Ingrid Fliter is an impressive Argentinian pianist who recently toured Australia. Following two acclaimed Chopin discs, her new recital of three of Beethoven’s Sturm und Drang sonatas is also something of a winner. Fliter plays Beethoven with an appropriately Classical demeanour. She limits the dynamic extremes and does not overdo the rubato, but within that spectrum she points detail and gets the balance right. The opening of her Pathétique is slow without being solemn, then bracingly fleet once the Allegro begins. The lovely slow movement is meltingly played. Fliter transforms the stop/start passages of the Tempest sonata’s first movement into episodes of genuine urgency and repose. This is a gripping performance. The Appassionata poses a greater challenge, both emotionally and technically. In spite of her easy flowing pianism, which takes every technical hurdle in its stride, I fear Fliter often settles for a generalised sound here – big and loud, or slow and soft as the case may be –  whereas Paul Lewis, whose Appassionata is one the best recordings in his Beethoven survey, maps the emotional contours of this forward-looking work with unwavering focus, making something unique and specific of every moment. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per…

I’ve always found Richard Strauss’s character a real mystery: a smug, rather banal bourgeois with a narcissistic streak, he wrote sublime music which itself often teeters on the edge of banality. I enjoyed this Heldenleben but, at 47 minutes, the hero, while not exactly an arthritic Colonel Blimp, isn’t a young buck full of rising sap, either. This is surprising, considering Yannick Nézet-Séguin is one of the most athletic conductors around today. The opening lacks the self-confident swagger that Beecham brought to it for EMI (at the age of 80). In the second movement, the “battle” rages effectively enough, although I can never escape the feeling that Mahler depicts his critics far more bitingly in the Rondo burlesque of his Ninth Symphony. Strauss’s wife Pauline, a granite-jawed termagant in real life, comes across relatively sympathetically in the extended (and ravishingly played) violin solo of the third movement. The ending, depicting the hero’s retrospective contemplation, is simply too slow, although the Rotterdam Philharmonic’s horns are glorious. The orchestra, which plays well throughout, also sounds very distant and was recorded at a curiously low level. I’d prefer any of Karajan’s readings, or Fritz Reiner’s legendary RCA one. The… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Argentinean cellist Sol Gabetta was named Gramophone Young Artist of the Year in 2010, but she had turned heads internationally as one to watch even before the release of the Vivaldi Project album in 2007, her first foray into Baroque music played on gut strings. On that recording she opted for the Italian group Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca but for this second instalment she has formed her own Cappella Gabetta. Ensemble playing in the opening Cello Concerto RV423 is crisp and clean bordering on dispassionate, but the Cappella perks up for the taut unison introduction to the G minor RV416, and in the final Allegro Gabetta dashes off rapid virtuosic passages with brio and finesse. She is equally at ease with the gold-spun cantabile lines of the RV420 Andante. The bold Allegro doesn’t have the cracking pace of Han-Na Chang and the London Chamber Orchestra for EMI – as a result Gabetta’s intonation is more precise, her phrasing more subtle and expansive. The Sonata for Cello and Continuo RV42 breaks from the homogenous string orchestra sound for a sombre, more intimate setting, stylish and warm enough to leave me hoping for Gabetta’s Bach Cello Suites on… Continue reading Get…

The first thing I noticed was the spectacular fidelity of the recording and how beautifully the harp arpeggios are captured at the very beginning of Harold in Italy. One unique feature of this recording of Berlioz’s strange concertante work/tone-poem hybrid is the restoration of virtuosic passages in the first movement, expressly composed for the dedicatee, Paganini, and later suppressed by Berlioz (why has it taken so long for someone to restore them?). Carpenter’s tone is sumptuous but the quintessentially elegiac voice of his viola is enlivened with wonderfully mercurial flashes from both the soloist and Ashkenazy with the hyper-alert orchestra. The pilgrims seem a happy band and the Serenade of the Abruzzi mountaineer to his sweetheart is winsomely played by the American violist. The final movement, The Brigands’ Orgy, is particularly dramatic. I don’t think anyone can surpass Charles Munch in his old Boston performance on RCA, but these forces come close. Among modern competitors, I’d put Sir Colin Davis and Tabea Zimmermann (LSO Live) and Lorin Maazel’s New York Philharmonic version with Cynthia Phelps (Deutsche Grammophon) on the same level. The only problem I had with this release was the choice of fill-ups. The Beatrice and… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Grosvenor finds plenty of poetry in the lyricism of Chopin, Liszt and Ravel.

Treading the path of many revered rockers who have dared to dabble in classical music late in their careers, Tori Amos makes her Deutsche Grammophon debut with a contemporary song cycle drawing on the music of Bach, Schubert, Debussy et al. as a harmonic framework. Luckily, the patron saint of female singer-songwriters has the right mix of indie cred and training as a classical pianist (ending in rebellion) to pull it off in style. The eclectic range of pieces that comprise Night of Hunters illumines Amos’s narrative of a relationship in crisis, told in a curious blend of mythical and prosaic language. The high-octane, Nymanesque opener Shattering Sea (Alkan) sets a turbulent scene, John Philip Shenale’s propulsive chamber arrangement featuring bassoon, clarinet and strings. Not all the songs live up to this promise though. The Satie Gnossienne suffers most, as Amos awkwardly breaks up words to fit what should be a floating melody – only her own newly composed bridge section charms the ear. But Fearlessness, Job’s Coffin and Nautical Twilight are exemplary Amos ballads in classical garb (with a girlish, Kate Bush vocal twist), while Edge of the Moon reveals the singer-pianist at her most vulnerable, to… Continue reading…

