Classical music

The Artist - Hilary Hahn - violinist:
Hilary Hahn is an acclaimed American violinist who was born in 1979, she started studying the instrument at the age of 4 and after studying at the renowned Curtis Institute of Music she started her phenomenal career which has taken her around the world working with a raft of world class orchestras and performing in all the top concert halls. She has won a Grammy for her recordings of the violin concerti of Brahms and Stravinsky, along with a host of other awards during her highly productive recording activities. After an initial contract with Sony Classical she is currently contracted to Deutsche Grammophon and her recent unusual album combination of the Schoenberg and Sibelius Violin concerti was the first recording of a piece by gritty 20th century composer Schoenberg to ever hit the top of the classical charts - quite an achievement.

Hilary Hahn has pursued an original approach to her highly informative website at www.hilaryhahn.com where she maintains a travel blog giving a fascinating insight into her touring musical life around the world and a further indication of her interest in stretching the limits of her career is her collaboration with various non-classical musicians from the world of rock and country. Anyone who enjoyed M. Night Shyamalan's terribly scary movie "The Village" (I have to admit I spent most of it hiding behind my sofa...) will have heard her as featured soloist on the Oscar-nominated soundtrack.

The Documentary - and comments:
Basically the form of the documentary covers a concentrated period of Hilary Hahn's touring life.
We start with her about to go onstage at Berlin's famous Philharmonie Hall with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin to perform the Korngold violin concerto conducted by Kent Nagano, there's a taste of that kind of frisson before a performance but straightaway the main issues with the DVD for a potential buyer become obvious. Looking at the DVD one can see that one of the main extras is a complete performance of the Korngold, so why on earth do we find that during the documentary itself - the Korngold also appears almost in its entirety? OK, the 3 movements are separated with film of Hilary Hahn, but in total we hear about 16 minutes of the 26 minute long concerto... that's 16 minutes of totally duplicated material! I could understand if perhaps only a couple of minutes of each movement appeared in the documentary, but with so much this is a big issue I feel for any potential buyer.

It would have been easy to find other material instead which would have made the DVD much better content-wise. But one has to emphasise that it is a fine performance by Hilary and the orchestra and certainly well worth watching and listening to. This is lush and dramatic music, originally written as Hollywood film music.

The documentary moves on to talk about the Korngold with Hilary and it is disappointing and surprising to find her rather ill at ease - she doesn't appear to know the background to Korngold's flight from his native Austria at the start of World War II and doesn't come out with any of the well known details of what film the music was originally written for. Her rather tongue-tied commentary certainly makes me feel rather embarrassed for her and wishing she could just be left to play her violin - which is what she really does so beautifully. Another segment with Kent Nagano discussing Hahn's performance of the Korngold is so peculiar I just have to pick up on it - he is filmed with the orchestral porters tidying up the Berlin stage behind him, with all the clatter and banging around this involves. Couldn't the producers have found a quieter corner to film? One gets a really rather haphazard impression of their production skills.

Perhaps the weakest and least interesting part of the documentary comes when Hilary Hahn takes the viewer around the Curtis Institute where she studied for 10 years. Whilst naturally one can understand her loyalty and respect for her renowned teacher Jascha Brodsky, her rather anodyne comments such as "Oh, they've painted the walls here and put in a new carpet - we only had a tatty sofa when I was here..." etc don't give a viewer any proper insight into her ideas and life as a musician, it feels like another waste of time on the DVD. Perhaps the only interesting comment in this section is when the former head of the school Gary Graffmann talks of her audition and says how it was obvious right from the first notes that Hilary Hahn was a major talent. I feel it would have been much more enlightening for the DVD to take a look further back into Hilary's relationship with the violin: Did she choose it at age 4? Did she come from a musical family? Did she always want to be a musician etc?

