For this week’s All Things Considered Turntable on this Music Monday, GBH host Arun Rath sat down with Brian McCreath, director of production at GBH Music and host of CRB’s The Boston Symphony Orchestra, to hear his classical music picks. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: So, start us off. What’s your first pick?
Brian McCreath: There’s this new release that came out not too long ago with Joyce DiDonato, the mezzo-soprano, and a group called Time for Three. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Time for Three — two violinists and a double bassist. They kind of do everything: classically trained, but they’ll play jazz, folk, anything.
They got together with this composer, Kevin Puts, for a new song cycle based on poetry by Emily Dickinson. The song cycle is called “No Prisoner Be.” It is so alive and so interesting because the violinist and bassist, Time for Three, sing along while playing their instruments.
One of the songs is called “There Is Another Sky.” Let’s listen to a little of that.
You can hear the guys from Time for Three doing a little bit of background vocals here to set this up, right? It’s a beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson — “There is another sky // Ever serene and fair.”
Kevin Puts is an American composer. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize, he’s had stuff done at the Metropolitan Opera. And he has a way of being able to communicate in all kinds of musical languages.
What I love about this song cycle is that he not only has that kind of sound — this very beautiful, lush sound — but also a sort of folk-tinged sound.
I wanted to just drop a little bit of another song called “’Tis True.”
You sort of get a vibe of American fiddling, right? So, a very different kind of poetry from Emily Dickinson. A different sound from Kevin Puts, Time for Three and Joyce DiDonato.
It’s a really wonderful song cycle. There”s [26] different songs included in this cycle. Anything that kind of connects me more to poetry by Emily Dickinson, I’m up for. And this one is so vivid.
Rath: It’s amazing. So beautiful. What do you have next?
McCreath: Well, there’s a new recording by Andris Nelsons, but this time with the Vienna Philharmonic. He’s going to be releasing an entire cycle of [Gustav] Mahler symphonies later this fall — all nine symphonies — and they just dropped the fifth symphony.
Let’s hear a little bit of this, just to start with.
This is part of the second movement of “Symphony No. 5” by Mahler. It’s that big orchestra, romantic feel, right? This is kind of a tumultuous movement. And the playing of the Vienna Philharmonic is amazing. Just a glorious brass section, right?
Now, I love every Mahler symphony. But in this particular case, what’s so fascinating to me about this recording is Andris’ tempos — which make this one of the longest performances of Mahler’s Fifth you’ll hear.
Rath: Which is not short to start off with.
McCreath: Right, right. But the pacing of it... it’s so different from what a lot of these recordings sound like of this particular symphony. The Vienna Philharmonic plays into this slower tempo that Andris has, but they make it work.
Rath: Two for two on ones that I’m literally going to go out and buy after we’re done here.
For your last one, I know we’re already working with one of my favorite composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams, but I think in a way I’m not used to hearing.
McCreath: Yeah, so “The Lark Ascending” is one of the most beautiful pieces that you can hear from an orchestral ensemble. And it’s based on a poem by George Meredith that actually depicts a lark ascending. Pekka Kuusisto takes an almost folk-music approach to this lush piece by Vaughan Williams. Let’s just listen to a little bit.
It’s just this lovely British sound, this English pastoral thing. Now, to my ear, when I listen to this piece generally, I hear violinists who are getting a big, Stradivarius kind of sound, and they’re projecting out and making this very lyrical.
But what I hear Pekka doing is a slightly smaller sound, a little bit more intimate — a little bit more conversational in what he does with his violin.
Rath: I feel like even though we’re used to this as being big and lush, it feels like it really suits the music.
McCreath: Exactly, exactly. He’s tapping into what Vaughan Williams was so inspired by, which were villagers in the countryside of England, right?
Rath: Brilliant. Okay, three for three.
And number four this week is a pick of mine. It’s a brand new disc featuring music of a composer I only recently discovered for myself: Charles-Valentin Alkan. He lived from 1813 to 1888.
His music fell into neglect after his death. His piano music has been rediscovered and more widely performed in recent decades — but the music he wrote for the organ hasn’t received its due, until now.
This disc is Vol. 1 of the complete Alkan organ works. The organist is Joseph Nolan. The piece that closes the disc — Nolan calls one of the greatest pieces written ever for any instrument. Obviously, a bit of bias there.
McCreath: That’s OK, that’s all right. Let’s do it.
Rath: It’s an impromptu on the well-known Lutheran hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” I want to play, first, the beginning of that, so we hear the familiar theme as it starts out.
McCreath: Oh yeah, he set it in the basement there, didn’t he?
Rath: Yeah. He’s starting out with the pedals and playing with his feet there, it would have to be.
The familiar theme develops over about 13 minutes. And by the end, he is playing so many lines simultaneously — using all 10 fingers and both feet on those pedals. If you’ve got good speakers where you are, turn this up.
You can hear, again, some fancy footwork with those pedals. Alkan wrote, I think, a series of etudes just for the pedals.
McCreath: It’s spectacular. I’ll confess that Alkan is not a composer I know a ton about. But I will say that what I do know about him is that, yeah, his music hasn’t been as played because of exactly what you say: it’s incredibly difficult. So, superhuman-type pianists, right, who can handle this. One of my friends, Marc-André Hamelin, whom we know here in Boston, is one of the —
Rath: He made one of the great discs of this music.
McCreath: Exactly. Part of how his reputation was built is on music by Alkan, because he’s one of the few people who could actually play it. And now, to have this organ CD added to what we can enjoy from Alkan is a real gift. I’m really glad you brought it along.
Rath: So, you’re going to buy this now?
McCreath: Yeah, this is on me now. To go out and buy it.
Rath: It’s good to get one in.
