Obscure Bits and Greatest Hits

By Michael Walsh

From Strauss to Schumann, surprise and reassurance

Summer is almost over and the fall concert season draws near; music is in the air. Here are six discs of orchestral and pianistic showpieces to ease the transition and whet the appetite.

STRAUSS: Also Sprach Zarathustra; Macbeth (Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Lorin Maazel, conductor; Deutsche Grammophon). Who could have predicted that a tone poem based on Friedrich Nietzsche's notions of the death of God, the will to power and the rise of a superman would become one of symphonic literature's greatest hits? Yet long before Director Stanley Kubrick popularized its spectacular organ and brass apostrophe in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Strauss's blazing essay in orchestrational virtuosity ranked high in audiences' esteem. Maazel and the Viennese give this mettle tester a commanding reading, capturing the grandeur of its arresting introduction, the suavity of its incongruous waltz and the enigma of its bitonal ending. The rarely encountered, frankly Wagnerian tone poem Macbeth, Strauss's first attempt in the genre, makes an appealing, generous bonus.

PROKOFIEV: No. 5 (St. Louis Symphony, Leonard Slatkin, conductor; RCA). Prokofiev's most popular symphony requires an accomplished orchestra with strings and woodwinds able to negotiate the Russian's tricky, sassy writing, as well as a brass section prepared to blast away with dignity when the time comes, as it often does. It also needs a conductor with an ear attuned to its harmonic piquancies and piston-engine rhythms. Slatkin and his crack orchestra, who are evolving the most exciting orchestral partnership since George Szell transformed the Cleveland Orchestra about 30 years ago, have what it takes in full measure. They impressively realize the score's biting sardonicism and icy beauty.

DVORAK: Serenade for Strings, Op. 22; Czech Suite, Op. 39 (Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Armin Jordan, conductor; Erato). Dvorak is best known for his last three symphonies (including the inescapable "New World") and his omnipresent Cello Concerto, but many have long admired his smaller works. The Czech Suite brims with rustic high spirits -it includes a polka, a sousedka, or "neighbors' dance," and a dashing furiant -while the Serenade for Strings is a five-movement study in country-squire elegance. Jordan, a Swiss conductor who came to general attention leading the score -and portraying Amfortas -in Hans-Juergen Syberberg's 1982 film Parsifal, draws refined, elegant performances from the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra.

BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1 (Pianist Emanuel Ax, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, James Levine, conductor; RCA). The culmination of Brahms' early style, the D minor concerto began life as a sonata for two pianos; ever the perfectionist, Brahms transformed it into a symphony before finally discovering that what the music really wanted to be was a piano concerto. This rawboned yet ardently romantic piece gets a grand reading from Ax and Levine. But they never get so concerned with profundity that they forget that it is, after all, the work of a 25-year-old still finding his way. Particularly in the spirited finale, the performers revel in the concerto's fresh, youthful passion.

RACHMANINOFF: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 4 (Pianist Zoltdn Kocsis, San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart, conductor; Philips). The middle pair of Rachmaninoff's quartet of piano concertos are both well known: the romantic second, in C minor, is probably the most popular (it is the source of the '40s pop song Full Moon and Empty Arms), and the brooding D minor is not far behind. But the bookends are regrettably obscure. The First Concerto, written when the dour Russian piano virtuoso was 18, has a dash and optimism that soon disappeared from his music. Such sunny qualities are almost entirely absent from the Fourth Concerto, a mournful, introspective work that features as its slow movement a set of variations on a melody that sounds like, of all things, Three Blind Mice; along with the Third Symphony and the Symphonic Dances, this is one of Rachmaninoff's most adventurous, modernistic scores. Kocsis, a young (32) Hungarian blessed with a strong, dramatic technique, plays both works brilliantly, and De Waart, whose specialty is Rachmaninoff, provides sympathetic support.

SCHUMANN: Kinderszenen, Arabesque; BRAHMS: Capriccio in B minor, Three Intermezzos; Rhapsody in G minor (Pianist Ivan Moravec; Nonesuch). It is hard to understand why Moravec is not better known. The Czech pianist plays with impeccable technique and taste, but his resolutely unflashy style has never been quite to the taste of the American public, which prizes pianistic fire eating. Moravec, 53, has been performing more in the U.S. lately, and his admirers hope he wins through live performance the recognition that aficionados have long awarded him on the strength of his early recordings. This disc ought to help. Moravec's Kinderszenen is delicately evocative of Schumann's magical scenes from childhood, and his Arabesque is spun of the finest pianistic gold. The Brahms pieces are by turns bold, strong, tender and virile. A distinctive voice in a seemingly endless parade of cookie-cutter virtuosos, Moravec deserves to be ranked among the foremost pianists of the day.