This programme has been cleverly crafted around the world premiere recording of Sir James MacMillan’s Oboe Concerto performed by its dedicatee Nicholas Daniel with the composer at the helm. It is a bold virtuosic work that should prove popular with both players and audiences.  The breezy first movement, a bustling affair with the soloist goaded on to challenging passage-work by startling effects in the orchestra, contrasts starkly with the following Largo based on material from a earlier composition In Angustiis (a post-9/11 lament for solo oboe). It juxtaposes periods of keening sorrow with outbursts of rage, while stretching the expressive possibilities of the instrument just about as far as it can go. The Finale is forthright and playful, opening with a demented parody of serialist pretensions before veering off in unexpected poly-stylistic directions – although some of its jokes are a little too wacky for its own good.  The disc opens with Vaughan William’s pastoral idyll with the soloist directing a performance that should serve as a top recommendation for this under-recorded gem. The Britten Sinfonia’s limpid strings conjure moments of heart-stopping beauty such as the hushed rapture at the close of the first movement. Daniel’s slender but focused tone is quintessentially British and…

How extraordinary, when you think about it, is Guillaume Tell in the career of Gioacchino Rossini? At the age of 37, at the very height of his powers, he writes his longest, grandest, and probably his greatest French opera, only to then fall silent for decades except for a few naughty piano works and the odd bon mot. He must have known (or feared) that he could do no better and, listening to it all over again, his final opera is a very fine thing indeed. This outing comes from the admirable and ambitious annual Rossini Festival in Pesaro, and if there’s one thing they invariably do well it’s pick a cast. I really can’t imagine a better sung bit of bel canto than this. Add to that a magnificently detailed reading of the score, plus a thoughtful production, and this is nigh on four hours of operatic heaven. Graham Vick’s neatly politicised staging shifts the action from late medieval times to the Swiss ‘Downton Abbey’ era, focusing on the class oppression that was running its course round about then rather than on the stark nationalism of the original. Against a bleak, white set, the drama is played out effectively…

Anne Sofie von Otter has crossed more genre boundaries than most and with effortless ease, so when DG marked her 60th birthday by asking her to pick her best 10 albums it was no surprise that she would come up with this stunner. The set, branded “10 Classic Albums”, lives up to the name. We get lavish helpings of Brahms, French chansons, late-Romantic lieder and Scandinavian songs alongside von Otter’s brilliant collaboration with Elvis Costello, and we are given a bonus with her 1997 arias from Handel’s Ariodante, her first collaboration with Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre. They also collaborated on an all-Offenbach album, done with wit and elan and even if it’s not your aperitif of choice von Otter’s ability to inhabit the music will impress you. English conductor John Eliot Gardiner is another regular partner and their 1994 Kurt Weill tribute, Speak Low, represented another outstanding departure. Two further jewels in the set are her Baroque ventures with Reinhard Goebel and Musica Antiqua Köln, Lamenti and (my favourite) Handel’s Marian Cantatas. But it is her 30-year association with fellow Swede, pianist Bengt Forsberg, which is the beating heart here. Their broad musical landscape takes in Cécile Chaminade’s…

This 10CD box has been released to celebrate the 75th birthday of a great artist who has beguiled audiences over a 50-year career of great integrity and an extraordinary range of roles. Van Dam’s effortless musicality, burnished velvety sound and ability to inhabit a character made him one of the outstanding singing actors of our time. While an obvious starting-point for the curious newcomer, these sorts of compilations are usually spurned by serious collectors as most are a ragtag assembly of bits and pieces from complete recordings that they will already have sitting on their crowded shelves – unless there is an unreleased nugget buried inside and then the completist will pounce. However the intelligent programming offered here is something else and bodes well for the launch of this new Erato Autograph series.  The discs are compiled thematically with one for Devils, one for Fathers, and one for Don Quichottes. CD5 cleverly duplicates the big scene for Jochanaan in Strauss’s Salome with the original German version conducted by Karajan and the alternate French version conducted by Nagano – fascinating stuff for the Straussian. Discs 1-6 celebrate van Dam’s versatility and breadth of roles on the opera stage and 7-9 his…

