Editor’s Choice, Opera – August 2015 A few years ago I welcomed unreservedly the revelatory recording of Leonardo Vinci’s late opera Artaserse (Virgin 6028692) as an undiscovered masterpiece. Featuring a stellar line-up of no less than five countertenors (thanks to prudish Roman fashions, the women’s parts too were written for men), the opera, composed in the high-Neapolitan gallant style is a glorious succession of imaginatively scored virtuosic arias with no duds and plenty of hummable tunes. With the same cast bar one, this DVD is in some ways even better as the confusion between who is singing what, when so many roles are sung in falsetto, is no longer an issue. Artaserse was one of the hit libretti of the period, set by everyone who was anyone, but Vinci’s is rather special. The villainous vizier (Artabano) has killed his king letting suspicion fall upon his own son (Arbace), best friend to the new king (Artaserse). When Arbace won’t dob on dad, a tangled web of blame and deceit ensues before all comes good in a magnanimous finale involving a poisoned chalice. Silviu Purca˘rete’s production is the campest thing you’ll see this side of Eurovision, with costumes that would make Cinderella’s…

There is something special about the blend of voices among family members – witness the Everlys or the McGarrigals in the pop world  – but there are few instances that exist in the field of classical music. German father and son team Christoph and Julian Prégardien, however, are two exceptional tenors in their own right and have been performing duets over recent years. Now they have taken their popular recitals with pianist Michael Gees into the studio for the Dutch label Challenge Classics. The result, Father and Son, is an entertaining collection of curiosities and rearrangements of what some may consider to be sacred cows. The arrangements, mostly by Julian Prégardien and Gees, include 12 Schubert songs and were the product of rehearsals followed by in-the-moment improvisations, much like you would hear in a folk club. This, they argue, is in the spirit of contemporary accounts of the original Schubertiade evenings. The Goethe setting Der Erlkönig divides logically into the two roles of the night-riding father and the son who dies in his arms. Other songs sit less comfortably as duets, for this listener at least, although the Prégardiens and Gees perform them all impeccably. Two little-known German composers are…

A wonderful mixture of power, passion, beauty and expressive intensity, the distinguished Bulgarian-born bass, Nicolai Ghiaurov was a fine exponent of many aspects of opera and song, not least the Italian and French schools. He and his second wife, the great Mirella Freni, made a formidable operatic duo. Now dead for over a decade it is timely that Decca honour Ghiaurov with this generous and varied survey of his work in the field of Russian music. In the operatic realm, we have a selection of important arias sung with the London Symphony under Sir Edward Downes. Ghiaurov presents impressive characterisations in roles from Eugene Onegin, Prince Igor and most notably Boris Godunov, for which he became particularly famous.  A selection of songs by Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Glinka, Rubinstein, and the now-forgotten Dargomyzhsky, shows the singer to be capable of great warmth and intimacy, especially in favourites such as None but the Lonely Heart and Rubinstein’s Melody. Ten folksongs performed with the Kavel Orchestra and Chorus under Atanas Margaritov are a welcome reminder of the other side of Russian music which Ghiaurov obviously enjoyed. The lusty singing of the male chorus together with a band that includes accordions and balalaikas make for…

This offering of Tallis’s motets reflects the changing demands on composers during the English Reformation. Henry VIII’s spurning of Catholicism in 1534, along with the taste of the early Reformation leader Thomas Cranmer, had a handsome effect on the composition of sacred vocal music. A syllabic, non-melismatic approach to word-setting was favoured – a trend reflected here in the blazing Mass for Four Voices. This music is full of striking harmonic effects; false relations abound! The spidery conclusion of In Manus Tuas, Domine is deftly handled: artful elegance applied to such dissonances gives the ear time to absorb the harmonic logic. Occasional intonation slips are just noticeable: a sharp soprano in the opening notes of Wipe Away My Sins, reaffirms her sharp inclinations in the otherwise sublime Miserere Nostri. The Cardinall’s Musick takes a rather reserved approach to the music, utterly appropriate to the style. Well-judged, vigorous singing flares up in the Gloria from the Mass for Four Voices. In that work, incredibly stellar chordal writing is intelligently balanced: a clear hierarchy in chordal notes is reflected in the tuning and volume of each note. As though a road map is placed in front of the listener, each phrase is…

