CD and Other Review

Review: BEAUTY OF THE BAROQUE (soprano: Danielle de Niese; English Concert/Harry Bicket)

A celebration of the English, Italian and German Baroque? Or a celebration of one of Decca’s most marketable sopranos? It would be lovely to say this album was both. But the beauty of this repertoire has been brushed aside to make room for an underwhelming diva showcase. Danielle de Niese’s breathy, pop-inflected delivery, lazy diction and apparent disregard for both text and context do this music scant justice. Ombra mai fu, Dido’s Lament and Sheep can safely graze all receive saccharine, underpowered treatment with a shockingly pinched upper register for such a young singer. The relentlessly slow-and-ethereal vibe of the album does de Niese no favours either, highlighting as it does her one-size-fits-all approach. Occasional coloratura passages liven up proceedings slightly, but are not stylishly handled. Her voice is not fundamentally unattractive – indeed, there’s a certain prettiness to it which, coupled with her lithe stage presence and certain genetic blessings, has gained her a large and devoted following – but her singing here fails to live up to the promise of the album’s title. The English Concert plays well, but with only marginally more vibrancy than its soloist. The only person to emerge triumphant… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from…

August 17, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: ROSS EDWARDS: Heart of Night (Diana Doherty; Riley Lee; David Thomas; MSO)

Within seconds you recognise the voice, the unmistakable hypnotic undulations of one of our most frequently performed composers. Ross Edwards’ mature style began with a concerto, the ebullient Piano Concerto of 1982, and like his teachers Richard Meale, Peter Maxwell Davies and Peter Sculthorpe he has since embraced the key structures of Western classical music with enthusiasm. The recent Edwards oeuvre is dense, with multiple symphonies, string quartets and many concertos. This disc features three works in the latter genre for clarinet, oboe and shakuhachi, each written for and performed by principals from major orchestras (Diana Doherty and David Thomas) and notable soloists (Riley Lee). Each concerto is extremely well written, masterfully balancing slippery virtuosic solos with understated chamber-like orchestral writing. They are languid yet optimistic in character, their gentle edges unfolding effortlessly. Which is where I start to feel frustrated: there’s so little bite. Edwards has perfected his approach to such an extent he risks becoming a well-oiled machine, unlike the harsher, more intangible composer of the 1970s for whom nature remained a mystery and metaphysical questions couldn’t yet be answered. It’s not about pace: even the glacial First Symphony of 1991, reflecting anxiously on war and mortality, stepped…

August 17, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: Rachmaninov: Piano Sonatas Nos 1 & 2 (Leslie Howard)

It is hardly surprising that the Australian-born Leslie Howard has been typecast as a Liszt pianist: he recorded the Hungarian master’s complete piano works on 99 CDs. It is therefore interesting to hear him in other music, even if it is not far removed from his specialty. The two composers were both known as phenomenal lions of the keyboard, but what Rachmaninov also requires is depth of feeling. The last of the great Romantics, his piano music is imbued with a distinctively Russian angst. A full, deep tone is required to express the melancholy in his slow music and the barely concealed savagery in his turbulent climaxes. Howard meets these demands, and puts them to good use in the earlier D minor Sonata (1907). In this work there is a sense of the composer stretching his wings: his habitual use of sequential passages in place of development is rather transparent, especially as the melodic content is not all that memorable. Howard finds moments of pure tranquillity in the slow movement but strikes me as heavy-handed in the rhythmically charged finale. The B flat minor Sonata is more mature. An entrancing slow movement opens with Scriabin-like chromatic harmony… Continue reading Get…

August 11, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: CASALS ENCORES (cello: Alban Gerhardt; piano: Cecile Licad)

The encore is an awkward ritual, but without it concertgoers feel cheated. The audience knows the artist is coming back; the artist knows it, but still we cheer and applaud, willing the performer to reappear. When our exhortations are rewarded, the artist pretends the little nugget they’ve kept up their sleeve is a spontaneous addition. But presenting a satisfying encore is an art in itself, and Spanish cellist Pablo Casals had an arsenal of compact crowd-pleasers for precisely this purpose. No doubt a disc of beloved encores once popularised by the most revered cellist of the 20th century – some in Casals’ own transcriptions – means big shoes to fill for Alban Gerhardt, whose faultless technique and singing tone make this an admirable tribute. The program’s balanced selection contrasts favourites with rarities, sparkling virtuosic display with the slow, expressive numbers that defined Casals’ encore style. Some of the most famous inclusions are weighed down by familiarity – Elgar’s Salut d’amore, Saint-Saëns’s The Swan and Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude languish most. As is often the case in concert, the most successful offerings are the most surprising. Boccherini’s Sonata in A major is the ideal showcase for Gerhardt’s… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

August 11, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: MAHLER: Symphony No 10 (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra/Wigglesworth)

Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs are traditionally regarded as the last gasp of Romantic music, despite being written decades after its “official” demise. I prefer to bestow that mantle on Mahler’s Tenth Symphony, albeit only the so-called “torso” of the first movement and the tiny intermezzo-like purgatorio are completely orchestrated by him. Recent years have seen a plethora of different versions but Mark Wigglesworth cleaves to the original performing edition by Deryck Cooke. The performance is a superb achievement – sonically, interpretively and in execution. The opening Adagio sets forth like a stately galleon sailing into dark waters which seem to lap at the boundary of where the Ninth Symphony stopped. The dissonant shards are well handled and intensify the anguish. Both the second and fourth movements are scherzi and both exude Mahlerian ambiguity: febrile Viennese gaiety and even exaltation, undermined by nervous fluctuating metrical changes, with nostalgic violas in the second, alternating with a dance of death, again, similar to the Rondo burleske in the Ninth. The pivot is the purgatorio movement, barely five minutes long, which starts innocently but soon becomes insidious. My only criticism relates to the start of the final Adagio, where the score calls for…

August 4, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: Apres un reve: Strauss, Faure, Britten, Chausson (soprano: Sandrine Piau)

If Sandrine Piau is aging, then nobody has passed the message on to her voice. The French soprano sounds as fresh and ravishing now as she ever has – and this new disc is another pearl in her exceptional solo discography. In line with the title, a dreamlike air pervades this selection of French, German and English songs. Piau’s iridescent soprano, underpinned by the limpid, evocative playing of her regular recital partner Susan Manoff, is ideally suited to the magic (and often the melancholy) of this music. Her voice’s natural shimmer becomes a fully-fledged glow in the Richard Strauss selections which open the disc – Piau’s rendition of the oft-recorded Morgen! could stand with the best of them – and of course she’s especially at ease in the French repertoire. Phrases floated sweetly in the air are her particular talent, but there’s no lack of expressive variety here. With unfailing sensitivity and elegant phrasing, she conveys the rapid cynicism of Poulenc’s Fêtes galantes as easily as the stillness of Mendelssohn’s Schlafloser Augen Leuchte or the rapture of Chausson’s Amour d’antan. The Galgenlieder (Gallows Songs) of contemporary composer Vincent Bouchot are a delightful surprise, and Piau renders them in vivid, memorable…

August 4, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: THE METALLIC VIOLINS (Natsuko Yoshimoto, James Cuddeford)

You’d be surprised what just two violins can do. Natsuko Yoshimoto and James Cuddeford, formerly the upper half of both the Australian String Quartet and Grainger Quartet, have long commissioned more than their fair share of inventive, witty and often very beautiful Australian duets. This excellent disc presents the final fruits of their joint mission and the array is diverse. Echoes of folk music appear in Stuart Greenbaum’s Danny Boy Variations and Andrew Ford’s affecting pair of works, balanced by Cuddeford’s sober memorial to the victims of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Roger Smalley and Elena Kats-Chernin both turn in sets of neat miniatures alongside a clever Compossible by David Harris. For me, however, the standouts are the opening and closing tracks. Matthew Hindson’s titular piece is hedonistic and energetic, maturely fusing his early attraction to pop music with new sonic complexities. By contrast Mary Finsterer’s Spherica No 1 is ethereal and otherworldly, the violins spinning a careful web of glistening harmonics.  Cuddeford and Yoshimoto were married at the time of this recording and the disc is by default a powerful portrait of their lengthy musical and personal partnership. The pair sound highly attuned to each other, almost as if…

August 4, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: NEAPOLITAN SONGS: Fra’ Diavolo (Marco Beasley t; Pino de Vittorio voc; Accordone)

The Italian early music group Accordone was founded by members of L’Arpeggiata and trades in similar repertoire, reinventing Neapolitan folk music with a captivating blend of period-instrument Baroque precision and improvisatory abandon. The Australian Brandenburg Orchestra has toured with both ensembles in Australia, which begs the question: why is this style so popular? Well, there’s plenty of dancing. Accordone’s new album is bursting with ritual tarantellas and jaunty peasant songs. The sunny Mediterranean chitarro guitar adds to the zest of castanets and tambourines, but the incessant stamping rhythms can become exhausting. If percussive excess tires the ear, the voice of Marco Beasley soothes it. Soulful and supple, his is an instrument ideally attuned to the album’s serenades and lullabies. Nowhere is the tenor more beguiling than in the sensual chromatic descent of Volumbrella, caressed by the velvet sheen of a viol quartet. Pino de Vittorio’s more brazen, traditional folk style is an excellent foil to Beasley’s sweeter tone in theatrical duets. And those rolled Italian Rs add still more rustic bite! These vibrant songs are based around the life and times of the infamous Fra’ Diavolo (Brother Devil), an 18th-century freedom fighter against the French occupation of Naples. Judging by the lyrics, Accordone…

