One acerbic US critic dismissed Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony as “a woolly mammoth which emerged after the Stalinist freeze”. Once upon a time I would have said, “I wish I’d thought of that!” Now, I’m not so sure. Yes, it’s still a sacred monster and Gergiev’s reading lasts more than 82 minutes (two and a half minutes longer than his previous effort, which also featured the bizarre combination of both the Rotterdam and Kirov orchestras because, apparently, the composer wanted the work played by two ensembles – a fact new to me). However, I’d forgotten just how much of the score is actually quite dark and brooding. This reading has none of the agonized, self-dramatised protraction of Bernstein’s mid- 1980s version with the Chicago Symphony (his only recorded foray with that orchestral war machine) which clocks in at 85 minutes. In this version with the Mariinsky Orchestra (formerly Kirov) Gergiev demonstrates again what a superb orchestral builder he is. Unlike, say, Petrenko in Liverpool, whose orchestra has long had exposure through a large of body of recordings, the Kirov Orchestra was largely unknown in the West before Gergiev’s emergence as a major podium force. There’s little agit- prop bombast here, and…

  The Venezuelan educator and politician José Antonio Abreu has added another string to his bow, one to sit proudly alongside his Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, firebrand conductor Gustavo Dudamel and a revolutionary approach to music education, El Sistema modern recordings in the catalogue presented in the familiar warm acoustic associated with the Yellow Label. The main reason for my unreserved praise lies with the viscerally exciting take on the criminally neglected Argentinean Alberto Ginastera’s First Quartet from 1948. There have been several recordings (an initiative which now has its first local teacher based in Adelaide). Comprised of four of his orchestra’s string section leaders, he has devised an exciting young ensemble of the highest order. In their debut recording, the Simón Bolívar Quartet presents a wisely chosen program bringing together three seemingly disparate composers in Ginastera, Dvorák and Shostakovich. Dvorák’s popular American quartet was written during the composer’s stay in the States and develops its own specific folk motifs – it’s this ingenious idea that brings together a trio of geographically separated composers on this fine disc. In his Eighth Quartet Shostakovich goes even further, quoting his own earlier Trio Op 67. In itself it’s a lament for the…

  The two extremes of Schumann’s personality exist side by side in the two sets of pieces recorded here. The Fantasiestücke of 1837 alternate between the introverted, reflective Schumann (his Eusebius alter ego) and the extrovert, somewhat manic Schumann (Florestan). No wonder, as the sleeve note states, this was regarded as “difficult and private music”. In the eight Kreisleriana of the following year, Schumann juxtaposed these expressive extremes more blatantly, even chaotically. Pianists attempting these pieces not only require considerable fluency at the keyboard; they need to convey the sudden changes of attitude. When that is achieved, as it is here, the music springs to life and the work of Schumann’s contemporaries seems impersonal by comparison. As befitting a great chamber musician, Imogen Cooper’s strengths lie in the detail of her playing and a finely honed ability to separate important thematic material from accompaniment in thicker textures. While reflective moments are bewitchingly otherworldly in her hands, she finds power in the fast music without resorting to overemphasis (or, let’s be frank, bashing). Cooper is equally at home in the variations Brahms transcribed from his String Sextet Op 18, but the prize of this disc is the Schumann, where a distinguished…

Choral music aficionados will love this program, featuring as it does two great mass settings of the twentieth century, Frank Martin’s Mass for Double Choir and Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem. Both works in their own way exude a very Gallic musical and spiritual sensibility. Martin’s a cappella Mass is an early work and reflects something of his Swiss Calvinist upbringing, but its austerity is relieved with some lush harmony derived from his love of French composers Franck and Debussy. Duruflé’s Requiem is a thoroughly Catholic affair, based largely on the plainsong Mass for the Dead but clothed in a luxuriously colourful harmonic idiom. The St George’s Consort, an adult ensemble formed in 2008, handles the Martin with equal amounts of skill and passion. As in all choral music recordings, a balance has to be struck between closely observed vocal power and the enchantment of distance. In the Martin, the balance is tipped in favour of immediacy. This allows for sections like the Pleni sunt coeli of the Sanctus, with its motoric rhythms, to make maximum impact as well as showing how capable the group is of sustaining long phrases like those in the Agnus Dei. The cathedral choir and consort together…

