Orchestral
CD and Other Review

Review: Shostakovich: Cello Concertos (Oslo Philharmonic)

In my recent review of Petrenko’s recording of Shostakovich’s Fourteenth Symphony, I said it made his other lugubrious works sound like Offenbach. Well, I spoke too soon. Despite excellent playing, conducting and engineering, I strongly recommend against anyone in anything like a fragile state listening to this CD. Mørk has covered these works before but I doubt whether those recordings could top these. The Oslo Philharmonic’s accompaniment certainly reinforces Petrenko’s reputation as one of the great Shostakovich conductors of our age. Mørk also distinguishes himself throughout, conveying the gruesome parade of fear, anxiety, despair, grotesquerie and sheer bafflement. They keep the first movement of the First Concerto moving in a business- like way, making it even more sinister. In their hands, the final movement’s inclusion of a supposedly favourite folk song of Stalin is more sardonic than ever, while the threnody-like second movement sees a few green shoots of warmth and lyricism. The Second is far less known and for me the most telling moment, especially in the current international context, was the way the orchestral climax in the first movement is brutally quelled by the bass drum, as if to kill any momentum. Petrenko and Mørk’s tempi in… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

February 5, 2015
Orchestral
CD and Other Review

Review: Mozart: Piano Concertos (Angela Hewitt)

Angela Hewitt has made a career as the other great Bach pianist from Toronto, though like her predecessor, Glenn Gould, she has recorded much more widely – from Couperin to Ravel. This is the third instalment in an ongoing cycle of Mozart’s Piano Concerti – this one devoted to two of his larger scale later works, No 22 with its varied instrumental accompaniment and the grand C Minor with its inventive clarinet obbligato. Hewitt has chosen live performances – though you’d never guess it, so quiet and unobtrusive is the audience. And while there is an occasional blurred or overplayed passage where the left hand dominates, the variety of colour is amazing. Her performances are informed as much by earlier piano practice as individual insight. She is joined by the National Arts Centre Orchestra who are equally vividly caught by the microphones, bringing out those inner incisive rhythms that we associate so strongly with Mozart. These are personal performances which admirably capture much of Hewitt’s live allure and we must remember that these concerti were ‘cutting edge’ when Mozart wrote them in the mid 1780s – so new in fact, that this was a mere decade after… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

February 3, 2015