Whatever you do when you listen to Nigel Kennedy’s The Four Elements, don’t expect anything like The Four Seasons… The British violinist is known, firstly, for his visceral performances of Vivaldi’s four most famous concertos and, secondly, for his rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, symbolised by his very non-classical hairdo. Kennedy’s own take on “The Four Somethings” idea melds these two facets of his personality. Writing for instruments more commonly encountered in pop or rock, Kennedy has composed four pieces entitled Air, Earth, Fire, Water – plus an overture and a finale. It’s just like Vivaldi – but it rocks. At least, that’s the idea. In reality, The Four Elements is a rambling work not quite interesting enough for the classical genre, nor punchy enough to succeed as popular music. Vivaldi fans will be turned off as soon as the electric bass and drums thud into motion in the overture; while the veneer of classical nerdiness will turn off mainstream listeners (despite the trip-hop beats in Air and a rap solo from Kennedy in Earth). The playing is top-notch throughout, and the instrumental writing is quite accomplished – but the flaw of Kennedy’s work is… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access…

Schoenberg’s admiration for Mahler extended to founding an Association for Private Musical Performances to revive Viennese musical life after WWI. They could rarely afford a full orchestra so relied on chamber music reductions. In the case of The Song of the Earth, Schoenberg completed only most of the first song then delegated Webern to the task, by which time the Association was bankrupt. The real hero is Rainer Riehn, who completed the sketch in the 1980s based on Schoenberg’s orchestration. “Mahler arr Riehn” doesn’t have quite the cachet of “Mahler arr Schoenberg”, so you can imagine the push to overstate the latter’s involvement. Nonetheless, the arrangement is a credit to Riehn and this CD is also a credit to Douglas Boyd and his ensemble and singers. The Song of the Earth in any form represents Mahler’s art at its most distilled and offers a tantalising glimpse – as do the Ninth and Tenth symphonies – into how his music would have developed had he lived longer. Even the full orchestral version has many chamber-like textures and it’s anyone’s guess how these two singers would have fared in the more heavily scored passages (Christa Ludwig and Fritz Wunderlich… Continue reading Get…

Walton’s First is one of the most outstanding symphonies of the 20th century, the turbulent energies of which are apparently the result of the composer’s failing relationship with one Imma von Doernberg. The exultant final movement burst out after a fresh encounter with one Alice Wimborne. Whatever the inspiration, it stands with the Elgar symphonies at the peak of English orchestral composition. A pity such passion had not fired the Second Symphony; compare the ravishing slow movement of the First with that of the Second… The latter seems almost an afterthought. Premiered in 1957, the Second Symphony fell afoul of the “toot, whistle, plunk and boom” school of music that held contemporary classical music to ransom for the following 40 years. We now know better and the symphony can be seen for what it is: an excellent if minor work. It is drier and less moving than the First, stylistically at one with many great 20th-century composers such as William Schuman, Sibelius and Roy Harris. Never at fault is Walton’s brilliant orchestration. These are excellent performances and good value for money. The finest Walton First is still the 1967 recording with the LSO under André Previn on… Continue reading Get…