However, the most frustrating aspect of the DVD comes when Hilary Hahn performs Bach in a Dresden nightclub called the Yellow Lounge, a venue which occasionally promotes classical music events in a much more informal situation than a concert hall, people can drink and eat while listening to the performance. It is an unusual situation and Hilary starts to play the intellectually and mentally demanding Bach Chaconne from the D minor Suite, it is immediately clear that the audience are at once riveted to her charismatic performance but what happens on the DVD? The narrator starts talking over the music! I was SO annoyed at this I wanted to throw my remote through the screen! This was a situation where the power of a really fine young musician to appeal to a non-classical audience could be shown in action and the atmosphere has to be ruined by the DVD production. I have to say this was certainly VERY frustrating to the viewer, especially as her performance sounded an original and highly appealing one.

If only the repetition of the Korngold had been reduced, we could have heard the whole of the Bach in this unique and challenging venue. Additionally, Hilary Hahn spoke of the effect that playing Bach had both on herself and on children that she had played for - it was one of the few moments where I felt she was starting to open up about her feelings about music. She then was shown warming up with the Gigue from the D minor Suite, again inexplicably "voiced over" by the narrator, most annoying!

Between these too long extracts from the Korngold, there is footage from Hilary Hahn's visits to the Abbey Road Studios in London to record with the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Colin Davis, and then a short segment when she performs Paganini's 1st violin concerto in Hong Kong. It is at this point that Hilary seems to become more at ease with the filming and we learn of her approach to recording and practising on the road. It is really an indication of how interesting this documentary COULD have been. Ironically, the most revealing conversation with her in the entire DVD is right at the end when she is packing up after her performance in Berlin, suddenly for the first time, one can see a young woman in her twenties who does actually have a life outside of music...

DVD extras:

There is a totally wonderful complete performance of the Korngold Violin Concerto, which I would recommend highly to anyone who doesn't know this work or who admires Hilary Hahn's playing. This is followed by a rather routine but nevertheless enjoyable rendition of Mozart's violin sonata in G major, K.301 with Hilary Hahn's regular accompanist Natalie Zhu as pianist. So far so good, both items are very acceptable extras for any DVD.

However it is downhill from here I am afraid! On the menu we are told that 3 additional sections follow billed as interviews with Hilary Hahn and Natalie Zhu, called: First collaboration at Curtis; Recording Mozart; Selection of the Programmes and finally Partnership of the Instruments. But each section consisted of little more than a couple of minutes, if even that, of simplistic and rather bland comments from Hilary and also her duo partner Natalie Zhu. To be honest, I was rather gobsmacked. When I thought back to all the great opinions, ideas, anecdotes and so on which Maxim Vengerov came up with in his portrait DVD, this made me feel very short-changed indeed.

Suffice it to say that there are also subtitles available on the DVD extras in German, Spanish, French and Chinese, as well as a photo gallery of Hilary Hahn (nothing that one can't find online) and her duo partner Natalie Zhu.

Overall conclusions:

This DVD was a big disappointment to me in the sense that I was looking forward to getting a better insight into one of the finest young female violinists playing today, but that simply didn't materialise. Yes, there is some great playing on this DVD, in particular the Korngold, and also most tantalizingly the spoken over extract from Bach's Chaconne, but it doesn't make up for the frustrating aspects of the DVD as I've discussed in this review. The so called interviews are a total laugh; they aren't interviews at all, just a few short uninteresting sentences if even that. Having the music spoken over is another big negative point in terms of buyer choice and the totally unnecessary duplication of much of the Korngold is a huge marketing mistake which certainly reduces the appeal of this DVD.

On a positive note I do have to say that the sound quality which includes Dolby Digital and "dts Digital Surround Sound" is excellent and can't be faulted.

However, I come away not feeling that I've really learned anything about Hilary Hahn as a person, which is a total contrast to my opinions after watching the Maxim Vengerov "Living the Dream" DVD. In Hilary's case it does seem to be that the documentary is really just a glorified glossy PR hand-out from her record company Deutsche Grammophon.