Xavier Sabata delves into the darker side of Handel with this tribute to the composer’s scoundrels, miscreants and rebels – the so-called “Bad Guys” often neglected in favour of the heroes and their chivalrous effusions. The Spanish countertenor’s glossy voice isn’t an obvious embodiment of pure evil, but then neither are these complex characters, and Sabata brings out their ambiguities nicely. Vengeful arias like Egeo’s Voglio stragi (from the seldom heard Teseo) are forcefully sung, but it’s in reflective, melodious mode, as in the same character’s striking Serenatevi, o luce belle, that Sabata is at his most expressive and interesting. His mellifluous sound is underpinned by a wheedling, insistent quality, perfect for a master manipulator, and while the voice is full of sweetness, he’s prepared to employ a few dark and sinister colours – the snarling conclusion to Polinesso’s Se l’inganno sortisce felice (from Ariodante) is especially menacing. Though at times crisper diction and more emphatic delivery might be welcome, Sabata’s tone is firm and focused, and his timbre is attractive if not staggeringly distinctive. He’s a persuasive advocate for these arias, many of which are rarely performed in isolation. Tolomeo’s Belle dèe di questo core mightn’t make much of…

Alice Coote has been successfully portraying men for years, but usually she’s done it with aid of wigs and costumes, in breeches roles like Orfeo, Idamante and Octavian. This disc, recorded live at the Wigmore Hall last year, finds her essaying a different sort of male role: that of the haunted protagonist in Schubert’s Winterreise. Coote is not the first female singer to take on the cycle, but it’s still predominantly the domain of tenors (the voice for which the songs were originally written) and baritones. In Coote, Schubert’s great and harrowing work finds yet another distinctive interpreter. Her velvety, contralto-ish voice is laced with mournful sweetness, and she takes a refreshingly simple, naturalistic approach: there’s no micromanaging of phrases or belaboured angst, just a subtle dissection of a disintegrating soul, whose occasional outpourings – the tempestuous Der stürmische Morgen, for instance, or the tearful urgency of Erstarrung – are made all the more potent by the slow burn which precedes them. Coote has a full and telling palette of vocal colours at her disposal, from an eerily pretty Wasserflut to the introspective glow of Der greise Kopf and the stripped- back tone of Die Krähe. She’s not afraid to let…

York Bowen (1884-1961) is probably the most important forgotten British composer to be “rediscovered” in recent years. The cause has been taken up by labels like Hyperion, Dutton and Chandos, with outstanding champions in Stephen Hough, Sir Andrew Davis and Lawrence Power. This latest Hyperion exploration of the complete works for violin and piano has fallen to violinist Chloë Hanslip and the current doyen of Bowen pianists, Danny Driver, whose revealing survey of the piano sonatas won plaudits all round in 2010. The major works here are the late Violin Sonata and the Suite for Violin and Piano, but there are a host of smaller occasional works ranging from the substantial Phantasie, a Cobbett commission in 1911, down to tasty soupçons like the Kreisleresque Bolero and the winsome Allegretto. Bowen was a proficient violist as well as a prodigious concert pianist, rendering these works highly “playable”. He was also a master of the dividing line between serious and light, with a gift for a memorable idea that imbues even the slightest work with charm and spirit. Driver and Hanslip turn out to be a match made in heaven and respond to Bowen’s idiom with grace, taste and sensitivity. Recognising that…

There’s something a little creepy about this recording of Vivaldi’s late oboe concertos, not just because they were written as the Inquisition demonised the impoverished Red Priest, but also because an elephant had to die to provide the ivory from which the soloist’s instrument (his ‘Ivory Angel’) was made. Simone Toni and Silete Venti! use a reconstructed version of the 1730 original instrument currently held in a Milanese museum. Rather than a disclaimer that no elephants were harmed in the making of this recording, Toni’s liner notes only mention his own “ineffable sorrow” when the ivory located after an initial search proved unsuitable for his purposes. Five concertos are interspersed with instrumental excerpts from L’Olimpiade and Griselda, forming an intriguing snapshot of an ageing Vivaldi reaching the end of an era where his trademark ebullience seems tinged with something more sinister. Don’t expect The Four Seasons. The overall tone tends toward the lugubrious, the ivory oboe sounding like the soundtrack to a movie set in a haunted house, its eeriness ideally offset by the Baroque chamber organ burbling away in the mad professor’s attic, while the seriousness of musical intent does its best to stay on the right side of…

