CD and Other Review

Review: Serenissima (Rose Consort of viols)

Inspired by viol-maker Richard Jones’ copies of Venetian instruments, the Rose Consort of Viols presents a globe-trotting recital, centred on Venice (La Serenissima) – a hub for musicians of the time. There’s everything from lively galliards to free-wheeling fantasias, and covering a range of composers from Italy, Germany, France and England. Most of this music is heard far too rarely, and some of it is quite extraordinary. I was once told that Renaissance counterpoint “wasn’t nearly as complex as the Baroque”, and I suspect that such an ignorant statement could be easily shattered by some of the pieces here. For example, the liner notes point out that the tenor viol part of Henricus Isaac’s La my la sol doubles in speed each time it repeats, until it syncs up with the rest of the consort. So much for a lack of complexity! Not all of the works are so logically constructed. The Rose Consort give a fabulously rustic performance of some anonymous dances from the mid-16th century from both Italy and England, and it’s easy to imagine the music as the background to a ball or social event. Furthermore, Delphian have done a fine job in recording the plangent timbre…

April 23, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Brahms: Symphonies and Overtures (Thielemann)

If you’ve been hooked on Chailly’s lean, muscular Brahms cycle with the Gewandhaus Orchestra from earlier this year, you’ll find a very different but no less satisfying experience with Thielemann and the Stattskapelle Dresden. Thielemann’s Brahms, taken from live recordings made between 2012 and 2013, is equally revelatory. Chailly achieves maximum emotional impact through absolute clarity of line and texture: his is ‘classical’ Brahms, but with grunt. Thielemann’s Brahms is, by contrast, über romantische. That’s not to imply a lack of precision or idiosyncratic liberties being taken with the score, mind: Thielemann is a master technician, but with a heart emboldened by years of conducting opera.  Aided by some glorious orchestral playing – the strings rich and full-bodied, the brass heroic in the tutti climaxes, the winds flexible and focused – he builds up impasto layers with searing brushstrokes on a broad canvas. This binds the terrific climax in the First Symphony’s Finale with the dark tragedy of the Fourth Symphony’s final passacaglia, and all that lies in between, with intimations of mortality that shine through even the beautiful simplicity of the Third Symphony’s third movement.  My only regret is not having had access to the full set, which includes a DVD of…

April 21, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Pièces de Clavecin (Esfahani)

“Compared to four books of pieces by Couperin and volumes upon volumes by JS Bach and his family, this is indeed a slim output. But what a wealth of genius it reveals. What excitement and wit and drama.” Thus writes Mahan Esfahani of the Baroque opera composer Jean-Philippe Rameau’s complete Pièces de Clavecin, which comprise a mere five suites and two or three stand-alone pieces. “Wealth of genius.” “Excitement and wit and drama.” Surely such phrases could also apply to the 31-year-old Iranian-American harpsichordist’s own output. He’s only made three solo harpsichord recordings so far, the first of which, devoted to CPE Bach’s Württemberg Sonatas (also for Hyperion), created a sensation when it was released in early 2014 and went on to win a slew of awards. But, along with Esfahani’s numerous acclaimed solo recitals and appearances with many of the world’s finest period instrument ensembles, it’s been enough to establish him as, well, somewhat of a genius. Playing a sensitively restored two-manual Ruckers-Hemsch harpsichord in the Music Room at Hatchlands Park in Surrey, Esfahani here takes us on a journey through Rameau’s three collections – the Premier Livre de Pièces de Clavecin (1706) the Pièces de Clavecin (1724) and…

April 21, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Brahms: Piano Works Volume 3 (Douglas)

At the risk of being flippant, male pianists seem to divide into two groups, judging by their album covers – those with fashionable stubble and those with cleanly shaved jowls. Barry Douglas and Jonathan Plowright both fall into the former category, and this might seem an irrelevance were it not for the fact that both are in the middle of their Brahms projects and both have new volumes out now. Both tackle the Sonata No 2 Op. 2 on their latest releases, giving us an opportunity to compare their very different approaches. Plowright’s recording was reviewed last month and I have to say that I prefer his nuanced and “cooler” reading over the Irishman’s more heated interpretation. Douglas, though, does bring a sense of excitement to the Lisztian outer movements. The Chandos team produces a warmer and more immediate sound than the elegant precision of the Swedes at BIS, so that may influence your choice. Douglas knows how to balance a program, placing the sonata last after the delightful 16 Waltzes Op. 39, alongside intermezzos – two from Op. 119, one from Op. 116 – and the solemn and majestic Theme with Variations taken from his string sextet and dedicated,…