Introduction:

Alexander Porfir'yevich Borodin (1833-87) was a highly talented individual who was actually only a "part-time" composer, his main profession being as a professor of chemistry, an area where he also enjoyed significant personal success. He was the illegitimate son of a Georgian prince and given the name of one of his father's servants, but he grew up in a privileged environment which brought him into contact with Western culture and encouraged his interest in classical music. Eventually he became one of "The Five" - a renowned group of Russian nationalist composers consisting of Mily Balakirev (the leader), César Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, as well as Borodin.

However, Borodin's main career of chemistry meant that he was frequently distracted from his music and his work on "Prince Igor" lasted intermittently from 1869 until his early death in 1887, which left the opera incomplete. It was edited, completed and orchestrated by Rimsky Korsakov and Glasunov, with much of the 3rd act not being by Borodin and apparently the overture being reconstructed from memory! It was first performed in St. Petersburg in 1890.

"Prince Igor" as a result has a rather mish-mash plot to say the least, which can be safely summarized as the Russians battling against their foes the Polovtsians back in 1185, combined with the usual illicit love affair "across the lines" - throw in a Russian character philosophising about life and love with the assistance of copious amounts of vodka and you really have the opera summed up pretty well. However, many people may recognize the music on this CD from the musical "Kismet" - written by Robert Wright and George Forrest, who basically "borrowed Borodin"...
Performers:

There's a lot of snobbery around about the less well known artists that Naxos tend to use for their CDs. It has to be said that this is extremely unfair. On this disc we have the National Radio Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, conducted by their then music director Theodor Kuchar, and 4 Ukrainian singers as soloists as well as the Kiev Municipal Chamber Choir. Ukraine has always had a great tradition in producing fine musicians, and this is demonstrated by the majority of the artists on this CD. Many of these Russian/Russian Federation groups are just as good as, if not better than British or other European musicians - it is important not to prejudge the situation before hearing the CD.

Contents of CD/Performances:

1. Overture: This really sets the standard for the perhaps surprising quality of this excellent recording. The National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine plays extremely well, most importantly for the large orchestration there is excellent clarity (no overblown brass here) and one hears both the excitement of the music as well as the gorgeous lyrical elements. Conductor Kuchar keeps a tight hold on his forces and it is nice to hear obviously Russian trained horns, trombones and woodwind, a quite distinctive sound. Many themes from the opera appear in the overture and their differing characterisations are very well brought out in this performance. Fine dynamic range and sound quality throughout the overture.

2 "I don't like boredom" - Galitzky's Recitative and Aria, Act 1: I should state that the vocal extracts on this CD are sung in the original Russian, but there is are translations in the CD booklet. This humorous aria sung by a Russian character about girls, alcohol and yet more girls is performed wittily by bass Taras Shtonda, a typical Russian bass - he carries off this rather fun vodka infused aria with an air of drunken panache, accompanied very precisely by the orchestra.

3. Dance of the Polovtsian Maidens: An orchestral piece, fast and furious, some fine playing from the orchestra and excellent sonic balance throughout. I found this very helpful in getting to know the opera because of the very clear recording - one could really make out inner parts (such as my 2nd violin part!) and that's a big plus point to the expertise of the Naxos sound engineers.

4. "Daylight is fading" - Konchakovna's Cavatina: For me, one of the 2 vocal highlights of this disc, a woman's lament for her missing husband, gorgeously evocative singing by mezzo-soprano Angelina Shvachka, beautifully floated lines and a very well controlled pianissimo voice. The slow melodies, depicting the Polovtsian princess, have almost an oriental flavour to them to differentiate from the music of the Russians. There is some especially stunning woodwind playing which echoes Shvachka's long languorous phrasing. In my opinion worth paying £2.50 for this track alone.

