This collection of legendary recordings provides an outlet for nostalgia among older music lovers and a rich opportunity for younger ones.

At a Prom concert in the Royal Albert Hall a few years ago, a few seconds after the famous bassoon passage at the beginning of the Rite of Spring, a mobile phone sounded. Sir Simon Rattle simply stopped the Berlin Philharmonic and started again. It makes you thankful they didn’t exist when Szell and Klemperer were around. This was the work that catapulted the then 21 year-old tyro conductor into the limelight when he conducted it with the Youth orchestra of Great Britain in 1976. I remember it vividly: I was there. Since then, he also recorded it during his tenure with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Whereas that was a respectable reading, this is in another league. In terms of tempos, colour and rhythm, it’s superb. The barbarism is beautifully tempered with finesse. It’s one of the great Rites. The only version I’d put above it is the stereo re-make by Igor Markevich and the aristocratic Philharmonia in 1960 where the orchestral shriek at the opening of the second part is… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Ian Bostridge may well be the busiest interpreter of Benjamin Britten in this the composer’s 100th birthday year. Previous recordings of Our Hunting Fathers and the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings have demonstrated the English tenor’s sensitive characterisation of text, but this latest collection of song cycles, written for Britten’s partner and muse Peter Pears, is Bostridge’s finest and most compelling offering yet. A big part of that is Antonio Pappano’s accompaniment. The duo collaborated on a Schubert album, but the eccentricities of Britten’s piano writing – all angular figurations and chiaroscuro effects he put into play himself – allow his imagination, and fingers, to run wild, whether bright and brilliant or sparse and eerie. Both performers vary their touch and articulation judiciously for a disc that is alive at every moment, leaving you hanging off every word. Listen to the way Bostridge leans into dissonance, gouging the text of Before Life and After from the late cycle Winter Words. Or the cat-and-mouse runs passed between singer and pianist in the nursery rhyme-like Wagtail and Baby. Bostridge’s intonation and enunciation are faultless but never characterless; I particularly relish how he shapes drawn-out melismas such as the sweet-toned “Seraphim”. His……

Once considered something of a ratbag, Samuel Sebastian Wesley is now regarded as a rather quaint figure, remembered for a handful of popular choral and organ works that make an occasional appearance with Anglican choirs. History reveals him to have been a colourful character. Despite being the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, he was born of his father’s teenage housemaid and after a childhood stint in the Chapel Royal, he spent a lot of his early career as a musician for the theatre. Wesley’s penchant for the theatrical was reflected both in his music and in his life. His tenure in various church music jobs was never overly long and his music often attracted trenchant criticism because of its mould-breaking style and form. While it is good to hear such evergreens as Blessed be the God and Father, Wash me throughly and Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace sung so beautifully, the real contribution of this disc is the opportunity to hear some neglected works in tasteful and disciplined performances. Ascribe unto the Lord, O give thanks unto the Lord and The wilderness and the solitary place are cast as minioratorios featuring soloists and an orchestral…

One of music’s most widely travelled explorers and an indefatigable advocate for intercultural understanding and world peace, Jordi Savall here returns with another extraordinarily rich multicultural musical offering: the music of the Balkans. As Savall writes in an introductory booklet note, he and his fellow musicians from different cultures “have delved into this extraordinary historical, traditional and even modern musical heritage to study, select and perform it, thereby creating a genuine intercultural dialogue between the different cultures that have so often been torn apart by dramatic, age-old conflicts.” The result is a vivid collection of traditional (instrumental) folk songs and dances – some joyful, some melancholy – largely drawn from Ottoman and Sephardic repertories. Five different ensembles have been configured for the different yet interrelated styles and traditions: Bulgarian and Macedonian, Gypsy and Hungarian, Serbian and Romanian, Turkish and Greek and Bosnian and Sephardic. The instrumentation is equally rich and includes accordions, violins, viols, lyres, guitars, ouds, a psaltery, percussion, ney and kaval flutes and a qanun (zither). A lively ‘Balkan Prelude’ from Serbia but with Turkish elements opens the disc, with some dazzling accordion and percussion work especially. What follows is a veritable crosscultural smorgasbord, including a soulful Romanian…

Shostakovich’s Ninth and Tenth symphonies have for me always represented the composer at his best. The Ninth is wonderfully uplifting, a light touch not shared by the other symphonies. The Tenth is its alter ego, dark and serious. Only in the closing pages and the dazzling scherzo does the mood lift. The latter, with its whirling woodwind, comes straight after the long first, in which gloom is unrelieved; a musical wasteland, the only light coming from the freezing gloom of a Russian winter. I had expected this new recording, with the remarkable Concertgebouw under the equally remarkable Mariss Jansons (due here in November), to walk away with the line honours. I’m not sure why I expected this, I suppose because of the double reputations and the fact that it’s probably my favourite orchestra. It is a brilliant performance, but there so are many other great versions of this demanding work. Every conductor worth his salt has recorded it, usually well, and there were well over 40 versions when I last looked. My main quibble is with Jansons’ reading of the scherzo. It has lead, not wings on its feet; the side drum is not prominent enough in the ensemble. After…

Hugh Laurie stars as inspirational teacher turning on his pupils to the joys of Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations.