David Garrett was a gifted young violinist who performed as soloist with the London Philharmonic at the age of ten. He “crossed over” a few years ago to record a series of song-based albums, and never has that act seemed more like crossing to the dark side. It began with the rather jejune Free (2007), a bouquet of tunes by Morricone, Bernstein and Bizet, but reaches an apotheosis of awful with Rock Symphonies – Garrett joined by an orchestra and heavy metal band. The violinist wields his bow like a machete, castrating composers of talent from Beethoven (first mvt of Fifth Symphony) to Kurt Cobain (Smells Like Teen Spirit). What makes it especially heinous is that Garrett’s playing isn’t even that refined, despite the Juilliard training. He can “shred” all right, but he doesn’t have the variety of phrasing to make rock music sound natural on the violin; he’s out of tune in Guns and Roses’ November Rain; and his solos seem conscribed to the pentatonic scale. It’s almost like Garrett is the André Rieu of rock – the schmaltz king of metal. Bad taste release of the year. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Sarah Connolly spins 20th-century English songs into gold in this new recital, the latest in a string of excellent solo discs from the English mezzo. It’s hard to believe that just seven years ago, Connolly was obliged to self-fund her first solo album – she’s a natural in the recording studio, singing with irresistible warmth and unfailing elegance. On the operatic stage, where many of her signature roles put her in breeches, Connolly can swagger with the best of them; in the quieter and more intimate world of art song, she’s just as vivid but in a very different way. English art songs are prone, rightly or wrongly, to being viewed as twee or irretrievably stuffy. Not so in Connolly’s care. Even the most familiar folk tune – Britten’s arrangement of O Waly Waly for example – is sung with hushed intensity, and Connolly handles lyrics about flowers and fields with as much sincerity as she does darker fare, such as Gurney’s stark By a Bierside.  Her diction and phrasing are so exemplary that one ceases to notice them and is simply caught up in the finely wrought world of each song, be it a tale of lost… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Mikhail Pletnev once recorded a sensational piano transcription of the Nutcracker suite. His traversal of the entire ballet isn’t quite in that class. Tchaikovsky’s score has more glamour, charm and sheer magic than almost any other music, ballet or otherwise. I suppose its nearest rival would be his own Sleeping Beauty. I’ve never really heard a bad Nutcracker but I doubt this reading surpasses the two wonderful Doratis or my own favourite: André Previn with the LSO (EMI). It’s unfortunate Ondine couldn’t have filled the first CD and found something else to fill the second, as both have less than 50 minutes of playing time.  Sometimes the orchestra sounds rather flatly recorded, especially the brass. The traditional highlights, such as the Waltz of the Flowers and the dancing snowflakes, remain somewhat earthbound. The pistol shot at the start of the mouse battle sounds like a popgun and the castanets in the Spanish dance are poorly captured: they’re barely there. I always judge the performance by the Arabian dance – if the sinuous sensuality is there, the rest will usually take care of itself. Well, it’s not… Look, there’s nothing catastrophically wrong with this version, but… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

The six Bach Cello Suites are the cornerstone of the cello repertory. They make for ultimate judgement, able to intimidate and awe player and listener alike. Pablo Casals discovered them for the modern world and made them his own. Now Michael Goldschlager has put his own stamp on them. There’s no sign of intimidation here. From the first moment, Goldschlager gives us a committed and profoundly thoughtful interpretation of the Suites. The warm acoustic, though fine, does not quite match the deep glow of my favourite recording by Heinrich Schiff, but this is a different reading, with Goldschlager seeming to imbue the music with deep, intense personal emotion. In his thoughtful notes to this 2-CD set, Goldschlager explains that he finds the Suites almost skeletal in outline, believing that if Bach had revisited them they might have been fleshed out with far more embellishment. But it is this very austerity in which he seems to rejoice in performance, an austerity which is, at the same time, the essence of beauty. This is a wonderful reading which can find a place alongside the best and most famous in the catalogue. The performance is notable for its… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

This is no daddy-daughter vanity project; 24-year-old Lily Maisky is an impressive pianist in her own right with a felicitous musical rapport with her famous cellist father. He might count Martha Argerich as a long-standing duo partner, but in this selection of popular Spanish songs and dances – recorded live in concert – it’s hard to imagine a more fresh or sympathetic union. Lily’s buoyant accompaniment perfectly matches Mischa’s bright, crisp pizzicatos in the third movement of Falla’s Suite populaire espagnole; both bring searing intensity to the sixth’s rapidly repeated notes. A gift for expressive cantabile must be in the Maisky blood, as heard in the phrasing of Granados’s Intermezzo and in his lilting Andaluza from the 12 Danzas españolas (the cellist’s own arrangement). There is plenty of mystery in their fragrantly ornamented reading of Ravel’s Habanera, and it’s lovely to hear the full range of Mischa’s cello, especially the rich, resplendent nether end, in the stately Playera by Sarasate. What I long for on this album though, after all that Mediterranean lyricism, is a lively, virtuosic contrast. Falla’s Danse espagnole No 1 from La Vida Breve is a good effort but the cellist’s uncharacteristically… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Interesting historical fact: In 1825, Johann Schultz and the Gewandhaus Orchestra presented the very first complete cycle of the Beethoven symphonies, a tradition followed by Schultz’s Leipzig successors which have included luminaries such as Mendelssohn, Furtwängler and Masur. Thus, with this new cycle under maestro Riccardo Chailly on Decca, it is fair to say that these works are pretty much “in the blood”. In fact, to sum up this beautifully presented 5-CD set, it is a rather brilliant fusion of the old and the new. The traditional element is immediately evident in the sound. The Leipzig strings offer a rich, beefy timbre while the brass is bright and punchy, though never vulgar. All of this is captured in a state-of-the-art recording of tremendous depth. The new is represented in the playing style – strings eschewing unnecessary vibrato, delicate woodwind – but especially in the tempi. Chailly observes Beethoven’s markings to the letter so we have some very fast movements indeed. The beauty is that the orchestra is so fleet of foot that detail is seldom sacrificed in the interests of speed. These unmannered readings allow Beethoven to speak for himself in exceptional versions of the Second, Third, Eighth… Continue reading…

