Lorin Maazel once told me that there was no such thing as a right or a wrong tempo: If you think it’s too slow, who’s to say that it might sound better played even more slowly? I was reminded of this when I heard this version of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony and concluded that, like Beethoven’s Pastoral (probably the only thing both works have in common) it’s possible to have equally fine slow and fast versions. Gergiev, who seems to have abandoned the one-size- fits-all and frustratingly generalised approach which marred his Mahler cycle, takes 28 minutes for the sprawling Adagio/Allegro first movement. Mark Wigglesworth takes even longer, yet both readings are valid. By contrast, Oleg Caetani in a performance hailed by all, takes 20! Gergiev’s Mariiinsky forces are like a giant war machine, ironically, as few symphonies have ever dramatised the horror of war more starkly. As the centrepoint of Shostakovich’s so-called War Trilogy, it stands as one of the greatest symphonic landmarks of the 20th century, in between the Scylla of the relentlessly bombastic and overlong Seventh and the Charybdis of the strangely lightweight and quirky Ninth. Playing and conducting of this stellar standard avoid having the first movement……

You’ll read reviews of this CD where itinerant and half-hearted Brahmsians will tell you that the tempi taken by conductor Andris Nelsons and soloist Helene Grimaud in this utterly remarkable, inspired and inspiring recording of the two Brahms piano concertos are too slow and leaden. You must not believe them. Just as true Brahmsians appreciate the glacial tempi of the symphonies in Celibidache’s legendary complete set, so here Nelson’s slower pace is all about unfolding the Brahms universe with its profound richness of detail and astonishing warmth of tone. There are so many recordings of Brahms First Piano Concerto, but few could be classified as Desert Island Discs and in fact many are downright disappointing. Well this performance of it recorded live in Munich changes all of that, and if by the end your legs are still able to support the weight of your body, assume that Brahms just isn’t really your thing. From that first opening orchestral chord, surely the most arresting ever captured on disc, Nelsons announces the epic scope of the enterprise ahead. Just three seconds in and your breath’s been taken away, and from there, he and remarkable Frenchwoman Grimaud are like two Alices in the…

As I write this, a new season begins on television of one of the most grotesque programs to ever flit across the small screen. I speak of Big Brother. Once a chilling character in a book by George Orwell, Big Brother the TV show is the nadir of civilization. Contestants put themselves on show 24 hours a day, and the more asinine, puerile, unintelligent, psychotic and ill- adjusted they are, the better. These are not unsuspecting victims, these are people who have so little shame, so little sense of decorum and privacy that would share every minute of their vacuous little lives – humans who would offer themselves up as mice in a live TV experiment. I watched 20 minutes of it with the kids, and could feel my brain cells dying one by one. There is more goodness and humanity in three bars of Bach than in 70 hours of Big Brother, and that might be classical music’s biggest selling point. It is decent. It has structure, it has intelligence, and it seeks to rise to a higher plane, rather than plunge to the depths. Strangely, much of it was written during blood-thirstier times when humans were less enlightened. During the gore of the French……

“I respect him very much… I consider him the most talented of all the modern composers.” Thus Rachmaninov, no less, in a 1912 encomium to Nikolai Medtner. Both pieces here have been recorded before, notably by Sviatoslav Richter (No 1) and David Oistrakh (No 3). But in hi-fi terms, these two Soviet-era accounts cannot begin to approach Hyperion’s sumptuously engineered issue, played with marvellous confidence and attention to each passing detail. Anyone with the slightest enthusiasm for post-Romantic musical melancholy, by a still-undervalued master, should own it. Lazy critics have traditionally pigeon-holed Medtner as “the Russian Brahms”. This soubriquet Medtner himself, with justice, resented. Very little in either of these compositions sounds Brahmsian, save inasmuch as Medtner largely shunned programmatic connotations. Fauré – rightly mentioned in the booklet note – is much likelier than Brahms to enter the hearer’s mind during the three-movement First Sonata, which never bespeaks youth, though Medtner finished it when still only in his 30s. Now and again, the rich textures and hints of woodland fantasy suggest Elgar also. The sole trace of Rachmaninov comes with the extraordinary bell-like opening to the finale. No wonder Medtner gave his 1936-38 Third Sonata the name Sonata Epica. At 47…

