Back in 2102, Austrian baritone Florian Boesch and pianist Malcolm Martineau gave us a searingly intense Winterreise. Hot on its heels comes Wilhelm Müller’s prequel, Die schöne Müllerin, and anyone expecting a gentle ramble beside a chattering brook had better look elsewhere.  Once again, Boesch and Martineau demonstrate how deeply one can peer into dark waters with an interpretation that’s mercurial, febrile and ecstatic by turns. The setting off is full of jauntiness – this miller is determined to find romance, come what may. Boesch wields his light baritone to great effect, toying with words and notes. Martineau’s outburst into Halt!, is the first sign that all is not well – this young man is likely to crash and burn – and the way Boesch twists the phrase “the darling girl wishes everyone goodnight” in Am Feierabend (when clearly she is meant to except the miller from her farewells) proves it. It’s a true partnership as each takes turns to play the subtext, whether musical or literary. Listen to Martineau’s staggering left hand in Ungeduld against stabbing quavers in the right – I’ve never heard it so unhinged – the music says what the words hint at. In other places…

Goldner and Lane turn in fine performances and provide a refreshing change from the standard classics.

Although Gluck’s Orfeo of 1762 was his big reform statement, by that time the composer had spent a fair few decades committing the very sins that he so clearly wanted to stamp out. La Clemenza di Tito, a setting of the same Metastasio libretto that Mozart would prune for his own version, was in fact Gluck’s 16th opera out of around 30 that preceded Orfeo! The plot is familiar from the Mozart, as are many of the arias (it’s fascinating to hear another master try his hand at Parto, parto). Many features of the mature Gluck are in evidence, immaculate orchestration; musical invention; a sure sense of dramatic progression. Where Gluck falls down is a tendency to long-windedness – this is close on four hours of opera. L’Arte del Mondo play modern instruments in period style and Werner Ehrhardt is adept at keeping everything moving, while bringing out Gluck’s colours and ensuring recitatives are engaging. His cast is mostly excellent. Rainer Trost makes a firm-voiced, if occasionally stretched Tito while Laura Aikin is thrilling as the scheming Vitellia. As befits the central role of the conflicted Sesto, Raffaella Milanesi is the finest here, singing with ardent tone. Arantza Ezenarro makes…

This set is a representative tribute to a much-loved and exceptionally fine lyric soprano.

As one of Les Six, Poulenc was acutely aware of modern trends. His mélodies (French Art Songs) set poets like Apollinaire, Éluard and Aragon; the voices of 20th-century French feeling. This charming collection reveals Poulenc as a master craftsman for the voice, affirming his position as heir to the French Art Song tradition, after Fauré and Debussy. His melodic lines are gracefully uncomplicated, and feature a delicate lyricism with a popular edge.  Belgian soprano Sophie Karthäuser is the charismatic chanteuse whose voice fills this parlour of musical delights. Her performance pedigree is impressive: she has sung Classical and Baroque roles under conductors such as Chailly, Gardiner and Christie. Her voice is sumptuous on this disc, gliding effortlessly through Poulenc’s long, sensuous phrases with a casual elegance. It is never overdone, and features all the nuance and variation of colour required in a diverse set of songs. She inhabits the character of each poem, employing theatrical touches and vocal shading to convey the narrative of each. Poulenc’s music is quintessentially French, and embraces a more contemporary world than some. Works like Voyage à Paris are fit for the dreamy atmosphere of the cafés and salons of 20th-century Paris. Others have a…

In this thoughtful and measured recital, French pianist Bertrand Chamayou gives evocative accounts of a wide range of Schubert pieces. In the liner notes, Chamayou suggests that the album is “a kind of imaginary recital programme, along the lines of a concert that could have been heard in Vienna at the beginning of the Romantic period, in the cosy and intimate atmosphere of a salon… but which, for various historical reasons, could not have happened in this form”. While several other pianists have used the idea of a Schubertiade as inspiration for recital programming, the anachronistic inclusion of arrangements and transcriptions by Liszt and Richard Strauss make this a performance to remember, and prove that Chamayou has put a considerable amount of thought into this CD. At its heart is a strong performance of the Wanderer-Fantasie, a work that Chamayou infuses with a crucial sense of interconnection between the movements. It’s particularly important here, as the whole work is built on a motif taken from Schubert’s lied Der Wanderer, and that vital link is neatly highlighted.  The other major works on the disc include the late Drei Klavierstücke D946, and the delightful 12 Ländler D790. The Klavierstücke were written within…

Zoltán Kodály’s reputation as a composer has usually taken a back seat to his ethnomusicology and pedagogical innovations, so although his music may lack the searching modernist abstraction of his colleague Bartók, it compensates with an authentic piquant flavour. These quartets are early works but Kodály’s character already comes through even in the first quartet where his Parisian training is obvious in the harmonic language – the melodic shapes and rhythms clearly hail from the Hungarian plain. It’s a lengthy work with weighty aspirations that doesn’t always convince but its Presto is a fun turn. The second quartet is a concise, pithy work with a more intense demeanour. Each of its three movements has a distinct flavour profile and pays off with an exciting finale full of stamping folk rhythms alternating with mysterious “night music” episodes; this is a work that should be programmed more often. Sandwiched between are two miniatures; an attractive Intermezzo for string trio and a quirky little Gavotte from 1952. The Dante Quartet play with warm devotion and a vehement intensity bolstered by technical security. Forget about national stereotypes; their bold attack and wide tonal palette allow them to sound “to the manner born” and there…