As a teenager, I once bought a recording of Shostakovich’s Twelfth. I played it once and, mystified, put it back on the shelf and hadn’t heard it again until this CD turned up! I’m still mystified but, as I always opine with Shostakovich symphonic cycles, you have to take the good with the bad – and the Twelfth is pretty bad. Not even Petrenko, who is developing into one of our best Shostakovich conductors, can do much with this turkey, but he does manage to invest the Adagio with a generalised eeriness. The Sixth is another matter: unduly neglected, it’s arguably Shostakovich’s most inscrutable and abstract symphony, whose lopsided construction does interpreters no favours, since the second and third movements combined are barely half the length of the preceding Largo and, as a skittish Scherzo and jokey presto respectively, are uncomfortably similar. Petrenko manages to distinguish them effectively and also achieves a haunting effect in the hugely spanned opening movement. It also sounds genuinely Russian: the “moodiness” of the strings with their undercurrent of sinister power and the piquant woodwind in the latter movements (something Haitink never managed in his recording with the LPO). The four stars… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Anyone who saw Swedish clarinettist Martin Fröst twist, twirl, strut and shimmy his way through his national tour with the ACO last year will know what a physically engaging showman he is. So it’s natural that he would record a dance-themed album during the tour, and no surprise it’s the most eclectic and inspired program the ACO has committed to disc. Hillborg’s Peacock Tales creates a spellbinding atmosphere even without its visual component, Fröst running the expressive and technical gauntlet against an eerie backdrop of clustered strings. Copland’s Clarinet Concerto is equally virtuosic. Both soloist and orchestra (with added piano and harp) are bright and punchy right up to the final clarinet glissando. Fröst is spirited and idiomatic in klezmer tunes scored by his brother Göran and attacked with gusto by the ACO. Göran’s arrangements of Brahms’s Hungarian Dances are well served by the soloist’s lightness of touch and flawless intonation, but it’s the band’s sweeping romanticism that carries these pieces. The most fun on the disc, however, is Högberg’s highly charged Dancing with Silent Purpose with its manic electronic beat. The Expressive Rage movement gives the ACO an opportunity to rock out… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from…

It’s hard to know at whom this release is aimed. Wagner’s idiom changed perhaps more radically than that of any other famous composer. Listen to the overtures to Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love) and The Fairies and you’d think you were listening to Offenbach or even Gilbert and Sullivan, not the man who went on to compose Tristan and Isolde, The Ring and Parsifal. This strangely assembled program contains an orchestral tribute to The Mastersingers by one Henk de Vlieger, about whom no information whatever is vouchsafed, other than that he was born in 1953. This attempt at a symphonic synthesis is surely based on The Ring: An Orchestral Journey brilliantly recorded by Lorin Maazel and somewhat less excitingly by Edo de Waart. The difference is that, while the Ring Cycle is studded with orchestral interludes and even accompanied vocal passages which have become showpieces in their own right, The Mastersingers has very few. Which brings me back to my original point: who really wants to hear a sort of operatic soundtrack which is hardly self-sufficient? Järvi and the Royal Scottish orchestra are in fine form and the Chandos acoustic is deep and rich, but I… Continue reading Get…