The greatest music — say, a late Beethoven piano sonata — exists in its own realm. It does not automatically conjure up images of the period in which it was written. Chopin’s waltzes do, and that is why they are sometimes thought of as glorified salon music. It takes a pianist with the sensibility of Stephen Hough to reveal the art behind their mixture of effervescence and sentimentality. Chopin himself regarded his waltzes as comparative trifles; he only published half of them and often gave the manuscripts to young ladies as gifts. Hough’s facility with lighter music is well documented in his mixed recitals. He has an instinctive knowledge of when to relax and when to press forward, which is used to charming effect in this beautifully recorded collection. In both the Minute and the C-sharp minor waltzes (from the Op 64 set) Hough subtly caresses the melodic lines, and breezes through the scale passages with an evenness of touch, never making too great a point of virtuosity. Mirroring the composer’s achievement, this is the art that conceals art. The delicacy of Hough’s approach also benefits the unpublished waltzes, many of which are less complex and less polished than the… Continue reading…

I hate to sound like an old fogy here but I guess it’s unavoidable.

Zubin Mehta has had a distinguished, if occasionally uneven career. His tenure with the New York Philharmonic was not one of the orchestra’s more successful appointments. Elsewhere he has done some outstanding work: his conducting of Turandot on Decca with Sutherland is probably the finest on disc, Richard Bonynge observing that Mehta’s scrupulous attention to detail at the recording sessions was remarkable. More recently he led the less famous forces in Valencia in a remarkable Ring Cycle. Now we have this new release from a concert he gave with the IPO in Tel-Aviv in 2007. From the outset, Dvorák’s Ninth is flabby and untidy, with the IPO’s strings sounding very indifferent. This is surprising, for the one of the IPO’s greatest strengths has always been its famous string section. There is some fine solo woodwind playing in the slow movement and the scherzo clips along nicely. Nonetheless, you don’t have to look far to find superior performances on CD. The New World Symphony is teamed with Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, and as couplings go it doesn’t get much stranger than this. What some orchestras can present together in a concert hall may seem incongruous on a recording…. Continue reading Get…

It’s good to see the Scandinavian company BIS persevering with the high-end SACD format at a time when the majority of music buyers no longer seem to care about quality audio reproduction at all. This disc has three audio layers to choose from: SACD Stereo, SACD Surround and standard-CD. When played through a good system boasting SACD reproduction, it shows just what the format is capable of. The sound here is simply superb. The violin has its natural warmth with plenty of bite, and the detail in the orchestral sound is exemplary, revealing layer on layer. Of course, that would be worthless if we were listening to a mundane performance. This is anything but. Soloist Vadim Gluzman and the Bergen Philharmonic under Andrew Litton give a committed interpretation of Bruch’s First Violin Concerto, and we can understand from this fine account why the success of this work overshadowed the rest of the composer’s career.  The Romance for Violin and Orchestra is a pleasant enough piece, much like a stocking-filler at Christmas. But the rarely heard String Quartet in A minor is a revelation. Written in 1918 when the composer was 80 and near the end of his life, this… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Anyone familiar with Schubert’s murderous Die Nonne (The Nun) or Mendelssohn’s frenzied Hexenlied will know the extremes to which a 19th-century composer might go in order to send shivers up the collective spines of his audience with a ghoulish musical yarn. But if an hour of such fare fills you with trepidation, fear not, for with Canadian baritone Gerald Finley and pianist Julius Drake you will be in very safe hands. This is a brilliantly constructed program of tales told through poetry and music, ranging from blockbusters like Erlkönig, a most deeply felt Lost Chord and ending with a razor-sharp Cole Porter ballad about a social-climbing oyster who goes down the wrong way with inevitable results. Finley is clearly a singer at the very top of his game – the voice always used with intelligence; full, resonant and flexible. I would be hard pressed to think of a rival today who could finesse these songs with such grace, nuance and sheer vocal acting. Drake is in his element as well, breathing fire or exuding pathos in turn.  Standouts include a hypnotic rendition of Edward, Loewe’s tale of patricide revealed, as well as a chilling Der Feuerreiter – Wolf’s ballad of… Continue reading Get unlimited…

In his day Charles Gounod was seen as a leading composer of religious music, turning out a large number of works in his productive lifetime (20 masses and four requiems, for a start). We remember him as the composer of Faust, once the world’s most famous and popular opera. He is less well-known for a rather weak-kneed version of Roméo et Juliette, complete with happy ending. If, as an opera composer, Gounod has faded, on the evidence contained in this excellent CD his religious music warrants reappraisal, even though, with its faint perfumes of a bygone age, it might seem more elusive to ears attuned to Poulenc and Fauré. This is especially true of the Requiem, though the Messe Chorale is made of sterner stuff and is a fine work. In an 1892 letter to a colleague, Gounod writes: “It is time for the banner of liturgical Art to replace in our churches that of profane cantilena, and for musical practices to proscribe all the mush of the Romance and all the sweets of piety which have for too long sickened our stomachs”. It is possible that César Frank’s 1872 setting of Panis angelicus was just the sort of soupy church music… Continue reading…