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…

The main strike against this CD is that it lasts barely 45 minutes. A pity, as the performances are very fine.

Jean-Rudolf Kars’ parents were Viennese Jews but he grew up in France, part of the same generation as Jean-Philippe Collard and Pascal Rogé. He converted to Catholicism in 1976 (three years after touring Australia for the ABC) and became a priest in 1983. On the strength of these discs, the priesthood’s gain was music’s loss.  One CD contains Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and also the D.946 Klavierstücke. This is Schubert at his most profound, simultaneously radiating Biedermeier exquisiteness, under the shadow of imminent death. Kars’ readings are searching, charming and poignant. His second CD contains both books of Debussy’s Préludes, beautifully played, if a little slower than we’re accustomed to today (The Submerged Cathedral must be somewhere in the Mariana Trench). His Messiaen excerpts from Twenty Contemplations of the Christ Child and the Catalogue of Birds underscore the extent to which Messiaen was Debussy’s spiritual successor. Kars’ renditions are wonderfully extrovert and joyful, emphasising the ecstatic side of Messiaen.  Dame Gillian Weir, perhaps the most ardent champion of Messiaen’s organ output, performs previously unissued works including the epic Les Corps glorieux – Sept Visions brèves de la Vie des Ressuccités “The Bodies in Glory – Seven Brief Visions of the life…

What an inspired idea! To capture the Zeitgeist of a troubled decade through the medium of a musical genre: in this case, the violin concerto. Gil Shaham explores violin concertos of the 1930s in Volume 1 of a series which contains works by Barber, Stravinsky, Britten, Berg and Karl Amadeus Hartmann, by far the least known of the group. A confirmed socialist, Hartmann was one of the few genuinely anti-Nazi figures in German music throughout the Third Reich and refused to allow his music to be performed there. I’d always considered what little music I’d heard of Hartmann (1905-1963) very difficult, however, this is a real discovery and Gil Shaham makes his Concerto Funèbre into a highly moving threnody, meditation and evocation of the horrors of war, using sources as disparate as a Hussite (Czech protestant) hymn and a Russian revolutionary song bookending an adagio and a Bartókian scherzo which lashes out in anger. Shaham’s tone and intonation throughout this tour de force are impeccable. Stravinsky and Alban Berg reacted to what they considered the excessive emotions of late Romanticism in contrasting ways: Stravinsky adopted neo-Classicism with baroque forms and his Violin Concerto, with its concision, ironic wit and dancing quality is a…

Despite a recent snippy comment in the Spectator, I still find Mark Wigglesworth one of the more interesting conductors on the international circuit and his Shostakovich cycle has been distinguished. This release is a popular combination of Shostakovich’s symphonic Alpha and Omega – his First and Fifteenth symphonies. Both were recorded in 2006 and the First appeared with the Second and Third Symphonies on a single CD. Why it has taken almost a decade for BIS to release the Fifteenth is anyone’s guess. The composer burst on the scene with his First Symphony, written at 18, with staggering assurance. It’s an engaging blend of youthful cheekiness and subversion with darker undercurrents. Wigglesworth and his Dutch orchestra handle the kaleidoscopic orchestration and signature moods – humour, wit, agitated energy – deftly, though tempi are measured. The Fifteenth, composed when Shostakovich was already ill, is one of music’s great enigmas by a composer who raised enigma to an art form. The opening, whose first notes we hear on a glockenspiel, was meant to portray a toyshop. Only Shostakovich could conjure up an atmosphere so sinister conveying innocence. The first climax doesn’t occur until the second movement. Here we are in familiar desperation territory and Wigglesworth…

I am, as they say nowadays, conflicted about this release. The playing of the Camerata Nordica is highly impressive. What disturbs me is the concept. String orchestra transcriptions of Beethoven quartets, especially the late ones, are nothing new. Toscanini and Weingartner did them – the latter even subjecting the Hammerklavier Sonata, of all things, to the process. The point is, can a string ensemble really replicate the unique intimacy, intensity, complexity and sublime enigma of this music more effectively than the medium for which it was originally composed? The ‘happier’ or less complicated quartets (if any of this music could be described as uncomplicated) fare better. The Op 127 sounds robust and almost jolly in this ensemble’s hands. It’s when we reach the Finale of the B Flat, Op 130 that the problems set in. The original Finale, the Grosse Fuge, is the most ferocious and terrifying piece by Beethoven (or anyone else, for that matter). I’m not against string transcriptions of the “Great Fugue” per se. Klemperer recorded it early in his EMI career, almost 60 years ago, and the result is, to this day, grittily unforgettable, but the effect of the playing here tends to glamorise it.  The…

Benjamin Britten’s personal life has been well documented – his relationship with Peter Pears in a period when homosexuality was still illegal, his pacifism and years in America and his friendships and fallings-out. But two documentaries by John Bridcut will rate as indispensable for the full picture of the man – both for the interviews and with the people who knew him best and for their impeccably performed musical excerpts. Britten’s Children is, in the filmmaker’s words, “an edgy subject, full of danger”, these days perhaps even more than ever before. Bridcut’s fascination with the composer started when he took part as a chorister in Britten historic recording of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius. His interviews with the various boys with whom Britten became “besotted” – including the late English actor David Hemmings for whom the role of Miles in The Turn Of The Screw was created – show these relationships to be innocent, if unusual, and without a physical sexual element. In a moving highlight Bridcut tracks down Wulff Scherchen, the German teenager whom Britten dumped for Peter Pears. Scherchen, now a grandfather living in Australia who was willing to be seduced, has kept all of Britten’s love letters is filmed…

