559696-97 bk Helps US 22/6/11 12:21 Page 20 Also available from Spectrum Concerts Berlin: AMERICAN CLASSICS ROBERT HELPS in Berlin Chamber Music with Piano Spectrum Concerts Berlin ATOS Trio Robert Helps, Piano 8.559199 2 CDs 8.559696-97 20 559696-97 bk Helps US 22/6/11 12:21 Page 2 CD 1 55:36 CD 2 62:13 Also available from Spectrum Concerts Berlin: 1 Postlude for Horn, Violin Trio I for Violin, Cello and Piano (1957) 14:36 and Piano (1964) 8:43 1 I. Mesto 5:37 2 II. Molto marcato 4:18 2 Fantasy for Violin and Piano (1963) 6:57 3 III. Maestoso 4:41 Quartet for Piano, Violin, Trio II for Violin, Cello and Piano (2000) 12:23 Viola and Cello (1997) 17:52 4 I. Duets: Allegro 3:06 5 3 I. Prelude 5:32 II. Horizons: Austere, but intense 6:47 6 4 II. Intermezzo (Flowing – Expressive – Sempre legato) 2:22 III. Toccata frustrata 2:30 5 III. Scherzo 3:19 7 Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47): Six Lieder, Op. 71 6 IV. Postlude 4:38 No. 4: Schilflied (1842-47, arr. Helps 1988) 3:53 7 V. Coda – The Players Gossip (Allegro giocoso) 2:01 8 John Ireland (1879-1962): Love is a Sickness Full of Woes (1921, arr. Helps 1995) 2:59 8 Duo for Cello and Piano (1977) 8:10 9 Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Quintet for Violin, Cello, Flute, Intermezzo in A flat major (1943) 4:18 Clarinet and Piano (1997) 13:54 Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938): 9 I. Moving 5:54 Studies on Chopin’s Études (1894-1914) 0 II. Relentlessly (without inflection) 2:24 0 Study No. 45 in E major, 1st version after ! III. Dolce e legato 5:37 Nouvelle étude No. 2 in A flat major (1906) 5:52 ! Study No. 12 in G flat major, 1st version after 8.559282 8.559324 Étude Op. 10, No. 5 (1909) 3:06 @ Helps: Shall We Dance (1994) 11:20 # Ireland: From the Darkened Valley (1919) 3:46 Recorded at Siemens Villa, Berlin, Germany*, from 21st to 23rd June, 2010 (CD 1), and on 24th June, 2010 (CD 2 1-6), and live in the Kammermusiksaal der Philharmonie, Berlin, on 5th November, 1997 (CD 2 7-0), and on 6th November, 2000 (CD 2 !-#) *Producer: Christoph Franke • *Engineer: Boris Manych • *Technician: Sarah Hoelscher Generous support for this project was extended by the following: Abby Whiteside Foundation, Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., Nina von Maltzahn, Deutschlandradio, Edward T. Cone Foundation, Friends of Spectrum Concerts Berlin e.v., Spectrum Concerts Berlin-USA, Inc., Susquehanna University, University of the Arts Berlin Publishers: American Composers Edition (CD 1 1-2; CD 2 1-3, 7); American Composers Alliance (CD 1 9-!); Manuscript (CD 1 8; CD 2 8); C. F. Peters, Inc. (CD 1 3-7; CD 2 4-6, @); Max Eschig (CD 2 9); 0 ! # Schlesinger (Robert Lienau) (CD 2 - ); Stainer & Bell (CD 2 ) 8.559355 8.559696-97 2 19 8.559696-97 559696-97 bk Helps US 22/6/11 12:21 Page 18 Robert Helps (1928-2001) Also available from Spectrum Concerts Berlin: Robert Helps is not only the pianist’s pianist restricted to verbal dedications to other composers; with and the composer’s composer, but he is the Helps they became short profiles, pieces in which he composer’s pianist and the pianist’s composer, observes the tonal language of his colleagues, takes it for, since his teen-age performance of music over, varies it in his own way and rethinks it. that was deemed unperformable he has played Naturally Helps’s experience as an interpreter also incomparably compositions which other influenced his composing. He was completely at ease pianists could not or would not perform. The with large, but never sprawling forms; but above all he singular pianistic mastery which he brought to was the master of lyrical concentration. As an interpreter these performances moulds his own writing for he knew for how long the tension of a musical arc could piano, from which pianists have discovered be sustained. The driving force of rhythm and its resources of nuance, rhythmic subtlety, opposite, the almost long-forgotten virtue of repose, dynamic control and sound, which endow their persisting in a harmonic atmosphere, are features of his own playing with a new sensitivity and work. Both come together in a sound-world which is not sensibility. His chamber and orchestral limited to traditional harmonic associations and their compositions are not pianistic transcriptions delicate concentration. It springs always from the specific but the fresh realization of the same awareness concept of the work. In Helps’s music instrumental in these non-pianistic media. He long has been virtuosity manifests itself as tonal quality, not as a legend in his time, and he deserves it. superficial acrobatics. One should not hear from the music that it is difficult to play, or take account of how 8.557153 8.572213 Milton Babbitt, 1996 much trouble the interpreter has had with a work, but rather the persuasiveness of the artistic result. Helps The Chamber Music of Robert Helps mastered