August 4, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: Wagner and Me (Stephen Fry)

Genial and general arts all-rounder Stephen Fry provides a useful introduction to Wagner in this new DVD. The film is full of fascinating behind-the-scenes activity in various opera houses, including Bayreuth. It’s also nicely shot, although I found a few of the musical edits a little clumsy. Fry has been criticised for inaccuracy, casual frivolity and for a “gee-gosh” approach to the subject. While there is some merit in those comments, what remains is an engaging journey through the Wagner myth and some of the music; an ideal introduction for those new to the composer and his works – and great fun for the rest of us. Fry also gets to grips with the serious side of the music, and the scene where he examines the astonishing Tristan chord is moving and instructional. Many Wagnerians take a deeply serious approach to the work of the great composer, especially The Ring. But high art needs its populist proselytisers, and Fry is ideally placed. He not only reveres Wagner, but is Jewish into the bargain – and this dilemma provides the film with added frisson. He handles this piece of hot toast adroitly and with feeling.  Fry is such a Wagnerite that…

July 28, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: ROSSINI: Arias (soprano: Julia Lezhneva; Sinfonia Varsovia/Minkowski)

At just 21 years old, Julia Lezhneva already has an enviable list of engagements to her name, and a growing discography: this release marks her third album by Naïve, and her solo début.  For such a young singer, the protégée of Kiri Te Kanawa, Lezhneva is indeed remarkable – but an artist promoted so heavily and so early needs to display a talent which transcends her age rather than making a selling point of it, and on this showing Lezhneva has yet to reach that point. Nor is she helped by the choice of repertoire here, a series of grand Rossini scenes, most of which demand greater maturity and vocal grandeur than Lezhneva can yet muster. Her voice is attractive, and dazzlingly agile, and she’s a sterling musician, but one senses she’s not yet tapped into the full expressive possibilities of her voice, nor yet sufficiently strengthened it at either top or bottom. Florid selections like Tanti affetti or Bel raggio lusinghier are reasonably successful – and her ardent Non più mesta is the disc’s highlight – but slower arias, like Sombre forêt or Giusto ciel, fall short, showing gorgeous legato but very little colour or sense of drama. If Naïve were determined…

July 28, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: BAROQUE DUETS (Fiona Campbell; David Walker; Ironwood)

This collection reunites Australian mezzo-soprano Fiona Campbell and American countertenor David Walker in duet following performances with Pinchgut Opera in Vivaldi’s Juditha Triumphans and Cavalli’s L’Ormindo. The latter was the starting point for this inspired partnership, with two scenes bound to please Pinchgut devotees since the production was never recorded for commercial release. A protégé of Monteverdi, Cavalli was the most influential and prolific opera composer of the 17th century. With duets from his L’Ormindo and La Calisto framing the album, Campbell and Walker invite listeners to dine on a banquet of Italian Baroque delicacies, with a few choice excerpts from Handel’s English oratorios and operas for good measure. Most of the duets being love songs or laments, there is much sighing and weeping and few opportunities to break out of a solemn mood.  In L’Ormindo’s extended Act III death scene Campbell’s warm mezzo is not always as controlled as it could be, but her unbridled fervour captures the anguish of a heroine’s darkest hour. Luminous, vibrato-less strings from period-instrument ensemble Ironwood bring clarity and gravity to the moment. Pur ti miro from Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea is the earliest work on the menu and the most ravishing, with voices…

July 28, 2011
CD and Other Review

Review: REGER: Piano Concerto; STRAUSS: Burleske (piano: Marc-Andre Hamelin; Berlin RSO/Volkov)

Marc-André Hamelin is one of the greatest pianists alive today. His technique is superhuman, as is his memory for the reams of notes penned by Alkan and Godowsky. He has recorded many fine discs for Hyperion, which is fortunate as it gives the potential buyer plenty to choose instead of this one. Of all the German late-Romantics, Max Reger is the hardest to love. His textures are thick, his themes unmemorable and his dense counterpoint impenetrable. His best pieces are sets of variations on themes by other composers: Mozart, Hiller and Bach. Left to his own devices, as in this bloated Brahmsian concerto from 1910, his worst habits come to the fore, including haste: he composed and scored the 38-minute monster in a matter of weeks. Contemporary critics were scathing – and rightly so. Out of those 38 minutes at least 30 are a waste of Hamelin’s time, including the entire third movement where the soloist flails about like a wounded animal struggling to escape the endless chromatic sequences. The unprepared final D-major chord is ridiculous. I have owned an RCA disc of this coupling for years (rarely played) with the excellent Irish pianist Barry Douglas. I would have thought…

July 28, 2011