A gently swelling guitar figure is adorned with flecks of pizzicato cello in the atmospheric opening to guitarist-composer Jaime Zenamon’s Reflexões No 6. The track throws the listener immediately into the rich sound-world of Boyd Meets Girl – a duo formed by Australian guitarist Rupert Boyd and American cellist Laura Metcalf. Their debut, self-titled album features works by Fauré, Bach, Ross Edwards, Gnattali, Piazzolla, De Falla, Pärt and Steve Porcaro – an eclectic programme bound together by the distinctive instrumental combination, the musical possibilities of which the players explore in wide-ranging detail. The Doloroso second movement of Reflexões is sparse and haunting, Metcalf’s cello carving rich-hued melodic lines over a crisp, dissonant accompaniment from Boyd. The musical world shifts with Fauré’s tender Opus 50 Pavanne, arranged for the combination by Metcalf and Boyd. An arrangement of a handful of Bach’s Two-Part Inventions sees the pair strike out in another direction in a joyful romp of brisk counterpoint. The mood becomes more reflective with a stripped back arrangement of the expansive second movement of Ross Edwards’ Guitar Concerto Arafura Dances, arranged for the duo by the composer. The Café 1930 movement from Piazzolla’s Histoire du Tango, borrowed from the flute and guitar…

On Migration, Slava Grigoryan and the Australian String Quartet have teamed up to record three recent works written for the unusual combination of guitar and string quartet. The album is named for the first of these, a single-movement work composed in 2003 by American guitarist Ralph Towner, a name that will be more familiar to fans of the German jazz and new music record label ECM than to classical music audiences. Migration languished unrecorded until now, and Towner credits Grigoryan’s enthusiasm and prodigious skill (indeed, in his hands its complex technical demands seem effortless) as central to the success of the work’s complex scalic runs and their integration with elegantly angular string parts. It sits easily alongside Flexible Sky by Austrian guitarist and composer Wolfgang Muthspiel, a dynamic but contemplative work comprising four contrasting movements. Dark and exciting, it features beautiful glissandi, and the notable interplay between violins and guitar reflects Muthspiel’s earlier training on that instrument. Nevertheless, for Flexible Sky, Muthspiel’s approach to instrumentation is democratic, noting that for him the work is “an interactive web of equal voices”. Towner, Muthspiel and Grigoryan regularly perform together as a guitar trio, indicating a degree of intimacy and mutual… Continue reading…

This Bruckner Three augurs well for what I hope will be a complete Bruckner symphonic cycle. The Third is, with the Second, probably the most tinkered with. The best performance of this work I’ve ever heard was with this very orchestra under Kurt Sanderling on an Electrola LP. This orchestra has just the right Teutonic heft but, in the hands of Nelsons, assumes a real finesse (influenced by his work with the Boston Symphony?) in the softer Gesangsperioden (lyrical passages). For Bruckner anoraks, this is the 1889 version, described somewhat fancifully by one critic as the “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am” one, a sentiment one doubts the resolutely chaste composer ever experienced. Bruckner was far, at this stage, from exploring, consciously or otherwise, the pyschological undercurrents apparent in the Eighth and Ninth symphonies. Nelsons’ take has neither the (impressive) tempo  idiosyncrasies of Jochum, nor the glamorised sheen and sleek legato of Karajan, nor yet the craggy implacability of Klemperer. The great recording producer Walter Legge, once said that Moghul architecture was monumental but finished with the lapidary detail of a jewel – something that all successful Bruckner conductors always achieve. Nelsons is aware of the need to construct an edifice,…

On the final disc of Yevgeny Sudbin’s Beethoven concerto cycle with Osmo Vänskä, the Russian pianist gives a vivacious account of Beethoven’s first two published forays into the genre – Sudbin has been working backwards through the concertos. He’s accompanied on this release by the Finnish Tapiola Sinfonietta, rather than the Minnesota Orchestra, with whom he recorded the rest of the series. The First Concerto’s Allegro con brio is brilliantly articulate – every note is alive and charged with energy. Sudbin deliberately eschews Beethoven’s cadenzas in the first movement for one he describes as a “cocktail of material” based on one by Friedman – a shimmery, almost gushily romantic flourish that bounces into the final tutti. Sudbin traces crystalline melodies in the pulsing Largo and the Tapiola’s clarinet player draws clean lines in the prominent solo part. The finale barrels along with a relentless joy and a jocular cadenza (all Sudbin). The Tapiola’s sound is full and healthy – a little too healthy, perhaps, though this gives moments like the fugal section in the first movement of Piano Concerto No 2 plenty of heft. There are some dreamlike moments in the Adagio, before the comically bright Rondo caps off the…

