Phillip Scott

Phillip Scott

Phillip Scott is a long-time reviewer for Limelight and US music journal Fanfare. He has written four novels and the scores of several children’s shows for Monkey Baa Theatre Company. He is best known for his work as performer, writer and Musical Director for The Wharf Revue. 


Articles by Phillip Scott

CD and Other Review

Review: Turina: Danzas Fantásticas, Ritmos, Songs (Mouritz)

Joaquin Turina took on the advice as well as the example of his older compatriots Albeníz and Falla, and wrote works influenced by the fiery gypsy music of Andalusia. His output consists mainly of piano music, songs, chamber music and a handful of dazzling orchestral works which show him to be second only to Ravel in orchestral wizardry. In all the music on this well-filled disc you will hear a style of Impressionism that is not cool and misty but ablaze with heat and light. The BBC Philharmonic relish Turina’s textures under Mena’s idiomatic direction, and typically rich Chandos sound is everything one could wish. This is well worth collecting alongside Mena’s previous discs of music by Falla and Montsalvatge. If I have a quibble, perhaps a degree of earthiness is missing in these lush performances. In the Danzas Fantásticas some of Mena’s predecessors point more clearly to the gypsy origins. Try the
old Ansermet/Suisse Romande recording on Eloquence to hear what I mean. Clara Mouritz’s vibrant mezzo- soprano voice is perfect for the heartfelt Saeta, but I feel the five Poema en forma de canciones lie too high for her. A true soprano is needed, the likes of Los Angeles,…

May 30, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Gál: Serenade, Trio; Krása: Tanec, Passacaglia & Fugue

Chamber music is the ideal medium for composers with a knack for polyphony. Here we have a fascinating disc of string trios by two exact contemporaries who were among the victims of Hitler’s Germany. Hans Gál fled to Scotland and lived a long (if obscure) life, while the Czech Hans Krása was interned at Terezin and killed in Auschwitz in 1944. While their music differs in intensity, both men were skilled at writing counterpoint so all these works are full of interest. Gál’s Serenade dates from 1932. Notable for its high spirits, it follows in the wake of similar trios by Beethoven and Dohnányi. The Trio of 1971 is understandably more autumnal in quality (apart from its Mendelssohnian Scherzo) and features a set of gentle, lyrical variations as its final movement. Krása’s music was heavily influenced by the Second Viennese School and is made of tougher stuff. Tanec (or Dance) is a short work evoking the sound of trains, with a tender chorale in the middle section. In the powerful Passacaglia and Fugue, the underlying emotional impetus stretches these highly structured forms almost to breaking point in Krása’s final composition. The performances by the Ensemble Epomeo are beyond praise: lively,…

May 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Claudio Arrau: Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms

As a young virtuoso, Claudio Arrau was renowned for playing long programs and tackling technically challenging works like Albeniz’s Iberia. From mid-life onwards he concentrated on the German tradition and mainstream repertoire. He reached his full maturity in the mid-1950s, when most of the recordings in the EMI box were made. This set contains the five Beethoven concertos, a selection of sonatas, and concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. Arrau was never a mere technician. In a 1970s broadcast
 of Brahms’s Second Concerto, he swayed and grimaced like a
 soul in torment. That is both the upside and downside of these recordings: he approaches each forte as if it was Mount Everest, and handles lyrical themes as if officiating at High Mass. Take
 the limpid piano melody in the second movement of Grieg’s concerto: its innate simplicity eludes him as he inflects every note with emotional significance. In his desire to make the instrument resonate he overuses the sustaining pedal, which would have been effective in a vast auditorium but turns muddy in the studio. By contrast, Alceo Galliera and the Philharmonia, who accompany most of the concertos, are a model of clarity. Arrau’s Beethoven is fascinating. Often…

March 21, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Bernarda Fink: Spanish Songs

Bernarda Fink has a vibrant mezzo-soprano voice and the sense of style to interpret this program to the manner born – which, despite her surname, she was. The daughter of Slovenian parents, she was brought up in Buenos Aires. Her repertoire includes Baroque music and mainstream German and French song, but this Spanish recital does not come out of the blue: it follows an earlier release of Argentinean songs from 2006. The diverse program,
which includes many rarities, concentrates on three of the
four masters of 20th-century Spanish song. (The missing one is Joaquín Turina.) It opens with Falla’s well-known Seven Popular Spanish Songs, and straight away Fink reveals her strengths: a strong chest voice for Andalusian declamation, the ability to float her warm tone at the top of her register and an understanding of the emotional terrain that allows her to hold nothing back in this spirited, heart-on-sleeve music. Rodrigo’s gentle Adela 
follows, the first of his Tres canciones españolas, and here Fink presents a beautifully poised cantilena against the simple accompaniment, rendered with style by American pianist Anthony Spiri. Rodrigo’s songs tend to
be spare in texture, Granados’s popular Tonadillas notable for their elegance, while Falla remains the most earthy. Throughout,…

