CD and Other Review

Review: In The Night (Stephen Hough)

Lately Stephen Hough has become more interested in compiling themed programs from various sources than producing single-composer discs. Fortunately his standing as a musician allows him to do so, and the results are always illuminating and satisfying. This new recital of nocturnally inclined works proves no exception. While French pieces are left out altogether (such as perhaps Ravel’s Gaspard de la Nuit or Fauré’s Nocturnes), what is here is well chosen. Schumann provides the major part of the program, which opens with In der Nacht from his Fantasiestücke Op. 12. This turbulent nightscape is perfectly rendered. As ever, Hough’s technical assurance allows him to focus on conveying the meaning of the music, both in its pictorial aspect (a stormy night wind over the ocean) and concomitant emotional state. Both go hand in hand so closely in Schumann. Balancing this piece is the suite Carnaval, where Schumann presents a series of character studies as though seen at a masked ball (which would take place at night, of course). The 21 fleeting studies cover a variety of moods, but the overall impression is one of unbridled passion. Markings such as Vivo, Passionato, Anime and Presto abound. The challenges are many: specific character has…

October 19, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Handel: The Eight Great Suites (Driver)

I first made the acquaintance of Handel’s harpsichord music through the medium of guitar duet. “Just listen to this,” a friend said, handing me a record of the G Major Chaconne as arranged and performed by legendary husband and wife duo Alexandre Lagoya and Ida Presti. It was a revelation. Since then I’ve heard Handel’s so-called Eight Great Suites (1720), to which Danny Driver has added for this recording the aforementioned Chaconne as well as two additional suites in C Minor and E Minor, played on harpsichord and piano by such luminaries as Sviatoslav Richter and Andrei Gavrilov, Laurence Cummings and Richard Egarr. Those of a less completist bent included Murray Perahia and Keith Jarrett.  All, I felt, had something individual to say. But the question remained: did Handel’s music benefit more from the overtone-laden sonority of the plucked harpsichord or the pedaled richness and dynamically-shaded clarity of the hammered piano? Frankly it depends on who’s driving (pardon the pun), and with Danny Driver at the wheel you’d swear they had been composed for the piano. Handel’s suites show enormous variety, boasting variations on the French dance suite, the four-movement sonata da chiesa, improvisatory preludes, rigorous fugues and sets of…

October 15, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Bartók: Chamber Music for Violin Vol 3 (Ehnes, Armstrong)

After the more serious material of the first two volumes, James Ehnes finishes his survey of Bartók’s chamber music for violin on an entertaining note. Here’s the Hungarian master in unbuttoned mood, tapping into the rich folk traditions of his native lands alongside his move to America and his flirtation with jazz. Contrasts was written for Benny Goodman and violinist Joseph Szigeti in 1938. It was one of the first pieces Bartók wrote in America. The music includes complex Bulgarian dance rhythms as well as recognising Goodman’s jazz heritage. The piece features top clarinetist, Michael Collins and pianist Andrew Armstrong. The charming Sonatina, based on Transylvanian folk themes, was originally composed for solo piano until 10 years later a student, Endre Gertler, brought Bartók a solo violin transcription. Bartók told Gertler that he’d wished he written it for fiddle in the first place.  For the Forty-Four Duos – bite-sized colourful slices of folk music from the Balkans – Ehnes is joined by Amy Schwartz Moretti. Few of these pieces last a minute, except for the lovely prelude and canon. Some tunes will be familiar in other settings but played by two duelling violins they make for a spicy and entertaining…

October 9, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Mahler: Symphony No 5 (Leipzig Gewandhaus)

Riccardo Chailly’s way with Mahler is a known quantity thanks to his superb CD cycle with the Royal Concertgebouw, probably the most recommendable complete set with magnificent orchestral playing and stunning sound. He occupies a pragmatic middle ground between the two schools of Mahler style; the classically restrained, if sometimes dull, with the emphasis on structural logic versus the wildly emotive, if self-indulgent, with live-for the-moment thrills and spills. His acute ear for sonority reflects his progressive tendencies but his old school operatic training is evident with his projection of a singing line and careful dramatic pacing. Since moving to Leipzig he seems to have refined his approach to suit the different character of his orchestra with its dark hued strings, mittel-Europa wind timbres and gleaming brass.  The mark of a great orchestra is the quality and focus of playing at the lowest dynamic levels – listen to the closing moments of the Adagietto; the strings fading to the merest whisper yet still perfectly blended together like a delicate silken thread. Chailly’s ability to clarify telling details is typified by the empty rattle of hard-stick timpani strokes in the opening funeral march that are so often lost in the mix….

