The title refers to Richter’s attempt to create three distinct musical worlds based on three Virginia Woolf novels.

Every British conductor worth his or her salt has recorded the symphony, as have Solti, Barenboim, Slatkin, Ashkenazy and Sinopoli. The trick with Elgar, especially in this symphony, is to avoid lugubriousness and Gardner manages well getting the piece off to a quiet and measured start. The transition from the well-performed Scherzo into the slow movement is handled perfectly. However, after listening to Barbirolli’s beautifully nuanced recording, the ordinariness of this newcomer is clear. Sir John’s is the one to beat. Of the other performances I sampled all were of a very high standard. There is Boult, of course, and a splendid version from Mackerras and the LSO; he gets great feeling into the noblimente theme. Then there is the remarkable recording Colin Davis made with the Dresden Staatskapelle in 1997. The power of the German orchestra, its heft and discipline, is remarkable and it blows the competition out of the water. In this field, a new recording must stand tall and this one is a bit average. The Introduction and Allegro is long recognised as a virtuoso piece for string orchestra and there are no shortages of… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

You can only marvel at how far Alsop moves this music forward. This is Bernstein for our times.

Les Siècles offers a fascinating period instrument approach, in a carefully researched and executed performance that sounds authentic, yet still entirely fresh.

Operalia winner Aida Garifullina was signed to an exclusive recording contract by Decca back in 2015. It has taken a while, but now, with the release of her self-titled debut album – an exquisite selection of 19th-century songs, arias and folk-lullabies – we can finally hear why. The Russian lyric soprano has a wonderful technical ease which, coupled with a full, even tone, promises much for the future. But, in case you’re judging a singer by her repertoire, it’s worth pointing out that this disc doesn’t tell the whole story. Glancing down the generous programme from Juliette’s Je veux vivre to the Bell Song from Lakmé and the Queen of Shemakha’s two arias from The Golden Cockerel, you’d imagine perhaps a lighter, higher voice than you actually get. It’s a sleight-of-hand that’s far from unpleasant. Transposed down a tone, the Delibes gains in resonance and colour – these are bells of burnished gold rather than silver – and while Garifullina’s Juliette feels more poised society hostess than love-struck innocent, she’s one you’d clear your schedule for. Coloratura showpieces aside, the bulk of the disc comprises Russian repertoire, much of it glancing to the East and drawing on the soprano’s Tatar…

Poor old Ethel Smyth. A fine composer, she had the misfortune to be a) English and b) a woman, both of which have condemned her to musical purgatory for much of the 70 years since her death. Still, Der Wald (never recorded) was the only opera by a woman to be staged at the Met until Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin in 2016. The Boatswain’s Mate (1914) is a small-scale but quintessential English comic opera. The widow and publican Mrs Waters is wooed relentlessly by a retired boatswain. When he recruits an unemployed soldier to frighten her into thinking she needs protecting, matters are turned upside down, with unexpected results for Mrs Waters’ head and heart. Act I employs spoken dialogue, a device awkwardly dropped in Act II, and some sections go on far too long, but it’s a winning libretto set to highly attractive music and incorporates elements of folk and popular song – it even quotes Smyth’s suffragette anthem, The March of the Women, though the work really doesn’t own the feminist credentials that are sometimes claimed for it. This world premiere is conducted by Odaline de la Martinez who directed the marvelous first recording of Smyth’s The Wreckers…

Without André Grétry (1741-1813) there wouldn’t be opera as we know it. The first French composer to successfully marry French and Italian styles in the Classical period, Grétry’s melodic and dramatic gifts coupled with a strong desire to push opera to its limits ensured his lasting fame. First performed at Versailles in 1778 before Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, L’Amant Jaloux, ou Les Fausses Apparences (The Jealous Lover, or False Appearances) was an immediate success. The setting is Cadiz, Spain. The rich Don Lopez (baritone David Greco) forbids his widowed daughter Léonore (soprano Celeste Lazarenko) to marry again. But she is in love with the eponymous jealous lover, Don Alonze (tenor Ed Lyon), who has a sister Isabelle (soprano Alexandra Oomens), who is Léonore’s friend and the beloved of French officer Florival (tenor Andrew Goodwin). Without giving too much away, much mayhem ensues before the happy ending. Erin Helyard directs cast and orchestra – both of which are uniformly excellent – from the keyboard with great attention to detail yet with a sure grasp of forward momentum. We also get snippets of English dialogue which must have made live performances from which this recording was made an… Continue reading Get…