Few recent piano recordings have given me as much pleasure as this one. Imagine that sense of relaxation, fun or reflection that one feels listening to an encore after a lengthy and often more serious piano recital. Then multiply it by 20, and you have Piers Lane Goes to Town. Of course it both is and it isn’t as simple as that. As the Queensland-born, London-based Lane writes in his engagingly-written booklet note, “Considering the scope of these short pieces (a selection of Lane’s most-often-played 20th- century encores), Australian composers feature more prominently than one might expect, partly because several works were written for me by down-under compatriots”. So this is a musical autobiography in more ways than one. Alan Lane may not have written his Toccata for Piers, but the fact he was the latter’s father counts for much, as does the fact that the music of Billy Mayerl “was a great favourite in the Lane household”. Anthony Doheny’s Toccata for Piers Lane was by contrast, and as the name suggests, expressly written for Lane, as was Robert Keane’s delightful yet slightly dangerous-sounding The Tiger Tango. Lane also suggests that he would be surprised “if even the most avid pianophile knew every piece on this disc”. However some…

  Mahler’s symphonies are at risk of becoming everyday entertainments rather than gala occasions thanks to every conductor with a penchant for late Romantic repertoire anxiously wanting a go. With an over abundance on the market I’m tempted to call for a moratorium despite my sad addiction. The Eighth is notoriously difficult to capture on disc. Jonathan Nott’s clear-headed, unsentimental approach might work in the concert hall where sheer physicality would carry all before it but it doesn’t register so well here. Part I needs broader tempi for transitions to make sense Despite Nott’s textural clarity it risks degenerating into “all sound and fury signifying nothing” not helped by a slightly cloudy recording. His firm grip works better holding together the sprawling structure of Part II but his reluctance to stop and smell the roses lets key moments pass by. Cool modernist dissection may work in the other symphonies but the Eighth is the most blatantly theatrical; Part II is an operatic finale… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

  Frans Brüggen seems to be enjoying a renaissance in his recording career. One review described his readings of these two staples (depicting destinations on the Grand Tour) as having light-footed fluency. I disagree: His Italian Symphony sounds quite leaden in the first movement, rather as Klemperer might have conducted it but certainly didn’t (Klemperer’s reading is one of the fastest in the catalogue). Brüggen’s Italy won’t have the Grand Tourists reaching for their 30+ sunblock either. There’s not much dazzling light – or attack. At least he includes the first movement repeat with its delicious, woodwind-dominated lead-back passage. The middle movements are unremarkable but the tarantella finale compensates for the foregoing lethargy. The Scottish is more suited to Brüggen’s spirit. The first movement is appropriately ruminative and creates a brooding, mist-shrouded landscape with prominent swirling woodwind and strings, more pondered than ponderous, you might say. Brüggen integrates the coda more convincingly than usual but I found the late entry of the clarinet in the ‘highland fling’ scherzo grated on repetition. Brüggen and his forces are at their best in the Scottish symphony’s Adagio, where both the orchestral colours and textures perfectly capture the atmosphere. I’d still opt for Klemperer in both works.   Continue reading Get unlimited…

Patricia Kopatchinskaja is the latest phenomenon in the galaxy of young violinists who seem to excel at everything they undertake. Following up her Gramophone Bartók/Ligeti/Eötvös Recording of the Year, here come the Stravinsky and Prokofiev Second Concertos. Both were composed within five years of each other but could hardly be more different. Indeed, the Prokofiev inhabits a different universe from its playful neo-classical precursor. Kopatchinskaja states that the work indicates an exquisitely creative “re-ajustment” to Prokofiev’s return to the Soviet Union, an acceptance that “this is the sort of music you have to compose.” She captures the emotional ambiguity of the work perfectly: the uneasy stirring of the G minor opening and the subsequent lyricism tinged with bleakness, her tone impressively kaleidoscopic, alert to every emotional nuance (as are Jurowski and the LPO). The spiritual core is the central movement with its ‘raindrop’ accompaniment – a radiant, rhapsodic oasis, shot through with shards of intensity. The finale seems to tap into Kopatchinskaja’s Moldovan roots: earthy and uncomplicated on one level yet maintaining headlong relentlessness to the last. The Stravinsky is, by contrast, a hard nut to crack, stylistically and psychologically. It took the composer down a path alien to the Russia he’d abandoned,…