Kenneth Leighton came to prominence in the 1960s with a unique musical language that suited the times. His output had a ‘mod’ feel: edgy harmonies and propulsive rhythms seemed to proclaim a bold, new outlook that challenged both the musical and ecclesiastical status quo. Looking deeper we discover that Leighton’s music was anchored by a fair weight of musical history. Five years as a boy chorister at Wakefield Cathedral imbued him with a love of the Anglican tradition, whilst his later experience as a student of strict counterpoint, under the stern eye of his teacher Petrassi, ensured he knew what rules he was breaking. Stephen Layton and the Trinity choir have done a magnificent job in bringing out all the colour and drama of this selection of Leighton’s church music. Much of the disc has been recorded at Lincoln Cathedral where the weight of the organ adds to the intensity of the performances, even if it means some detail is blurred.  Crucifixus Pro Nobis is splendidly realised with superb attention to the text by Patrick Carey and Phineas Fletcher. Tenor Andrew Kennedy wrings all the pathos from the score providing some hair-raising moments which are worth the price of the…

Editor’s Choice, Vocal & Choral – August 2015 When one considers Franz Liszt’s rapacious appetite for poetic stimulation, the exalted literary circles in which he moved and his inexhaustible creative drive, it should come as no surprise that he composed over 70 songs, although only a handful will be familiar to most lieder-philes. That may change thanks to this third volume of Hyperion’s latest project in the label’s seeming aim to record the entire art-song repertoire and the bringing on board of Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley will broaden its appeal.  The album spans some 50 years of Liszt’s career and demonstrates his wide ranging polyglot tastes and searching intellectual curiosity for source material. His harmonic and formal invention can veer from the exploratory to the mundane, but when taken on its own terms and delivered with this level of dramatic intensity it makes for a haunting 75 minutes.  Finley takes these songs by the scruff of the neck and gives them all the dramatic gesture and flair he can muster. The Petrarch Sonnets are here, but heard in the substantially revised second edition for low voice, their austere profile casting a darker shadow than the familiar soaring soprano version. The…

This latest album of Philip Glass piano music is a desperately poor effort from a pianist who apparently thinks that pressing down notes in the right order constitutes an interpretation. Never mind the specifics of the cultural milieu that helped create this music. Don’t bother listening to other pianists – musicians who have worked with Glass or indeed the composer’s own recordings. People who know stuff? What have they got to say that might be remotely useful? As in her earlier album of music by the British composer Michael Nyman, Valentina Lisitsa has assembled a grab-bag of Glass film scores – from The Truman Show, The Hours, Mishima and The Olympian – and her strategy is to wrap these already candy-sweet scores inside a lasagne of tinsel. Which is not to say that she puts a technical finger wrong. Inner parts are balanced; harmonic ambiguities are allowed to speak. No, the problem lies in her decorative and ambient touch, which reduces the music to inert patterning. The brief spans of most of these picture-postcard vignettes means that your irritation is generally only momentary. But her hapless attempt to sustain the 30-minute generative structure of Glass’s 1968 How Now – one of his trail-blazing,…

Javad Maroufi is credited as one of the first composers of piano music in Persia and is renowned for his significant contribution to Persian classical music. Inspired by their common heritage, Australian-Persian pianist Amir Farid has long been familiar with the composer’s work – indeed, Maroufi’s compositions were some of the first that Farid performed in public as a child. It’s fitting then that Maroufi’s body of work forms the basis of his wonderful second solo album. The pieces on this disc fuse the Western language of Chopin with the modal folk melodies of Persia, resulting in a journey through a collection of deceptively simple piano works. The Preludes in particular pay homage to Maroufi’s Polish counterpart. Farid is the perfect interpreter of these tiny gems. One technical trial is the use of a rapid right-hand tremolo, imitating the sound of the Santur, a Persian dulcimer. Farid sustains these rollicking repeated notes with an almost vocal quality. The melodic lines require rapid embellishments, which Maroufi allows the performer to add at their discretion. It’s through these subtle inferences that Farid demonstrates his intimate understanding while getting a chance to show his virtuosic chops in the demanding Charagh-e-Esfahan. If there is…