March 11, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Ravel: Complete Edition

Meticulous. Polished. A perfectionist. These are terms frequently applied to Maurice Ravel (1875-1937). It is true that there is never a wasted note or an indistinct effect in his work. He is also linked inextricably to Debussy under the heading “Impressionist”, but Ravel’s music is less ethereal and his harmonic thinking conceived quite differently. (Debussy places unrelated chords in the ether; Ravel’s harmony is structured more like contemporary jazz. He employs chords of the 9th, 11th and 13th degrees of the scale but eliminates their roots.) Ravel’s personality was reserved and enigmatic – he was famously more relaxed with children than with adults – and this led to the perception that his music was merely polished surfaces. So it is, but I find tremendous heart in the melting opening of his String Quartet, or the tender closing chorus of the strangely affecting opera L’enfant et les Sortilèges. Nor does his polish make him a conservative composer. What could be more out there than Boléro? The climatic harmonic resolution is orgasmic! Scarbo from Gaspard de la nuit is extreme both in its technique and its inspiration. Virtuosity and spontaneity again combine in the rousing finale of the opera L’Heure espagnol in…

January 30, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Brasileiro: Villa-Lobos, Guarnieri, Mignone, Santoro et al (Nelson Freire)

The Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire made his initial impression on collectors with a recording of music by his compatriot Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). That Teldec disc included the Prole do Bebê Suites and the massive Rudepoema. After partnering Martha Argerich in two-piano works, Freire was absent from the catalogues for two decades, finally to reappear with a series of acclaimed recordings of Beethoven and Brahms. Now, after 40 years, he returns to the music of his homeland. The result is playing of such freshness, spontaneity and vigour that you would think no time had passed. This disc is clearly a labour of love. While Villa-Lobos gets the lion’s share of the generous program, it also contains pieces by older composers, which Freire tells us have been in his repertoire since he was a teenager (he was born in 1944). Among these are the Tango Brasileiro by the un-Hispanically named Alexandre Levy, the Valse Lent by Henrique Fernández and Camargo Guarnieri’s popular Dança Negro. While they don’t have the profile of Villa-Lobos, the other composers represented here are hardly unknown, as the sleeve note claims. Villa-Lobos selections include the bubbling Carnaval das Crianças, more familiar in its piano and orchestra version under…

November 14, 2012
CD and Other Review

Review: Lang Lang: Complete Recordings 2000-2009

It is the largest box I have ever been sent to review – physically speaking – even bigger than Karajan’s 82-CD collection, though it holds only 12 discs. It also contains a lavish 192-page booklet chock full of colour photographs and articles about the pianist’s inspiration and suchlike. The product’s dimensions reflect the phenomenon of Lang Lang, a young concert pianist whose discs have sold millions of copies in China alone. Lang recently decamped to Sony, announcing his arrival with an excellent Liszt program, so DG have sensibly decided to repackage the recordings he made for them between 2000 and 2009 in a new design splashed liberally with red. No one can say that Lang Lang does not deserve the acclaim. He is a remarkable musician: technically adroit and emotionally involved in the music at all times. In many ways a throwback, he adopts the approach and occasional mannerisms of older pianists like Horowitz and Arrau. He sometimes rolls chords, and has a penchant for emphasising lyrical moments with rubato and a hushed, pearl-like tone. I call this an “18th Variation” approach, because it particularly suits that famous movement from Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Lang is also……

November 2, 2012
CD and Other Review

Review: Stephen Hough: French Album

>Following the success of his English and Spanish albums, Stephen Hough has come up with this thoughtfully planned, beautifully executed French album. Typically for Hough, the repertoire is anything but predictable. It opens with the familiar strains of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. The Gallic connection lies in the transcription by the pianist Alfred Cortot, who was actually Swiss. Hough himself is a transcriber of note (or notes) and so we have his keyboard arrangements of Pizzicati from Delibes’ ballet Sylvia and Massenet’s song Crépuscule. Among the rarely played works are the charming Automne by Cécile Chaminade and Alkan’s quirky La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer. Two popular encores are included: Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso and Debussy’s Clair de lune, the latter sounding not at all hackneyed due to the surrounding context. There are multiple selections by Fauré and Poulenc, and the recital ends with a longer work, Liszt’s Réminiscences of Halévy’s opera La Juive. Hough invariably hones in on the specific quality that defines each piece. In the Ravel, it is humour, an aspect that pianists often neglect in their desire to remind us how difficult this music is to… Continue reading Get…