I found this CD puzzling, but a friend described it as a “marquee” issue – a showcase for the Australian Chamber Orchestra and director, Richard Tognetti. The main courses are the first movement of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto and the first movement of Brahms’ First Symphony. The rest of the program is a Bach violin concerto and two other short excerpts. I’m at a loss to understand why anyone would want to hear just the first movement of the Beethoven or the Brahms. Surely it would have made more sense to issue a double CD featuring both in their entirety.  Tognetti’s way with the concerto is admirable. Without sounding rushed, he keeps it moving while retaining the monumental grandeur. His is an unfailingly sweet-toned reading with plenty of animation. The Brahms is similarly flowing, eschewing the granitic approach of Klemperer and Furtwängler. I recently saw Tognetti’s Brahms Fourth. His conducting gestures were infrequent, but the results were stunning: the ACO’s ensemble was tight and the heft of just 48 players was amazing. This is not quite as impressive but I’d still like to hear the entire performance as the textures are admirably lucid with just the right quotient of bounce or schwung…

Jonathan Nott’s Mahler 6 joins the ranks of good but not great readings of this behemoth. The main tempo of the opening movement (with repeat observed) conveys much of the frenetic grimness that depicts the dire determination of someone setting out on a journey he knows will not be easy. I still think the legendary Barbirolli version (45 years young and recorded when performances of this work were rarities) gets the initial Allegro just right: the schleppend or “dragging” sensation makes the opening even grimmer. Pappano does it equally well in his recent version. Nott’s not afraid to achieve a slow motion quality in the celeste-driven “dream sequence”. The expansiveness never robs the movement of power. The scherzo (rightly, in my opinion, placed second) maintains the momentum and seems to describe a malevolent troupe of marionettes before it peters out like a clockwork toy. The Andante, the real emotional heart of the work, is taken moderately, the faux naïve tone fraught with dark undercurrents. The climax is impressive. The final movement, an entire universe in itself, is superbly handled, catapulting the Bambergers into the realm of virtuoso German ensembles. My only grumble is that the hammer blows (two here) lack the sickening dullness…

This excellent and extremely well-filled CD reminded me, even more forcefully than the recent and equally superb James Ehnes traversal of Prokofiev’s violin oeuvre, what a Janus-like composer he was. My other reaction was one of awe-struck admiration for Roger Woodward’s complete mastery of both sides of Prokofiev’s musical and creative personality.  Don’t be put off by the 1991 recording date: the sound from the ABC’s Sir Eugene Goossens Hall, is excellent. This CD is like a marvellous anthology of short stories that you dip into, not recommended for digesting in one go. Much of the music was composed when Prokofiev was very young. The Sarcasmes Op 17 (1912-14), the Four Etudes, Op 2 (1909) and Suggestion diabolique (1910-12) are among his angriest, most percussive, frenetic and radical keyboard works, yet they are so much more assimilable and create more of an adrenalin rush than anything Schoenberg was writing simultaneously. Interspersed among them are the exquisite Prelude, Op 12, No 7 (1906-13) an oasis of pellucid lyricism. Likewise the Pensées “Thoughts” Op 62 (1933-4), composed when he had mellowed considerably. These are delightfully dreamy cameos, although I agree with one critic who expressed bemusement at the composer’s declaration that the second was…

Frans Brüggen seems to be enjoying a renaissance in his recording career. One review described his readings of these two staples (depicting destinations on the Grand Tour) as having light-footed fluency. I disagree: His Italian Symphony sounds quite leaden in the first movement, rather as Klemperer might have conducted it but certainly didn’t (Klemperer’s reading is one of the fastest in the catalogue). Brüggen’s Italy won’t have the Grand Tourists reaching for their 30+ sunblock either. There’s not much dazzling light – or attack. At least he includes the first movement repeat with its delicious, woodwind-dominated lead-back passage. The middle movements are unremarkable but the tarantella finale compensates for the foregoing lethargy. The Scottish is more suited to Brüggen’s spirit. The first movement is appropriately ruminative and creates a brooding, mist-shrouded landscape with prominent swirling woodwind and strings, more pondered than ponderous, you might say. Brüggen integrates the coda more convincingly than usual but I found the late entry of the clarinet in the ‘highland fling’ scherzo grated on repetition. Brüggen and his forces are at their best in the Scottish symphony’s Adagio, where both the orchestral colours and textures perfectly capture the atmosphere. I’d still opt for Klemperer in…

Lorin Maazel once told me that there was no such thing as a right or a wrong tempo: If you think it’s too slow, who’s to say that it might sound better played even more slowly? I was reminded of this when I heard this version of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony and concluded that, like Beethoven’s Pastoral (probably the only thing both works have in common) it’s possible to have equally fine slow and fast versions. Gergiev, who seems to have abandoned the one-size- fits-all and frustratingly generalised approach which marred his Mahler cycle, takes 28 minutes for the sprawling Adagio/Allegro first movement. Mark Wigglesworth takes even longer, yet both readings are valid. By contrast, Oleg Caetani in a performance hailed by all, takes 20! Gergiev’s Mariiinsky forces are like a giant war machine, ironically, as few symphonies have ever dramatised the horror of war more starkly. As the centrepoint of Shostakovich’s so-called War Trilogy, it stands as one of the greatest symphonic landmarks of the 20th century, in between the Scylla of the relentlessly bombastic and overlong Seventh and the Charybdis of the strangely lightweight and quirky Ninth. Playing and conducting of this stellar standard avoid having the first movement…