Alex Klein can seemingly do no wrong, and here with some of his favorite comrades he has put together another real winner for Cedille. This program features music with poetical inspiration, and the record company is even good enough to give us the full (and substantial) texts that lay behind the inspiration for each piece. Only the Hindemith lacks such a program, and to me is the main reason for hastily acquiring this disc, though I suppose you could argue that the invention of a new instrument (in this case, the Heckelphone, a sort of baritone bassoon) serves as a poetic stimulation, at least among its original admirers. The Heckelphone as we know has gone the way of the Arpeggione and the Dodo though remains as a vestige in a few of Richard Strauss’s works. But Hindemith crafted one of his finest compositions for it, the viola, and piano, and each instrument is taxed to the max in trying to pull it off—the viola part especially is devilish. I have come across two or three recent readings of this work, one for the tenor saxophone alternative, and one for Oboe d’amore, and one for Heckelphone itself, but these have either not been satisfactory because of the substitutions, or for the couplings on the disc. This one, hands down, is the one to have, and I doubt will we hear another better anytime soon. Klein by the way plays the beast to perfection.
The other works here are formidable and beautiful. Loeffler, longtime violinist with the Boston Symphony before his death, had the opportunity to try a lot of his work out in that environs, and to good effect. His Two Rhapsodies are smokehouse treatments of a fantastical couple of poems, and displays an almost post-expressionist French sound. My favorite has been a Robert Bloom version on Boston Skyline, but this has better sound and equals that one interpretatively. The Klughardt piece, like most of August’s music that I have heard, deserves wider exposure, absolutely absorbed with a trenchant romanticism that surpasses his friend Liszt in many instances.
The other pieces add the value of this disc greatly. Felix White, an all but unknown British composer, was actually quite prolific, and this tone poem is a fleet, fantasy-laden exposition of color and incisive emotive value. Klein has already recorded the Oboe Concerto of Marco Aurelio Yano, a friend of the artist who refused to let his quadriplegic condition get in the way of his achievements during his short life, and this short Modinha (traditional Brazilian melody) is quite affecting.
So there you have it—an outstandingly successful concept album in superior sound played by great artists with wonderful music. Need I go on?
— Steven Ritter