April 20, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Decca Most Wanted Recitals (Various)

Decca’s Most Wanted Recitals series continues. As before, the discs are digitally remastered but contain no biographical or musical notes. Most of this material has not been reissued since its first appearance decades ago. Some should have been left undisturbed, but these six releases contain much of interest. Baritone Hermann Prey (1929-1998) was overshadowed during his lifetime by Fischer-Dieskau, yet Prey has a lovely voice and a distinctive approach to Schubert’s Schwanengesang. Listen to his passionate, committed rendition of In der Ferne: not as detailed (some would say mannered) as Fischer-Dieskau but by no means bland. Walter Klein’s accompaniments support him all the way. Renato Bruson’s honeyed operatic baritone is revisited in a recital of Donizetti arias, recorded in 1979, including a duet from Donizetti’s Requiem where he is joined by Pavarotti. Bruson’s soft singing is exceptional. French baritone Gerard Souzay gives us two discs of Schumann, both containing the Dichterliebe. The earlier one, with pianist Jacqueline Bonneau, finds him in fresher voice in 1953 but the mono recording is rough. His 1960s Philips records with Dalton Baldwin are preferable; his voice is less stable at forte but his artistry remains supreme. He sings the Liederkreis Op. 24 and… Continue…

April 19, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Pierre Boulez: The Complete Columbia Album Collection

Anyone who still considers Pierre Boulez to be a threat or a dangerous malcontent – where to put those obligatory mentions of torching opera houses and valueless tonal music? here will do – might be pleasantly surprised at the playlist served up by this box of Boulez’s complete recordings for Columbia Records. Berlioz, Mahler, Debussy, Stravinsky, Ravel, Bartók and Wagner are the dominant narrative. The occasional disc of music by Elliott Carter, Luciano Berio and Boulez himself oblige us to play plink-plonk; but even these apparently unwelcome brushes with the avant-garde get offset by a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and discs of Handel Water and Fireworks Music. And as he prepares to celebrate his 90th birthday in 2015, the most dangerous truth of all is revealed. Boulez was an insider all along, who, unlike his frenemy John Cage, has always viewed progress as an embedded part of, and never an alternative to, tradition. That said, admire Boulez as I do, as a Beethoven conductor, he ain’t no great shakes. A plodding, micro-managed Fifth Symphony plays the notes but utterly misses the music. His Handel, though, is rhythmically assertive and detailed. Makes you wish Boulez had recorded some Bach. The…

April 18, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Debussy, Zimmermann, Stravinsky (Klavierduo Huber/Thomet)

The Rite of Spring can sound even more raw-boned and serrated on piano than in Stravinsky’s orchestral concept. The timpani of fingers against keyboard; this is no place for soft-pedalled or inappropriately decorative playing. In the hands – four of them at one piano – of Susanne Huber and André Thomet the score becomes a terrifying edifice, breathing with a directness that chills the soul. We’re used to hearing the introductory bassoon solo emerge as though from a faraway horizon, Stravinsky’s line stooping against metric regularity as it inches centre stage. But now we’re thrown bodily inside the unfolding argument, snow-blinded by the busyness of Stravinsky’s counterpoint.  Some recordings of this four-hand redux can sound overly polite and too ‘pianoey’. But Huber and Thomet make their intentions clear with “Danses des adolescents”, as those accented string chords are pummelled with pile-driver might.And ditto the crunchy reading of Debussy’s two-piano En Blanc et Noir (1915), the black and white of the piano keys symbolising the black and white morality, as Debussy saw it, of one nation imposing itself on others during the Great War. German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Monologe (1964) slices through history as source material co-opted from Bach, Mozart…

April 17, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Amorosi Pensieri (Cinquecento Renaissance Vokal)

For the past ten years Cinquecento have been carving themselves a niche in the specialised field of pre-Baroque sacred works, and madrigals by composers whom most of us have never encountered. Formed in Vienna and based in Germany, the group comprises six singers from five countries. For their eighth release on the British Hyperion label Cinquecento revisits three 16th-century Flemish singer-composers, Philippe del Monte, Jacobus Vaet and Jacob Regnart, this time performing their secular songs, and introduce us to a previously unknown composer. Not much is chronicled about Jean Guyot de Chatelet (Joannes Castileti), other than that he served briefly as Kapellmeister to Emperor Ferdinand I before returning to his home in Liege. However Guyot is not afraid to express his feelings, hence: “Instead of happy distractions, melancholy attacks me/I am bound by the ties of love/discipline holds me harshly prisoner”. Or his song about Susanne who has to fend off two dirty old men to preserve her innocence. These songs have all the colour and earthy life of the contemporaneous paintings of Pieter Brueghel and his sons and they sit well with the sextet’s pleasing vocal blend. Recorded at the Deutschlandfunk’s chamber music studio in Cologne, the program mixes…

