Oddities and Rarities on Record Shelf

The offbeat repertory, ranging from Liszt’s forgotten virtuoso firecrackers for piano and orchestra to two new CDs of Reinhold Gliere’s lovably obese Third Symphony, awaits discovery--or rediscovery--on the record shelves.

First, a program of Liszt fireworks on one of those ludicrously cheap--under $5, retail--LaserLight CDs (14 011).

The top knuckle-buster here is the Fantasy on Beethoven’s exquisitely dotty “The Ruins of Athens.” This 1830s variant begins in the orchestra as purest Beethoven, resolving into Liszt at his most flamboyantly futuristic with the entrance of the solo.

Also included are the equally neglected “Malediction,” for piano and strings, with its horror-house harmonies and tricky string figurations, and the hilariously convoluted “Grande Fantaisie” on Berlioz’s already eccentric “Lelio,” the French composer’s sequel to his “Symphonie Fantastique.”

The soloist-hero of the project is a witty, hugely capable 40-year-old Hungarian dynamo named Jeno Jando. The sympathetic conductor of the Budapest Symphony is Andras Ligeti.

A few months ago this column recommended a new CD by Yoav Talmi and his San Diego Symphony of Gliere’s Third Symphony (1912), subtitled “Ilya Murometz,” after the legendary medieval Russian hero. The disc (Pro Arte 589) was not yet generally available when the review was published.

Now it’s here, no less desirable but no longer shining in solitary splendor, what with the arrival of two additional CD versions of a score that used to visit once in a decade.

Edward Downes expertly leads the BBC Philharmonic in an edition (Chandos 9041) that makes fewer tummy tucks than Talmi’s while also employing marginally slower tempos. Downes’ comes in at 78 minutes, Talmi’s at 66.

The difference is largely in the finale, wherein the gigantic Ilya is petrified, an effect that may also be accomplished through Downes’ generosity. It is here that Talmi makes his largest and, to these ears most enhancing, excisions.

The third “Ilya,” which comes in a bit under Downes’ timings but seems to employ the same edition, is a non-contender: dutifully led by Donald Johanos, somewhat lazily played by the thin-stringed Czecho-Slovak Radio Symphony and indifferently recorded (Marco Polo 223358).

For something totally different, rarely encountered music of the most refined sensibility, try the 1897 sonata for violin and piano by Ravel, unpublished until 1975, the centenary of the composer’s birth.

In one long, sweetly lyrical, harmonically alluring movement (Faure is brought to mind), the early sonata is part of a program offering all of Ravel’s music for this combination of instruments (Harmonia Mundi 901364).

Included, of course, are the marvelous 1927 Sonata, that least self-conscious of jazz-inspired “classical” creations, as well as the flashy “Tzigane” and several short pieces, all played with terrific zest by violinist Regis Pasquier and pianist Brigitte Engerer.

Ignorance of the Russian language, to say nothing of Church Slavonic, tested but only slightly hampered this listener’s involvement with a possible first recording of music attributed to the 16th-Century Czar Ivan IV, better known as Ivan the Terrible.

Ivan’s (or whoever’s) half-hour-long composition is titled “Stikhira No. 1, in Honor of Pyotr, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia” (Melodiya 10-00007).

A stikhira would seem to be a monophonic processional hymn--Melodiya’s skimpy, inept program notes offer no clue--sung here by a superb quartet of male voices, whose hypnotically rich, modal rumbling is interspersed with readings (very slow, with barely perceptible dramatic inflection) of excerpts from Ivan’s letters. A translation would have been nice.

The CD also contains a fiercely dissonant, grandly dramatic symphonic meditation on Ivan’s kind of music: “Stikhira for the Millenary of the Christianization of Russia” (1987) by Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin.

Melodiya tells us nothing about the piece, whose performance by the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Culture Symphony under Gennady Rozhdestvensky packs a considerable wallop even in a 1989 recording whose high-end distortions are reminiscent of the atrocious 1950s Soviet product.

With all its deficiencies, this is a valuable program. One wonders, however, whether it is currently available through Melodiya’s nominal American distributor, Koch International, given the uncertainties inherent in doing business with the former Soviet Union. Check with your retailer.