November 2, 2012
CD and Other Review

Review: Barenboim: LISZT, WAGNER

The opening titles of this DVD show pianist and conductor in rehearsal: two old men who first played in concert together 50 years earlier. Boulez is no longer the zealous young maverick who wanted to burn down concert halls (figuratively and, possibly, literally speaking); Barenboim has, of course, long been a conductor himself. In a printed interview the pianist relates that he didn’t come to appreciate Liszt until after he had accompanied Claudio Arrau in the Second Concerto. The concert opens with Wagner’s early Faust Overture, filled with hints of the master to come but still in the thrall of Weber. The burnished tone of the Staatskapelle Orchestra and clarity of Boulez’s conducting sit well together. This could well be one of the conductor’s favourite pieces, although his impassive face never gives the game away. Barenboim’s weighty touch is, in my view, not entirely suited to Liszt. While he produces a lovely full tone in the quiet passages (especially impressive in the Second Concerto), thundering fortes and double-octave passages sound and look effortful. In fact, despite excellent aural results, there is not a lot of the joy of music-making on show here. The Second Concerto precedes the better-known First, where…

October 5, 2012
CD and Other Review

Review: Konstantin Shamray in Recital (Tchaikovsky, Scriabin, Prokofiev)

Released to coincide with this year’s Sydney International Piano Competition, this disc of Russian music showcases a previous winner. In 2008, Konstantine Shamray won not only the First Prize but also the People’s Choice award. Listen to the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Piano Sonata and you will understand the excitement caused by this young pianist. The piano was not Tchaikovsky’s natural medium, and parts of his sonata of 1878 sound like the keyboard reduction of a symphony. Understanding this, Shamray revels in the quasi-orchestral gestures of the first movement (Chopin’s heroics a clear influence), and savours the dark lyricism of the slow movement. In the fleet scherzo and dazzling finale his light touch impresses. A crucial section of the scherzo involves the repetition of a simple melodic figure with a descending scale in the bass. This passage could easily sound trivial, but so spry is the pianist’s response that instead it sparkles. He creates a mood of half-lights and shadows most effectively in four late pieces by Scriabin, especially the Feuillet d’album. Scriabin’s fragrant, introverted music is as impressionistic as anything by Debussy. By contrast, Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No 8 occupies a more robust emotional terrain. The third of Prokofiev’s so-called…

September 19, 2012
CD and Other Review

Review: SAINT-SAENS, LISZT, PROKOFIEV (Behzod Abduraimov)

Another young pianist makes a splash with a well-structured and scintillatingly played program. Only 21, Tashkent native Abduraimov won the 2009 London International Piano Competition, and toured Australia earlier this year. If Europe is trying to wrest the piano wunderkind crown back from China, then Abduraimov is definitely the real thing. He takes on the titans in the very first track: Horowitz’s elaboration on Liszt’s piano reduction of Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre. With old-school aplomb Abduraimov produces sparklingly even scale passages, quick clean staccato and over-the-top rubato. Here and there I feel a sense of control being carefully maintained – Horowitz and Earl Wild made pieces like this sound effortless – but what control this young pianist has! Prokofiev’s Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Piano Sonatas were composed in the wake of WWII, and are often called the composer’s war trilogy. They not only form the peak of Prokofiev’s keyboard output, but one of the peaks of 20th-century piano music. Abduraimov toughens his touch in the first movement of the Sixth to conjure up a steely militarism that is frighteningly appropriate. In the pungent slow movement he maps out the dramatic landscape with care and sensitivity, while the Scherzo is suitably light-fingered….

June 14, 2012
CD and Other Review

Review: Liszt: My Piano Hero (Lang Lang, Vienna Phil/Gergiev)

If you want a disc of Liszt’s Greatest Hits you could do worse than have Lang Lang as your guide. The hype and the hysterical fan base of the megastar Chinese pianist have not entirely managed to obscure the fact that he continues to mature as an artist. Lang has said Liszt is a special composer for him, and his playing on this disc demonstrates that affinity very clearly.  What a wide-ranging composer Liszt was. I recently reviewed Brendel’s Liszt recordings, which concentrate on the inward, philosophical late works. Lang opts for Liszt the showman: cascades of glistening scales and fancy finger work (La Campanella), surging double octaves (Hungarian Rhapsody No 6) and so on. But Liszt also set the ladies swooning with the beauty of his tone and the breathless quality of his rubato, and Lang understands this side of the composer as well. In Liebestraum and the transcription of Schubert’s Ave Maria he achieves a perfect balance: not over-romanticised but not foursquare either.  The thundering virtuoso and the gentle poet come together in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto − one of the best piano concertos ever written, in my opinion. This performance, recorded live with Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic,…

May 31, 2012