5. "Slowly the day was fading" - Vladimir's Cavatina, Act 2: Another stunning track, this music makes me want to cry it is so beautiful. Interestingly you can immediately hear the different flow of the melody, as Vladmir, Konchakovna's lover is Russian rather than Polovtsian. A slow, lyrical aria, with a totally hummable tune that I guarantee will stay in your head for days afterwards. The tenor Dmytro Popov, demonstrates an effortless technique with wonderfully floated high notes and effortless phrasing. Again, this track more than justifies the purchase price. It is such sensually attractive music, very romantic. The orchestra features (as in the previous track) some evocative woodwind solo playing as well as an appearance from the "big tune" of the overture played by a wonderfully authentic sounding Russian French horn. Great stuff.

6. "There is neither sleep nor rest" - Prince Igor's Aria, Act 2: Sadly, given that this is the showpiece aria of the title role, this is the worst track on the CD. Baritone Mykola Koval is the weakest link amongst the singers, he is obviously straining hard to reach some of the higher notes in the aria and he doesn't really have the breadth of phrasing needed to sustain this intensely melodic writing. It isn't an unacceptable performance, but certainly doesn't live up to the expectations gained by the previous tracks.

7. Choral version of the Polovtsian Dances, Act 2: This is actually one of the hardest parts of the opera to play from the orchestral violinist point of view, lots of very fast figuration and off-beat accents/chords, so from my own experience I can safely say that the orchestral playing is pretty impressive on this track, however the Kiev Chamber Choir are a little "over-enthusiastic" - the sopranos in particular are rather blowsy and there are some strained voices to be heard at times. But the singers do capture the exuberant excitement of this music even if it is nt the most sophisticated and polished of interpretations.

8. Polovtsian March, Act 3: For orchestra only, this piece again evokes the oriental nature of the Polovtsians, and is very well played by the orchestra. I like the facts that even at full blast, the brass don't overpower the strings and woodwind (unlike some far more expensive recordings) and there is an enviable accuracy in ensemble throughout. A stirring and triumphant march to round off the extracts from "Prince Igor".

9. "In the Steppes of Central Asia": Rather bizarrely, instead of making use of the vocalists to perform another ensemble from "Prince Igor" and give an even wider insight into the opera, Naxos tag on a totally unrelated piece by Borodin - a "musical picture" that he composed in 1880. It depicts the progress of a procession across the steppes, using Russian melody, then oriental and finally cleverly combining the two. If you've ever wondered where the big horn tune at the end of Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite" comes from, then look no further. The music is very well played, but with the quiet ending depicting the procession disappearing into the distance, it seems an anticlimactic end to an impressive CD.

Conclusions:
Well, I could not have made a better choice to give myself a quick and easy overview of this rather fascinating opera. I bought this CD in HMV with their 2 Naxos CDs for £5 special offer, so that I could prepare myself a bit before playing the piece at an opera workshop weekend. I can say that the almost 50 minutes of music from "Prince Igor" contained on this highlights disc provide a great starting point for anyone wanting to get to know the opera. I'm sure it will send keen classical fans off to buy a complete version.

The sound quality is surprisingly impressive for such a budget price CD, and with the one exception mentioned above, the artists are of first class quality, it is always nice too to hear real authentic Russian accents rather than the totally garbled gobbledegook misrepresentation of the language that one gets from most big name Western opera singers, it really adds a lot to the atmosphere of the CD. I would especially praise the orchestra and conductor who produce exciting, moving interpretations.

It should be emphasised that there are excellent programme notes in the accompanying CD booklet, with biographies of all the artists, a short but highly interesting article about Borodin and most impressive of all, the original Russian lyrics of the vocal tracks plus English translation, something which is frequently missing from much more expensive CD materials. At about an hour of music for £2.50, you can't complain about value for money either.

The only reason I am not giving this recording 5 stars is that I'd rather have had another selection from "Prince Igor" - there are some wonderful ensembles not featured here - than an unrelated performance of "In the Steppes of Central Asia", but this is a small niggle and will probably not bother most potential buyers.

If you like Tchaikovsky and other Russian classical music, this is a must buy for your collection, a really enjoyable listen and another excellent production from Naxos. Highly recommended!

