flute and organ (on
the BIS label), but I do not know how it compares with this sublime
interpretation.

This is a meditative work of great intensity, and considerable beauty--far
more than this listener is used to expecting from a 15-minute sonata.
Compared to the eventful Etudes, it seems there's not a lot going on in it:
the economy of its outer movements is severe, almost extreme.  Especially
after the Etudes, again, it's a composition of deep tranquillity.  There's
certainly no cheap display to catch one's attention and captivate us
immediately.

While Martin never could be cheap, the second and third movements of the
Sonata come the closest to 'attention-getting.'  The second movement,
'Allegro alla Francesca,' is vaguely akin to a musical amble through the
woods ...a hansom carriage ride, mind you: Martin always being consummately
elegant.  But even this pleasant canter shifts with Musette, the third
movement, into a sort of falsetto reverie, turning inward again into music
that is more imagined and kaleidoscopic than outwardly scenic.  Soon, these
two musical lines are placed in a gentle, alternating tension which Martin
leaves delightfully unresolved.

The fourth movement takes us back to the serenity of the first.  That
opening Andante had set a lyrical mood, cast mainly by the viola's musings
while the background strings played long, mostly dark notes, delivered in
closing as a nearly static wall of sound.  Now, as the Sonata winds down,
we return to an Adagio delivered with great intensity, something ineffable
one can only surmise as Martin's attempt, as in the Polyptych, to give
musical shape to his religiosity.  Assisted by a second gifted soloist,
the pretty-nearly-anonymous violist J.  Reiber, Stadlmair comes into his
own with this piece: gentle and meditative, with harmonies that are not
over-elaborate, and long, sunny, lyrical moments that briefly pierce
through the mists.  They both bring this Sonata da Chiesa to unfold in
one of the surest resolutions, for me, since Bartok's Concerto for 2
pianos--though, to be sure, one that's far more understated.

This CD confirms an impression of Martin as a composer of utmost grace and
elegance.  His adventures in counterpoint are nothing short of stunning--if
that's not too sharp a depiction of this intense but refined master.  It
prompted me to revisit similar works: his Ballade for Cello and Small
Orchestra, the Ballade for Viola, Wind, Harp, Harpsichord and Percussion,
and others; they merely strengthened that impression.

The program of this CD has also urged me to reconsider my views:  Martin's
compositions for strings never even approach the dull--and so yes I _can_,
after all, live with a whole hour of music for strings!

Martin's sense of harmony and counterpoint stand up to comparison with the
best.  Yehudi Menuhin himself (whose own version I'd love to hear) says
that "When I play the "Polyptyque" by Frank Martin I feel the same
responsibility, the same exaltation as when I play Bach's Chaconne."

In the symmetry of his musical architecture, I'd liken Martin to Ravel
and Mozart.  Although in the economy of his means he might often be more
restrained than either, his musical choices are as carefully considered.
He's certainly their match in the purity of his lines:  while there is no
lack of emotion, nowhere in his music, for good or ill, do we find a
visceral rough edge.

This is not at all difficult or challenging music, but I would not
especially urge this CD on listeners who are new to Martin: grace and
intensity only cover one segment in his rich musical spectrum.  I'd
start with the Ballade for Piano and Orchestra, or his Petite Symphonie
Concertante  ...with the promise of plenty more gems to come in the Cello
Concerto, the Violin Concerto, the two Piano Concertos, the Concerto for 7
Winds, Timpani, Percussion and String Orchestra, the Double Mass,
oratorios, and, not least, the glorious Harpsichord Concerto (a new version
soon out on Naxos, I hear).

For the rest of us, I'd say this CD is definitely one to snap up and
savour.

"Bert Bailey" <[log in to unmask]>