Italian period band Concerto Italiano continue their stylish survey of Vivaldi’s small yet perfectly formed string concertos with this second volume in Naïve’s monumental Vivaldi Edition. But has their normally iconoclastic director erred on the side of caution? In the booklet notes Alessandrini makes useful observations about these tiny concertos sans soloists, each of which lasts no more than four minutes. There are lots of them, but nobody knows what they were used for – though they claim kinship with Vivaldi’s operatic overtures. They take an idea and develop it through “predictable harmonic sequences”. They employ dance forms such as the gigue, fugal textures and “a certain carefree joy in the motor rhythms of long semiquaver passages”. As all are in four parts, their “chamber music idiom also lends itself to one instrument per part”. The music is wonderful, with Vivaldi showing his usual knack for getting the most out of a single idea, and Alessandrini’s sure direction moves it at a cracking pace with no loss of clarity. It’s only when you compare it with the far more colourful and exciting ones by Adrian Chandler and La Serenissima for Avie or Andrea Marcon and the Venice Baroque Orchestra for…

The opening chords to Mendelssohn’s Ruy Blas Overture are some of the most ominous in all Romantic music, and Riccardo Chailly gives them the works in this spirited new recording with the composer’s own orchestra from the Leipzig Gewandhaus.  Great stuff, and the five selections from A Midsummer Night’s Dream that follow continue the take-no-prisoners approach. Chailly’s well known for his late-Romantic extravaganzas but it’s in this smaller, earlier Romantic repertoire that his natural flair and ability to expand musical ideas from within is best demonstrated. This is big, in-your-face Mendelssohn, with the scherzo less elfin and more goblin-esque than usual, while any couple using this lively reading of the Wedding March on their big day better be wearing track shoes to keep up.  Mendelssohn’s Piano Concertos, featuring Saleem Ashkar are similarly meaty, the First starting off with such energy that it’s as if the music’s already built up a head of steam before the Record button was pressed. Ashkar gives it lots of razzle-dazzle, although some detail gets lost in the more intricate passages with the balance a little too much in favour of the super-charged orchestra. The Second Concerto isn’t so well known, but such is the full-blooded…

That enfant terrible of the opera stage Calixto Bieito must be mellowing in his middle age – either that or we have become numbed to the edgy Spanish director’s naughty ways. How else to explain why his take on Mussorgsky’s masterpiece Boris Godunov has less shock value than your average episode of Midsomer Murders? True he does have the Simpleton shot by a teenage girl, not to mention one of the crowd beaten to a pulp – oh and in Boris’s great death scene the pretender Dmitri strangles Xenia and suffocates the Tsarevich Fyodor.   This Bayerische Staatsoper production is set in recent times. We know this because the chorus hold up posters of Putin, Bush, Sarkozy and Berlusconi. Bieito ditches the third act but strangely this causes little collateral damage. That’s because Bieito has a trump card in 38-year-old Ukrainian bass Alexander Tsymbalyuk, who is undoubtedly on the verge of a stellar career. He has everything – good looks, dramatic nous and a gorgeous voice that has delicacy as well as power. He’s backed by a first-class cast including Anatoli Kotscherga as Pimen and Vladimir Matorin who makes a good Varlaam, looking uncannily like the famous portrait of the…

Thomas Tallis was destined, as the old Chinese curse puts it, to live in interesting times. Luckily, for him and for us, he defied fate and kept his head joined to the rest of his body through many of England’s religious troubles. Andrew Carwood and his expert singers have produced an engaging program of works that reflect both the liturgical and musical diversity of the period.  At the centre of this disc is the imposing seven-voice Missa Puer natus est, which seems to have been written in the reign of Mary Tudor. While being based on the cantus firmus of the plainsong introit for Christmas, its lack of a high treble part and solo sections attest to the composer’s ability to adapt his craft to available forces (in this case, Philip II’s Chapel Royal).  On the other side of the ecclesiastical ledger, we are given a sonorous setting for lower voices of the Benedictus (Blessed be the Lord God of Israel) to be sung at Mattins according to Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. A Latin Magnificat (probably Tallis’s earliest surviving work) makes a fascinating contrast not only with the plainer English setting but with his later Catholic works. Two well…

It was a strange prospect to say the least; the whole of Debussy’s La mer (not to mention various Ravel orchestral works) on the organ. Even as an organist, I wondered whether there could be a transcriber, a player and an instrument to do due honour to such richly detailed and subtly orchestrated scores. Gunnar Idenstam, a Swedish concert organist and composer certainly gives it his best shot.  The organ of St Martin’s, Dudelange, Luxembourg is an excellent choice with its synthesis of the best of the French, German and English schools of organbuilding. The spatial disposition of the four-manuals in the clear but reverberant acoustic allows the all-important sense of orchestral background and foreground to be recreated.  Idenstam brings an excellent technique and a generous sense of drama to the task at hand. While the Debussy has many exciting moments, I couldn’t help feeling that in attempting to reflect the changing orchestration of the original somehow the transcription lacked cohesion and instead of a unified musical tableau I was listening to a succession of colourful moments. The shorter Ravel works fared better. Pavane pour une infante défunte is particularly effective and La valse along with two of the Valses…