Ernst Krenek’s resumé reads like a pro forma template of Austro-Germany’s forgotten composers sent into exile by the political climate of the 1930s. Studying with Franz Schreker and a short-lived marriage to Mahler’s daughter Anna ensured a thorough grounding in heady Late Romantic expressionism, dabbling with atonality before embracing Hindemithian democratic craft and making a big splash in 1927 with Jonny Spielt Auf; a key example of Zeitoper. Staged in over 100 European theatres, the pseudo-jazz inflected score and Jonny’s ethnicity would bring fame and notoriety but aroused the ire of the racial purifiers waiting to seize power. Krenek’s adoption of Schoenberg’s serial technique in the 1930s would seal his fate; his opera Karl V would be banned by the Nazis and he would be denounced as a “degenerate” so he decamped to Palm Springs, sheltering in academia for the rest of his life where he produced a steady stream of fine compositions that, apart from occasional performances in rebuilt Germany, were ignored.  His Reisebuch aus den Österreichischen Alpen song cycle of 1929 was a response to the previous year’s 100th anniversary of the death of Schubert. Spurred by a visit to the Alps, it is a revisionist take on…

Isabelle Faust is an exemplar of the new generation of Modern String Players who have assimilated the techniques of Historically Informed Performance with cross-pollination, inspiring a pragmatic hybrid style. The sickly constant vibrato and bland homogenised phrasing of yesteryear is replaced with a clean-cut sound of impeccable intonation and rhythmically alert rhetorical gestures, effortlessly articulated by her phenomenal bowing technique, (as heard in her breathtakingly beautiful performances of the Mendelssohn Concerto on tour in Australia this year). Faust’s self-effacing persona and collaborative spirit is evident from her various partnerships in chamber music, while the breadth of her repertoire choices and her interest in contemporary works reveals a sharp musical intellect. Yet the end results are music-making of a stimulating spontaneity with a complete freedom from stylistic dogma. This latest release is a perhaps surprising collaboration with Il Giardino Armonico, one of the first Italian groups to embrace HIP. Their early recordings of Vivaldi were a shock to the system with their abrasive rustic accents, but in later years, changes of personnel have refined their sound and they are truly magnificent here under long-term director and co-founder Giovanni Antonini. Accents are as crisp as ever but not so grating as to…

Andreas Staier established himself in the 1990s as a perceptive Schubertian with revelatory recordings on period pianos of the late sonatas and Lieder performances with Christoph Prégardien. His hyper-sensitive touch coaxes a myriad of colour and sonority out of the fortepiano so my expectations were high for this set of Piano Trios. Using a lovely copy of a 1827 Conrad Graf, Staier’s colouristic playing gives us plummy bass notes and pinging treble, creating fascinating tints, his companions adding delicate brushwork. Moments such as the second statement of the main theme of D898 with pizzicato strings supporting Staier’s impeccable articulation are breathtakingly beautiful and many such moments abound; the funeral march of D929 is gaunt and sepulchral. However his companions seem to be channelling an earlier era; both are superbly expressive exponents of Baroque string playing but their approach here seems at odds with Staier. Their lithe dynamic thrust in fast movements make for an exciting ride but they refuse to indulge us with any hint of Romantic expression, their blank phrasing with barely any vibrato and minimal tonal variation works against Schubert’s long, singing lines and large-scale structures so that periods of reflection drag despite flowing tempi. A frustrating release…

Paint Your Wagon is one of those shows that, despite the fine craft of its lyricist and composer, proved difficult to revive thanks to a less than compelling book. A morality play set in gold-rush California, grizzly Ben Rumson and his daughter Jennifer strike gold and found Rumson Town attracting a horde of roughnecks. Jennifer falls for Mexican Julio Valvera so is packed off east for schooling, but not before Dad purchases a Mormon’s spare wife. Jennifer returns but the gold has run out so she and Julio settle down to farm the ravaged land.  The show opened in 1951 but ran for a disappointing 289 performances, doing better in the 1953 West End run with 477. I Talk To The Trees and They Call The Wind Maria became popular hits. Years later Hollywood took a sledgehammer to the book, dropped several fine songs with replacements penned by André Previn and let loose Josh Logan who, despite his Broadway origins, had a knack for spoiling fine shows on celluloid. The result was an overwrought mess at a somnolent 158 minutes with Lee Marvin’s Ben Rumson a drunken buffoon mugging for the camera and growling out Wand’rin Star.  A radical ‘revisal’…

