CD and Other Review

Review: Rossini: Arias (Kurzak)

The current roster of Decca/Deutsche Grammophon glitters with star sopranos, most of them on the lyric side and many with at least some claim to coloratura. Yet Aleksandra Kurzak continues to set herself apart, her formidable technique matched by vocal charisma and a richness of colour more idiomatic form here under conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi, playing with sympathetic panache. Kurzak sings with poise, rounded tone and evocative colours, moving mercurially from the ecstatic assurance of Semiramide’s Bel raggio to Amenaide’s ardent prayer from Tancredi and even a kittenish not always found in a voice of such agility. Her solo recording debut, Gioia!, came as something of a revelation, and while, two years on, she’s no longer such a surprise, this generous collection of Rossini arias is further proof of the Polish soprano’s ability to dazzle and delight. The album focusses mostly on the composer’s serious operas: Semiramide, Guglielmo Tell, Matilde di Shabran and, in a nod to Kurzak’s homeland, Sigismondo, whose title character is a 16th-century Polish king. There’s a smattering of comedy too, though, with arias from Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Il Turco in Italia, the former featuring an avuncular cameo by fellow Pole Artur Rucinski as Figaro….

July 2, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Balfe, Wallace, MacFarren: British Opera Overtures

At the age of 82, Richard Bonynge could be forgiven if he sat back on his laurels rather than heading off for the recording studio yet again. But that is most emphatically not what he seems to be up to at the moment, with a steady stream of recent recordings. He and his late wife Dame Joan Sutherland explored Victorian song throughout their long recital careers, and Bonynge persuaded Decca to let him produce a complete recording of Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl back in 1991. Of late, however, he has turned his mind to some of the period’s lesser-known composers with a fascinating complete recording of William Wallace’s opera Lurline. Wallace is represented on the new CD, along with Balfe, Benedict and MacFarren, but composers like John Barnett, Edward Loder and Arthur Goring Thomas are each represented in the current catalogue by just one piece each – and that’s the overture on this CD. It’s delightful fare. The composers here were nothing if not craftsmen and the works have a great deal of colour, energy and imagination. If one or two of them feel a touch overlong, that is a minor quibble when there is so much enjoyable music here…

June 26, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Peter Philips: Cantiones Sacrae Octonis Vocibus

Why, oh why, aren’t Peter Philips and his music better known? As a committed English Catholic he spent his working life abroad. His first sojourn abroad was to Rome, where he fell under the spell of the Italian madrigal, but he soon settled in the Low Countries, working for the Archduke Albert in Brussels. In 1622 Henry Peacham wrote that Philips was “one of the greatest masters of Musicke in Europe”, and everything so far committed to disc from his melodious and engaging oeuvre supports that claim. The present disc explores his eight-part motets, written for two choirs and intended to celebrate major feast days of the Church year. The musical language avoids the harmonic extremes of a Gesualdo or even a Monteverdi, but Philips shows his Italianate leanings with colourful effects illustrating text. Changes of speed and metre abound, and there is much passing of phrases from one chorus to the other. Rupert Gough and his excellent Royal Holloway choir have been recorded in the warmly resonant acoustic of St Alban’s Church, Holborn, and these lively, committed performances have great bloom. Sackbuts and cornetts enhance the richness of some of the motets, adding additional lustre to what is a…

June 26, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: JS Bach: Violin Concertos (Müllejans, von der Goltz)

How to breathe new life into works as familiar and well covered as Bach’s violin concertos? The answer, seemingly, is to change the usual batting order and to reinvent a fourth concerto that gives depth to your line-up, something which is sorely lacking in our Baggy Greens at the moment. Most recordings start off with the two famous solo concertos – the E Major BWV1042 and the A Minor BWV1041 – and end with the double concerto. They may throw in the less familiar G-Minor transcription from the BWV1056 harpsichord concerto to give full value for money. This lovely recording by Freiburger Barockorchester starts with the double, perhaps to showcase its two equally talented concertmasters Petra Müllejans and Gottfried von der Goltz, but then puts the cream on the cake with its reconstructed version of the concerto for three harpsichords BWV1064. Anna Katharina Schreiber is the third soloist in a work that requires a high degree of virtuosity from all three players, especially in the outer movements. It’s generally believed that the work was originally composed for violins, and it certainly suits the instrument with some exciting overlapping runs in the outer movements. The orchestra all play on period instruments…

June 26, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Chausson: String Quartets (Jennifer Pike, Tom Poster, Doric String Quartet)

