CD and Other Review

Review: Brahms: Solo Piano Works Volume 3 (Jonathan Plowright)

British pianist Jonathan Plowright continues his much-lauded coverage of Brahms’ solo piano music with this third volume in the series for BIS. It opens with the 15 Variations on a Hungarian Melody from 1853 (Op. 21, No 2), an earlier manifestation of Brahms’ fascination with Hungarian gypsy music that stemmed from his relationship with violinist Eduard Reményi and received fuller expression in the gypsy rondo of his First Piano Quartet, Op. 25. Like Brahms’ gypsy forays, his 16 Waltzes, Op. 39 (from 1865) were regarded by some critics as unconscionable descents into mainstream sensibility; they are indeed popular works, but no less delightful for this, and delivered by Plowright with sprightly vigour and zest. The influence of Beethoven and Schubert is evident in the Eight Klavierstücke of Op. 76 (1878), which move into deeper, more mysterious territory. Finally, with the Six Klavierstücke of Op. 118 (1892), we are plunged headlong into deep, stream-of-consciousness introspection, contemplation juxtaposed with volcanic anguish. The last of these is particularly disquieting, foreshadowing Debussy and defying resolution as it erupts and disappears into the mist. There is a dizzyingly broad spectrum of emotional terrain to traverse over these four sets of pieces, and Plowright navigates it…

August 12, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: Royer, Rameau: Vertigo (Jean Rondeau)

“Two magicians, two master architects, amongst the most wildly imaginative and brilliant of their era; two composers who also tried to capture echoes of grand theatre with the palette offered by their keyboard.” Thus does 25-year-old French harpsichord prodigy Jean Rondeau characterise Rameau and the young Turk snapping at his heels, Royer; thus does Rondeau set the stage for a sweetly bellicose suite in which Rameau and Royer wage war across a Prélude and three entrées – Poetry, Music and Dance – before settling on Royer’s exquisite L’Aimable. The venue is the Château d’Assas. The instrument is its famous harpsichord, favoured for its capacious sonority; its rich bass, its unexpectedly warm middle register and its crisp, silvery, flute-like upper register. Here, Rondeau is free to indulge his fancy and conjure up the complimentary worlds of the theatre and salon in pieces such as Rameau’s delicate Les Tendres Plaintes and more vigorous Les Sauvages, and Royer’s dramatic Le Vertigo and tender La Zaïde. Rondeau’s playing, as always, seems locked in a struggle between lyricism and contemplation, passion and detachment. Which is part of its magic. And if one is in danger of being – pleasantly, it must be said – crushed…

August 12, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: Galuppi: Harpsichord Sonatas, Op. 1 (Andrea Chezzi)

Baldassare Galuppi is one of those unfortunate composers who were hailed in their lifetimes as being among the finest music-makers…and then promptly forgotten. Galuppi’s writing is in the galant style, essentially the precursor to the Classical era – his melodies might be simple, but they’re never simplistic. This sort of music, so full of elegance and warmth, can sound a tad trite if it’s not played with panache. However, that’s not a concern in this case! Andrea Chezzi brings brilliance to these sonatas when required, but most enjoyably, a definite sense of playfulness. For example, the opening Sonata No 1 in C Major, Op. 1, is given some additional tonal shifts from some well-timed use of the harpsichord’s stops, cheekily jumping from a dark sound to something more nasal in an echoed phrase. On the more reflective side of things, the slower movements are given a lovingly rounded sense of melody. The liner notes point out that this collection of sonatas was never composed as a set but was collated by Galuppi from various works. As a result, some of the sonatas are in three movements, while others are a single movement. While this might sound like a negative, it’s…

August 12, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: Schubert: Piano Works (Geoffrey Saba)

