CD and Other Review

Review: Elgar, Carter: Cello Concrtos (Weilerstein)

She’s playing the Elgar Cello Concerto with the husband of the woman who made the greatest-ever recording of it; she’s already won a “Genius” award from the MacArthur Foundation, and she’s got Decca hailing her as its first solo cellist signing in more than three decades. Lots of hype to live up to there, and Alisa Weilerstein seems on a hiding-to-nothing when the inevitable comparisons are made with Jacqueline duPré. What
the conspicuously intelligent American has going for her is a prodigious talent that’s been
recognised ever since she made
her concert debut with Cleveland
Orchestra nearly two decades ago.
That, and a commercial point-of-difference
in programming, with the immortal Elgar coupled implausibly with Elliott Carter’s Cello Concerto, and then the bitter pill’s sugar- coating of Bruch’s Kol Nidrei. But Weilerstein is known for her interest
in contemporary music, and Carter’s Cello Concerto, filled with slap-pizzicato and spiky orchestral explosions, is one of the few works by the American composer’s-composer that has crossed over successfully into the popular concert hall. And strange as it may sound given the beloved warhorse company that it keeps, this boots-and-all recording of it is the highlight of an impressive CD which leaves the brain stimulated but the emotions strangely unengaged. In…

May 30, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Verdi: Complete Works

Forget the Complete Wagner with its paltry 43 CDs – this monolith, weighing in at a gargantuan 75 discs, beats all comers this year – that is if you can manage to struggle home with it from the shop! From 1840 to 1860, Giuseppe Verdi produced a new opera nearly every year. A slowpoke compared with some of his contemporaries (the likes of Donizetti and Pacini could
whack out three or four operas
a year) but considering that
Verdi’s output included works
like Nabucco, Macbeth, Rigoletto,
La Traviata, Il Trovatore and Un
Ballo In Maschera, that’s pretty good
going by anyone’s standards. He slowed down over the following 30 years, with only five more works seeing the light of day – but what masterworks they were! Decca and Deutsche Grammophon have made so many recordings over the years that it comes as no surprise that Universal Music are able to curate a “complete works” of the depth of quality that we have here. The classic sets include Kleiber’s La Traviata with Cotrubas and Domingo, Abbado’s Macbeth, Giulini’s Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, Domingo’s finest Otello and Karajan’s earlier Aida. We also get both versions of La Forza del Destino (St Petersburg and Milan) and both French and Italian…

May 23, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Hildegard: Vespers for St Hildegard (Sinfonye)

Academic and composer Stevie Wishart has edited and recorded the complete works of the recently beatified 12th-century mystic and composer Abbess Hildegard of Bingen over the last 20 years. She collaborates here with electronica producer Guy Sigsworth on a “creative re-imagining of a choral evensong”. Released with an eye on the crossover/new age audience, the disc may make purists recoil in horror but Wishart has never been afraid to allow some creative license in her interpretation of the melismatic neumes. Most of the content of this album features unadorned monodic chant performed by the six pure but characterful voices of Sinfonye, interspersed with Wishart’s tasteful reworkings “alio modo” (another way). One of Wishart’s original compositions, a particularly impressive polyphonic setting of the Magnificat, turns out to be the highlight of the disc, showing off the expressive range of the ensemble to better effect than the restrained chanting nun material surrounding it – indeed, I wished for more of this sort of polyphonic elaboration throughout. Some of the instrumental contributions come perilously close to 1970s folk/rock doodlings. And beware of two tracks where the producer has been allowed his head; Azeruz and ZuuenZ – generic ambient electronic soundscapes more appropriate for…

May 23, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Brahms: Piano Sonata No 3, Handel Variations (Plowright)

The image of heavyweight composer and patriarchal guardian of a decaying romantic tradition makes it easy to forget that Brahms started out as a virtuoso concert pianist. It is equally easy to forget that his third and final sonata, for his own instrument, was completed at the ridiculously precocious age of 20 (during a sojourn with his new friends Robert and Clara Schumann). From then on it was as if he had said all that he wanted to say in the genre, and his large scale piano compositions were henceforth confined to sets of variations – those on themes of Paganini and Handel being the most substantial. For his ambitious (and auspicious) debut on the BIS label, the British pianist Jonathan Plowright exhibits a prodigious musical appetite, tackling the meaty Third Sonata for his main course with the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel making for a rich and sumptuous dessert. The sonata again confounds any expectations you might have of Brahms as a structural conservative, being cast in no less than five contrasting movements, linked with a recognisably Beethovian thematic motto. It receives a carefully considered yet intensely dramatised reading, more tempestuous in approach than, say Radu…

May 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Gál: Serenade, Trio; Krása: Tanec, Passacaglia & Fugue