many ways of expressing himself as a composer but did not limit himself exclusively to any particular one. Robert Helps and Spectrum Concerts Berlin are closely The diversity of his forms of expression finds its inner connected. The history they share is rooted in coherence in a unique personal style. Metaphorically transatlantic cultural tensions and connections, which are speaking, one can recognize his handwriting, regardless Spectrum Concert Berlin’s raison d’être. In a more of whether he writes in ink, pencil or brush. But in every personal sense it is rooted in Helps’s “double life” as a genre it achieves a particular aura. composer and a performing musician. Both kinds of musical professionalism came for him from one source. CD 1 He stressed the importance of live performance and imbued each of them with a special character. The Helps and paradox: Postludium interpreter must have appropriated a work in order to present it to the public with his own stamp upon it. That The recording begins with a typical Helps paradox. was Helps’s artistic creed. Through the constant inner Postludium means Epilogue. Helps placed the eight- collaboration of Helps as both composer and “inventor”, minute piece at the end of his three-movement Serenade and of Helps the interpreter, his œuvre contains works but he sanctioned performances of it as a stand-alone which have become rare of their kind: transcriptions and work without the other movements – the Fantasy for homages. In his transcriptions he brought a new character violin and piano and the Nocturne for string quartet. He 8.559173 to works written by other artists. His “homages” are not starts the Postlude, however, like a prelude: with horn 8.559696-97 18 3 8.559696-97 559696-97 bk Helps US 22/6/11 12:21 Page 4 fanfares which constantly delineate a particular tonal composed originally as an independent piano piece Etüden fügen den ohnehin hohen technischen seine Kammermusikwerke immer wieder auf und area, with gestures of invitation and promise. Violin and called Radiance but later Helps identified in it the Herausforderungen noch astronomische Schwierig- verliehen ihnen mustergültige, vitale Deutungen. Das piano answer the call. potential which lay in its idiosyncratic sound world. keiten hinzu. Für ihn eröffnete – ähnlich wie für Robert Klavierstück Shall We Dance inspirierte den Maler Alan The violin continues with the final notes of the When he received the commission from the Helps – die souveräne Virtuosität die Möglichkeit, Magee zu einem Bild, das inzwischen fast zum Emblem melody which are integrated into the fanfares. After Koussevitzky Foundation for his piano quartet he chose Werke des bekannten Repertoires in gesteigerter, für Spectrum Concerts Berlin wurde. Mit gutem Grund, playing an accompanying rôle the piano emerges ever Radiance as the starting-point for his new work. intensivierter Klanglichkeit erfahrbar zu machen. denn auch Helps’ Klavierstück wirkt wie ein more strongly into the foreground. The piece ends like an Passages from it are echoed in the middle of the second Godowsky’s Kompositionen bleiben im Schatten seiner konzentrierter Ausdruck dessen, was das Bestreben von epilogue. It gets quieter, dies away and becomes more movement in which the strings, as an independent pianistischen Leistungen. Helps erinnert an den Spectrum Concerts Berlin war und bleibt: der distant as the three parts assume the character of element, are first introduced over the piano. The third Komponisten Leopold Godowsky und den Interpreten transatlantische Brückenschlag unabhängig von reminiscences. The horn part vanishes into the ether, movement, with its simple beginning in the strings, Godowsky, in dem er zwei von desen Chopin politischen Konjunkturen und Trübungen. something which not every virtuoso player of this appears at first like a transformation of, and antithesis to, Bearbeitungen aufführte. Shall We Dance könnte man als eine Hommage an instrument achieves, the violin plays flautando while the the Radiance idea. The harsh entry of the piano, Man könnte in Robert Helps einen Seelen- Wien, genauer: an die Zweite Wiener Schule, den piano settles on those limpid textures which distinguish however, which silences the strings, turns the Scherzo verwandten von John Ireland sehen. Gewiss faszinierte Komponistenkreis um Arnold Schönberg und Alban Helps’s style. Somewhere in the middle, after the into a scene of conflict. A solution is suggested at the end ihn die schöne Musik Irelands, die er oft gespielt hat; Berg, bezeichnen. Fast eine Viertelstunde Musik zaubert virtuosic and dynamic climax of the violin and the piano, when the strings and piano come together in a unified überdies hat er einige seiner Lieder für Klavier allein Helps aus einer knappen Idee, einem kurzen the horn follows with its big solo, devotes itself more to sound which contains clear references to the Prelude.