Franz Schubert’s late piano music has a deceptive simplicity about it: a surface naivety masking emotional depths. The surface purity and the Romantic soul need to be kept in balance; with Schubert it is always a question of less is more. That is why the most thoughtful and self-effacing of the great pianists – Alfred Brendel, for example – make such fine Schubertians. Geoffrey Saba, an Australian-born pianist resident in London, is one of this breed. He maintains the necessary equilibrium with skill and understanding. In the second Impromptu of D935, for instance, he transitions deftly between rippling semiquavers and the stately, somewhat melancholy chorale that closes the piece. In the following Impromptu, a theme and variations, he employs subtle rubato: enough to create a feeling of spontaneity that underlines the work’s title. Schubert could have called these four pieces a sonata, but he did not. The first of the Klavierstücke belongs to the same troubled world as Winterreise, and contains the seeds of desperation beneath a restless surface. Both works include passages of major-key frenzy that collapse into the minor. Saba judges such moments unerringly. I find the piano sound on this disc a trifle hollow. It lacks the warmth of Brendel’s Philips…

August 12, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: Beethoven: Complete Works for Solo Piano Volume 14 (Ronald Brautigam)

Serious record collectors should regularly light a candle for Robert von Bahr whose label BIS has brought so many fine artists to our attention; his willingness to green-light projects of dubious financial return is much appreciated by those of a completist turn. Ronald Brautigam’s surveys of Haydn and Mozart keyboard works were distinguished not only by the exceptional performances of the major masterpieces as by his diligent attention to every extant scrap from the composer’s desk. This latest release in his Beethoven cycle includes some of Ludwig’s least inspired scribblings but does have some gems to treasure. The lesser works can be a bore on a modern piano so the lovely characterful sound of the period instrument, an impeccable copy of an 1819 Conrad Graf by Paul McNulty, does wonders for their charm factor. This particular instrument featured heavily in earlier volumes and is a magnificent device with a lovely liquid top register and engagingly nut-brown bottom-end. Brautigam wrings the maximum expression and colour out of the instrument without ever pushing through the tone, while the light action abetted by his superb technique make for some thrilling flourishes. For the slyly charming variations on God Save the King, Rule Brittania…

August 12, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: Matthews: String Quartets Volume 3 (Kreutzer Quartet)

David Matthews (b. 1943) and his composer brother Colin were protégés of Benjamin Britten. The string quartet medium is clearly one that appeals to David; he has written 12 so far. Although this is the third volume in the series, it actually contains the earliest: Quartets Nos 1-3 (composed between 1969 and 1978), plus a short Mirror Canon (1963) and a string quartet transcription of Scriabin’s Piano Prelude, Op. 74 No 4. TUnderstandably, the First shows some influence of Britten’s own quartet writing: there are passages containing wisps of thematic material hovering over sustained chords, often in high harmonics, and occasional musings from solo instruments. Along with that, however, are strong rhythmic passages and thick textures. Matthews’ primary influences of Tippett, Berg and, most notably, Beethoven were present from the start. The First, in five movements played without breaks, is densely packed with contrapuntal incident. The Second, more classically styled, was written while Matthews was in Australia staying with Peter Sculthorpe. The piece culminates in a moving elegy (am I wrong to hear Sculthorpe’s fingerprints in the syncopated ostinati of the second movement?). By comparison, the Third seems a more public statement. All three major works and the two fillers…

August 5, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: James Wood: Cloud-Polyphonies

James Wood is an English percussionist, composer and conductor; he is also a musicologist and instrument designer. Tongues of Fire is a large-scale work for choir and percussion quartet that weaves together an extraordinary range of cultural forms and ideas, from Latin-American Spanish to the works of Hildegard of Bingen, in order to mystically evoke New Testament descriptions of Pentecost. Wood’s expertise in percussion is evident in the musical representation of tongues of fire and rushing wind, in addition to the symbolic import of choral parts in eight different languages.  By contrast, Cloud-Polyphonies is a three-part percussion work exploring the movement of natural entities – starlings, clouds and buffalo – an unlikely triumvirate at first glance, but a combination that works spectacularly. Starlings evokes the “extraordinary aerobatic displays” made by these birds before migration using marimbas and woodblocks, and 66 drums conjure the thumping of buffalo hooves on changing earthen terrain. The textures created by Wood and brought to fruition by the Yale Percussion Group are mesmerising and hypnotic, and complemented by a spacious, reverberant acoustic in which the many overtones and subtleties created by the instruments are gloriously evident.