Chamber music is the ideal medium for composers with a knack for polyphony. Here we have a fascinating disc of string trios by two exact contemporaries who were among the victims of Hitler’s Germany. Hans Gál fled to Scotland and lived a long (if obscure) life, while the Czech Hans Krása was interned at Terezin and killed in Auschwitz in 1944. While their music differs in intensity, both men were skilled at writing counterpoint so all these works are full of interest. Gál’s Serenade dates from 1932. Notable for its high spirits, it follows in the wake of similar trios by Beethoven and Dohnányi. The Trio of 1971 is understandably more autumnal in quality (apart from its Mendelssohnian Scherzo) and features a set of gentle, lyrical variations as its final movement. Krása’s music was heavily influenced by the Second Viennese School and is made of tougher stuff. Tanec (or Dance) is a short work evoking the sound of trains, with a tender chorale in the middle section. In the powerful Passacaglia and Fugue, the underlying emotional impetus stretches these highly structured forms almost to breaking point in Krása’s final composition. The performances by the Ensemble Epomeo are beyond praise: lively,…

May 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Mahler: Symphony No 9 (Dudamel)

At just 32 years of age, Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel is already the hottest property in classical music. Both on the mean streets of Caracas with his Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, and closer to Hollywood Boulevard with the LA Philharmonic, who’ve just re-signed him as Chief Conductor until 2019, and even over in Gothenburg in Europe, he’s presiding over a musical revolution. And his Mahler recordings have already played a big part in it, whether it’s the Fifth Symphony with the South American kids, the live DVD of the Eighth, or various download-only recordings of other Mahler masterpieces, all given extraordinarily compelling readings. But none of those previous releases could truly prepare you for an encounter with this, Dudamel’s first full-scale Mahler CD with the LA Philharmonic in arguably the greatest symphony of them all, the Ninth. Recorded live last year before an audience with jaws on floor at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, it is incredibly well played (with Australia’s own Andrew Bain on first horn) and beautifully recorded by the Deutsche Grammophon engineers. But it’s Dudamel’s command of the overall architecture, and in particular his unerring… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

May 22, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Vaughan Williams: A Cotswold Romance

This CD is a treat for lovers of English music and English folk song in particular. A Cotswold Romance is a concert version by Maurice Jacobson of Vaughan Williams’ robust ballad-opera, Hugh the Drover, written in the era before World War One and later refashioned as a cantata in 1951 using the opera as its prime source. The open-hearted, full fresh air composer is in fine form here; the music is very attractive and performed in great style by the assembled forces. It is led by the late Richard Hickox, whose work in rescuing forgotten English music is his legacy. This sweet rural fantasy is about a time when a young man could risk all to get the girl he loves and finally, after various tribulations, the happy couple sets off on the road to a new life, under the open sky. In today’s more cynical times, we can only look upon such idealistic foolishness with wry amusement and affection. As operas go (and the composer’s very fine Sir John in Love is similar) it inhabits a very different world to the more heady European styles, opting not for gripping drama but for more serene stories of village life with…

May 16, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Una Follia di Napoli

When the renowned flautist Johann Joachim Quantz visited Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples in 1725, it seemed he inspired the ageing composer, hitherto ambivalent about wind instruments, to write some flute sonatas for him. Not only that; in the years that followed, the younger composers of the Neapolitan School also wrote specifically for the recorder – the flauto dolce, or transverse flute. This had not happened in Naples before, and only once again in the same period, during an amateur flautist’s reign as Viceroy between 1728 and 1733. So it is that a talented player often inspires composers. Likewise, recorder virtuoso Maurice Steger inspires his fellow instrumentalists here, with compelling performances of music from the mid-1720s by Alessandro Scarlatti and his “spiritual heirs”. Using a range of alto recorders and, in the Leo concerto, a soprano recorder, Steger leads a small band comprising strings, psalterium and continuo in a selection of concertos, sinfonias and sonatas by Scarlatti father and son, Sarro, Fiorenza, Barbella, Mancini and Leo. Throughout, Steger emulates the great singers of the day such as Farinelli, with beautiful cantabile lines tastefully ornamented to complement the sparkling allegro movements. The band is superb, with violinists Fiorenza de Donatis and Andrea…

May 16, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Rachmaninov: Symphony No 2

Petrenko is transforming what has always been a good orchestra into an undeniably outstanding one, catapulting the RLPO into the very top of the second tier – no mean achievement and no faint praise. Their recent Rachmaninov Third Symphony was a harbinger about Petrenko’s calibre as a Rachmaninov interpreter, and this superb account of No 2 more than fulfills that promise. Few, if any other Romantic symphonies, need as convincing a pulse in the first movement. By the end of the Largo and Allegro Moderato, Petrenko has delivered slow-release incandescence with both conviction and that uniquely Slavic sense of yearning. He’s not afraid to employ quite striking rubatos without resorting to sentimental overstatement, and the formidable climaxes are beautifully integrated. The second-movement Scherzo with its initial Prokofiev-like spikiness is easier to bring off, but in the Adagio we’re back in the emotional heartland with a polished but tender clarinet solo. The finale erupts spectacularly, Petrenko’s lively but sensible pace reassuring me that this really was a vintage Rach 2, not one which fell at the last hurdle. It’s thrilling how he gradually gathers momentum in the Allegro Vivace. The other works, orchestral excerpts from the opera Aleko, are well chosen…