Background:

There are few 80 year olds who cling resolutely to the label of "enfant terrible" but producer, director and writer Ken Russell has to be a number one candidate. Perhaps best known for his Oscar winning film "Women in Love", the Who's "Tommy" and the sci-fi film "Altered States".

"Shocking" is something which has always come easily to Ken Russell, (though he might prefer to argue he has merely been pushing the boundaries of film...) whether is the scenes of naked wrestling in "Women in Love"; the cavorting of a naked Glenda Jackson in his Tchaikovsky biopic "The Music Lovers" or the outrageous depiction of composer Richard Strauss as a Nazi to mention just a few examples. But initially, Ken Russell started his career as a pioneer in the still infant world of TV documentaries and produced programmes which whilst fairly uncontroversial in comparison to his later creative work, still proved to be revolutionary ground-breakers in the development of television in Britain. "Elgar" is one of these early programmes.

"Elgar" - a Monitor programme.

Back in the late 1950s and 60s, television was still in its infancy as a mass media outlet and Monitor was an arts programming strand regarded as one of the crown jewels of the BBC's output. It was presided over by Corporation stalwart Huw Wheldon, who'd noticed Ken Russell's talent from some of his early amateur film efforts and taken him on board the team - thus establishing Russell as an innovative film maker.
Russell put forward the idea of making an almost hour long documentary on the renowned British composer Edward Elgar (1857-1934) in order to celebrate the 100th edition of "Monitor". Naturally it was an ambitious project, not least in that unlike today's no holds barred documentaries, Russell had to adhere to some pretty strict rules imposed by Wheldon and the BBC. The most restrictive was that there was a ban on the dramatisation of the lives of real people at that time on the BBC. So Russell was forced to accept a compromise: the main characters would be portrayed by actors, but they wouldn't speak and would mainly appear in long-shot. To many producers this might have fatally restricted their creativity, but to Russell it was to prove the opposite.

At the time of the programme - 1962 - composer Edward Elgar and his music had been going through a period of neglect, and the knowledge and awareness of his music tended to concentrate mainly on the "Pomp and Circumstance" side of his compositions. Ken Russell set out to try and change this rather restricted and unrealistic image - and succeeds brilliantly in revealing a far more emotionally complex and sensitive individual.

The programme "Elgar" basically provides an overview of Elgar's entire life. Because of the restriction in not having the characters speak, Russell concentrates the viewer's attention on the music right from the start with Huw Wheldon speaking a concise yet always informative narration in his inimitable "BBC Received Pronunciation".

The film opens with a wonderfully evocative scene of Elgar as a young boy riding a white pony over the Malvern Hills... the countryside which was to inspire so much of his music. The accompanying music is his "Introduction and Allegro" - invigorating and evocative - it and the image of Elgar travelling along the crest of the Malvern Hills serve as a kind of Leitmotif throughout the film whenever Elgar returns to Malvern and Worcester from London. Actually, we now know that he never did ride a pony as a child! But the effectiveness of that opening image (which seems to stick in the mind of all who view this film) does seem to justify that little piece of artistic licence!

We learn of Elgar's humble roots as the son of a music shop proprietor and his obvious early talent at learning any instrument he found in his father's shop. Right from the start we hear his early compositions - whether a piece for violin, or a gorgeous extract of one of his first church music works. There is quite a strong emphasis on the hardships which he had to endure in order to establish himself as a composer, and indeed also in his personal life when he fell in love with and eventually married Alice who was from a higher social class and whose family did not approve of her marrying a "mere musician". Interestingly, we hear of Elgar's depression and even his occasional suicidal thoughts - one aspect of his character which was virtually unknown to the general public back in the 1960s. This is contrasted with his strong religious faith, and then - following his wife's death, his despair at being left alone.

Admittedly there are some inaccuracies in the film - perhaps most particularly in that his early success in Germany was first from the Enigma Variations rather than the later Dream of Gerontius, and also Elgar's antipathy towards his best known composition "Land of Hope and Glory/Pomp and Circumstance March" was in no way as strong as depicted in the film. There are also major omissions in that his relationship with Alice Stuart-Wortley is completely ignored, but back in the 60s Elgar scholarship was still in its infancy and perhaps there were too many people still alive to whom such revelations could have been offensive. But none of this should in any way deter someone from watching this film, as it does not suffer as a result.

