Dutch label Channel Classics has released an attractive box set of the first complete series of Mozart violin sonatas to be performed on period instruments. The albums, featuring English duo violinist Rachel Podger and keyboardist Gary Cooper, were released individually from 2004 to 2009 when they picked up a swag of awards. Now they come in an eight-disc box, giving listeners the chance to appreciate the sweep of the 36 works that covered 25 years of the composer’s life. Cooper performs on a copy of a 1795 Viennese fortepiano by Anton Walter – the maker favoured by Mozart and Beethoven – while Podger plays her 1739 Pesarinius violin, made in Genoa by a student of Stradivari. For the final disc Cooper switches to a 1766 Kirckman harpsichord, exactly the sort of instrument the young Mozart would have used, while the bass line is augmented by cellist Alison McGillivray. As Podger says: “Approaching [Mozart’s] music instinctively comes most naturally to me. It seems so effortlessly composed, and communicates with us directly.” Beautifully recorded, the set would make an ideal companion to the Beethoven sonatas being recorded by US violinist Susanna Ogata and British fortepianist Ian Watson. The Mozart canon, however, is…

Queensland’s all-woman Muses Trio – violinist Christa Powell, pianist Therese Milanovic and cellist Louise King – has been promoting female composers in a series of chamber concerts for four years and now they have released their self-published debut album. Taking its title from Elena Kats-Chernin’s relatively well-known The Spirit and the Maiden, it includes three world premiere recordings: Melburnian Kate Neal’s piano solo Song For Comb Man; Queensland jazz lecturer Louise Denson’s engaging Two Boleros and, also from Queensland, Cecile Elton’s Insomnio de la Cuidad (Tango for a Sleepless City) which sits nicely alongside the Boleros, starting lazily until the restlessness begins. Three pieces for cello and piano by Nadia Boulanger take us to another time and place, as does the Czech Víteˇzslava Kaprálová’s Elegy for violin and piano from the 1930s. Kats-Chernin’s trio, based on a legend about a young woman who is captured by a ghost that lives in a well, is the most substantial work and makes a good opener with its exciting, driving rhythms. English composer and mezzo-soprano Judith Bingham’s Chapman’s Pool is a four-part work which starts and ends sombrely. Brooklyn-born Jennifer Higdon’s contrasting Pale Yellow/Fiery Red closes the disc strongly, although you can download Amy Beach’s Romance for…

Liverpool-born Mark Simpson has been attracting critical acclaim for his compositional prowess in addition to his virtuoso clarinet playing. In 2006, he became the first ever winner of both the BBC Young Musician of the Year and the BBC Proms/Guardian Young Composer of the Year, an astonishing achievement at just 17 years of age.  Night Music is a collection of eight chamber works covering the last decade, and the works are largely performed by the musicians for whom they were written. The titular work for piano and cello is assured, introspective, intricate and captivating, its intensity heightened by impassioned performances from pianist Alexei Grynyuk and cellist Leonard Elschenbroich.  Not surprisingly, several works have substantial clarinet parts, performed by Simpson himself. Echoes and Embers is a nuanced exploration of the clarinet’s timbral possibilities; Lov(escpape) a tug-of-war between gestural dynamics featuring fluttering, swoops and other extended techniques. Un Regalo for solo cello (performed by Guy Johnston) is also a highlight. Simpson’s detailed notes are included, but, unusually, no information about the performers.  This is a minor quibble in another stellar release from NMC, a charitable company dedicated to British contemporary music. Night Music is an exemplary recording and it will be fascinating…

