Orchestral
CD and Other Review

Review: Haydn: Piano Concertos (Bavouzet)

No other composer, in my experience, had such a warm and simple character (but a multi-faceted musical personality) as Joseph Haydn. Widely contrasting elements of Rococo delicacy and sturdiness combine with exuberance and melancholy, seriousness and wit, forcefulness and elegance. However, unlike Mozart, Haydn’s only concertos to have fared well are the two cello concertos (one discovered relatively recently) and his trumpet concerto. Neither the violin nor the keyboard concertos have entered the Haydn ‘canon’. In the case of the keyboard concertos, it’s not for want of distinguished advocacy: In the mid ‘70s, Michelangeli (of all people ) recorded two with the Zurich Chamber Orchestra under Edmund de Stoutz and, more recently, pianists of the calibre of Andsnes and Hamelin have essayed their considerable charms, with impressive and persuasive results. Now, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet has interrupted his Haydn Sonata cycle with three genuine concertos ie. the three without textural or chronological ambiguity to cast doubt on their authenticity. Bavouzet has been around for a while but recently he’s entered the “Is there anything this guy can’t do?” stratosphere with an acclaimed Beethoven Sonata cycle, an award winning Prokofiev Concerto cycle, Debussy, and miraculous Ravel, as heard in his Sydney recital last…

March 10, 2015
Orchestral
CD and Other Review

Review: Cole Porter in Hollywood

It is now six years since aficionados of the classic Broadway musical mourned the tragically early death of John McGlinn, who did such exhaustive work creating definitive recordings with authentic orchestrations and vocal arrangements. We can thank EMI (now Warner Classics) for signing John Wilson who has continued in the tradition but with a focus on the film musical. The first two albums, That’s Entertainment and Rodgers and Hammerstein at the Movies, were delightful romps and this latest is likewise. Wilsons’ reconstructions of the souped-up Hollywood orchestrations are delivered by his hand-picked band in period style with swoopy strings and fruity saxes, but with just enough British reserve to avoid going over-the-top in glitz; one can still visualise a knowing campy twinkle in the eye. His casting of singers is impeccable; genuine Broadway style voices with no nasty modern pop-vocalist mannerisms or plum-in-the-gob operatic diction – oh, how nice it is to hear every delicious Porter lyric clearly enunciated in a natural idiomatic style. Most of the program is from the 1950s, so the opening number from Silk Stockings makes an apt curtain raiser as a paean to the technological innovations of that decade with Anna-Jane Casey and Matthew Ford…

February 20, 2015