CD and Other Review

Review: Britten Songs (Bostridge)

Ian Bostridge may well be the busiest interpreter of Benjamin Britten in this the composer’s 100th birthday year. Previous recordings of Our Hunting Fathers and the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings have demonstrated the English tenor’s sensitive characterisation of text, but this latest collection of song cycles, written for Britten’s partner and muse Peter Pears, is Bostridge’s finest and most compelling offering yet. A big part of that is Antonio Pappano’s accompaniment. The duo collaborated on a Schubert album, but the eccentricities of Britten’s piano writing – all angular figurations and chiaroscuro effects he put into play himself – allow his imagination, and fingers, to run wild, whether bright and brilliant or sparse and eerie. Both performers vary their touch and articulation judiciously for a disc that is alive at every moment, leaving you hanging off every word. Listen to the way Bostridge leans into dissonance, gouging the text of Before Life and After from the late cycle Winter Words. Or the cat-and-mouse runs passed between singer and pianist in the nursery rhyme-like Wagtail and Baby. Bostridge’s intonation and enunciation are faultless but never characterless; I particularly relish how he shapes drawn-out melismas such as the sweet-toned “Seraphim”. His…

November 7, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Wesley: Choral Works (St John’s College Choir, Cambridge)

Once considered something of a ratbag, Samuel Sebastian Wesley is now regarded as a rather quaint figure, remembered for a handful of popular choral and organ works that make an occasional appearance with Anglican choirs.   History reveals him to have been a colourful character. Despite being the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, he was born of his father’s teenage housemaid and after a childhood stint in the Chapel Royal, he spent a lot of his early career as a musician for the theatre. Wesley’s penchant for the theatrical was reflected both in his music and in his life. His tenure in various church music jobs was never overly long and his music often attracted trenchant criticism because of its mould-breaking style and form.   While it is good to hear such evergreens as Blessed be the God and Father, Wash me throughly and Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace sung so beautifully, the real contribution of this disc is the opportunity to hear some neglected works in tasteful and disciplined performances. Ascribe unto the Lord, O give thanks unto the Lord and The wilderness and the solitary place are cast as minioratorios featuring soloists and…

October 31, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Balkan Spirit (Savall)

One of music’s most widely travelled explorers and an indefatigable advocate for intercultural understanding and world peace, Jordi Savall here returns with another extraordinarily rich multicultural musical offering: the music of the Balkans. As Savall writes in an introductory booklet note, he and his fellow musicians from different cultures “have delved into this extraordinary historical, traditional and even modern musical heritage to study, select and perform it, thereby creating a genuine intercultural dialogue between the different cultures that have so often been torn apart by dramatic, age-old conflicts.”   The result is a vivid collection of traditional (instrumental) folk songs and dances – some joyful, some melancholy – largely drawn from Ottoman and Sephardic repertories. Five different ensembles have been configured for the different yet interrelated styles and traditions: Bulgarian and Macedonian, Gypsy and Hungarian, Serbian and Romanian, Turkish and Greek and Bosnian and Sephardic. The instrumentation is equally rich and includes accordions, violins, viols, lyres, guitars, ouds, a psaltery, percussion, ney and kaval flutes and a qanun (zither).   A lively ‘Balkan Prelude’ from Serbia but with Turkish elements opens the disc, with some dazzling accordion and percussion work especially. What follows is a veritable crosscultural smorgasbord, including a…

October 31, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Shostakovich: Symphony No 10 (Royal Concertgebouw)

Shostakovich’s Ninth and Tenth symphonies have for me always represented the composer at his best. The Ninth is wonderfully uplifting, a light touch not shared by the other symphonies. The Tenth is its alter ego, dark and serious. Only in the closing pages and the dazzling scherzo does the mood lift. The latter, with its whirling woodwind, comes straight after the long first, in which gloom is unrelieved; a musical wasteland, the only light coming from the freezing gloom of a Russian winter. I had expected this new recording, with the remarkable Concertgebouw under the equally remarkable Mariss Jansons (due here in November), to walk away with the line honours. I’m not sure why I expected this, I suppose because of the double reputations and the fact that it’s probably my favourite orchestra. It is a brilliant performance, but there so are many other great versions of this demanding work. Every conductor worth his salt has recorded it, usually well, and there were well over 40 versions when I last looked. My main quibble is with Jansons’ reading of the scherzo. It has lead, not wings on its feet; the side drum is not prominent enough in the ensemble. After…

October 31, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Prokofiev: The Gambler (Mariinsky Opera)