The music of the Medieval and early Renaissance is a startlingly unfamiliar language for modern ears with its strange clashes and cadences. Thanks to the tireless work of scholars, specialist performers and boutique labels, nowadays we can immerse ourselves in order to become sufficiently ‘fluent’, yet one can only wonder at what emotional responses this music must have triggered in the average 14th-century listener. Next to the big names of the Burgundian School, Arnold and Hugo de Lantins were second league but their works pop up in various codices alongside Dufay and Binchois. Little is known about Arnold but even less about Hugo – we’re not even sure they were brothers – but they were both clerics in the diocese of Liège. The first evidence of their work appeared in Northern Italy. This recital by Le Miroir De Musique, a superb ensemble of four singers and six instrumentalists, offers a lovely programme of secular chansons and rondeaux interspersed with instrumental arrangements.  The vocalists here strike an ideal balance of disciplined purity with an unforced, open vocal delivery. Clara Coutouly is especially enchanting in her solo turns Hélas amour, que ce qu’endure and Puis que je voy, belle, que ne m’aimes;…

Louis XIV was 15 in 1653 when he took part in a lavishly staged ballet performed on seven evenings in the Salle du Petit-Bourbon at the Louvre Palace. It was engineered by his ministers as a clever piece of political propaganda to cement the divine authority of the monarch along with a centralised government after the unrest of the Fronde rebellions. The spectacle was remembered for decades after and gave Louis his title of “the Sun King”; the four “watches” of the night with some sinister post-midnight revelries culminated in a glorious dawn with the King strutting his stuff in a costume of glittering celestial glory. Sébastien Daucé has spent three years recreating this work from fragments and disparate sources; a project of great scholarship, integrity and imagination. Amongst the anonymous dance tunes, and those of Jean de Cambefort, Daucé has interpolated airs du cour by Michel Lambert and Antoine Boësset, while scenes from Cavalli’s Ercole Amante and Rossi’s Orfeo have been added to remind us of the dominance of Italian opera in Parisian theatres before Lully. Ensemble Corespondances are superb exponents of this rarefied repertoire and the expansive forces of 18 voices and 33 instrumentalists… Continue reading Get unlimited…

This 2012 production was the centrepiece of Cecilia Bartoli’s first season as Artistic Director of the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. It’s a pleasure to note that Andreas Scholl has retained almost all his tonal beauty over 20 years now. Costumed as a European Union bureaucrat, his towering physical presence and wonderful sound befits the stature of the role.  Christophe Dumaux exudes danger and menace as Tolomeo. His nemesis, Sesto, usually comes across as a dithering ninny but Philippe Jaroussky takes hold of the role, his youthful look suggesting a boy out of his depth in a pool of circling sharks. Anne Sophie von Otter has gravitas as aging beauty Cornelia, singing with such artistry as to conceal any marks of time.  Bartoli’s Cleopatra is a knockout; a big, blousy Elizabeth Taylor portrayal sung with flamboyance in triumph and tenderness in defeat. The big tragic arias are heart-rending showstoppers, the artist spinning endless strands of silken tone. In contrast there’s Bartoli in frizzy blonde wig astride a missile. Once seen it’s difficult to unsee. And there’s the rub – wonderful musical performance in an ugly mess of a production. I counted off the directorial clichés; No 7 – dancers in army fatigues,…

I have been aware of Belgian soprano Sophie Karthäuser’s fine work in early repertoire for some years now but somehow missed her first release on Harmonia Mundi of Poulenc, which Andrew Aronowicz praised in these pages back in 2014; on hearing this latest delight I shall eagerly hunt out the former. Wolf has a reputation as a tough nut to crack for most listeners; his melodic style is a world away from Schubert, with wild, chromatic harmonies of Wagnerian sensuality, although naive simplicity sometimes pops up unexpectedly and he mostly avoided repetitive strophic form so that each setting is a miniature dramatic scene. His accompaniments, often carrying a bold subtext, can sometimes seem more inspired than the vocal line with evocative scene-painting and extended epilogues. In the wrong hands those accompaniments can sometimes turn turgid (like Schumann on acid) but no concerns here; Eugene Asti’s work is breathtakingly beautiful, perfectly graded and balanced – the recording is stunningly clear and present, every pellucid touch audible.  As for the singing – I was bowled over. While expecting the clarity and tonal beauty of such a fine Mozart exponent I was surprised by the dramatic range on offer. The top of the…