April 16, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Orchestral Works (Karajan)

I’m sure everyone has a favourite Karajan recording – no doubt he’s a regular in this feature. But my pick isn’t a Beethoven or a Mahler Symphony, nor is it mighty Wagner. No, I’m a sucker for the Berlin Philharmonic’s Baroque – and I don’t even mean their Four Seasons. One of my all-time favourite recordings is a very modest 1987 Deutsche Grammophon compilation of random Baroque gems, most of them Italian. This CD has been a part of my life since childhood – and surely all good classic recordings have an element of nostalgia attached to them. But what I find most endearing about Karajan’s Baroque is the orchestra’s sumptuous, full tone (boosted by generous helpings of vibrato). These recordings were made between 1970 and 1972, at a time when the Historically Informed Performance (HIP) movement was picking up in Europe and specialist ensembles were being founded all over the place to give us authentic readings of all that early repertoire.  Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love contemporary approaches to early music performance, and I’m usually for the ‘less is more’ approach when it comes to vibrato. But there’s something about the way the Berlin Phil’s playing never betrays…

April 15, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: St Petersburg (Bartoli)

Italian mezzo Cecilia Bartoli will be remembered in years to come not only for her formidable, many would say matchless, talent as a singer but also for her ability to uncover lost or neglected treasures from the Baroque and early Classical eras. Starting with her Vivaldi album, then with the Salieri and Sacrificium projects to the dazzling Steffani series, the Roman diva has been stamping her considerable personality on a rich vein of musical gold and bringing ‘new’ old music to the wider public. Now, with St Petersburg, she turns her attention to a fascinating period in Russian history, the 18th century when, under three empresses, the nation’s culture and politics were wrenched from the dark ages and brought into the sunshine of western European enlightenment. The troika of Tsaritsas – Anna who reigned from 1730-40, Elizabeth (1741-61) and Catherine the Great (1762-96) – imported Italian musicians and composers and commissioned the first Russian operas. Once performed, though, the scores languished in the archives of St Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre until Bartoli came along and set them free. Five composers feature on 11 tracks in this treasure trove of delights, opening appropriately with Neapolitan Francesco Araja, the first of the court…

April 14, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: Pärt: Vocal Works (Layton)

This wide-ranging survey of Pärt’s choral music is the third disc of his music performed by Stephen Layton’s Polyphony. As with the other two recordings, the singers’ clarity and unanimity of tone confirm them as ideal interpreters of this music. An added attraction is that this program takes us to back to some of Pärt’s earliest choral writing: the austere Solfeggio of 1963. The haunting musical stasis of this piece belies its unswerving adherence to the rules of serialism. Seven years later Pärt’s setting of the Nicean Creed, Summa shows the composer emerging into his “tintinnabulist” period and embracing the so-called “holy minimalism” that has become a hallmark of his music. Another movement charted by this disc is Pärt’s journey from the confines of Soviet-era Estonia into the freedom of the wider, multicultural world of the last quarter-century. The works recorded here demonstrate that Pärt’s style both transcends time and place, but is also influenced by people and history. Virgencita, a 2012 work receiving its first recording, celebrates the story of the apparition of the Virgin Mary at Guadalupe, Mexico and reflects both the tenderness and passion of… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

April 11, 2015
CD and Other Review

Review: The Red of a Woman’s Heart

Soprano Lisa Harper-Brown and pianist David Wickham, both English but now based in Perth, have released a sequel to The Poet Sings (2012), their first volume devoted to neglected 20th-century Australian art song, and particularly by female composers. The Red of a Woman’s Heart features three collections by Margaret Sutherland, including a cycle of William Blake poetry and six settings of Judith Wright, which for Wickham “are the best of the genre in Australia.” Many composers were still looking to England for lyrical material, so the Wright cycle is particularly significant, as are Raymond Hanson’s two settings of poems by the extraordinary Australian radical socialist poet Mary Gilmore. Other highlights include two sets by Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Profiles from China and Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird. There is a lightness of touch about this recording, with a great sense of presence and space that makes it an excellent complement to the selections recorded by Ian Munro and Elizabeth Campbell nearly a decade ago. The interplay between Harper-Brown and Wickham is seamless, as though the music is being produced by a single entity. Harper-Brown is completely at home with… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…

April 10, 2015