We are all familiar with the disappointment when an eagerlyanticipated full-price CD turns out to be a pretentious lemon. The converse also (if more rarely) occurs: a full-price CD which one inserts into the player with limited enthusiasm, but which turns out to be most enjoyable. So here. Many of us will greet such a release by recourse to Britney Spears’ lexicon: “I am sooooooo not a clavichord expert.” And 79 minutes of clavichord is a lot of clavichord. But what threatened to be a chore proved revelatory. While CPE Bach’s oft-recorded 1773 symphonies deserve the rebuke uttered years ago by English broadcaster Basil Lam – “the too-easy surprises of a style where anything may happen” – the present keyboard sonatas, mostly dating from the 1760s, are much more coherent works. Gone are the symphonies’ improvisatory flourishes, their stop-start approach to modulation, their general sense of attention deficit disorder. In their place is a firm, Haydn-like approach to structure, though with no shortage of inventiveness. One curiosity is the appearance of various sonatas’ slow movements in several different versions, varying according to the amount of ornamentation (which CPE himself wrote down). Clearly CPE was an inveterate reviser. Incidentally this production……

Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) is from that long list of prolific French composers known for one or two familiar if slight works (Divertissement and Escales) but who’s more serious output has been ignored. This selection of chamber works (a cost effective genre) seeks to redress that neglect but falls short of its aim. The String Quartet composed between 1937 and 1941 then premiered soon after the liberation of Paris in 1944 is a weighty work that bears witness to troubled times. Its first movement is a cogent argument of obsessive motives but with characteristic urbane turns of phrase followed by a slow movement of lamentation and bleak sonority. The scherzo is a playful pizzicato movement while the finale bustles along with Hindemithian counterpoint; its syncopations reminding us of the lighter Ibert we know. The Trio for violin, cello and harp from 1944 is a good-humoured romp of fine craftsmanship and integrity: its Andante sostenuto a lyrical idyll. The programme is filled out with other short instrumental works such as the strange Ghirlarzana for solo cello and an early work; the enjoyable if inconsequential Souvenir for string quartet and double bass, here receiving its premiere recording. Unfortunately the good intentions are scuppered…

Once considered something of a ratbag, Samuel Sebastian Wesley is now regarded as a rather quaint figure, remembered for a handful of popular choral and organ works that make an occasional appearance with Anglican choirs. History reveals him to have been a colourful character. Despite being the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, he was born of his father’s teenage housemaid and after a childhood stint in the Chapel Royal, he spent a lot of his early career as a musician for the theatre. Wesley’s penchant for the theatrical was reflected both in his music and in his life. His tenure in various church music jobs was never overly long and his music often attracted trenchant criticism because of its mould-breaking style and form. While it is good to hear such evergreens as Blessed be the God and Father, Wash me throughly and Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace sung so beautifully, the real contribution of this disc is the opportunity to hear some neglected works in tasteful and disciplined performances. Ascribe unto the Lord, O give thanks unto the Lord and The wilderness and the solitary place are cast as mini- oratorios featuring soloists and an……

Certain conductors have become synonymous with particular composers. One thinks of Beethoven/Klemperer or Mahler/Bernstein. In the case of Elgar, the conductor who most often comes to mind is Sir Adrian Boult. He conducted and recorded Elgar’s music repeatedly over a period of 60 years, although when he first heard The Dream of Gerontius he predicted it wouldn’t last! This box contains all his Elgar recordings for EMI. There are others: Boult famously recorded the symphonies for the small company Lyrita in 1968. But this collection contains practically all Elgar’s orchestral works, many obscure or secondary, usually in multiple performances. The only substantial work missing is the song cycle Sea Pictures, probably because Barbirolli’s EMI recording with Janet Baker swept the board.  Timings vary – Boult’s Enigma Variations runs 26:21 in 1936, 31:03 in 1953. Occasionally he rethinks his approach. The Shakespearean tone-poem Falstaff is mellow and its climaxes more triumphal in a late performance from 1973. In 1950, the piece sounds mercurial, lively and even comic…. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

When you see it from the air, it’s a lot smaller than you expect. More cratery and corroded. More mound than monolith. But when I finally make it to the foot of Ayers Rock, I feel like one of those gorillas in 2001: A Space Odyssey, staring up in dumb simian wonder at a phenomenon far beyond my understanding. Whoa… So that’s why Ayers Rock is one of Australia’s icons – because it’s really, really big and impressive.   I’m in Australia’s red centre on a junket kindly arranged by Northern Territory Tourism. And a very nice junket it is so far, with shuttle buses, chilled water, indigenous dancing and handicrafts, hors-d’oeuvres sculpted from local flora and fauna, and lots of smiley people wearing lanyards. But I must admit to feeling like something of a fraud in their midst. I’m not really here for the touristy stuff – but for the music. Tonight at 7pm will be the first symphony concert ever held at Ayers Rock. The band: the Darwin Symphony; the music: a Verdi gala conducted by Matthew Wood; the soloists: soprano Emma Matthews and tenor James Egglestone.   It’s an evening of firsts for me as well. It’s…