Schoenberg’s admiration for Mahler extended to founding an Association for Private Musical Performances to revive Viennese musical life after WWI. They could rarely afford a full orchestra so relied on chamber music reductions. In the case of The Song of the Earth, Schoenberg completed only most of the first song then delegated Webern to the task, by which time the Association was bankrupt. The real hero is Rainer Riehn, who completed the sketch in the 1980s based on Schoenberg’s orchestration. “Mahler arr Riehn” doesn’t have quite the cachet of “Mahler arr Schoenberg”, so you can imagine the push to overstate the latter’s involvement. Nonetheless, the arrangement is a credit to Riehn and this CD is also a credit to Douglas Boyd and his ensemble and singers. The Song of the Earth in any form represents Mahler’s art at its most distilled and offers a tantalising glimpse – as do the Ninth and Tenth symphonies – into how his music would have developed had he lived longer. Even the full orchestral version has many chamber-like textures and it’s anyone’s guess how these two singers would have fared in the more heavily scored passages (Christa Ludwig and Fritz Wunderlich in Klemperer’s reading…

Walton’s First is one of the most outstanding symphonies of the 20th century, the turbulent energies of which are apparently the result of the composer’s failing relationship with one Imma von Doernberg. The exultant final movement burst out after a fresh encounter with one Alice Wimborne. Whatever the inspiration, it stands with the Elgar symphonies at the peak of English orchestral composition. A pity such passion had not fired the Second Symphony; compare the ravishing slow movement of the First with that of the Second… The latter seems almost an afterthought.  Premiered in 1957, the Second Symphony fell afoul of the “toot, whistle, plunk and boom” school of music that held contemporary classical music to ransom for the following 40 years. We now know better and the symphony can be seen for what it is: an excellent if minor work. It is drier and less moving than the First, stylistically at one with many great 20th-century composers such as William Schuman, Sibelius and Roy Harris. Never at fault is Walton’s brilliant orchestration. These are excellent performances and good value for money. The finest Walton First is still the 1967 recording with the LSO under André Previn on RCA. (Sargent’s better-played…

Mikhail Pletnev once recorded a sensational piano transcription of the Nutcracker suite. His traversal of the entire ballet isn’t quite in that class. Tchaikovsky’s score has more glamour, charm and sheer magic than almost any other music, ballet or otherwise. I suppose its nearest rival would be his own Sleeping Beauty. I’ve never really heard a bad Nutcracker but I doubt this reading surpasses the two wonderful Doratis or my own favourite: André Previn with the LSO (EMI). It’s unfortunate Ondine couldn’t have filled the first CD and found something else to fill the second, as both have less than 50 minutes of playing time.  Sometimes the orchestra sounds rather flatly recorded, especially the brass. The traditional highlights, such as the Waltz of the Flowers and the dancing snowflakes, remain somewhat earthbound. The pistol shot at the start of the mouse battle sounds like a popgun and the castanets in the Spanish dance are poorly captured: they’re barely there. I always judge the performance by the Arabian dance – if the sinuous sensuality is there, the rest will usually take care of itself. Well, it’s not… Look, there’s nothing catastrophically wrong with this version, but you can do better with…

As a teenager, I once bought a recording of Shostakovich’s Twelfth. I played it once and, mystified, put it back on the shelf and hadn’t heard it again until this CD turned up! I’m still mystified but, as I always opine with Shostakovich symphonic cycles, you have to take the good with the bad – and the Twelfth is pretty bad. Not even Petrenko, who is developing into one of our best Shostakovich conductors, can do much with this turkey, but he does manage to invest the Adagio with a generalised eeriness. The Sixth is another matter: unduly neglected, it’s arguably Shostakovich’s most inscrutable and abstract symphony, whose lopsided construction does interpreters no favours, since the second and third movements combined are barely half the length of the preceding Largo and, as a skittish Scherzo and jokey presto respectively, are uncomfortably similar. Petrenko manages to distinguish them effectively and also achieves a haunting effect in the hugely spanned opening movement. It also sounds genuinely Russian: the “moodiness” of the strings with their undercurrent of sinister power and the piquant woodwind in the latter movements (something Haitink never managed in his recording with the LPO). The four stars… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

