CD and Other Review

Review: Paul Terracini: Works for Brass (Sydney Brass)

Australian trumpet player Paul Terracini is an experienced soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, as well as a conductor and teacher. His decision to focus more on composition is borne out by the excellence of the five works for brass ensemble recorded here. The instrumentation is mostly trumpets/horns/trombones/tuba, with the two multi-movement works including timpani and percussion. The odd man out is the Exaudi Orationem Nostram for eight trumpets. Gegensätze contrasts two sections, one lively, the other reflective. In Behind the Shining Door, based on one of Terracini’s choral works, a gentle trumpet melody with accompaniment builds to a climax before sliding into repose. If the outer movements of Concerto for Brass are portraits of a bustling contemporary world, its central movement, based on the medieval chant Pange Lingua, is a serene oasis of contemplation. Its cousin Exaudi Orationem Nostram is a ‘prayer’ in which a multi-faceted motif based on ascending and descending sixths picks up the light as it rolls onwards, delighting in its own beauty. Winmalee Mourning was inspired by a bushfire that destroyed nearly 200 homes in the Blue Mountains village of Winmalee, west of Sydney, in 2013. The first movement, Inferno, paints a picture of paradise lost,…

July 27, 2017
CD and Other Review

Review: Rococo (Dorothee Oberlinger, Ensemble 1700)

Germany’s Dorothee Oberlinger has released a golden new offering with Ensemble 1700, Rococo – Musique à Sanssouci. The album is filled with baroque gems, which unveil the charms of the recorder in a chamber setting. Oberlinger opens with a sense of longing in Gottfried Finger’s A Ground. Her performance is so enchanting that a minute passes before I notice the continuo on a conscious level. The recorder’s airy timbre competes with Oberlinger’s audible breaths, captured with clarity and honesty.The balance with the ensemble is well considered – particularly in Handel’s Concerto Doppio in C Minor for recorder and bassoon. Here Oberlinger merges into the strings and becomes a different player; spirited and concise. A Johann Gottlieb Graun concerto evolves to a fuller sound: the robust string presence hails this new mood before returning the focus to Oberlinger in a Quantz recorder solo from Fantasien und Präludien. In skillful programming, the harpsichord returns in the CPE Bach piece, and the recorder is further layered with viola and continuo in the music to follow.   Oberlinger shares the spotlight with the music itself, in contrast to albums from leading Australian recorder players Genevieve Lacey and Alicia Crossley, whose releases – though magnificent…

July 21, 2017
CD and Other Review

Review: Songs Without Words (Grigoryan Brothers)

The Grigoryan Brothers have impressed in recent years with their ability to genre-hop without ever seeming out of place; their collaboration with the Tawadros brothers a few years ago was excellent. The repertoire here is primarily performances of vocal favourites by Dvorˇák, Fauré, Elgar, and Tchaikovsky, among others, re-worked for guitar duo. There are a few issues with the repertoire selection in that some pieces are rather more effective than others. For example, Rachmaninov’s famous Vocalise comes off a distinct second-best for a simple reason – the guitar’s lack of sustain means that the notes disappear long before they should. In some of the pieces, the duo seems to have realised this dilemma. Tchaikovsky’s None but the Lonely Heart is taken at such a rapid clip that it’s done and dusted in about two minutes, whereas most recordings usually take at least a minute more. Since this is simply the nature of the instrument, pieces that don’t rely quite so much on a single sustained note work considerably better. Manuel de Falla’s set of Seven Spanish Folk Songs are played very effectively, though I wish there was more rhythmic bite in some of them – Jacqueline du Pré… Continue reading Get…

July 21, 2017