I first encountered Matthias Goerne’s artistry 17 years ago with his first contribution to Hyperion’s landmark Schubert Edition; he opened with Lob der Tränen and one was bowled over by the sheer beauty of the voice with its velvet sheen and rich, dark colour. He was granted the honour of providing the edition’s Winterreise which was predictably excellent then jumped ship to Decca and for me the shine went off ever so slightly. His singing took on some mannerisms that started to pall with repetition; fussy micro-managed phrasing and a tendency to croon. Thankfully that turned out to be just a stage in his artistic development and with him signing to Harmonia Mundi for an 11 disc survey of Schubert Lieder those artifices have disappeared.  We live at a time when there is an extraordinary array of fine singers tackling this repertoire, but this series is something quite special; the overwhelmingly moving Die Schöne Mullerin from 2009 with Christoph Eschenbach’s magisterial accompaniment is one of my desert island discs and the very definition of the word Innigkeit.  This final instalment with its predominantly nocturnal imagery is on a similar plane with limpidly beautiful and subtle contributions by Helmut Deutsch and…

Brilliant pianists tend to be either jaw-dropping virtuosos or they are intensely musical. James Brawn, at 42 years of age, while having the chops at his disposal to negotiate the thundering octaves of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No 1 or Mussorgsky’s Great Gate at Kiev belongs in the second category. He is a musician first: you hear it in the clarity of line maintained throughout the extensive variations of Busoni’s monumental arrangement of the Chaconne from Bach’s Violin Partita No 2, the gentle cantabile of Liszt’s Consolation No 3, and the unaffected fluidity of the C Major Prelude from Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. Brawn was born in England, but spent his early years in New Zealand and Australia, where he first studied piano. He has won many prizes. For a while he returned to Melbourne to teach at Scotch College but in 2010 moved back to the UK to resume his concert career – of which this and two discs of Beethoven sonatas are a product. The title “In Recital” reflects the judiciously chosen program; the disc does not seem to have been recorded live in concert.  The centrepiece is the Mussorgsky, where Brawn takes a thoughtful approach. He is more…

Unsurprisingly, a nocturnal atmosphere pervades the works assembled here – lullabies old and new – but such is the variety of styles and timbres there is never any danger of monotony. Rather, these are like watercolours rendered in what artists call chromatic greys, with the occasional shower of prismatic hues shining out of the darkness. Earlier masters include Enescu, Stravinsky, Szymanowski, Sibelius and Ravel, whose exquisite Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré opens the program. Of the modern masters, I particularly enjoy Brett Dean’s Berceuse, the violin’s higher register lending it a mysterious, ethereal quality, as well as Kate Moore’s inventive Broken Rosary, which evokes the stringing of beads – the title refers to a rosary belonging to Moore’s late grandmother, which she broke one day as a child. Other highlights include Peter Adriaansz’s quirky Palindromes Part 3, Kats-Chernin’s cute Lullaby for Nick, which was the first piece she ever wrote, age 7, but which she never wrote down until recently, Cor Fuhler’s 18 Spoonfulls – the music’s units relate to the small mouthfuls one must feed a child (!) – and the lullaby in the form of a passacaglia by Andrew Ford, Cradle Song. Anna McMichael and Tamara…

Two spectacular instrumental showcases that, despite their differences, find common ground.

In 1918 Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes were doing their best to cheer up a shell-shocked public so, rather than continue his assault on bourgeois sensibilities that had brought forth Le Sacre du Printemps, he commissioned Respighi to orchestrate a selection of Rossini’s piano pieces. La Boutique Fantasque premiered in London in 1919 and was an instant hit. Rossini’s bouncy tunes in Respighi’s Technicolor orchestration made the suite a regular feature of Classical Pops concerts of previous generations.  Neschling and his superb Belgian orchestra offer perform the complete ballet with gusto as an orchestral showpiece laying bare usually blurred details of orchestration aided by an upfront and brightly lit recording. While prudently less high voltage than the old rip-roaring account of the suite by Arthur Fiedler on RCA Living Stereo (a guilty pleasure) it is an exciting romp in demonstration sound but lacks a certain balletic grace and flexibility.  Impressioni Brasiliane was the product of a visit to Rio and is very much in Respighi’s pictorial style with snatches of Brazilian tunes. Opening with an evocative night piece and closing with a hip-swaying danza, its bizarre middle movement portrays a visit to a biomedical institute that held 80,000 snakes –…

Celebratory concerts such as this are always a mixed bag. Those who like American songs will often be at odds with those who prefer the sounds of old Vienna. The days are long gone when a traditional German orchestra sounded stiff and formal playing a Broadway tune. The fabulous Dresdeners are quite at ease in this music and play it better than most. The deliciously slinky way they have with Gershwin’s Strike up the Band Overture would match all comers. Thielemann is on top of all musical styles, even though the first half of the concert is clearly the better half. Renée Fleming’s voice is best suited to operatic items; she sounds as if she’s slumming it in the American material. Her version of I Could Have Danced All Night is breathlessly over the top. She is simply too heavy for those parts and tries too hard to be ‘cool’. Vogt, with his superb voice and matinee good looks is a charmer. Although in Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better by Irving Berlin, he is under par and Fleming is simply wrong. The alternate verses are sung in German, which is a treat for us Anglos. The overtures from many of these…

