CD and Other Review

Review: Andrew Ford: Learning to Howl (Sheldon, Sydney Chamber Choir)

Andrew Ford’s eclectic tastes and playful persona, well known from his bitingly witty and perceptive critical essays and radio shows are well represented here in this collection of finely crafted compositions from 2001-2007. The main work, Learning to Howl for soprano, soprano saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet, harp and percussion, sets verses of Sappho and other mostly women poets across the centuries in an approachable lyrical style – the vocal writing refreshingly natural and idiomatic. The work has an austere, delicate beauty with its sparse accompaniment of harp and percussion and Ford’s keen ear for sonority and colour is much in evidence. Jane Sheldon’s pure tone and accurate intonation interweaves well with the wind obbligatos played by Margery Smith, but the songs would benefit from more dramatic projection and variety of tone on the vocalist’s part. The other lengthy work here Elegy in a Country Graveyard overlays recorded interviews of elderly residents with choir and ensemble to create an evocatively atmospheric depiction of a spectacularly positioned graveyard at Robertson in NSW’s Southern Highlands – a nostalgic tribute if quaintly ‘ABC Radio’ in character with its cawing crows. Three short works complete the disc of which the standout is Snatches of Old…

August 29, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Brahms, R & C Schumann: Violin Sonatas (Pike, Poster)

    Former child prodigy Jennifer Pike, who stunned the music world by winning the BBC Musician of the Year competition at the age of 12 performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, has matured into one of the major talents of her generation. At just 23, and after studies at Oxford University, the English virtuoso impresses again with the latest in her growing discography. Accompanied by Scottish pianist Tom Poster, Pike’s 1708 Goffriller instrument sings sweetly on this beautiful and intimate program. From the hauntingly lovely opening bars of the Brahms Sonata the listener knows they are in for special treat. Pike’s phrasing throughout is full and mature – never hurried, never over the top – but with beautiful lines and pitch-perfect intonation. She and Poster enjoy a warm symbiosis which is entirely apt for the works of three composers who were locked together by fate. The interplay between the two in the Allegretto of Robert’s Sonata is a feature. Pike lingers just long enough on the sustained notes that lead into the playful passages. The disc is neatly rounded off by Three Romances by Clara. Much has been made of her abilities as a pianist and teacher – admired by Chopin, Liszt and…

August 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Beethoven: Pathétique, Moonlight & Appassionata Sonatas (Yundi)

  Yundi (born in 1982), like Lang Lang, is a major musical sensation in China, where he is treated like a rock star by a generation of young devotees. China is a vast and expanding market in this area, as in many others, and if it takes celebrity promotion to get more people to fall in love with classical music, then I’m all for it! My problem concerns the narrowness of the repertoire, implying that a few recognised masterpieces exist and nothing else is worth bothering about. The farthest these young keyboard lions stray from the beaten track (apart from insipid transcriptions of traditional Chinese songs) are Mendelssohn’s First Piano Concerto (Lang) and Prokofiev’s Second (Yundi). Yundi approaches Beethoven in the same manner as the showmen concert pianists of old. His elongated opening phrases of the Pathétique indicate that these will be Romantic interpretations with no Classical or period flavour. He thunders the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata as if it were Chopin’s Revolutionary Étude. This places him at a considerable stylistic distance from young European pianists who have recorded Beethoven of late, like Ingrid Fliter, Alice Sara Ott or François Frédéric Guy, all of whom display an awareness of…

August 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Smetana: The Bartered Bride (Burešova, Juhás)

  Often mistakenly called a folk opera, The Bartered Bride certainly evokes a world of dirndls, wide eyed peasants and hands-on-hips dancing. But don’t be fooled, there is no folk music in this opera, even if it might sound it. In fact a Frankfurt Opera production set in the 1930s with the men in three-piece suits, worked more effectively for me than Opera Australia’s trad production from a few months earlier. Written in 1866, the work was not a success. It took quite some time for it to become the greatly loved opera that it now is. The score abounds in marvellous tunes and infectious ensembles, the composer ensuring a balance between numbers that continually refresh the ear. The infectious rhythm for Kecal’s Act 1 aria, the graceful melody for Marenka and Vašek’s duet, and the merry tunes for the dances and choruses, make for a genial and enjoyable score. Dvorák and others at the time regarded the opera as the seminal work of Czech light opera. Dana Burešová makes a fine, clear voiced Marˇenka but Tomáš Juhás as Jenik is a little too shrill. The buffo comic Kecal, is sung by a superannuated Jozef Benci with far too much…

August 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Raff: Symphony No 2, Shakespeare Preludes (Suisse Romande Orchestra)

