Instrumental
CD and Other Review

Review: Lawes: Music for solo lyric viol (Richard Boothby)

The lyra viol is a 17th-century instrument that, like the viola d’amore, has resonating strings inside the body of the instrument. It’s played between the knees like the bass viol, but is a little smaller. In many ways, however, the lyra viol is most similar to the lute. Like the lute, the lyra viol has a significant solo repertoire, and its music is notated in tablature. Tablature notates the location of the notes for the player, but not what those notes are. Given that the lyra viol often uses completely different tunings, using tablature makes performing music where each string might be different from the norm considerably easier. Although he’s most well known for his music for viol consort, William Lawes wrote prolifically for the lyra viol. Richard Boothby here performs the entirety of the solo repertoire, most of which are dances – it’s a lushly warm performance of Almains, Sarabandes, and Corantos. Though Boothby’s playing is beautifully hypnotic, I’d have liked more bite to some of the faster dances. Lawes’ consort music is known for his startling use of dissonances and rhythmic shifts, which could have been exaggerated more. On this disc, these works can… Continue reading Get unlimited…

December 7, 2016
Instrumental
CD and Other Review

Review: Homages (Benjamin Grosvenor)

The expression “homage” is somewhat overused. The homage here is to earlier composers and, less specifically (and, in this case, convincingly), genres. Busoni’s treatment of JS Bach’s famous Chaconne for solo violin is here played very emphatically and majestically by Grosvenor. There’s no question as to his artistry or interpretative imagination but I found the experience wearing.Mendelssohn’s tribute to Bach sees vibrant preludes with kaleidoscopic embellishments and grand fugues with admirable ebb and flow, not to mention, architecture. I’ve always found Franck’s Prélude, Chorale and Fugue rather academic but Grosvenor maintains both the seemingly endless tendril-like legato (and rubato) effectively. I found the homage concept less cogent in the Chopin and Liszt component, but the music more engaging. The notoriously tricky Barcarolle is beautifully brought off with just the right swinging rubato. No one will ever replace Dinu Lipatti, but that’s no reflection on Grosvenor. In Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli, from the Italian component of his Years of Pilgrimmage, he, similarly in Gondoliera, captures the innocence of a gondolier serenading his beloved. For me, the best came with the download bonus of the six-movement Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. (He orchestrated only four). Grosvenor takes the Prélude… Continue reading Get…

December 7, 2016
Instrumental
CD and Other Review

Review: Bach: Goldberg Variations (Mahan Esfahani)

And so one of today’s most singular young harpsichordists comes to one of the most singular works ever written for the instrument, JS Bach’s Aria with 30 Variations, aka the Goldberg Variations. The legend, propagated by one of Bach’s great early biographers Forkel, is well-known. In 1741 an insomniac Count von Keyserlingk of Dresden commissions from Bach a work which the Count’s harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, subsequently performs for his master to while away the sleepless hours. Now considered an apocryphal story, it is no less attractive for that. But one thing is true: that in the last century and this one at least, both exponents and listeners of the piano or the harpsichord have spent many an hour in thrall to one of Bach’s most original and grandly conceived work for keyboards. Whether playing Rameau and CPE Bach or Steve Reich and Górecki, the Tehran-born Esfahani always seems to be asking not whether he has something new to say about the music but whether the music has something new to say to him. In other words, a merely novel interpretation isn’t the endgame – though it may be a byproduct. The aria, a stately sarabande that encloses the… Continue…

December 7, 2016