Lennox Berkeley has often been more of a biographical footnote than a well known composer. Highly regarded as a teacher (students include Richard Rodney Bennett and the recently passed John Tavener), his oeuvre includes symphonies, opera and chamber music. A collaborator of Britten, he was equally friendly with Ravel and Les Six and his output has a more international sound than many of his British contemporaries. Written between the 1930s and the 1950s, his works for violin and piano immediately strike one for their clarity of purpose. Here is chamber music that is both cultured and approachable. The English violinist Edwin Paling together with the Tasmanian- based pianist Arabella Teniswood- Harvey (the wife of Michael Kieran), proves to be an ideal musician for the task at hand. And here is a task that is both scholastic and musical, bringing together a previously unpublished first Violin Sonata as attractive as any of the other works in this program. Equally fine are the Introduction and Allegro composed for the underrated Israeli violinist Ivry Gitlis and the earlier second sonata written whilst Berkeley studied with Nadia Boulanger. Whilst it is not necessarily ground breaking in terms of invention, Berkeley’s chamber music for violin and piano is…

Tedeschi’s new CD follows on from the success of his first recording, Gershwin and Me, and features the Rhapsody in Blue, the wonderful Preludes, arrangements from the Songbooks and Tedeschi’s own inspired take on Porgy and Bess. Elsewherere he’s joined by Australian jazz trumpeter James Morrison and vocalist Sarah McKenzie. With more arangements of Gershwin songs and pieces such as Promenade, Three-Quarter Blues and Impromptu in Two Keys, it’s a varied and attractive program. Gershwin’s music is able to effortlessly inhabit multiple worlds – blues, jazz, classical and so forth – while maintaining the highest standards of craftsmanship. Tedeschi by contrast is firmly of the classical world, while perfectly able to accommodate the rhythmic and harmonic nuances of Gershwin. This is evident right from the opening work, Promenade, which Tedeschi imbues with a jaunty insouciance; I also loved the sheer exuberance of Jazzbo Brown Blues and the expansiveness of I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise. If Morrison and McKenzie tend to steal the limelight when they appear, that’s more down to Tedeschi’s generosity as a collaborator. But it’s in the solo works that Tedeschi’s art is best savoured, and nowhere more so than in the solo version of Rhapsody in Blue. Here, Tedeschi, unencumbered by the orchestral accompaniment, really soars, An enjoyable…

These performances have aged very well indeed making this an ideal way to discover HWH.

Volkmar Andreae (1879-1962), the Swiss composer and conductor, is not well known athough he directed the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra from 1906 to 1949 and was so well regarded as a conductor that he was offered the New York Philharmonic after Mahler resigned in 1911. As a young man the musical world almost lost him to the military, and during the First World War he was often released from his duties at the Tonhalle for this purpose. He also led the Zurich Conservatorium between 1914 and 1939. His music is gracious, melodious and attractively romantic. That there is hardly an original note in his compositions will not be of great moment to those drawn to his music. His grandson, conductor Marc Andreae, is part of a determined effort to resurrect the man’s music, backed by Guild, the record label. This CD is a part of that laudable exercise. The Piano Concerto is excellent, and will sound familiar. Those who know the Litolff Scherzo will know what I mean. The first movement, the better of the three, happily plays around in fields inhabited by Grieg and Rachmaninov. Once you get into the single movement Concert Piece, his composition becomes more radiant… Continue reading Get…