CD and Other Review

Review: Beethoven: Piano Trios (Melnikov, Faust, Queyras)

In the same month as this disc was recorded Harmonia Mundi were adding the finishing touches to an eagerly awaited complete recording of the Beethoven Piano Trios by Trio Wanderer – a magnificent achievement that went straight to the top of the list of complete sets. Apart from explaining the delay issuing the disc under review, I wonder whether the conflict of repertoire influenced the decision to record in period style with an original fortepiano or if it was a purely artistic decision, either way I’m not sure the choice was 100% right.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am not averse to period instrument performance in this repertoire and the players here are three of the finest of their generation. A few years ago Melnikov and Faust recorded a stunning set of Beethoven’s Violin Sonatas on modern instruments, performed with incredible expressive intensity and hyper-alert intelligence, with Melnikov’s transcendental virtuosity allowing him free reign to colour and shape each note. Here his voice is muted by the dynamic restrictions of the fortepiano and one gets a sense that Faust and Queyras are constantly having to pull back to blend. That said, the fortepiano, a restored Alois Graf from 1828,…

June 15, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Zemlinsky: Symphonies (BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Brabbins)

Anyone expecting the chromatic, expressionist post-Mahlerian idiom of Zemlinsky’s mature works will be surprised. As Fiona Maddox wrote in The Guardian: “At the stage when these early works were composed, Zemlinsky occupied a crevice between Brahms and Mahler.” He never crossed the musical Rubicon into atonality like Schoenberg (his brother-in-law) or Berg and Webern, but here the “Brahmsian” influence is more apparent than any nod to modernity. Both works were composed in the 1890s but the conservatism of both is in striking contrast to the sheer genius of Mahler’s First Symphony, written years earlier. Both symphonies are essentially genial and life-affirming and seem to lack any sense of struggle between orthodoxy and radicalism, personal or creative. With the First, you’d think you were listening to Max Bruch or Stanford/Parry. The Second is the longer and more ambitious, with a sprawling first movement that, like the scherzo, slightly outstays its welcome. Its coda is reminiscent of middle period Dvorák. The slow movement is charming rather than dramatic and the finale is simply too discursive to have any real effect, with none of the drama of Brahms symphonic finales, especially the awesome passacaglia of the Fourth. These works are not tepid and…

June 12, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (Tonhalle Orchestra/Zinman)

The initial reviews of this final installment in David Zinman’s Mahler cycle with the Tonhalle Orchestra haven’t exactly been effusive, but they are wrong. From that hypnotic opening oboe melody through to the heartbreaking final bars, this is a reading of Mahler’s last-will-and-testament in vocal music whose understatement should never be misinterpreted as lack of engagement.  True, it doesn’t have the overt gnashing of teeth and beating of breast that Bernstein brings to it in his Desert Island classic, but it has something almost as good – a stillness and a poise suggestive of a composer on his way to the other side, delaying and delaying the inevitable, almost as if trying to change the subject.  And when the big tuttis are required, as they are for the first time in the second song (Der Einsame im Herbst), there’s plenty in reserve, both vocally with Susan Graham whose restraint up to that point is exemplary, and with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra who are surely now approaching the top echelons in European music-making. If there are quibbles to be had, they probably lie in the third song (Von der Jugend) where tenor Christian Elsner interprets the text’s pin-point specific imagery of…

June 12, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Gounod: Faust (Kaufmann, Metropolitan Opera/Nézet-Séguin)

Gounod’s Faust is the sort of opera that gives the genre a bad name. Its libretto is based on a play that takes Part 1 of Goethe’s original mystical morality tale and encrusts it with dowdy Victoriana and shifts the focus to the tortures inflicted on poor Marguerite whose eventual redemption hardly seems a fair consolation in today’s secular world; the lovely music coats a bitter pill that takes quite an effort to swallow.  Des McAnuff’s production attempts to restore some of the original’s dramatic gravitas by shifting the opening scene to the Los Alamos laboratories with Faust as a tortured atomic scientist. The arresting imagery during the overture gave an initial frisson so I looked forward to further clever analogies but apart from the obvious effects during the Walpurgisnacht they failed to materialise so the concept proved to be only half-baked. There were other fine visual moments such as the giant project images of Marguerite’s face but the unit set of Faust’s laboratory didn’t seem to be used to its full potential and my attention wandered.  Musically however, one couldn’t ask for more with a splendid cast of singing actors doing their best to sell the piece. Kaufmann is…

June 11, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Pergolesi: Vocal Works (Lezhneva, Jaroussky, I Barocchisti/Fasolis)

French producer, Alain Lanceron’s decision to bring together Julia Lezhneva and Philippe Jaroussky in a recording of Pergolesi seems like a match made in heaven. Both singers have wowed Australian audiences in recent times: Jaroussky with his voice of velvet and dashing good looks, and Lezhneva with her range, technical prowess and elegance.  The pair work particularly well together in the Stabat Mater where there are frequent opportunities to match vocal colour and intensity. They are well supported by Diego Fasolis and his band who reinforce the varying moods of the plangent text without taking away from the distinguished vocal contributions.  Grander in scale are the two psalm settings, Laudate pueri and Confitebor. These festive works with their writing for chorus and larger orchestra allow the soloists to present their more operatic credentials. The Laudate is a well chosen vehicle for Lezhneva’s talents, allowing her to display her skill in coloratura runs and ornamentation over a fairly wide vocal range. Her delicate but expressive instrument is still in an early stage of development, and I look forward to hearing her in these works as her career progresses and her voice matures. The Confitebor provides a jolly conclusion to this enjoyable…

June 11, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Widor: Organ Symphonies Nos 7 & 8 (Nolan)