Paganimania is a collection of newly commissioned works for piano by seven contemporary composers. Their brief? Take Paganini’s 24th Caprice for solo violin and use it as the basis of a new composition. This project was the brainchild of Christopher Janwong McKiggan, an English-born pianist currently resident in the US and completing a doctorate at Rice University, Texas. It has produced some spectacular results, and McKiggan’s playing is uniformly commanding. Robert Beaser’s Pag Rag teases out American Rag-influences with lyrical and rhythmic panache, while James Mobberley’s Capricious Invariance gently unfolds into cascades of colour with hints of fugues. Scène V by Moon Young Ha is meditative and expansive, allowing the resonant qualities of each note/chord to radiate outward in space. On this topic, it’s a good point at which to note that Paganimania is particularly well-recorded with the rich, warm tones of McKiggan’s piano hanging reverberantly in the air. Other highlights include Zhou Jing’s Jade Clappers, a meditation on cross-cultural intersections between China and Europe through the Tai Ping Ge Ci music that, to her ears, is reminiscent of Paganini’s Caprice. Thai composer Narong Prangcharoen’s Pact Ink is fast, furious and captivating. As a pianist actively commissioning new works McKiggan…

Music inspired by the atrocities of the 20th century perhaps took a while to reach their peak with Britten’s magisterial War Requiem in the early 1960s, but with the centenary of the battle of Gallipoli this year, there has been a plethora of recordings of music inspired by the horrors of World War I. Some have been more successful than others but I’m glad to state that this new Melba release by the very fine Melbourne-raised and Juiliard-trained pianist Benjamin Martin, must immediately take its place at the top of the pile. There is something quite unique about this disc, which presents a well selected programme of solo piano music by a group of fine orchestral English composers whom we we do not initially associate with the solo keyboard (Bax, Vaughan Williams, Bridge and Delius), immaculately played and intimately performed by Martin. All of this music ranks amongst the earliest inspired by the Great War – all of it being written during the 1920s and all of it is as equally affecting as the best of the period’s song cycles. Perhaps the finest work lies with Vaughan Williams’ Prelude after a piece by Orlando Gibbons, dovetailing English music across the…

How can a miniaturist have delusions of grandeur? The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) showed the way. Overwhelmingly a writer for the piano, Scriabin modeled his early works on Chopin, and adopted the Polish master’s forms: etudes, preludes, nocturnes, scherzos, waltzes and mazurkas. He also wrote ten piano sonatas, along with three symphonies and a few other orchestral works, but no opera and very little vocal or chamber music.  As he matured, Scriabin stretched the boundaries of chromatic harmony. His late miniatures such as the ‘poème’ Vers la Flamme of 1914 are practically atonal. In his final years he assumed a messianic self-regard, conceiving of a vast musical event complete with light shows and massed choirs. For a short time Scriabin was thought to represent the future of serious music. He certainly thought so, but did not live long enough to see the post-war abandonment of Romanticism. A hundred years after his death we are in a position to revisit his work without the mystical-philosophical baggage, and to appreciate its exquisite craftsmanship. These 18 discs cover everything: all the piano music from a Waltz Op. 1 to Five Preludes Op. 74, and many works without opus numbers. Vladimir Ashkenazy, who…

Astonishingly, the Belgian composer, organist and pianist Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) entered the Liège Conservatoire at the age of just eight. So one can imagine the gifts bestowed upon a musician who was at one time considered the greatest living Belgian composer and who is today chiefly remembered for his organ music. This is Volume 85 in Phaedra’s In Flanders’ Fields series, which aims to give listeners some idea of the richness and beauty of Flemish and Belgian classical music, past and present, performed by Flemish musicians. According to Phaedra’s website, the enterprising Flemish label wants to shine “a light on music by composers from the Low Countries, especially from Flanders and Wallonia… to save them from indifference and oblivion.”  Here the spotlight is on Jongen’s chamber music for winds, with and without piano. The earliest work is the Lied for horn and piano; the most mature, the Concerto, Op. 124 for woodwind quintet (1942). 5 Beaufort (the Brussels Woodwind Quintet), which comprises players from the National Orchestra of Belgium, and Belgian pianist Hans Ryckelynck, choose however to open with the uncharacteristically modernist Rhapsodie, Op. 70 for woodwind quintet and piano (1922). The remaining works are an attractive blend of Saxon late-Romanticism…