Meyer & Bottesini
Works for Double Bass
* Edgar Meyer:
- Concerto for Cello and Double Bass; Yo-Yo Ma (cello).
- Concerto for Double Bass
* Bottesini:
- Concerto No. 2 in b minor for Double Bass
- Gran Duo Concertante
Edgar Meyer (double bass), Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Joshua Bell (violin)
Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra/Hugh Wolff.
Sony SK 60956 Total Time: 67:16
I'm a bit nonplussed. Edgar Meyer is undoubtedly one of the top two
bass players in the world. I've had the good fortune to hear him perform
live, an astonishing musician. I can't even begin to tell you all the
feats he performed in one jaw-dropping encore - just him and his bass.
I felt I was at a bullfight and wanted to shout "Ole!" at every particularly
graceful pass or unpredictable wonder. However, Meyer also composes,
and at more than a merely-competent level. This isn't the case of, say,
Koussevitzky providing repertoire for his instrument or a performer
indulging his vanity. Meyer even has his own voice, or at least his own
sound or compositional take on things. He is, indeed, a real composer,
as opposed to a duffer. The listener doesn't have to make allowances
for him.
The idiom stems from neoclassic American modernism, a favorite of mine
(think Copland and Piston), with inspiration from various vernacular
sources, like "roots" music and, occasionally, jazz. In its sense of
time and phrase, Meyer's music more resembles American works before World
War II than after it. He orchestrates lean and mean; the sound reminds
me a lot of Britten, without actual appropriation. All that said, his
music only occasionally speaks to me. There's a gorgeous violin concerto,
written for Hilary Hahn, but the works here don't come up to that one.
I want to like these concerti a lot more and wonder why I don't. The
mind that produced them interests me a great deal.
I think, for me, when Meyer's music doesn't work, it usually comes down
to a failure of or lack of concern for drama. There are highly imaginative
passages in both works on this CD and some very dull ones, where the
music seems merely to mark time. Perhaps the harmony or thematic treatment
simply doesn't change fast enough to suit me. At any rate, I occasionally
find myself wanting more contrast. Of the two Meyer works here, I prefer
the double concerto for cello and bass -- less of what seems to me
noodling. Meyer reveals Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and
viola as the inspiring source, and one can discover several connections
to that work in this one, but they link at a highly abstract level.
Apart from one small quotation (which you can easily miss), Meyer makes
it up all on his own.
One notices, however, distressingly similar ideas in Meyer's two concerti,
chief of which is a downward bluesy slide in their respective opening
movements. This, at least, shows poor programming on Sony's part and
does Meyer no good at all.
But I feel like a grinch when I point any of this out. The performances
carry off all objections. Ma, of course, plays his instrument very well
indeed. However, Meyer has such command over the color of his instrument
and has eliminated so much of the fuzz and buzz from the usual sound
of the bass that often you can't tell, for example, between him and Ma.
Furthermore, the concerto itself, at its best, has a quirky poetry. One
of my favorite moments comes deep in the second movement (not a conventional
slow movement): a jazzy duet between the solo cello and the pizzicato
bass. The finale, for me the best of the three, takes off on bluegrass
fiddle music, among other things, but again at a certain level of
abstraction. The main idea, with its insistence on the tonic chord and
its strong rhythmic pulse, may even remind you a bit of the opening bars
of Tippett's second symphony.
I heard Meyer do his double-bass concerto live. Truth to tell, it didn't
do much for me then, but I had also recently heard David Anderson's
concerto, to me the finest for the instrument -- an authentic musical
argument, rather than a simple bag of tricks. Meyer has performed
Anderson's work at least once (I believe with the Philadelphia) and ought
to record it. At any rate, Meyer's own concerto, while no mere excuse
to get up in front of an orchestra, doesn't completely escape the curse
of the bag o' tricks. The first movement seems to end in the middle of
nothing, in itself not necessarily bad, but it does fail to convince or
to sum things up. On the other hand, there are some gorgeous passages
-- notably, the first orchestral tutti in the opening movement and a
pointillist gathering of forces around a dancing solo part, as the texture
rebuilds from solo bass to full orchestra. The second movement, my
favorite of the three, begins as an arioso accompanied by pizzicato
strings, a little reminiscent in that way of the Villa-Lobos Bachianias
brasileiras No. 5. A clarinet joins with the bass for a duet that will
haunt you before the orchestra breaks in with an energetic samba, thus
reinforcing the Villa-Lobos echo. The arioso returns, this time with a
duet between bass and oboe. The finale tries to go out with a bang,
but, despite the various rockets Meyer sets off, the rhythm seems mostly
to plod. This may be the orchestral performance, or it may stem from
Meyer's insistence on a stamping on-the-beat bass part as well as a
certain four-squaredness to the themes.
You may not recognize the name Bottesini right off the bat. Considered
the great 19th-century virtuoso of the double bass, he also composed,
most likely to provide himself with repertoire. Meyer plays his own
edition (with his own cadenzas). Despite national origin and name,
Bottesini composed solidly in the German tradition. Indeed, in a
"drop-the-needle" test, you might be tempted to guess a minor German
Romantic master, like Goldmark, without the occasional flash of genius.
The concerto -- despite Meyer's enthusiasm for it as "my favorite concerto"
-- will never set the world on fire, but it does genuinely charm,
particularly the singing second movement. And sing Meyer does, keeping
up with the best cellist you ever heard. I find the third movement best
because of Meyer's cadenza, which sends the double bass into the string
Himalayas, normally reserved for violinists' harmonics. The tone is
pure and sweetly in tune, and how he brings it off, I have no idea.
Toward the end, Bottesini himself has a breakout moment, with a theme
that reminds me of a Liszt Hungarian dance. Meyer and the orchestra
play with a lovely lilt.
The Gran Duo Concertante wants nothing more than to be liked and succeeds.
Bottesini wrote its one movement while still a teen-ager. With considerable
precocity (and lack of experience), he composed it for two double basses.
Fortunately, Camillo Savari, a Paganini disciple, rearranged the thing
(with at least the composer's blessing) into its present form for violin
and bass. It generally consists of the two soloists trading licks, as
the orchestra remains discreetly in the background, for the most part,
stepping up to grandly announce a new section before settling into its
vamp. Oddly enough, although the double bass has a very difficult part,
it mainly accompanies the violin. Apparently, Bottesini -- who performed
it in his concerts -- didn't hog the limelight. Joshua Bell very often
fails to make any sort of impression on me. Obviously, he's a wonderful
player, but it takes an extraordinary violinist to register with me.
Truthfully, I couldn't tell you whether it's Heifetz or Stern or Ricci
or Accardo or Francescatti playing, from the sound alone. Pathetic, I
know. However, for the first time, Bell scores with me here -- strong,
vibrant playing, in tune without calling attention to the fact. It's
probably the closest a violin can sound to a trumpet. Again, Meyer has
a lot of thankless things to do (apparently, Bottesini reserved what
became the violin part for himself), but he does them very well and
strongly supports the star.
The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (apparently Sony's American house
orchestra) under Hugh Wolff does fine. It makes the most of its few
moments in the sun.
Steve Schwartz
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