This early Prokofiev opera isn’t performed all that often. Although it is a fine, well-written work, it’s devoid of big tunes appealing primarily to those who are interested in sung drama rather than more conventional opera. Of course, we all know that the composer could write fabulous tunes, as the ballet scores and his Third Piano Concerto attest, but he was then in his revolutionary period as a young firebrand. In 2007 when I saw this production in St Petersburg I was impressed by the ‘sung play’ aspect of it all. It was very effective and at two hours, didn’t outstay its welcome. In this story, virtually everybody gambles in some way, not just the foolish Alexei, and the plot, set in a German spa, is an intricate ensemble of desperate or failing people. It’s more akin to Strauss’ Arabella than say, La Traviata, both regarded as top conversation operas, and with this well-oiled ensemble, it’s a delight. The direction is sensible and, happily for those of us watching it on screen, the acting is first class, with none of those close ups of singers glancing nervously at the conductor which mar so many video productions. The singing is marvellous,…

October 31, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: CPE Bach: Keyboard Sonatas (Spányi)

We are all familiar with the disappointment when an eagerlyanticipated full-price CD turns out to be a pretentious lemon. The converse also (if more rarely) occurs: a full-price CD which one inserts into the player with limited enthusiasm, but which turns out to be most enjoyable. So here. Many of us will greet such a release by recourse to Britney Spears’ lexicon: “I am sooooooo not a clavichord expert.” And 79 minutes of clavichord is a lot of clavichord. But what threatened to be a chore proved revelatory. While CPE Bach’s oft-recorded 1773 symphonies deserve the rebuke uttered years ago by English broadcaster Basil Lam – “the too-easy surprises of a style where anything may happen” – the present keyboard sonatas, mostly dating from the 1760s, are much more coherent works. Gone are the symphonies’ improvisatory flourishes, their stop-start approach to modulation, their general sense of attention deficit disorder. In their place is a firm, Haydn-like approach to structure, though with no shortage of inventiveness. One curiosity is the appearance of various sonatas’ slow movements in several different versions, varying according to the amount of ornamentation (which CPE himself wrote down). Clearly CPE was an inveterate reviser. Incidentally this production…

October 31, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Ibert: Chamber Music (Bridge Quartet)

Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) is from that long list of prolific French composers known for one or two familiar if slight works (Divertissement and Escales) but who’s more serious output has been ignored. This selection of chamber works (a cost effective genre) seeks to redress that neglect but falls short of its aim.   The String Quartet composed between 1937 and 1941 then premiered soon after the liberation of Paris in 1944 is a weighty work that bears witness to troubled times. Its first movement is a cogent argument of obsessive motives but with characteristic urbane turns of phrase followed by a slow movement of lamentation and bleak sonority. The scherzo is a playful pizzicato movement while the finale bustles along with Hindemithian counterpoint; its syncopations reminding us of the lighter Ibert we know.   The Trio for violin, cello and harp from 1944 is a good-humoured romp of fine craftsmanship and integrity: its Andante sostenuto a lyrical idyll. The programme is filled out with other short instrumental works such as the strange Ghirlarzana for solo cello and an early work; the enjoyable if inconsequential Souvenir for string quartet and double bass, here receiving its premiere recording.   Unfortunately the good…

October 24, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Wesley: Ascribe Unto The Lord (Sacred Choral Works)

Once considered something of a ratbag, Samuel Sebastian Wesley is now regarded as a rather quaint figure, remembered for a handful of popular choral and organ works that make an occasional appearance with Anglican choirs. History reveals him to have been a colourful character. Despite being the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, he was born of his father’s teenage housemaid and after a childhood stint in the Chapel Royal, he spent a lot of his early career as a musician for the theatre. Wesley’s penchant for the theatrical was reflected both in his music and in his life. His tenure in various church music jobs was never overly long and his music often attracted trenchant criticism because of its mould-breaking style and form. While it is good to hear such evergreens as Blessed be the God and Father, Wash me throughly and Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace sung so beautifully, the real contribution of this disc is the opportunity to hear some neglected works in tasteful and disciplined performances. Ascribe unto the Lord, O give thanks unto the Lord and The wilderness and the solitary place are cast as mini- oratorios featuring soloists and an…

October 24, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Elgar: Orchestral and Choral Works (LPO)