Chausson’s all too brief life (he died in a bicycling accident, aged 44) produced more than its fair share of memorable music, including much fine chamber music. The Concert scored for violin, piano and string quartet, Op 21, is a gorgeously ripe example of über-romanticism and it is given an appropriately impassioned performance by the Doric String Quartet with violinist Jennifer Pike and pianist Tom Poster. It’s wonderful to be swept
 away by the group’s collective emotional sense; whether in the mercurial closing pages of the first movement or the dramatic menace of the slow, third movement or the truly grand finale (with its Franckian return to the very opening of the work). The hefty piano part is well handled by Poster, who knows when to throw caution to the wind and live in the musical moment. Pike matches his intensity well. The Dorics display fine ensemble and the excellent intonation that 
is so essential in French romantic chamber music where parts so often have to play in octaves. While the ebullient Concert makes a triumphant conclusion 
to the disc, Chausson’s String Quartet, Op 35, is a more sombre curtain-raiser. The third was completed after the composer’s death by his…

June 24, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Mahler: Symphony No 1, Rachmaninov: Symphonic Dances

This DVD, recorded at a concert in Singapore’s Esplanade Hall as part of the Orchestra’s 2010 Southeast Asian Australasian tour, brought back fond memories of the same program – Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances and Mahler’s First Symphony – of the Berlin Philharmonic’s appearance at the Sydney Opera House, in a what-are-we-going-to-do-with-the-rest-of-our-lives experience. The Rachmaninov work, his 
last orchestral score, has always 
been an enigma, part Slavic
 nostalgia and part darkly sinister 
glamour, with a dash of Hollywood
 glitz. Rattle’s tempo for the juddering introduction is the most dangerously slow I’ve ever heard. In Sydney, I was still so overwhelmed by the sensation of actually having heard them tuning (almost worth 
the ticket price in itself) just a few yards away, that I failed to notice just how slow 
it was, but what better way to experience simultaneously its unique fusion of heft
and finesse? The saxophone solo is just
 the first of countless wonderful moments throughout the spectral waltz and the
 driven finale, where almost any other orchestra would feel pushed to the point of disintegration, instead of simply heightening the tension with complete control and rock-solid ensemble. Herbert von Karajan, chief conductor of the Orchestra for more than 30 years, resisted……

June 24, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Schreker: Der Schmied Von Gent

A mere century ago, Franz Schreker was mentioned in the same breath as Richard Strauss, Korngold and Berg as one of Europe’s most important opera composers. In 1938 the Nazis put paid to all that by condemning his work as “entartete” (meaning degenerate) and after the war his exotic, late Romantic style was hardly flavour of the month. Recent decades have proved kinder however, and this new CD joins a healthy catalogue of recorded works. For anyone used to the highly perfumed sexual psychodrama of Der Ferne Klang, this piece may come as a bit of a surprise. A late work, Der Schmied von Gent is set during the 16th-century Spanish occupation of Flanders and turns out to be a light-hearted folk opera. Our hero, Smee, is accused of overcharging the occupying forces and loses his business. To get it back he sells his soul to the devil and enjoys seven years of good fortune. After an act
 of kindness towards the Holy Family (who are in disguise, naturally), St Joseph grants him three wishes, enabling him to wriggle out of his enforced trip to Hell. Unable to enter Heaven either after his death, he sets up a pub outside…

June 20, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Ashkenazy: 50 Years on Decca

It is hard to believe that the dynamic principal conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has had a 50-year recording career (and ongoing). The bulk of Ashkenazy’s work in the studio has been for Decca, and this box dips into his extensive discography with the label. It begins with the Rachmaninov Second and Third Piano Concertos from the
early 1960s, when young Vladimir
 was still a Soviet Award-winner,
and concludes with his 2007 
recording of Beethoven’s Diabelli
 Variations. In between are many 
examples of his work as a pianist 
and conductor, although the
 selection is by no means complete. 
(What’s missing? Previn’s mellifluous Piano Concerto, and all the Stravinsky recordings.) As with most prolific recording artists, Ashkenazy has his detractors and is often taken for granted, but at the very least he is reliable. None of these performances strikes me as eccentric, wrong-headed or self- promoting; nor are they boring. At his best he has produced readings of works such as the Prokofiev and Rachmaninov concertos that have held their own in a competitive field for decades. The secret of his success is the music.
 He puts the composer first. You can hear that as early as the 1963 Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto…

June 20, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Smoke Encrypted Whispers: Poems by Samuel Wagan Watson

Aboriginal poet Samuel Wagan Watson first became aware of segregation when, as a young boy standing on the “steamy Bjelke- Petersen plateau”, he saw the black and white smoke rising from Brisbane below – black from the blue-collar battlers in their fibros and white from the white-collar class with their European cars and “chez nouveau’’ fireplaces. The metaphor permeates the 23 short poems Smoke Encrypted Whispers, which won him the Book of the Year award and Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in 2005. The beautifully crafted miniatures evoke childhood memories, fear of the dark, unforgettable descriptions of places like Tigerland and Boundary Street – named to mark the Brisbane curfew zone for Aborigines in his grandparents’ time – and visits from uncles 
who taught him traditional 
ways. Watson also gives some fascinating insights into his writing process as well as musing on visits to Berlin and a Maori marae in Wellington. Brevity is the source of wit for Watson, and also for Queensland- based Southern Cross Soloists
led by clarinetist Paul Dean,
who commissioned 23 Brisbane composers to write two-minute pieces to respond to the poems. The result is stunningly good. At the heart of this handsomely produced 80-minute album are five…