  Joachim Raff (1822-1882) was a celebrated composer in his time, equally as famous as his older contemporaries Schumann and Liszt (he was the latter’s assistant in Weimar in the 1850s.) Raff wrote prolifically, composing eleven symphonies, yet his work fell out of favour and is rarely played today. This excellent release from Järvi and his Swiss orchestra – appropriately, since Raff’s family was Swiss – gives us a possible clue as to why his popularity did not outlast the century. The Second Symphony surges forward in the manner of Schumann’s Rhenish, especially in Järvi’s vigorous performance. The lusty first movement is built on a fanfare figure, and the work is bracingly orchestrated with clarity and flair. Compared to his peers, however, Raff lacks a distinctive personality; his music is a public utterance, at odds with the Romantic zeitgeist. His harmony is less sophisticated than Schumann’s, and certain themes sound derivative of Mendelssohn, who had been dead 20 years. Raff embraced programmatic music, and this side of the composer can be heard in his four Shakespearean Preludes. They pre-echo the tone poems of Richard Strauss, but again Strauss did it with more imagination and individuality. If you don’t expect more,…

August 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Parry: From a City Window (Tynan, Bickley, Dazeley, Burnside)

  For many, English song means the late flowering that was Warlock, Gurney, Quilter, Butterworth and Vaughan Williams. But where were they coming from, and were they reacting against a tradition or developing out of one? The latter, I would suggest, if you listen to Parry’s contribution to the genre, and this generous selection of his finest proves as good a place as any to begin. Our guide is the admirable Iain Burnside, an accompanist and programmer on a mission it would seem, and one who has done more for the byways of British song over the last decade than pretty much anyone else. This beautifully programmed recital reveals Parry combining an innately English sensibility with the fastidious craft of the great German lieder composers. Sincerity and proper declamation of text are clearly paramount, and if the melodic invention doesn’t always rise to quite the same level, this is still an enjoyable and important survey. Highlights include better- known numbers like the arch- romantic To Lucasta on Going to the Wars, the winsome Julia (echoes of Gurney or Warlock) and the chipper My Heart is Like a Singing Bird. For genuine depths of inspiration though, turn to the haunting Nightfall in…

August 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Zelenka: Sonatas (Ensemble Marsyas)

Czech composer Jan Zelenka (1679-1745) was held in high regard by masters such as JS Bach and Telemann. Today his majestic church music is finally receiving the attention it deserves. But his six sonatas ZWV181 have been popular with modern wind players since the mid-1950s. Unsurprising, given the virtuosic treatment. These sonatas are superb examples of the quadro sonata, a genre in which all four voices were given fully independent parts. In Janice B Stockigt’s excellent booklet to this equally excellent recording, she quotes one of Zelenka’s students, JJ Quantz referring to the quadro sonata as “the true touchstone of a genuine contrapuntist”. Ensemble Marsyas, named after the satyr of Greek mythology who challenged Apollo in a reed-playing competition (he was skinned alive for his trouble), here perform sonatas III, V and VI; they are joined in Sonata III by that doyenne of the Baroque violin, Monica Huggett. Performances are dazzling throughout, with Josep Domenech Lafont and Molly Marsh (oboes) and Peter Whelan (bassoon) negotiating Zelenka’s dazzling, inventive and sometimes dense but never unclear writing with style and élan. Violone player Christine Sticher likewise relishes her part while keyboardist Philippe Grisvard and theorbo player Thomas Dunford add harmonic richness to…

August 15, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Da Milano: Music for Lute (O’Dette)

Francesco da Milano (1497-1543), known to his contemporaries as “il divino”, was undoubtedly the greatest lute composer of his era. Working in the service of three successive Popes, his fame was such that copies of his music appeared in manuscripts well into the 1600s and form the largest body of work for the instrument from the previous century. His hundred or so ricercars and fantasias, contrasting dense counterpoint with improvisatory scale passages, give some idea of his renowned skill as an improviser, plus some intabulations of contemporary vocal chansons; all exquisite pieces with a unique flavour and a cool, chaste beauty that recalls early Renaissance painters. The great American lutenist Paul O’Dette, responsible for many fine recordings of Renaissance music including the complete lute works of Dowland (try his disc of Simon Molinaro if you can find it), has assembled a selection of favourites into ‘proto-suites’ to make a coherent program that one can either dip into or listen straight through. He plays with his usual impeccably clean technique, pure bell-like tone and rhythmic elan, internal lines clearly voiced, virtuosic runs crisp in articulation and flexibly phrased – a careful balance of brilliance and contemplation. Recorded with Harmonia Mundi’s usual…

August 15, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Vivaldi, Handel, et al: Enchanted Forest (Prohaska)

When they weren’t putting ancient kings on stage, Baroque opera composers nursed a fascination with witches, sirens and nymphs whose doings provided rich pickings for adventurous vocal and orchestral writing. Anna Prohaska’s Enchanted Forest gathers together a clutch of these characters for a program of otherworldly arias. More nymph than vengeful witch, Prohaska’s pure, slender soprano is at its best in the earlier selections: Restino imbalsamate, from Cavalli’s Calisto and Monteverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa are ethereal yet dark-edged, with gently rippling coloratura and effective use of straight tone which elsewhere can turn a little strident. At top speed the voice loses some of its lustre, although there’s a vehement accuracy to these pieces – notably Vivaldi’s Alma oppressa and Handel’s Combattuta da più venti – which is not without excitement. Of the excerpts from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, it’s the mesmerising O let me weep which is most successful, Prohaska overcoming a needlessly imperious start to deliver a lyrical, moving Plaint. Best of all, though, is Cavalli’s O piu d’ogni ricchezza, an understated tour de force whose recitatives are as vibrantly delivered as its dance rhythms and vocal effects. Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo are atmospheric partners, but make the strongest…