Certain conductors have become synonymous with particular composers. One thinks of Beethoven/Klemperer or Mahler/Bernstein. In the case of Elgar, the conductor who most often comes to mind is Sir Adrian Boult. He conducted and recorded Elgar’s music repeatedly over a period of 60 years, although when he first heard The Dream of Gerontius he predicted it wouldn’t last!   This box contains all his Elgar recordings for EMI. There are others: Boult famously recorded the symphonies for the small company Lyrita in 1968. But this collection contains practically all Elgar’s orchestral works, many obscure or secondary, usually in multiple performances. The only substantial work missing is the song cycle Sea Pictures, probably because Barbirolli’s EMI recording with Janet Baker swept the board.    Timings vary – Boult’s Enigma Variations runs 26:21 in 1936, 31:03 in 1953. Occasionally he rethinks his approach. The Shakespearean tone-poem Falstaff is mellow and its climaxes more triumphal in a late performance from 1973. In 1950, the piece sounds mercurial, lively and even comic. Perhaps the 84-year-old Boult took a more sympathetic view of the character? There is also a world of difference between Paul Tortelier’s aristocratic reading of the Cello Concerto and the 1945 performance by Pablo Casals. Boult deserves kudos for sticking with his wayward soloist, even though Casals’ involvement represented a de-parochialisation of the composer.   All three sacred cantatas are included. More internationalism appears via Nicolai Gedda’s superb Gerontius. Boult preferred The Kingdom, leading a committed performance with Margaret…

October 24, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Verdi: Arias (Anna Netrebko)

When Anna Netrebko released her first solo disc, she was the poster child for a supposedly new breed of opera star: glamorous young singers who photographed at least as fabulously as they sang and whose publicity machines whirred at hyperspeed. Like any sudden sensation, she was greeted by both acclaim and skepticism: was she precisely the new blood opera needed, or an omen of Hollywoodification? Did she really have the voice and stage instincts to back up her superstardom – and how long would it all last? Ten years later, Netrebko has not only fulfilled her early promise, but moved well beyond it. If she’s a poster child now, it’s for singers with staying power, and this new disc of Verdi arias, although timed to celebrate the composer’s bicentenary, is also a milestone for the soprano herself, now slowly but surely moving into heavier repertoire. Never a timid performer, Netrebko opens her program at full throttle, with twenty minutes of Lady Macbeth, before moving into heroine mode with arias from Giovanna d’Arco, I Vespri Siciliani, Don Carlo and Il Trovatore. The Orchestra Teatro Regio Torino under Gianandrea Noseda (who also conducted the soprano’s debut album) are sympathetic partners throughout, but…

October 24, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Goldmark: Symphones No 1 & 2 (Singapore Symphony)

Karl Goldmark creeps into the more expansive music reference works for two reasons: his brief teaching – in Vienna – of Sibelius; and his 1877 Rustic Wedding Symphony, a five-section, 45-minute divertissement which Sir Thomas Beecham enjoyed reviving. Other than that, he seems almost entirely forgotten (though a handful of violinists, including Joshua Bell and the late Nathan Milstein, have recorded his concerto).   Most people will have been totally unaware that Goldmark even attempted a Second (i.e. non-Rustic-Wedding) Symphony, but he did, and this is actually its second CD version. The first – a Marco Polo release two decades old – was unavailable for comparative purposes, which is perhaps as well, since the golden-toned new disc surely surpasses it. Singapore can now boast a really effective local orchestra, better than some Australian bands and worthy to rank with all save the topmost American ensembles. Touches of string portamento give a pleasantly old-fashioned atmosphere to various passages. Latter-day Beckmessers might dock points for some slightly crude trombone sounds and for the cornet-like first trumpet that dominates the symphony’s third movement; the rest of us will not care a toss about such venial flaws. While in stylistic terms the work owes something to Schumann’s exuberance (and shares with Schumann’s Rhenish the key of E Flat), Goldmark the orchestrator is in the highest…

October 17, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Schubert: Music for violin and piano (Ibragimova, Tiberghien)

Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien are one of the most formidable teams in the world today. Their Wigmore Hall Live Beethoven series was sensational, form first note to last. I must say I was surprised to receive this two CD set of the violin/piano music of Schubert. Curiously, this combination never inspired him to the same sublime heights as the two Piano Trios, the late quartets or the two quintets, as different as they are from each other. This music has never really been accepted into the mainstream repertoire (a bit like Dvorák’s Violin Concerto). Mono recordings on LP by the now forgotten Max Rostal and Colin Horsley and Johanna Martzy still change hands for astronomical sums, for reasons no one has ever quite explained.   Listening to these performances certainly inspired me to reevaluate them. Perhaps Diabelli is to blame, as it was his idea to publish them as Sonatinas, thereby emphasising their appeal to amateurs but trivialising it for everyone else. While the D Major Sonata D384 is Schubert in his gemütlich Biedermeier mood, the two minor key ones are quite substantial and as long as many of Beethoven’s works in this genre. The A Minor especially presents…

October 10, 2013