August 5, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: Stuart Greenbaum: Mondrian Interiors (Jessica Fotinos, ANAM Musicians)

From 2011 to 2015, the Australian National Academy of Music and the Melbourne Recital Centre presented the Australian Voices concert series, celebrating significant Australian composers. Included was a programme of chamber works by Stuart Greenbaum (b. 1966). This recording, released on ANAM’s own imprint, features seven Academy musicians with harpist and ANAM alumna Jessica Fotinos, performing three works by Greenbaum in which harp plays a central role. Mondrian Interiors is a collection of eight pieces inspired by an exhibition of works by the Dutch artist, with works scored for combinations of oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, piano and harp. Four Finalities is a song cycle written in collaboration with poet Ross Baglin and performed by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean. The delicate interplay between Betts-Dean’s forcefully ethereal voice and the harp is utterly captivating, enhanced by a rich and spacious recording sonic. Finally, Nine Candles for Dark Nights is solo harp piece written for Australian harpist Marshall McGuire that explores and expands the sonic capacities of this instrument. This is a tremendously accessible collection of works that balances the obvious beauty of the harp with subtly nuanced complementary sonorities. The performances are fresh and exciting, and it’s to be hoped that we’ll… Continue reading Get…

July 29, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: Schumann: Complete Symphonic Works (WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln/Holliger)

Editor’s Choice, Orchestral – July 2016 Back in 2013 oboist-composer-conductor Heinz Holliger, in partnership with the excellent WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln and featuring an august cast of instrumental soloists – violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja and pianist Dénes Várjon included – initiated a project to record Robert Schumann’s complete orchestral music. The sixth and final volume contrasts Schumann’s first tentative stab at a symphony – the two-movement torso Zwickauer Symphony – with tautly conceived late-period overtures from the ever popular Manfred to the rarer Julius Caesar and Bride of Messina. No man or woman alive knows more about the inner-workings of Schumann’s music than Holliger, but his cycle hasn’t always been consistent in the listening. It was Holliger’s bad luck that his first three volumes were released just as Simon Rattle, Robin Ticciati and Yannick Nézet-Séguin released their own symphony cycles and DG sneaked out Abbado’s second. Compared to the lavishly nuanced detail of Rattle and Ticciati’s poetic intensity, Holliger generates a plainer surface – the Second Symphony’s Scherzo lacks Rattle’s skittish momentum and his reading of the Rhenish is no match for Ticciati’s unhinged volatility. But the weight of Holliger’s scholarly learning can’t be dismissed. Holliger thinks that one key towards informed…

July 29, 2016
CD and Other Review

Review: O’Brien: Complete Orchestral Music, Vol. 1 (Liepāja Symphony/Paul Mann)

Charles O’Brien was a Scottish composer, who doesn’t have much new to say outside (or inside) the British orchestral oeuvre of the early 20th century. However, his music is forthright and attractive, occasionally with a decided Celtic lilt. Hamish MacCunn was his composition teacher, and The Land of the Mountain and the Flood was clearly an influence. The 45-minute Symphony in F Minor begins soberly before entering into some robust 19th-century symphonic rhetoric, punctuated by Teutonic tuttis. There’s barely a hint of the Highlands; its feet are planted firmly in 19th-century Vienna. The slow movement is thoughtful, without any particularly interesting ideas, the second a graceful Menuetto. The last movement is a vigorous tribute to German Romanticism. Again, well scored, but lacking true inspiration. The music of the Ellangowan Concert Overture is instantly recognisable as Celtic; the only missing instrument is a bagpipe. It’s an enjoyable Scottish romp with a gentle conclusion. The overture is more successful than the symphony. It knows where it lives. The Liepāja Symphony Orchestra is conducted by Paul Mann, who directs the music with understanding. Competent but undistinguished playing, likewise the recording.

July 29, 2016