October 2, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Dutilleux: Orchestral, chamber and vocal music

Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) had a long and productive life but worked in a slow, meticulous manner, which explains why this almost complete edition of his music only runs to six CDs. Missing is an immature ballet score Le Loup (The Wolf). Georges Prêtre recorded excerpts from it in the 1960s for EMI but evidently Universal was unable to license them, even though this set contains recordings from several diverse sources. The bulk of Dutilleux’s oeuvre is represented here – from his early Symphony No 1 and Piano Sonata of 1947/48 to his final orchestral work The Shadows of Time and Le Temps l’Horloge, an orchestral song cycle completed in 2009 and dedicated to soprano Renée Fleming (who sings it here). Because of Dutilleux’s magnificent sonic imagination and perfectionist attitude, every piece in this set is significant. The major large-scale works are his two symphonies – the Second (Le double), is more of a concerto grosso – and his concertos for violin and cello. The First Symphony (1951) emerges from the world of Roussel and Honegger, yet the composer’s fastidiousness is evident in the carefully balanced textures and succinct musical argument. (These traits would become even more pronounced.) Martinon conducts the…

September 25, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Blomstedt: The San Francisco Years

The Swedish conductor Herbert Blomstedt came to San Francisco in 1985, following a decade with the Dresden Staatskapelle. Although Blomstedt lacked a marketable outgoing personality, he was in the right place at the right time. A contract was signed with Decca, and here are many of the memorable results, recorded between 1988 and 1995.  Blomstedt brought the central European repertoire back to the orchestra, and the set includes Beethoven, Bruckner, Mahler and Brahms. These discs reveal a clear, lithe orchestral sound. SFS was light on its feet compared to its rival in Chicago, and in many ways better suited to recording.  Blomstedt’s performances are not eccentric, but neither are they dull. Lively versions of Mendelssohn’s Scotch and Italian symphonies are here, and a terrific selection of Hindemith. He excelled in Scandinavian repertoire, so we have the complete Peer Gynt, Symphonies 2 and 3 from his excellent Nielsen set, and two delightful symphonies by the under-appreciated Berwald. From his Sibelius survey we get the First and Seventh Symphonies, plus Tapiola. (Many of these well-filled discs last over 80 minutes.) Rarities include works by Brahms for choir and orchestra, coupled with the Alto Rhapsody meltingly sung by Jard van Nes. Sound quality…

September 15, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Pepe Romero: Master of the Guitar

In a career that’s lasted more than half a century, Pepe Romero has proven himself to be an important part of the classical guitar’s 20th-century revival. With a prodigious, flamenco-based technique, his intense and raw performances are celebrated here in a generous 11CD box set, covering the greater part of the Spanish guitar repertoire.  If you’re looking for the less Spanish-influenced music that was to appear in the guitar repertoire in the 1960s and 70s (Britten’s Nocturnal, perhaps?), then this definitely isn’t the place. A solid five CDs here are devoted to the guitar repertoire from Spain, but then again Romero’s at his very best in repertoire that’s written in a modern, yet lyrical style. He particularly shines here in performances of the music of Joaquín Rodrigo and Federico Moreno-Torroba, and it’s refreshing that it’s not only these composers’ big hits that are included. Of especial note is Rodrigo’s Invocación y Danza, perhaps his greatest composition. It’s written in an entirely different style to his sunny concertos, and is instead a dark and almost destructively powerful rumination on the music of fellow Spaniard Manuel de Falla. Romero’s performance here is stirring stuff indeed, showing the guitar in its best light. Other…

September 8, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Mendelssohn: String Quartets (Artemis Quartet)

Mendelssohn’s six string quartets don’t get the airplay they deserve, being overshadowed by Beethoven and Schubert’s. There are plenty of recordings out there, but few to rival this new double disc from Berlin’s Artemis Quartet, which has established itself as a leader among the new generation of ensembles. Formed 18 years ago, they have built a strong following wherever they’ve played – including tours here with Musica Viva. Natalia Prischepenko left last year and this is our first chance to hear the Artemis with their new leader, Latvian violinist Vineta Sareika. I can tell you that this stunningly good band – Gregor Sigl, violin, Friedemann Weigle, viola, and Eckart Runge, cello – has lost nothing in the transition. Their authority and musicality are intact and they still have that chemistry that makes them so special. They’ve chosen works from three periods of Mendelssohn’s short career. The Op 13, his second quartet, was written in 1827 when he was 18 and is a memorial to Beethoven, being inspired by the great Op 135 “muss es sein? (must it be?)”. Mendelssohn’s third quartet, is the composer at his sunniest and its blue skies first movement makes the perfect opening. The final quartet is a grief-stricken…