Howard Shelley’s relationship with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra goes way back. The British performer has recorded about 13 albums with the TSO, and returns for Czerny’s Piano Concertos released on Hyperion. As usual, Shelley adopts equally the roles of conductor and pianist. The Concerto in F Major, Op. 28 that launches the album hints at quaintness, interspersed with thick orchestral power. And this is all before we hear Shelley press the keys, entering after an agreeable three minutes. His performance is majestic – yet there’s a humbleness and reliability, and that marks the essence of Shelley. The Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 214 gets off to a cunning start. The first movement has the mighty ending of a finale, then settles into a somewhat peaceful Adagio con moto. The Rondo Brillant in B Flat is a standout, showcasing Shelley’s virtuosity across the instrument’s range. Two concertos are recorded here for the first time. A child prodigy who grew up to perform Beethoven’s concertos, Czerny’s own are buried among his countless studies; along with chamber music, masses, symphonies, and more. When it comes down to it, Czerny’s works on this album are fairly unremarkable – but that doesn’t deem them…

The second release in Andrew Manze’s complete traversal of Vaughan Williams’ symphonies, is as impressive as its predecessor. Despite the name “Pastoral”, the Third was a wartime symphony. Parts were written while Vaughan Williams was stationed at Écoivres during World War I, and its elegaic, melancholy mood is directly related to that experience. Manze’s recording embraces a post-war reading of the work in one very specific way: he employs a tenor for the wordless vocalise in the final movement, rather than a soprano. The ghostly sound of a man’s voice produces an almost tangible link to the unknown soldier that came to represent the casualties of the Great War. And how deeply contemplative is Manze’s pacing of the magical orchestral passage following the tenor’s appearance? The Fourth, composed between 1931 and 1934, seems with its harsh harmonic clashes to represent the threat of war once more, but the composer indicated that his point was purely musical. This was his first symphony to follow a traditional, recognisably symphonic form, namely that of Beethoven’s Fifth. Manze treats it that way. His urgency and clarity point out the symphony’s structural coherence, helped by a fresh and open sound. Manze reveals… Continue reading Get…

“There has never been in the history of music a child prodigy to equal Mendelssohn,” pianist and author Charles Rosen once wrote. “As a teenager, he was a much better composer than either Beethoven or Mozart at the same age.” And yet, as Rosen continues, “Mendelssohn’s precocity was a curse as well as a gift. Because of it, he never matched the extravagance of his greater contemporaries.” That may be true. Though what does extravagance have to do with genius? Anyway, as those of us who love Felix Mendelssohn’s music know, there’s a lot more to admire in his substantial oeuvre than those great masterpieces of his teenage years, the Octet and the Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Violin Concerto and maybe some of the Songs Without Words. Like the five symphonies, for instance, which achieve a startling unity and variety within single works and in relation to each other through Mendelssohn elegantly working out the implications of existing models. The First wears its debt to Mozart on its sleeve but is impeccably crafted and exhilarating to listen to. The Second, the extraordinary symphony-cantata known as the Hymn of Praise, seeks to reconcile the Baroque cantata and oratorio…

South African-born, UK-bred composer John Joubert is, we are told, the sort of chap to have three books on the go at a time. Not surprising then that the prolific nonagenarian turned to Charlotte Brontë’s Jayne Eyre as inspiration for his eighth opera in a catalogue that includes George Eliot’s Silas Marner and Joseph Conrad’s Under Western Eyes. A labour of love, written to no commission, the work took him from 1987 until 1997, and only received its premiere performance last year. Bar a few patches, this excellent recording on the pioneering Somm label derives from that concert. Along with composers like William Mathias and John McCabe, Joubert’s sound world owes a debt to Britten’s tonal lyricism, but in Jayne Eyre he allows his innate romanticism full play in a way that the more buttoned-up Britten would perhaps have shied away from. The result is a sensual, melodic score that despite employing only 35 players sounds rich and full with sensitively integrated orchestral piano and substantially deployed percussion leading the powerful climaxes. Joubert and his librettist Kenneth Birkin have crafted a lean framework that omits the extraneous, focusing almost exclusively on the characters of Jayne and Rochester. It’s well-crafted, but…

Étienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763–1817) is remembered today for the stirring Chant du Départ, the most popular French revolutionary anthem after the Marseillaise, but his operas and symphonies, acclaimed in their day, are now seldom performed.It’s a pity, because Uthal (1806) is an intriguing work, full of the devices the early Romantics loved: forests in the middle of the night, bards, warriors, the roaring sea, and the poetry of Ossian: a blind Gaelic poet from the third century – invented by an 18th-century Scotsman. Ossian’s day has long since passed, leaving in its wake Ingres’ paintings, Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave, and Méhul’s opera. The story is a good excuse for Ossianic atmosphere. Malvina (Karine Deshayes) tries to bring peace to her warring husband Uthal (Yann Beuron) and father Larmor (Jean-Sébastien Bou). All three leads are in fine voice, but the finest music is reserved for the bards: the enchanting Hymne au Sommeil and the chant Près de Balva. The harp features prominently in both. Méhul’s most famous stroke was to score the opera without violins, restricting himself to violas and basses in order to give the work an austere feel. Berlioz thought the result was “melancholy, more wearisome than poetic”, while Grétry quipped,…

In 2002, Riccardo Chailly conducted the first Turandot to use the new completion by Luciano Berio at the Amsterdam Muziektheater directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. 15 years later, the same team reunited to mount it at La Scala and commit it to video. Alfano’s completion sought to continue the spectacle but, in its rush to wrap up the story, is dramatically implausible – poor Liú is soon forgotten and love conquers all. Berio’s alternative is low key and pensive, its modernist touches may jar the ear but it’s more respectful than Alfano’s gauche reprise of “that” tune. Lehnhoff’s production has some curiosities but I “get” his neo-Brechtian-meets-Commedia-dell’arte aesthetic and there are some arresting images. Stemme is splendid as the cruel princess, her warm tone evincing a humanity behind the ice; her Wagnerian credentials allow her to ride the maelstrom from the pit in thrilling fashion. Antonenko does well to match her, though his sound has tightened since his fine 2008 Salzburg Otello. Maria Agrest is a lovely full-toned Liú, and the Milan chorus is superb whether delicately awestruck or baying for blood. Topping all is the brilliance of Chailly’s conducting – this could well be the finest account of the score…

We can thank the popularity of Walter Scott’s wildly romantic novels for the popularity of Scotland as setting for 19th-century Italian operas. If you add a German dramatist in Heinrich Heine and an Irish orchestra and chorus then this highly attractive new release of Pietro Mascagni’s neglected masterpiece Guglielmo Ratcliff has a truly global provenance. The composer first started work on it as a student in Milan following an unsuccessful love affair but it got put aside. After the success of Cavalleria Rusticana, Mascagni completed it but the tenor role was so challenging that after a successful premiere and a short run the work fell into obscurity. The hero is the spurned lover of Maria, disturbed since boyhood by an apparition of two lovers who can never have each other. Every time Maria is about to marry, her suitor gets killed – no prizes for guessing the perpetrator! The action centres on four monologues, one by Maria’s father MacGregor, two by Ratcliff himself and one by Margherita (“the mad woman of the castle”). This Wexford Festival production under Francesco Cilluffo is a corker. Angelo Villari thrills as Ratcliff, aided by a mainly Italian solo cast with the notable exception of…

This startling new recording presents a modern form of pasticcio or, as countertenor and project originator Philippe Jaroussky says, a work that was “conceived as a kind of opera in miniature or as a cantata for two solo voices and chorus.” It also reminds us there were other fine operas on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice written after Striggio and Monteverdi’s famous favola in musica. (As there were, of course, before it, such as Rinuccini and Peri’s 1600 L’Euridice. Here again we have the tragic and all-too-familiar story of Orpheus’s doomed attempt to rescue his beloved Eurydice, who had perished after being bitten by a serpent, from Hades’ realm. But by stitching together elements of three operas written decades apart – Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (1607), Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo (1647) and Antonio Sartorio’s L’Orfeo (1672) – we are introduced not just to bracing chiaroscuro effects that serve to heighten the drama; such anachronisms also demonstrate the changing styles of, and tastes in, music over nearly 70 years of the Baroque period. This was clearly a labour of love for Jaroussky (Orpheus). And what a fine thing to get such collaborators as Hungarian soprano Emöke Baráth (Eurydice), I Barocchisti, Coro della Radiotelevisione…