Bru Zane’s latest from the vault of neglected French opera suggests why Ferdinand Hérold was once regarded as the country’s greatest musician. Le Pré aux Clercs is a light counterpart to Les Huguenots. Despite duels and a death it ends happily. Certainly happier than for Hérold himself, who died of consumption a month after the premiere in 1832. Only his ballet La Fille Mal Gardée and the brilliant overture to Zampa survive today. A pity, because Pré is delightful: an elegant, refined score, mixing pathos and melancholy with wit and dancing rhythms. Listeners may know the once-famous overture and Isabelle’s virtuoso aria Jours de mon enfance (on which Strauss modelled Zerbinetta’s aria in Ariadne). Lesser-known highlights include a catchy syllabic trio (a definite earworm) and the romance Souvenirs du jeune âge. The largely Francophone cast is excellent, headed by Marie-Ève Munger, Marie Lenormand and the American Michael Spyres, a versatile and stylish tenor like his idol, the late Nicolai Gedda. The singers in the 1959 Benedetti recording may be more idiomatic, trained in the old Opéra-Comique theatre tradition. Since 2004, the relaunched Opéra-Comique’s mission has been to explore its heritage. This production, enthusiastically received in Paris and Wexford in 2015,…

Johann Christoph Pepusch, aka John Christopher Pepusch or just plain Dr Pepusch, was born in Berlin in 1677, but moved to England around 1700 where he became a leading light of London’s musical life. In 1726, he was one of the founders of the Academy of Ancient Music and two years later scored his greatest success arranging the music for John Gay’s runaway hit, The Beggar’s Opera. The peak of his career coincided with the rise of the Italian opera in London, and, as his involvement with Gay’s famous lampoon would suggest, Pepusch was strong on the side of those seeking an English alternative to continental excess. Written in 1715, his masque Venus and Adonis looked like it might be just the thing to ‘reconcile Musick to the English Tongue.’ For all its Englishness – and it’s a clear precursor of Handel’s Acis and Galatea – the work is packed with the stock in trade of Italian opera including da capo arias, virtuoso instrumental effects and plenty of accompagnato recitative. So, what’s it like? The immediate observation listening to what is a world-premiere recording on the enterprising Ramée label is how can this melodious and memorable music have languished until…

We know Sullivan primarily for the brilliant music he wrote for the equally brilliant comic plays of WS Gilbert. Many will also know some of his excellent concert music. The songs are a different matter, although many are attractive and well written,  they fall outside the popular Lieder repertoire inhabited by Schubert and his lot, not always reaching the heights attained by those German composers with which they have a cultural affinity. Nonetheless they are certainly worthy of our attention and so Chandos has come to the rescue with 46 of them. For his texts Sullivan drew widely. He drew from Shakespeare, O Mistress Mine and The Willow Song. The song cycle The Window by Tennyson and from Robert Burns the delicately felt Mary Morrison. In the main the music is often what you would expect, lightly inspired Victoriana. For example, the Arabian Love Song, with its mysterious piano ripples between verses is intriguing and the ballad Once Again undoubtedly had female hearts fluttering in many a drawing room. Sweethearts is a melodramatic duet from the composer’s old collaborator, Gilbert. It is set as a waltz and goes with an engaging swing. Familiar to Savoyards will be the reworking of…

Way back last century (in 1986 to be precise) the choir of King’s College, Cambridge under Stephen Cleobury produced a recording of choral pieces by Bax and Finzi. At a time when fascination with ‘early music’ was at its height, this rather unfashionable choice of repertory was a revelation; its expansive text-setting and lush harmonies were a reminder of a then rather neglected corner of choral music, full of guilty but well-wrought pleasures. Some 30 years on, choirs are thankfully less narrow in their choices. James O’Donnell and his Westminster Abbey forces have delivered a more than worthy successor to that disc. O’Donnell lavishes much care on Finzi’s masterly anthem, Lo the Full, Final Sacrifice; its long, contrasting paragraphs full of beautiful singing, whether the exultant “Lo, the bread of life” or the meditative “soft, self-wounding Pelican” or the beguiling Amen. Careful attention to text mirrors Finzi’s own care in this regard. God is Gone Up is dispatched with appropriate élan and the Magnificat radiates unalloyed joy. Three smaller Finzi anthems confirm his appeal. Bax is represented by contrasting carols, I Sing of a Maiden and This Worldes Joie – the first carefree and the second careworn. Given the considerable…

Agnew and Les Arts top off their fine Monteverdi series.