Opera
CD and Other Review

Review: Verdi: La Traviata, Aida, Macbeth (Various)

Three of Verdi’s finest for around $40 is good value by most people’s reckoning and this BelAir set would make a welcome inclusion in any opera fan’s library. French soprano Mireille Delunsch is incandescent as the dying Violetta in Peter Mussbach’s noir 2003 Aix Festival La Traviata. Everyone is dressed in black while the blonde heroine palpitates in sequined white like Marilyn Monroe (or is it Catherine Deneuve?). Matthew Polenzani is impressive as Alfredo, sweet toned and secure in the big moments. Dmitri Tcherniakov’s 2009 Macbeth at L’Opera National de Paris is the standout of this collection. The treatment is simply breathtaking, with a clever use of sets. The cast is top-notch: Greek baritone Dmitris Tilakos is totally convincing and Lithuanian soprano Violeta Urmana sings powerfully and beautifully, descending into bloody madness looking like a deranged Dawn French. The chorus are superb and the great scene in the fourth act where the displaced Scots are shattered by war evokes chilling footage of refugees. Nicolas Joel’s 2007 Zurich Opera production of Aida, on the other hand, evokes the flag-waving of empire. Nina Stemme makes a compelling Aida. Salvatore Licitra, whose death from a brain haemorrhage in 2011 cut short a promising…

March 26, 2014
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CD and Other Review

Review: Hindemith: Violin Sonatas (Becker-Bender, Nagy)

In the 1920s, Paul Hindemith was well and truly aboard the Modernist bandwagon, writing “shocking” absurdist operas employing bitonal harmony and even jazz. His violin sonatas, however, bypassed all this. His first two appeared in 1919 and 1920, predating his iconoclastic period, while the later sonatas date from 1935 and 1939, by which time he had left youthful hijinks behind. Though Brahms would have found them mystifying, in the early works Hindemith breathes the same air as the older master. No 2 gets a strong performance from German violinist Tanja Becker-Bender and her Hungarian partner Péter Nagy. They are thoroughly inside the idiom, capturing the slightly lugubrious atmosphere of the slow movement. They also show fine rapport in the later C Major Sonata, when Becker-Benda lightens her tone for the fleeting scale passages at the close of the Langsam movement.Elsewhere they can turn abrasive – Hindemith’s music doesn’t need help to sound tough – and at forte Becker-Bender’s tone becomes wiry in the upper register. Recent competition in Op 11 No 1 and the two later sonatas comes from Frank Peter Zimmermann on BIS. His tone is easier on the ear, and his musicianship (and that of his pianist Enrico…

March 26, 2014
Uncategorised
CD and Other Review

Review: Bax: Symphony in F (BBC Scottish National Orchestra, Yates)

Sir Arnold Bax was one of Britain’s most individual composers. Hearing a few bars of one of his mature, Celtic infused scores is often enough for you to say, “ah, Bax”. But in 1907, as a well-heeled emigré wannabe composer “battening on the fleshpots of Dresden”, as we are told in Lewis Foreman’s excellent sleeve notes, his influences and musical flavour were distinctly Russian – indeed, his landlady was convinced he was one! In Germany he also got to hear two movements of Mahler’s Sixth and something of the ambition of that work infuses this, his first attempt at a symphony. It was Bax’s practice to orchestrate only when he had a performance in view, and in the absence of such, the piano score languished – until now, thanks to the conductor Martin Yates. It’s a big, sprawling work, in places in need of a trim, but it’s brimming with memorable material such as the leaping opening theme of the first movement or the Ravelian waltz that forms the basis of the scherzo. The whole work is most convincingly realised for the orchestra. Bax was a master colourist and that this comes over here is a credit to Yates. It……

March 26, 2014