It took Franz Liszt 26 years to produce the final version of his Twelve Studies in Increasing Degree of Difficulty. The earliest version dates from 1826, but the pianist-phenomenon decided that these pieces were not difficult enough. Other pianists could still manage to play them! The most challenging version of the expanded and elaborated studies appeared in 1837, but the final version of 1852 – dedicated to Czerny – brought a reduction in technical obstacles. Stretches of over a tenth were eliminated, for example.  While these 12 Etudes and the others in this recital were designed to showcase Liszt’s superhuman technique, Liszt the poet is still in evidence. Additional to the pyrotechnics lie delicate textures, presaging those of Debussy in terms of color if not harmony. These textures require all the subtlety of nuance that the later composer would demand.  Recordings have tended to lean towards one or other extreme. Generally, young pianists use the Etudes to show off their pianistic skill: the young Bolet, Cziffra and Ovchinnikov come to mind. Older pianists stress the poetry and musicality, like Arrau and late Bolet, both in their 70s when they recorded these works. Arrau’s Transcendental Etudes have been described as magisterial,…

And then there were three cycles – the Silesian Quartet’s version of Polish composer Graz˙yna Bacewicz’s seven string quartets following on the heels of the Amar Corde Quartet (on Acte Préalable) and the Lutosławksi Quartet (on Naxos), and securing her reputation as one of the best-known unknown composers around. Bacewicz died in 1969 and her quartet cycle journeys from makings of tonality that are known towards a hard-fought for personal harmonic wizardry that embraces 12-tone thinking without being overly concerned with ‘correct’ 12-tone technique. Secreted kernels of melody appear discreetly from behind shadowy, shuffling textures to anticipate the soundworld of latter-day Bartók quartets – and even Luigi Nono. Bacewicz’s cycle is noticeably more consistent and chancey than Shostakovich’s, but how depressing to read elsewhere mantras about Bacewicz the “female composer”. Music as great as this ought to leave crude gender categorising far behind. “Music as great as this ought to leave crude gender categorising far behind“ The pivot is the Fifth Quartet. Written in 1955 as she was recovering from serious injury sustained during a car crash, Bacewicz has developed her language from the broadly Neo-Classical turn-of-phrase of the Fourth Quartet – for which please don’t read Stravinskian pastiche –…

Nicola Benedetti scales the heights from Tzarist charm to Stalinist menace.

Lionel Bringuier’s recordings of Ravel’s piano concertos with Yuja Wang were issued last year, and a second listening confirms the Wang approach has much going for it.

This latest volume in Ronald Brautigam’s consistently brilliant survey of Mozart’s works for piano and orchestra finds the Dutch fortepianist in fine fettle in some of the early concertos.  Joined by superb German period-instrument band Die Kölner Akademie under Juilliard-trained director Michael Alexander Willens, Brautigam raises the curtain with the main attraction, so to speak. Written in 1773, Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 5 was his first original piano concerto, the previous being arrangements of other composers’ music. It’s a thrilling work, with a grand opening Allegro replete with trumpets and timpani, a delicate Cantabile slow movement and a punchy, exciting concluding Rondo.  All of which contrasts nicely with Mozart’s sweeter, more delicate Piano Concerto No 6 in B Flat (1776). Gone are the martial effects; instead the main attraction is a stately, delicious Andante where flutes replace oboes, upper strings play on the bridge and lower strings are for the most part plucked. More contrasting again are the Three Concertos for keyboard, two violins and basso arranged around 1772 by Mozart fils and père after JC Bach’s keyboard sonatas of 1766. With Brautigam joined only by violinists Peter Hanson and Marie-Luise Hartmann and cellist Albert Brüggen, these are more in…

I write this review on the exact centenary of the Battle of the Somme, which is being appropriately (and heart-rendingly) commemorated, and in which this composer died, at 31. I’m surprised how deeply affected I am hearing this exquisite CD.  The very mention of Butterworth’s name induces a pang in many people. He was the archetypally gallant yet reticent Edwardian hero, a fine Etonian scholar and musician (and revered by the men he led into battle) and this marvellous music rekindles the pain at the loss of someone cruelly extinguished on the cusp of probable greatness. All the orchestral pieces (some arranged and developed by the conductor) are radiantly preformed and perfectly convey the haunting, dappled beauty of Edwardian summers – great houses, croquet lawns and languid figures in muslin and linen, but not without a hint of mystery.  The texts of the song cycle A Shropshire Lad were composed by AE Housman and these renditions by James Rutherford are in the same league as those of Sir Thomas Allen. The singing is hearty, direct, innocently patriotic and occasionally suffused with an almost Mahlerian melancholy. The CD contains a premiere recording of the previously unfinished Orchestral Fantasia developed from a 92-bar…

