{"id":37,"date":"2011-11-21T20:44:51","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T01:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2011-11-21T20:44:51","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T01:44:51","slug":"cd-review-new-music-meets-obscure-on-groteske","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2011\/11\/21\/cd-review-new-music-meets-obscure-on-groteske\/","title":{"rendered":"CD Review: New Music meets obscure on Groteske"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Jonathan Swartz &amp; Mark Fewer, violins<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Andr\u00e9s D\u00edaz, cello<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Wendy Chen, piano<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>GROTESKE<\/strong> (Soundset Recordings)<\/p>\n<p>A new CD of chamber music featuring busy Canadian violinists Mark Fewer and native Torontonian Jonathan Swartz contains a pretty compelling mix of new and obscure.<\/p>\n<p>The new is <em>Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Charpentier<\/em>, which allows Toronto composer, teacher and director Kieran MacMillan to show off what a clever boots he is. The theme, borrowed from a Ritournelle from Marc-Antoine Charpentier&#8217;s nativity cantata, is laid out in a way so simple as to sound primitive, but MacMillan quickly turns it into a freewheeling set of 11 variations that cover just about every art music style imaginable.<\/p>\n<p>The obscure is the five-movement <em>Suite<\/em>, Op. 23, for two violins, cello and left-handed piano commissioned by left-handed pianist Paul Wittgenstein from Erich Wolfgang Korngold &#8212; completed in 1930. (The album&#8217;s title comes from the middle movement, &#8220;Groteske&#8221;.) It is a remarkable showcase of a very creative composer. Korngold managed to somehow fuse the new aesthetic of the 20th century with late Romanticism. Sometimes it sounds as if he&#8217;s trying to underpin serial tone rows with traditional harmonies. it&#8217;s a fascinating interplay.<\/p>\n<p>This excellent quartet of players delivers all the music on this disc with zest, flawless technique and a lot of care in the shaping of the music. Pianist Wendy Chen engages with the piano with red-blooded gusto.<\/p>\n<p>It may seem like a risk to take a chance on this disc, but it&#8217;s well worth it.<\/p>\n<p>For more information, including track samples, click <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soundset.com\/cd_detail.php?disc=105\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the second movement, marked &#8220;Walzer,&#8221; very nicely played by violinists Liviu Prunaru and Valentina Svyatlovskaya, cellist Marie-Stephanie Janacek and pianist Antoine Rebstein last year:<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bWzniOoOzCg?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n<p><em>John Terauds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jonathan Swartz &amp; Mark Fewer, violins Andr\u00e9s D\u00edaz, cello Wendy Chen, piano GROTESKE (Soundset Recordings) A new CD of chamber music featuring busy Canadian violinists Mark Fewer and native Torontonian Jonathan Swartz contains a pretty compelling mix of new and obscure. The new is Fantasy Variations on a Theme by Charpentier, which allows Toronto composer, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[36],"tags":[6470],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2011\/11\/fewer.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-B","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}