Editor’s Choice, Opera – August 2015 A few years ago I welcomed unreservedly the revelatory recording of Leonardo Vinci’s late opera Artaserse (Virgin 6028692) as an undiscovered masterpiece. Featuring a stellar line-up of no less than five countertenors (thanks to prudish Roman fashions, the women’s parts too were written for men), the opera, composed in the high-Neapolitan gallant style is a glorious succession of imaginatively scored virtuosic arias with no duds and plenty of hummable tunes. With the same cast bar one, this DVD is in some ways even better as the confusion between who is singing what, when so many roles are sung in falsetto, is no longer an issue. Artaserse was one of the hit libretti of the period, set by everyone who was anyone, but Vinci’s is rather special. The villainous vizier (Artabano) has killed his king letting suspicion fall upon his own son (Arbace), best friend to the new king (Artaserse). When Arbace won’t dob on dad, a tangled web of blame and deceit ensues before all comes good in a magnanimous finale involving a poisoned chalice. Silviu Purca˘rete’s production is the campest thing you’ll see this side of Eurovision, with costumes that would make Cinderella’s…

There is something special about the blend of voices among family members – witness the Everlys or the McGarrigals in the pop world  – but there are few instances that exist in the field of classical music. German father and son team Christoph and Julian Prégardien, however, are two exceptional tenors in their own right and have been performing duets over recent years. Now they have taken their popular recitals with pianist Michael Gees into the studio for the Dutch label Challenge Classics. The result, Father and Son, is an entertaining collection of curiosities and rearrangements of what some may consider to be sacred cows. The arrangements, mostly by Julian Prégardien and Gees, include 12 Schubert songs and were the product of rehearsals followed by in-the-moment improvisations, much like you would hear in a folk club. This, they argue, is in the spirit of contemporary accounts of the original Schubertiade evenings. The Goethe setting Der Erlkönig divides logically into the two roles of the night-riding father and the son who dies in his arms. Other songs sit less comfortably as duets, for this listener at least, although the Prégardiens and Gees perform them all impeccably. Two little-known German composers are…

A wonderful mixture of power, passion, beauty and expressive intensity, the distinguished Bulgarian-born bass, Nicolai Ghiaurov was a fine exponent of many aspects of opera and song, not least the Italian and French schools. He and his second wife, the great Mirella Freni, made a formidable operatic duo. Now dead for over a decade it is timely that Decca honour Ghiaurov with this generous and varied survey of his work in the field of Russian music. In the operatic realm, we have a selection of important arias sung with the London Symphony under Sir Edward Downes. Ghiaurov presents impressive characterisations in roles from Eugene Onegin, Prince Igor and most notably Boris Godunov, for which he became particularly famous.  A selection of songs by Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Glinka, Rubinstein, and the now-forgotten Dargomyzhsky, shows the singer to be capable of great warmth and intimacy, especially in favourites such as None but the Lonely Heart and Rubinstein’s Melody. Ten folksongs performed with the Kavel Orchestra and Chorus under Atanas Margaritov are a welcome reminder of the other side of Russian music which Ghiaurov obviously enjoyed. The lusty singing of the male chorus together with a band that includes accordions and balalaikas make for…

This offering of Tallis’s motets reflects the changing demands on composers during the English Reformation. Henry VIII’s spurning of Catholicism in 1534, along with the taste of the early Reformation leader Thomas Cranmer, had a handsome effect on the composition of sacred vocal music. A syllabic, non-melismatic approach to word-setting was favoured – a trend reflected here in the blazing Mass for Four Voices. This music is full of striking harmonic effects; false relations abound! The spidery conclusion of In Manus Tuas, Domine is deftly handled: artful elegance applied to such dissonances gives the ear time to absorb the harmonic logic. Occasional intonation slips are just noticeable: a sharp soprano in the opening notes of Wipe Away My Sins, reaffirms her sharp inclinations in the otherwise sublime Miserere Nostri. The Cardinall’s Musick takes a rather reserved approach to the music, utterly appropriate to the style. Well-judged, vigorous singing flares up in the Gloria from the Mass for Four Voices. In that work, incredibly stellar chordal writing is intelligently balanced: a clear hierarchy in chordal notes is reflected in the tuning and volume of each note. As though a road map is placed in front of the listener, each phrase is…