It’s hard to know at whom this release is aimed. Wagner’s idiom changed perhaps more radically than that of any other famous composer. Listen to the overtures to Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love) and The Fairies and you’d think you were listening to Offenbach or even Gilbert and Sullivan, not the man who went on to compose Tristan and Isolde, The Ring and Parsifal. This strangely assembled program contains an orchestral tribute to The Mastersingers by one Henk de Vlieger, about whom no information whatever is vouchsafed, other than that he was born in 1953. This attempt at a symphonic synthesis is surely based on The Ring: An Orchestral Journey brilliantly recorded by Lorin Maazel and somewhat less excitingly by Edo de Waart. The difference is that, while the Ring Cycle is studded with orchestral interludes and even accompanied vocal passages which have become showpieces in their own right, The Mastersingers has very few. Which brings me back to my original point: who really wants to hear a sort of operatic soundtrack which is hardly self-sufficient? Järvi and the Royal Scottish orchestra are in fine form and the Chandos acoustic is deep and rich, but I somehow can’t help…

Long ago, I heard a magnificent Rachmaninov 2 with Tadaaki Otaka, and that predisposed me favourably to this release. By and large, he and the MSO don’t disappoint. I suppose this reading could best be described as “middle-of-the-road Romantic”. The tempo in the first movement is steady, (reminiscent of Klemperer’s magnificent traversal – without his gothic touches) although the Largo, at a few seconds under 12’, is on the flowing rather than fast side. In the Scherzo, he delineates every strand – again, like Klemperer – and highlights the delightful way various instruments mimic each other. In the Finale, the work’s ambivalent ending is emphasised. Recently, in this very publication, Mark Wigglesworth opined that the New World Symphony is essentially Czech (or Bohemian) and was inspired by homesickness as much as the wide open prairies and “big sky” of America. The MSO plays well, and I especially like the forward, fruity woodwind which give the work a “Czech” feel. I have two reservations: Otaka omits the first-movement exposition repeat. This, I feel, is a mistake because it renders the movement too short in relation to the subsequent slow movement. Second, I think he slows down a little too much for…

If this release was intended as a snapshot or showcase for the current state of the Sydney Symphony, it would zoom into the five-star category. The playing is some of the best I’ve ever heard from them. The felicities are too numerous to mention here, but I’ll cite the quadruple flute passage in the first movement development; the horns cover themselves with glory in the slow movement and Emma Matthews is fine in the finale, sounding innocent and then appropriately dreamy. Alas, a clear recommendation is not that simple – the playing and engineering are outstanding, but I’m still not convinced that Ashkenazy has anything especially interesting to say about Mahler. The first movement hums along well enough but lacks any lyrical intensity. I’m not suggesting Mengelbergian rubato pulling the music out of shape, but a slightly more varied pulse and more inflection would be welcome. The second movement effectively blends rustic awkwardness with a dark undercurrent (as with the equivalent movement in the Sixth Symphony, where it’s hard to tell whether the music depicts children at play or a sinister troupe of marionettes). The “Heaven’s Gate” climax in the adagio (relatively swift, like Klemperer’s) is well handled and not over-wrought….

No one can yearn like a Russian. Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony has yearning aplenty. Beneath the suave, almost louche, art deco glamour – clearly influenced by his years in the United States – there lies an undercurrent of nostalgia for Mother Russia. I believe it was Jascha Heifetz who once described Rachmaninov’s Piano Trio as “silk underwear music”. It was probably one of those you-had-to-be-there moments but in listening to this gorgeous score, I think I know what he meant.  My favourite moment is the first movement’s second subject, which sidles in with cellos wafting above woodwind melismas. Gianandrea Noseda’s finesse in letting the music unfold naturally and seductively enhances its beauty. It’s hard not to fall back on that overworked adjective “elusive” to describe the kaleidoscopic, mercurial moods of this symphony. The central movement, with its plangent horn calls and swooning harp and then its strange sudden lurch into a scherzo is just as haunting. The finale is a 20th-century take on a Russian dance. The BBC Philharmonic is in top form in all departments and Noseda allows every strand of melody to shine through in what can only be described as a luminous recording.  The two other works are the early…