June 20, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Elgar: Symphony No 2, Sospiri, Elegy (Oramo)

Finnish maestro Sakari Oramo 
is no stranger to the music of Elgar, having been at the helm
 of the City of Birmingham Symphony for ten years, where he played a leading role in the Elgar sesquicentenary celebrations in 2007. He was subsequently awarded the Elgar Medal in 2008 for his efforts as a non-British musician in advancing Elgar’s music. The Second Symphony 
is prefaced with a quote from Shelley: “Rarely, rarely, comest thou Spirit of Delight!” Oramo captures the ebullient mood of the “Spirit of Delight” which permeates the opening, but is also responsive to the darker, more troubled music in the haunting slow movement that emphasises “Rarely, rarely, comest thou”. BIS’s super-audio engineering shows the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic to be a well-oiled machine, the brass responding magnificently to Elgar’s many musical and technical challenges, especially in the opening movement and the brilliant Scherzo. The strings are well disciplined throughout, but could have been encouraged to even greater pathos in the slow movement. Oramo’s speeds are comparable to those set by Sir John Barbirolli in his 1964 recording, but there were occasional moments when I felt that Barbirolli was freer with the music and able to wring greater expressiveness and…

June 20, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Grainger: Works for large chorus (MSO, Davis)

It’s the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up just one boy on her own … Well, not really. The story of Rose Grainger and her precocious son Percy has more in common with Fifty Shades of Grey than The Brady Bunch. Abandoned by a drunken, syphilitic husband, the domineering mother home-schooled her son, introducing him to a wide range of literature, including the Nordic legends that influenced his music so deeply. By age 16, it appears that Percy had developed a taste for sadomasochism and as he grew
 up his mother did her best to stymie her son’s budding romantic relationships. The suggestion that she was incestuously involved with her son played tragically with her already fragile mental health and
 she jumped to her death out an office block window. It’s no surprise,
then, that Grainger 
remained obsessed
 with his mother for the
 rest of his life. The works recorded here (most for the first time) bear her imprint. Marching Song of Democracy is dedicated to her and celebrates their “adoration” of Walt Whitman, while Thanksgiving Song extols “womankind’s contribution to terrestrial immortality”. Scored for wordless chorus and large orchestra, these works reveal Grainger’s masterly orchestration and questing…

June 19, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Mahler: Symphony No 1 (Alsop)

I’m beginning to think that Mahler’s First Symphony is conductor-proof. Almost every version I’ve heard lately has merit and Marin Alsop’s with the Baltimore Symphony is no exception, despite an overall restraint. The opening of the first movement, surely one of the most magical of any symphony, is very slow until the explosion in the coda. In fact, the first three movements are all slightly slower than usual, whereas the final one is slightly swifter. Perhaps the second Scherzo/Ländler movement lacks the last ounce of what Germans call schwung – bounce or swing – but the central section doesn’t sound too inebriated, as it sometime can. I wondered whether or not it was just me who thought that the third-movement funeral march (Frère Jacques in a minor key) seemed to have been recorded at a higher level than the rest, and I’ve since discovered another review which garnered the same reaction. Another unwelcome development is the double bass melody, which forms the backbone of the movement, being played by the entire section, not a solo. The same reviewer who noticed the disparate recording levels also points out, helpfully, that the Jewish klezmer music in the trio is conducted with what…

June 12, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Brundibar: Music from Theresienstadt (1941-1943)

The excellent British outfit The Nash Ensemble have released an important and superbly recorded new album of works by four Jewish Czech composers – Pavel Haas, Viktor Ullman, Hans Krása and Gideon Klein – who were all killed in Nazi concentration camps. They were part of the rich cultural life of the Theresienstadt ghetto, an old garrison from the Hapsburg Empire created as a way station for Jews being sent on to the death camps. Although the listener will be appalled by what happened to these four Czechs, all of whom were sent on to Auschwitz on the same transport, the music itself is curiously free of the poignancy and despair of their situation.
 As Ullman said of that time: “Theresienstadt has served to enhance, not impede, my musical activities, that by no means did we sit weeping by the waters of Babylon and our will to create was equal to our will to survive.” Krása’s suite from his delightful children’s opera Brundibar (Bumblebee) is given its first performance here in David Matthews’ version for string quartet, piano, flute, clarinet, trumpet and percussion. Its mood varies between the magic of Ravel and sparkling humour of Poulenc. Ullman studied with Schoenberg…

June 12, 2013