Erland von Koch (1910-2009) had a long and distinguished career embracing various ‘styles’. This sample of his ‘serious orchestral style’ certainly whets the appetite. The two symphonies, receiving world premiere recordings, date from 1948 and 1952 and are superbly crafted without an ounce of flab. The style might be described as Hindemith-lite with a touch of Bartók, but the melodic invention is fresh and memorable. Koch’s formal structure and thematic development is organic and lucid with a satisfying inevitability yet never predictable; a divertingly novel path to a foregone conclusion. The orchestration is clear and transparent but with just enough weight to satisfy the senses and never resorts to gimmickry. The melodic lines are coloured by subtle instrumental doublings and mixtures (marvellous wind writing) and the arguments are cogent, logical and always moving forward with striding confidence. Movements avoid outstaying their welcome such is his concentration and economy of means. Impulsi, a thrilling orchestral showpiece with nervous triplet repetitions would make a marvellous concert opener while the Nordic Capriccio is an amiable, folk-tinged romp. The performances are impeccable with a sense of commitment and relish.  Sound is as transparent and natural as one expects from the label. Marvellous stuff.

Serious record collectors should regularly light a candle for Robert von Bahr whose label BIS has brought so many fine artists to our attention; his willingness to green-light projects of dubious financial return is much appreciated by those of a completist turn. Ronald Brautigam’s surveys of Haydn and Mozart keyboard works were distinguished not only by the exceptional performances of the major masterpieces as by his diligent attention to every extant scrap from the composer’s desk. This latest release in his Beethoven cycle includes some of Ludwig’s least inspired scribblings but does have some gems to treasure. The lesser works can be a bore on a modern piano so the lovely characterful sound of the period instrument, an impeccable copy of an 1819 Conrad Graf by Paul McNulty, does wonders for their charm factor. This particular instrument featured heavily in earlier volumes and is a magnificent device with a lovely liquid top register and engagingly nut-brown bottom-end. Brautigam wrings the maximum expression and colour out of the instrument without ever pushing through the tone, while the light action abetted by his superb technique make for some thrilling flourishes. For the slyly charming variations on God Save the King, Rule Brittania…

Alfred Schnittke’s early life, with a Jewish father, Volga German mother and a musical education in occupied Vienna, was haunted by the fears and tensions of the outsider. The ‘polystylist’ language he eventually developed, with its wild juxtapositions of the ‘banal’ and ‘refined’ and a jabbing irony that confounded Soviet apparatchiks, may thus have been a fortified wall shielding a serious avant-gardist, but he risked coming across as a composer in search of a voice.  As time passed by and regimes began to crumble, he allowed cracks to appear in that wall and offer glimpses of the vulnerable artist within. Declining health in the 1980s revealed spiritualist tendencies, most apparent in the Penitential Psalms for mixed choir a cappella, written in 1988 to commemorate the millennium of the Christianisation of Russia.  Setting poems for Lent by anonymous monks from an anthology of Old Russian texts, the principal themes are that of original sin, the wrongs of the past and the need to repent and forgive; significant sentiments as the Soviet Union was breaking apart and old scores were being settled. The work has elements of traditional Russian Orthodox Liturgical chant with syllabic declamation and hummed drones, but tight contrapuntal lines…

A decade has passed since Trio Wanderer gave us a superb set of Brahms’ Piano Trios with the first Piano Quartet as filler. That recording set a benchmark thanks to the ensemble’s ideal balance of elegance and expressive intensity, so this sequel is long overdue. The rarely heard first version of the Op. 8 Trio is a fascinating adjunct to that set and the Wanderers tackle the work with a different mindset, helping to delineate the self-critical composer’s maturing concision. They don’t linger as they did during the lengthy first movement, which Brahms initially over-egged with five themes,  several of which were replaced by the lovely secondary subject. Hanslick thought the fugato passage as inappropriate as a schoolboy Latin quotation in a love poem and the composer took note and cut it. The marvellous Scherzo he left well alone but for a few nips and tucks, however he wisely remodelled the middle of the slow movement; the mood swings of the original are superfluous with such animated flanking movements. The last movement meanders through some tortured passages with a good third of the movement later excised and the clunky conclusion… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month…