Impression of the film:

Perhaps the most enduring aspect of the programme is the incredibly vivid visual imagery which reinforces the quality of Elgar's music. There are so many total strokes of genius which stamp Ken Russell's involvement all over this film and ensure its durability as a unique piece of television history. For example the use of actual footage of First World War fighting, accompanied by the rousing tune of Land of Hope and Glory as soldiers die in battle, are carried off injured, or a line of blinded men marching along a road, each holding on to the shoulder of the one before... culminating in the final fast climax of the march as the camera pans around a WW1 cemetery, faster and faster and faster. I can't think of a more poignant and hard-hitting depiction of the utter futility of war.

All through this film one finds the perfect combination of visual and musical imagery to make a deep emotional impact on the viewer. The cinematography of "Elgar" is at the highest possible level and one can understand how Russell's work later influenced people such as Stanley Kubrick. Obviously as the film was made in 1962 it is in black and white, but I have to say that after a few minutes you totally forget that you are seeing only shades of black, white and grey. The contrasts of lighting, shading, movement and stillness are incredibly vivid and the sure sign of a master film-maker at work.

My own favourite 2 scenes are one where Elgar and his wife are seated at a table, he is composing his first great work - the Serenade for Strings - while she draws lines for manuscript paper. The Serenade slow movement - one of Elgar's wonderful melodies - plays as they concentrate intensely on their tasks, the intensity of the lighting is vividly reminiscent of a Velasquez still life painting - unbelievably effective. The other scene comes at the end of the film where Elgar is on his deathbed, but one only sees his arm put the needle on a wind up gramophone as he looks out from his bed over to Worcester Cathedral and the hills beyond while his glorious "Nimrod" from the Enigma Variations is played on the record. At the end of the variation, the needle clicks repeatedly on the record.... and the light fades... pure genius, always makes me cry!

In hindsight, when one considers the "warts and all" type of biographical coverage that we encounter on tv nowadays, the approach taken by Russell and Wheldon in "Elgar" could perhaps be described as rather twee and superficial in some respects. Yet - I personally believe that the way in which they concentrate on what they felt were the most salient points of his complex emotional character, and coupled that with the power of his music - it makes for a much more intense experience overall than our rather intrusive modern approach.
Needless to say, this DVD edition of the film has been beautifully restored and the sound remastered, so that the mono soundtrack does not distract in any way from the quality of the sound. It says a lot for the quality of the BBC Monitor team that the basic quality of the film and sound has held up so well over the years.

DVD Extras:

This is where this particular edition of "Elgar" really comes into its own and makes it a "must buy" for any serious classical music fans. We have to be incredibly indebted to the British Film Institute for putting together such a top-class package.
As well as a revealing and occasionally very droll audio commentary on the film by Ken Russell himself, there are subtitles for the hearing impaired and a whole host of wonderful extras to explore, including some fascinating archive footage of Elgar himself conducting "Land of Hope and Glory" for a recording session celebrating the opening of the renowned Abbey Road studios in 1933, with interesting commentary from the Elgar expert Michael Kennedy.

Additionally, one can watch some rare "home movies" taken by a friend of Elgar's covering the Three Choirs Festival in the early 1930s, which show many of Elgar's friends and colleagues - such as George Bernard Shaw, his regular concertmaster W. H. Reid and other luminaries from Elgar's musical social scene. Most revealing and intimate of all - there is footage of Elgar playing with his beloved dogs and the only known film of his last girlfriend and "muse" Vera Hockman.

There are also some beautiful stills from the filming of the film and a biography of Ken Russell.

Conclusion:
This is definitely a "must see" for any Elgar fan and also I'd recommend it highly to anyone studying television, media and film.