May 16, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No 2 and Sonatas

Scary time, the 1930s, when the Stalinist denunciation of Soviet artists made for serious anxiety among composers just waiting for the dreaded knock at the door from the secret police, and some of the justifiable paranoia is manifested in the music itself. Take the searing opening solo melody in Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto for instance, with which Dutch star Janine Jansen opens her outstanding new all- Prokofiev disc. It’s a restless, unsettled kind of thing, and that first movement as a whole is a musical cat on a hot tin roof, jumping at its own shadows, and made all the more disconcerting by the intellectual clarity of the performance and the equivalent audio definition in a masterly production job by Decca’s engineers. Not that it’s all Reds-under-the-bed hysteria. The concerto’s slow movement is a gloriously long-arching melody, even if the mechanical accompaniment provides a menacing, albeit subtle, reminder of the machinery of war parading by outside. Every note here is made to count, and while it never fully engages the emotions, Jansen again demonstrates why her first recording back in 2004 sold 300,000 copies. She is the violinist for the age, detached yet precise, cool but considered, and when she…

May 16, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Villazón Sings Verdi

Record companies love anniversaries, so
 with Wagner, Verdi and Britten all reaching significant ones in 2013, we can expect a plethora of celebratory releases. Rolando Villazón actually has two Verdi tributes out: one a compilation from his former label, Virgin Classics, which predates the tenor’s well- publicised vocal crisis and subsequent 
surgery; and this new, meatier
 collection, recorded – with able
 support from the Orchestra del
 Teatro Regio di Torino and its
 principal conductor Gianandrea 
Noseda – as an early birthday
 present to Italy’s operatic master. There’s no avoiding the difference
 in Villazón’s voice: his molten gold
 timbre has hardened and the sound as a
 whole (particularly up top) is narrower and tighter, no longer the effortless wonder it
 once was. What hasn’t changed is Villazón’s inimitable enthusiasm. He wears his heart quite audibly on his sleeve, and reinforces 
it with instinctive, pliable phrasing and a knack for five-minute vocal portraiture. His program here is substantial and varied, with plenty of lesser-known repertoire alongside several of the usual suspects, and even
 a few non-operatic selections, including 
three Romanze orchestrated by Berio. Villazón attacks each piece with gusto, and if the results aren’t always flawless, his commitment is undeniable. The Duke’s…

March 21, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Jordi Savall: Pro Pacem

A cri de coeur across periods, cultures and artforms, this package comprising a 1,191- page illustrated hardcover book in eight languages including Hebrew and Arabic, a Multichannel hybrid SACD and a collection of postcard-size artwork is priceless – that said, it costs under $50. As Jordi Savall writes in the introduction to the book, Pro Pacem is a project that “makes a plea for a world without war or terrorism and for total nuclear disarmament.” Essentially, Pro Pacem forms a small but profoundly eloquent contribution to the cross-cultural dialogue necessary to create the conditions for world peace. Thus the music, drawn from Alia Vox’s extensive catalogue, brings East – Armenia, China, India, Israel and Turkey – and West
 – Belgium, England, Estonia, Greece, Italy and Spain – in song and instrumental music, much of which is sacred or whose texts deal with themes of peace. There is Binchois’ Da pacem, and Gregorian and Sibylline chant, the latter sung with great beauty and delicacy by Savall’s late wife, Montserrat Figueras. There is Hebrew prayer and Turkish improvisation on the Turkish lute. There are excerpts from the Koran. There is polyphony by musical giants such as Lassus and Guerrero. There is instrumental…

March 21, 2013
CD and Other Review

Review: Claudio Arrau: Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms

As a young virtuoso, Claudio Arrau was renowned for playing long programs and tackling technically challenging works like Albeniz’s Iberia. From mid-life onwards he concentrated on the German tradition and mainstream repertoire. He reached his full maturity in the mid-1950s, when most of the recordings in the EMI box were made. This set contains the five Beethoven concertos, a selection of sonatas, and concertos by Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Schumann, Chopin and Brahms. Arrau was never a mere technician. In a 1970s broadcast
 of Brahms’s Second Concerto, he swayed and grimaced like a
 soul in torment. That is both the upside and downside of these recordings: he approaches each forte as if it was Mount Everest, and handles lyrical themes as if officiating at High Mass. Take
 the limpid piano melody in the second movement of Grieg’s concerto: its innate simplicity eludes him as he inflects every note with emotional significance. In his desire to make the instrument resonate he overuses the sustaining pedal, which would have been effective in a vast auditorium but turns muddy in the studio. By contrast, Alceo Galliera and the Philharmonia, who accompany most of the concertos, are a model of clarity. Arrau’s Beethoven is fascinating. Often…

March 21, 2013