Vocal & Choral
CD and Other Review

Review: Songs by Max Reger (Sophie Bevan)

In songwriting terms, Reger remains a one-hit wonder: his Mariä Wiegenlied, but heaven help anyone seeking the rest of his vast Lieder output. Now Hyperion has come to the rescue,  but even they supply a mere 33 of the nearly 300 songs which Reger left. Repeatedly discernible in this selection dominated by miniatures is the composer’s tendency to resort to restless chromaticism in songs that begin as folk-like, almost drawing-room productions. No wonder recitalists have shied away. Far easier to master a song that stays in the same mood throughout, rather than switching within seconds from Schubertian quasi-naivety to Hugo-Wolf-style anguish. Significantly, Reger preferred minor poets: no Goethe, Schiller or Heine here. Occasionally Reger uses a verse familiar from Strauss: Mackay’s Morgen!, which Reger makes almost indistinguishable from a Wagnerian dusk. But other Reger settings show him in a much better light and they deserve more frequent airings. This reviewer was particularly taken by the martial Zwischen zwei Nächten, the impressionistic Aeolsharfe (like Debussy to German words), and above all the deliberately antiquarian In einem Rosengärtelein. Sophie Bevan has a big timbre which nevertheless encompasses considerable delicacy when needed. Malcolm Martineau is perfectly attuned to Reger’s unrelenting demands. Engineering and…

December 16, 2016
Vocal & Choral
CD and Other Review

Review: Reverie (The Australian Voices)

The most recent release by The Australian Voices is their first with current director Gordon Hamilton at the helm. As a composer, Hamilton is no stranger to eclecticism, and Reverie offers works that draw on classical, jazz and popular styles, with texts and subjects not limited to war, nonsense and political speech. The most classical offering is Hamilton’s arrangement of Australian-British composer and soldier Frederick Septimus Kelly’s Elegy – In Memoriam Rupert Brooke. It complements other reflective works by Hamilton on the disk, including a sombre meditation on the ANZAC experience, Dark Hour and the radiant, existentialist Who Are We? Graham Lack’s Reverie of Bone, with percussion by Claire Edwardes, dwells in a similar space. At odds with these more sober offerings are groove-driven works, like Lisa Young’s Misra Chappu and James Morrison’s Underwater Basket Weaving, a cute bluesy work featuring Morrison himself on trumpet. But top reason to own this disc is the diptych of politically themed works by Robert Davidson: Total Political Correctness, a musicalisation of the Trump-Kelly debate, and the viral internet sensation, Not Now, Not Ever! – Davidson’s reworking of Julia Gillard’s speech against misogyny. Hamilton says the works each “embrace… the banal in… Continue reading…

December 16, 2016
Vocal & Choral
CD and Other Review

Review: Muffat: Missa In Labore Requies (Cappella Murensis)

Born in France of a German father and with Scottish forbears, Georg Muffat was something of a polyglot in more ways than one. As a result of his many travels, either for study or in search of work, Muffat was destined to introduce into Germany the fashionable baroque styles of both Italy and France, having met both Corelli and Lully. In his splendid and lavish 24-part Missa In Labore Requies, both styles happily coexist. It is thanks to Haydn, who possibly acquired the autograph score from Muffat’s son, that the Mass is still extant, even though it was neglected up until the 1990s probably because it was thought to be spurious. (It has now been authenticated.) The abbey church at Muri in Switzerland, with its four galleries and two organs is a wonderfully apt recording venue. Such spatial differentiation is reminiscent of the four organ galleries of Salzburg Cathedral. The cathedral was possibly the venue for which the work was originally written, as Muffat had to return from a study tour to assist in the celebrations for the 1,100th anniversary of the founding of the diocese. The musical forces of the Mass are divided into five groups –… Continue reading…

December 16, 2016