In the mid 1980s, Magnus Lindberg’s sound-world underwent a drastic overhaul. His mammoth work Kraft (1983-5) reveals a composer delving into the kaleidoscope of Modernism. Yet only a few years later, Lindberg’s works were sounding radically different, embracing tonal harmony, and drawing on a wealth of styles, from minimalism to Boulez. The works on this recent release bear a strong Neo-Romantic quality, if not in harmony, then in gesture. Al Largo is a scintillating work bristling with detail. Orchestrations are lush and powerful, rarely retreating below piano, making for a dynamic and full-bodied experience. Commencing with a startling brass fanfare, Lindberg conjures up a series of vivid orchestral scenes, culminating in a joyous exultation. “Orchestrations are lush and powerful, making for a dynamic and full-bodied experience“ The composer’s Second Cello Concerto is a rich, dynamic work, highly expressive in an almost Romantic sense. Despite this, gestures assume a more modernist character, unlocking the rich timbral profile of the cello. Certain features are shared throughout all three movements, particularly Lindberg’s bold and rhapsodic approach, with broad, sweeping melody a constant feature in the solo part. Anssi Karttunen delivers a consistently powerful performance, plumbing the work’s expressive depths and achieving brilliant contrast in the…

The fourth of Gilbert and Sullivan’s remarkable operettas was HMS Pinafore, almost stillborn due to a heatwave that kept the public out of the stifling theatre in 1878. It was eventually saved by Sullivan playing excerpts at some prom concerts and the rest is history. This recording is from a concert performance made in August 2015 at the Edinburgh Festival, and while it doesn’t supersede the excellent recordings currently available, it is good to have a fresh take. Instead of dialogue, for example, Tim Brooke-Taylor provides the narrative and droll comments between the numbers. Andrew Foster-Williams’ Captain Corcoran is strong, if a little strained at times. Elizabeth Watts brings to Josephine a bit more spunk than is usual; this character can sometimes be a bit wet and she makes much of her splendid second act aria. Neal Davies is an excellent Dick Deadeye. As the hero, Ralph, Toby Spence is equally effective. John Mark Ainsley’s Sir Joseph is far too mannered for me. Conductor Richard Egarr keeps the music moving; Pinafore almost conducts itself unless you get in the way. As an aside, there are many reasons why these operettas have proved such useful school shows: the music is bright…

South African lyrical soprano sensation Pumeza Matshikiza has followed her debut recording Voice of Hope with a splendid set of arias and a smattering of jujubes to freshen the palate. Unlike Hope, Arias is weighted toward a stiff dose of the dramatic repertoire which suits her full, distinctive timbre and strength. Her personality and acting ability comes through loud and clear. Matshikiza shows she is a perfect fit for Mozart with two arias from The Marriage of Figaro, and she “trembles and wavers” convincingly in Che fiero momento from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Her song choices also pay tribute to her heroes Renata Tebaldi (Sarti’s Lungi dal caro bene) and Victoria de los Ángeles (Sebastian Yradier’s La Paloma and a habanera from Montsalvatge’s Cinco Canciones Negras). Vocally she is always secure and never struggles. Her high “amore” ending of Senza mamma, o bimbo from Puccini’s Suor Angelica manages to keep a wide vibrato under control. Dvorˇák’s Song to the Moon from Rusalka is simply wonderful and Si, mi chiamano Mimì from Puccini’s La Bohème shows the character’s deceptive robustness as well as her fragility.  Some light relief from Liù’s heartbreaking aria from Turandot and Ravel’s Oh! La pitoyable aventure! from L’Heure Espagnole comes with a distinctly retro La Paloma, but in Arias, she eschews the light poppy moments which pepper her first album.