August 15, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Stanford, Parry: Sacred Music (King’s Consort choirs)

Parry and Stanford seem to have emerged at last from the shadow of stuffy Victorianism to take their places as respected contemporaries and, in some instances, equals of Elgar. This recording, however, is special in two particulars. Firstly, it offers rich and rare orchestral versions of sacred music more familiarly accompanied on the organ. And second – and I can’t think of a previous instance – the music is played on period instruments; that is, those in use 100 years ago. Stanford’s first setting of the Morning and Evening Service hails from 1879 and is a remarkable achievement for a 27-year-old. Conceived orchestrally, with the rules of symphonic development underpinning the whole edifice, the work was a breath of fresh air blowing through the Victorian Church of England. Three more of Stanford’s services are included here showing the level of melodic invention and sheer variety of this considerable contrapuntalist. Parry is represented by Elgar’s orchestration of Jerusalem, the Coronation Te Deum from 1911, the refulgent Blest Pair of Sirens (his ode to music for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee), and I Was Glad, the coronation anthem to end them all. The players and singers of the King’s Consort have this music…

August 15, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Beethoven: Symphonies 4 & 9 (Bell)

After 500 commercial recordings, mainly together, Sir Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields have been one of the most dependable names in the business for half a century. So with the great man turning 90 next year, there’s more than a bit of interest in how American violinist Joshua Bell goes in his very first recording as the new music director of the venerable institution founded in Sir Neville’s living room back in 1958. Short answer: really well. Nothing to scare the warhorses in his choice of Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh of course, which he and the Academy worked up during a favourably reviewed American concert tour. But succeeding a legend? Well, Bell’s never been one to shy away from potential humiliation, as he famously demonstrated by busking in a Washington DC metro (net result: $32 in 45 minutes and only seven people stopping to listen). Here, he doesn’t try to impose his personality on music most of us could whistle in our concert-hall sleep. And in this day of new editions of everything, and bold personal statements, and authentic blah-blah-blah, it’s refreshing to hear a guy on a high-profile mission simply standing with his…

August 15, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Greene: Spenser’s Amoretti (Hulett, Green, Pinardi)

Organist at St Paul’s, composer for the Chapel Royal and ultimately Master of the King’s Music, Maurice Greene’s only fault, it would seem, was that
 he wasn’t Handel. His settings
 of Spenser’s Amoretti (little 
love sonnets) trace the poet’s courtship of his future wife and may be England’s first song cycle. Each of these ditties comprise as many as five contrasting sections. Greene’s setting of Spenser is generally first rate and his response to emotional mood spot-on. The Merry Cuckow, for example, begins with a “trumpet shrill” fanfare that has more than a whiff of The Beggars’ Opera. He then falls into 3⁄4 time as the mood shifts towards love, yet still manages to set the birds name to the traditional “cuck-oo” notes. He can also rise to moments of great beauty, as in One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon The Strand with it’s drooping scotch snaps. It may not have the emotional through line of a Wintereisse, but the cycle ends effectively with three mournful reflections on absent love. Benjamin Hulett’s light, focused voice and exemplary diction perfectly conveys the subtleties of Spenser’s texts. To vary the continuo, Giangiacomo Pinardi on the orbo joins Australian harpsichordist Luke Green…

August 8, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: George Benjamin: Written on Skin (Purves, Hannigan)

George Benjamin’s new opera is based on the strange and brutal 13th-century Provençal tale Le Coeur Mangê, in which an unnamed ruler (The Protector) asks an illuminator (The Boy) to glorify his power for perpetuity in a book. The Boy’s presence awakens the sexual independence of The Protector’s wife (Agnes), and their subsequent affair leads to the murder of The Boy. In a grisly dénouement, The Protector forces his wife to eat The Boy’s heart, after which she jumps from a window to avoid a similar fate. In order to allow the contemporary world to “bleed through”, British playwright Martin Crimp has added three “angels” who manipulate the drama as if conducting an experiment and double as subsidiary characters. It’s a brilliant conceit that produces
a satisfyingly tight piece of musical theatre matched in intellectual rigor by Benjamin’s razor-sharp score. Crimp ingeniously mixes direct speech with characters narrating their own actions, which lends the recording a special clarity, as you are frequently aware of what a character is doing or thinking. Benjamin uses his orchestra (in this instance 
the peerless Mahler Chamber Orchestra) with enormous imagination and sensitivity to evoke the musical world of the medieval illuminator. Bass viola da gamba…

August 8, 2013