I’ve always found Richard Strauss’s character a real mystery: a smug, rather banal bourgeois with a narcissistic streak, he wrote sublime music which itself often teeters on the edge of banality. I enjoyed this Heldenleben but, at 47 minutes, the hero, while not exactly an arthritic Colonel Blimp, isn’t a young buck full of rising sap, either. This is surprising, considering Yannick Nézet-Séguin is one of the most athletic conductors around today. The opening lacks the self-confident swagger that Beecham brought to it for EMI (at the age of 80). In the second movement, the “battle” rages effectively enough, although I can never escape the feeling that Mahler depicts his critics far more bitingly in the Rondo burlesque of his Ninth Symphony. Strauss’s wife Pauline, a granite-jawed termagant in real life, comes across relatively sympathetically in the extended (and ravishingly played) violin solo of the third movement. The ending, depicting the hero’s retrospective contemplation, is simply too slow, although the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s horns are glorious. The orchestra, which plays well throughout, also sounds very distant and was recorded at a curiously low level. I’d prefer any of Karajan’s readings, or Fritz Reiner’s legendary RCA one. The… Continue reading Get unlimited…

The first thing I noticed was the spectacular fidelity of the recording and how beautifully the harp arpeggios are captured at the very beginning of Harold in Italy. One unique feature of this recording of Berlioz’s strange concertante work/tone-poem hybrid is the restoration of virtuosic passages in the first movement, expressly composed for the dedicatee, Paganini, and later suppressed by Berlioz (why has it taken so long for someone to restore them?). Carpenter’s tone is sumptuous but the quintessentially elegiac voice of his viola is enlivened with wonderfully mercurial flashes from both the soloist and Ashkenazy with the hyper-alert orchestra. The pilgrims seem a happy band and the Serenade of the Abruzzi mountaineer to his sweetheart is winsomely played by the American violist. The final movement, The Brigands’ Orgy, is particularly dramatic. I don’t think anyone can surpass Charles Munch in his old Boston performance on RCA, but these forces come close. Among modern competitors, I’d put Sir Colin Davis and Tabea Zimmermann (LSO Live) and Lorin Maazel’s New York Philharmonic version with Cynthia Phelps (Deutsche Grammophon) on the same level. The only problem I had with this release was the choice of fill-ups. The Beatrice and Benedict overture is fine…

Rachmaninov’s four piano concertos are a classic example of the excellent being the enemy of the merely very good. When, in 1917, he came to revise his first youthful concerto (from 1891), the Second and Third Concertos had firmly ensconced themselves in the repertoire and in the affections of the public. The Fourth Concerto, composed in 1926, never had a chance: it had none of the fizz of Gershwin in its jazz-influenced passages and the main theme of its slow movement has a bizarre and unfortunate resemblance to Three blind mice! There are traces of the dreamy, sentimental, later Rachmaninov in both these works – and Simon Trpceski is excellent throughout – but they are either embryonic or truncated. In the last movement of the First, just as you think they’re about to burst into the BIG tune, the pianist scuttles off in a helter-skelter passage of presto fingerwork. There is real chemistry between Trpceski and Petrenko here, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic are on fire. I loved the brass attack in the opening chords of the First Concerto. Both orchestra and soloist are highly affecting in its slow movement.  I’ve left little room for… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from…

The hour was late, my day had been hellish, the decanter beckoned. Perhaps just a wee dram and the first movement. A few moments in and the Glenfiddich was forgotten. This is one of the greatest Mahler recordings and performances I’ve ever heard. The illustrious producer Walter Legge once opined that a conductor should build like a Moghul emperor and finish like a jeweller, and this is one of the elements which create the magic here: Jansons never loses sight of the gigantic scale of this symphony, while acknowledging and refining every detail. Tempos are generally slow and the overall timing makes this one of the slowest Mahler Thirds available. No matter! The playing of the Concertgebouw is not just beyond reproach – it’s beyond belief. The wilder sections of the first movement may lack the manic abandon of Bernstein, but the interchanges between the brass and woodwind are just one instance of the sensitivity and imagination that suffuse this account. Jansons’ rubato in the dreamy second movement is just as impressive and the offstage post horn solo in the third is equally magical. Bernarda Fink is beautifully poised in the fourth and fifth movements. The finale is often problematic, and a misreading often…