This is volume four in Joseph Nolan’s widely acclaimed journey through the complete organ works of Charles-Marie Widor. The Perth organist’s high standards show no signs of slipping, with magnificent accounts of Symphonies Nos 7 and 8. Widor wrote these two symphonies between 1886 and 1887. These and the previous two (published 1879) comprise the composer’s Opus 42, which after its initial publication in 1887 was to go through a further five editions. Massive in their structure and conception, 7 and 8 are more consciously symphonic in a late-Romantic sense and less suite-like than some of the earlier symphonies. Nolan, formerly of Her Majesty’s Chapels Royal, St. James’ Palace and, Master of Music at St. George’s Cathedral Perth, was recently made Associate Conductor and Head of Chorus at WA Opera. It’s an appointment that will not only further his development, but allow him to exercise an aural imagination which thrives on maximising colour and texture in order to elucidate line and form – as he does here. Again playing the superb organ of La Madeleine in Paris, which has no less than 60 stops and 4426 pipes, Nolan bathes the dramatic opening Moderato of the A Minor Symphony No 7 in a stained…

June 11, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Elgar: Music for Powick Asylum (Innovation Ensemble/Collett)

The English label Somm has done sterling service exploring the lesser-known side of many British composers, not the least of which has been Edward Elgar – in particular early works and overlooked wartime compositions. This CD is about as early as it gets – music composed when he was bandmaster at Worcester’s County Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Powick – appointed at the tender age of 21. The majority of the disc is made up of Polkas, Lancers and Quadrilles, many of which are enigmatically named for ladies of Elgar’s acquaintance (obvious ones like Nelly (the composer’s fiancé and Maud, the local music-seller’s daughter, more mysterious ones like La Brunette and Die Junge Kokette). It’s charming stuff, not exactly a demanding listen, but atmospheric late-Victorian dance music in the Sullivan vein. The majority of the compositions were written for the inmates’ regular Friday night dances – a surprisingly enlightened form of music therapy for the time. In addition to the Powick music there are a few extra gems thrown in, chief of which is a delightful Andante and Allegro for Oboe and String Trio predating Elgar’s asylum years and written for the Worcester glee club and his brother Frank. Not essential listening, then, but…

June 11, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Pfitzner: Cello Concertos (Gerhardt, Berlin Royal SO/Weigle)

A mere five years younger than Richard Strauss, Hans Pfitzner has had a problematic history as Michael Kater has amply suggested in his books on music under the Third Reich. A Romantic conservative, Pfitzner remained firmly associated with the musical trends of his youth (Brahms and Schumann) and given his vacillating anti-Semitism, has remained persona non grata. His only regularly performed work has remained the opera Palestrina, its three Preludes with their scintillating use of age-old modes keeping his name alive within the orchestral repertoire. The three cello concertos are very attractive in their way but conservative in composition, and in all of them the soloist Alban Gerhardt, Sebastian Weigle and the ever reliable Berlin Radio Symphony are equally responsible for maintaining a perfect balance between the cello and its accompanying orchestral forces.  The opening concerto in A Minor is a student work criticised by his teachers and lost during his lifetime, only receiving its premiere in 1977. Perhaps the best of the works is the often delicate G Major concerto Op. 42 which was written for the virtuoso Cassado with assured writing that never drowns the soloist. There is an earlier CPO recording of these concerti with David Geringas…

June 11, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Bach: Easter Oratorio, Actus Tragicus (Monteverdi Choir/Gardiner)

Quite why the two works on this disc get fewer outings than some of the better-known passions and cantatas is a bit of a mystery. The Actus Tragicus is an early work, admittedly, but its craftsmanship and profound sense of musical communion (in this case an outpouring of grief, possibly connected to the death of a family member or friend) singles it out as one of Bach’s most touching essays in choral music. Scored for two recorders, a pair of violas da gamba and chamber organ, it has a gentle air of consolation captured perfectly in John Eliot Gardiner’s sympathetic reading and replicated in a near-ideal recording that brings out every detail of Bach’s youthful orchestration. Listen to the rapturous Es Ist Der Alte Bund where a solo soprano pleads over the chorus, Ja komm, Herr Jesu, komm, before breaking off heart-stoppingly, mid sentence – just one example of how Gardiner makes Bach strike home again and again. The so-called Easter Oratorio is the other work here and for interpretation and soloists goes to the top of my list – even beating Brüggen’s very fine recent version. Gardiner excels in the celebratory opening overture and chorus (stunning trumpets and drums) but…

June 11, 2014
CD and Other Review

Review: Rachmaninov: Complete Piano Music (Ashkenazy)

What is there to say about Ashkenazy’s Rachmaninov that has not already been said? As pianist and conductor he has been associated with this composer throughout his career, and on disc from his earliest recital. As a young award-winning pianist and well into middle age, Ashkenazy maintained the big technique necessary to play Rachmaninov (whose large hands could easily stretch a 15th at the piano), coupled with a thoughtful temperament that produced searching and highly musical performances with a lack of over-the-top flamboyance. It is this quality that has made Ashkenazy’s recordings ones to live with. This 11 CD set contains all the composer’s music for piano, two pianos, and piano and orchestra. He recorded some works more than once, so we find the Études Tableaux and the Corelli Variations from both 1974 and 1985/86 (for the former) and 2011 (for the latter). There is also a doubling up of the Suite No 1 for Two Pianos: we get the 1974 recording with Previn, and a later version with the pianist’s son Vovka. Yet strangely enough, Ashkenazy’s celebrated accounts of the piano concertos with Previn and the LSO are not included; instead, recordings with Haitink conducting the Concertgebouw take their…

June 11, 2014