The current roster of Decca/Deutsche Grammophon glitters with star sopranos, most of them on the lyric side and many with at least some claim to coloratura. Yet Aleksandra Kurzak continues to set herself apart, her formidable technique matched by vocal charisma and a richness of colour more idiomatic form here under conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi, playing with sympathetic panache. Kurzak sings with poise, rounded tone and evocative colours, moving mercurially from the ecstatic assurance of Semiramide’s Bel raggio to Amenaide’s ardent prayer from Tancredi and even a kittenish not always found in a voice of such agility. Her solo recording debut, Gioia!, came as something of a revelation, and while, two years on, she’s no longer such a surprise, this generous collection of Rossini arias is further proof of the Polish soprano’s ability to dazzle and delight. The album focusses mostly on the composer’s serious operas: Semiramide, Guglielmo Tell, Matilde di Shabran and, in a nod to Kurzak’s homeland, Sigismondo, whose title character is a 16th-century Polish king. There’s a smattering of comedy too, though, with arias from Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Il Turco in Italia, the former featuring an avuncular cameo by fellow Pole Artur Rucinski as Figaro….

At the age of 82, Richard Bonynge could be forgiven if he sat back on his laurels rather than heading off for the recording studio yet again. But that is most emphatically not what he seems to be up to at the moment, with a steady stream of recent recordings. He and his late wife Dame Joan Sutherland explored Victorian song throughout their long recital careers, and Bonynge persuaded Decca to let him produce a complete recording of Balfe’s The Bohemian Girl back in 1991. Of late, however, he has turned his mind to some of the period’s lesser-known composers with a fascinating complete recording of William Wallace’s opera Lurline. Wallace is represented on the new CD, along with Balfe, Benedict and MacFarren, but composers like John Barnett, Edward Loder and Arthur Goring Thomas are each represented in the current catalogue by just one piece each – and that’s the overture on this CD. It’s delightful fare. The composers here were nothing if not craftsmen and the works have a great deal of colour, energy and imagination. If one or two of them feel a touch overlong, that is a minor quibble when there is so much enjoyable music here…

Why, oh why, aren’t Peter Philips and his music better known? As a committed English Catholic he spent his working life abroad. His first sojourn abroad was to Rome, where he fell under the spell of the Italian madrigal, but he soon settled in the Low Countries, working for the Archduke Albert in Brussels. In 1622 Henry Peacham wrote that Philips was “one of the greatest masters of Musicke in Europe”, and everything so far committed to disc from his melodious and engaging oeuvre supports that claim. The present disc explores his eight-part motets, written for two choirs and intended to celebrate major feast days of the Church year. The musical language avoids the harmonic extremes of a Gesualdo or even a Monteverdi, but Philips shows his Italianate leanings with colourful effects illustrating text. Changes of speed and metre abound, and there is much passing of phrases from one chorus to the other. Rupert Gough and his excellent Royal Holloway choir have been recorded in the warmly resonant acoustic of St Alban’s Church, Holborn, and these lively, committed performances have great bloom. Sackbuts and cornetts enhance the richness of some of the motets, adding additional lustre to what is a…

How to breathe new life into works as familiar and well covered as Bach’s violin concertos? The answer, seemingly, is to change the usual batting order and to reinvent a fourth concerto that gives depth to your line-up, something which is sorely lacking in our Baggy Greens at the moment. Most recordings start off with the two famous solo concertos – the E Major BWV1042 and the A Minor BWV1041 – and end with the double concerto. They may throw in the less familiar G-Minor transcription from the BWV1056 harpsichord concerto to give full value for money. This lovely recording by Freiburger Barockorchester starts with the double, perhaps to showcase its two equally talented concertmasters Petra Müllejans and Gottfried von der Goltz, but then puts the cream on the cake with its reconstructed version of the concerto for three harpsichords BWV1064. Anna Katharina Schreiber is the third soloist in a work that requires a high degree of virtuosity from all three players, especially in the outer movements. It’s generally believed that the work was originally composed for violins, and it certainly suits the instrument with some exciting overlapping runs in the outer movements. The orchestra all play on period instruments…