While I’m no great fan of “chill” albums, I’m a great fan of good choral singing. Thankfully, Eventide not only features some of the finest choral singing you’ll here anywhere; as far as chill albums go, it’s one of the best I’ve heard (and having worked in a suburban CD store for some years, I’ve heard a lot). Young UK choral outfit Voces8 (for those of you whose school Latin is a bit rusty, voces is the plural of vox – “voice”; the “8” is for the group’s eight singers) has been around since 2003 but this is its debut for the prestigious Decca label, surely a coup for any young choir. The repertoire is unashamedly chillax and features straight classical works by Tallis, Bruckner, Britten, Lauridsen et al, albeit sometimes in arrangement, as well as vaguely crossover items such as Karl Jenkins’ Benedictus and film music such as Hymn to the Fallen by John Williams from Saving Private Ryan. There are also world premiere recordings such as Ola Gjeilo’s Second Eve, which was commissioned by Voces8. Many of the items feature solo instrumental accompaniment courtesy of Christian Forshaw’s saxophone, Matthew Sharpe’s cello and Lavinia Meijer’s harp; Tallis’ Te lucis ante…

You may think it repertoire raiding but there’s a surprisingly long tradition of playing these suites on viola; we don’t know if they were played thus in Bach’s day but there was a modern transcription published back in 1916. Authenticity is irrelevant here as Bach himself happily rehashed his own material to suit the circumstances and as a colleague once observed “more than any other composer Bach remains Bach even if you play him on a kazoo”. Maxim Rysanov follows up his superb 2010 recording of Suites 1, 4 & 5 and makes it abundantly clear why he is the current golden boy of the viola scene. Playing a magnificent Guadagnini instrument from 1780 his tone is in the clean bright modern manner rather than the dark and dusky. I have rarely heard these pieces played with such a nimble lightness of touch and it makes a startling contrast to my current cello benchmark, Pieter Wispelwey’s extraordinary recent recording in low baroque pitch with its dark umber shading and gravitas. Rysanov’s style is a balance of bold gestures tempered by period manners with the preludes tossed off with improvisatory dash and dance rhythms beautifully pointed. He daringly plays the sixth suite in its original key of…

This disc should be praised as much for thoughtful programming as for musicianship.

Bavouzet and Noseda give us a mighty impressive overview of the Prokofiev piano concertos in this cleanly recorded set. While having all the necessary power at his disposal for big climactic moments – such as the monumental cadenza in the Second Concerto – overall, Bavouzet concentrates on the poetry and capriciousness of Prokofiev’s writing. The young composer, in Bavouzet’s hands, sounds more enfant than terrible. The Frenchman’s light-fingered fleetness pays dividends in the First and Third Concertos, but it is in Nos Four and Five where he is truly revelatory. Previously in complete sets of these works I have had the feeling that the Fourth (for left hand only) was not terribly familiar to the musicians and that they performed it rarely in concert. In his booklet note, Bavouzet relates how he studied the piece closely at a time when his right hand was giving him trouble. (Fortunately for him – and for us – he made a full recovery.) His familiarity shows in the way he shapes musical phrases, bringing colour to a work that is sometimes regarded as grey and unmemorable. His pace is an asset in the quirky Fifth Concerto. Bavouzet shines in places where you… Continue…

What new can be offered these days in the ways of Schubert symphonies? Here we have his three middle symphonies, all wonderful, all recorded a zillion times. I came to the third symphony in the 60s through Beecham and his glorious Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The music danced as light as a feather; by contrast, Dausgaard’s approach is punchy and masculine. This heavier approach is particularly appropriate to the Fourth, known as ‘The Tragic’ (Schubert’s Sturm und Drang symphony). The Fifth is noted for its lighter sound as it doesn’t use trumpets, tympani or even clarinets. The catalogue is knee deep in performances of this elegant work, usually regarded as a child of Mozart, whom Schubert worshipped. Dausgaard takes a genial approach compared tohiswaywith3and4.Iran comparisons with Mackerras (Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment), which I found curiously heavy handed. He gets better results with the ACO on the Omega label. Beecham and Bruno Walter’s recordings from the 60s are even heavier; but then both were using full old fashioned bands. The splendid Swedish orchestra has been directed for 17 of its 19 years by Dausgaard. It employs contemporary instruments, but draws down on period performance practice. The recorded sound is healthy – not too…

It’s four years since Juan Diego Flórez released an album, but he’s back full of singing in this collection.