September 1, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos 3 & 7

Prokofiev’s rarely performed Third Symphony (Mackerras performed it with the Sydney Symphony in 1977) is the symphonic equivalent of Almodóvar’s Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown. I enjoyed it more than I expected to.  Based on ideas from his opera The Fiery Angel, about religious hysteria, it’s nowhere near as maniacal as the Second Symphony but the frenzy is still just beneath the surface. It’s a tour de force the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra carry off with aplomb under their Ukrainian chief Kirill Karabits, illustrating the galvanic effect he’s having in that haven of gentility on England’s South Coast.  The Seventh Symphony (Prokofiev’s swansong) Karabits describes as “tragic”. I think his conducting is more convincing than his commentary, as the work was composed for young audiences! It’s cool, enigmatic, almost elegant in parts, “late night” Prokofiev, if you like, occupying the same sound world as Cinderella. His reading is certainly darker than either André Previn’s 1970s LSO one, or Nicolai Malko’s pioneering Philharmonia recording made a few years after the composer’s death in 1953. Karabits solves the “problem” of the alternative endings by recording both: the original was a subdued “leave taking” but the ever vigilant “authorities” demanded something…

August 28, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: The Film Music of Miklós Rózsa

It wasn’t until the 1940s when émigré composers from Central Europe began working in the UK and Hollywood, that film music came of age. Top of the heap, alongside Korngold, was the Hungarian, Miklós Rózsa. The oriental element that assisted the exotic flavour in his music, comes from his Magyar heritage. It came naturally to him (as it did his colleagues, Bartók and Kodály) and didn’t have to be concocted.  The Jungle Book and The Thief of Bagdad both benefit from this influence. These scores for Alexander Korda set him on the road to fortune, especially when war broke out in 1939 and Korda decided to finish The Thief of Bagdad in Hollywood. Rózsa never went back. Sahara was made for David O. Selznick during a time when the composer was freelancing and deals with a tank chase across the Sahara. The late Christopher Palmer made this arrangement of the score. Rózsa’s music for Ben Hur is generally regarded as his magnum opus; the lavish and hugely impressive score developed a life of its own shortly after the film was released in 1959. Rumba Gamba has been making some excellent recordings in recent years. Although well played, this recording is…

August 21, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: István Kertész: The London Years

The youthful conductor István Kertész had worked mainly in provincial Hungary when he made his first recording for Decca in 1961, but his reputation was rising rapidly. Everyone responded to the freshness of his music making. His musical memory was acute: he was reputed to learn scores for the first time on the plane on his way to rehearsal. He was booked to do Elgar’s First Symphony for his recording debut with the London Symphony Orchestra, but on the strength of his success in a concert with Dvorák’s Eighth, the plans changed. Eventually he recorded all of Dvorák’s symphonies, and much else, with the LSO. Kertész would have cemented his international standing but for the intervention of fate: he drowned in the Mediterranean while on holiday in 1973, at the age of 43. The recordings with the London Symphony form the bulk of his legacy, and many of the best are included here. Dvorák is represented by the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, some tone poems and the Requiem. A great recording of Bartók’s dark and gloomy opera Bluebeard’s Castle with Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry is also here (sung in Hungarian). One of his most exciting early recordings was of…

August 20, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: The Hilary Hahn Encores

It’s always a burning question. When the performer walks back on stage, what encore will she play? Something slow and meditative, like Bach, or maybe flashy Paganini at breakneck speed? Encore pieces are a revered repertory, which according to Hilary Hahn were “shaped by the performers who preceded us”. So, this stellar violin virtuoso has asked a different question: what should today’s encores sound like? Her answer came in an ambitious project: commissioning 26 composers to write encore pieces, plus holding an open competition to find a 27th. The result is a ripper, two-disc compilation with one of the most profoundly contrasting arrays of compositional style and language you could imagine. You’ll find older, more established writers, like Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara, with newer voices thrown into the mix. Each piece explores a different sound world, and posits a unique idea of what an encore should do. Some works are slow, lyrical and open, others fast, dissonant, and impossibly demanding when it comes to technique and flair. Everyone will have a favourite, but Israeli composer Avner Dorman’s Memory Games is an outright thrill to listen to.  Hahn’s performance is stunning in every encore. She is often lauded for her rich tone…

August 19, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Beethoven: Symphonies 1 & 7 (Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal)

Kent Nagano’s ongoing Beethoven recording project is one of the most underrated cycles in the current catalogue and this latest release of Symphonies Nos 1 and 7 again proves the point. As with the previous symphonies (Nos 3, 5, 6, 8 and 9), this ‘Departure – Utopia’ (each installment bears a literary title) has all the dynamic contrasts and tempo changes that one would expect from a project that aims to reveal Beethoven the Revolutionary. But unlike so many other Beethoven re-interpreters who accentuate dynamic contrasts and tempo changes, Nagano never lapses into affectation or sensationalism. Instead, he gets his Montreal Orchestra up on its toes, like a middleweight ducking and weaving while unleashing rat-a-tat volleys that rarely miss. Take the finale of No 1, for instance, which starts so hesitantly that you think it’s a mistake, before that blisteringly quick tempo of the main theme suddenly takes off with such precision of articulation that you have to marvel that somehow it’s completely virtuosic without ever drawing obvious attention to that fact. The reason is that there’s deep thought behind it all, the intellectual rigour never weighing it down but only serving to heighten the musical assurance – the sure-footedness…

August 16, 2014