Kenneth Leighton came to prominence in the 1960s with a unique musical language that suited the times. His output had a ‘mod’ feel: edgy harmonies and propulsive rhythms seemed to proclaim a bold, new outlook that challenged both the musical and ecclesiastical status quo. Looking deeper we discover that Leighton’s music was anchored by a fair weight of musical history. Five years as a boy chorister at Wakefield Cathedral imbued him with a love of the Anglican tradition, whilst his later experience as a student of strict counterpoint, under the stern eye of his teacher Petrassi, ensured he knew what rules he was breaking. Stephen Layton and the Trinity choir have done a magnificent job in bringing out all the colour and drama of this selection of Leighton’s church music. Much of the disc has been recorded at Lincoln Cathedral where the weight of the organ adds to the intensity of the performances, even if it means some detail is blurred.  Crucifixus Pro Nobis is splendidly realised with superb attention to the text by Patrick Carey and Phineas Fletcher. Tenor Andrew Kennedy wrings all the pathos from the score providing some hair-raising moments which are worth the price of the…

Editor’s Choice, Vocal & Choral – August 2015 When one considers Franz Liszt’s rapacious appetite for poetic stimulation, the exalted literary circles in which he moved and his inexhaustible creative drive, it should come as no surprise that he composed over 70 songs, although only a handful will be familiar to most lieder-philes. That may change thanks to this third volume of Hyperion’s latest project in the label’s seeming aim to record the entire art-song repertoire and the bringing on board of Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley will broaden its appeal.  The album spans some 50 years of Liszt’s career and demonstrates his wide ranging polyglot tastes and searching intellectual curiosity for source material. His harmonic and formal invention can veer from the exploratory to the mundane, but when taken on its own terms and delivered with this level of dramatic intensity it makes for a haunting 75 minutes.  Finley takes these songs by the scruff of the neck and gives them all the dramatic gesture and flair he can muster. The Petrarch Sonnets are here, but heard in the substantially revised second edition for low voice, their austere profile casting a darker shadow than the familiar soaring soprano version. The…

This latest album of Philip Glass piano music is a desperately poor effort from a pianist who apparently thinks that pressing down notes in the right order constitutes an interpretation. Never mind the specifics of the cultural milieu that helped create this music. Don’t bother listening to other pianists – musicians who have worked with Glass or indeed the composer’s own recordings. People who know stuff? What have they got to say that might be remotely useful? As in her earlier album of music by the British composer Michael Nyman, Valentina Lisitsa has assembled a grab-bag of Glass film scores – from The Truman Show, The Hours, Mishima and The Olympian – and her strategy is to wrap these already candy-sweet scores inside a lasagne of tinsel. Which is not to say that she puts a technical finger wrong. Inner parts are balanced; harmonic ambiguities are allowed to speak. No, the problem lies in her decorative and ambient touch, which reduces the music to inert patterning. The brief spans of most of these picture-postcard vignettes means that your irritation is generally only momentary. But her hapless attempt to sustain the 30-minute generative structure of Glass’s 1968 How Now – one of his trail-blazing,…

Javad Maroufi is credited as one of the first composers of piano music in Persia and is renowned for his significant contribution to Persian classical music. Inspired by their common heritage, Australian-Persian pianist Amir Farid has long been familiar with the composer’s work – indeed, Maroufi’s compositions were some of the first that Farid performed in public as a child. It’s fitting then that Maroufi’s body of work forms the basis of his wonderful second solo album. The pieces on this disc fuse the Western language of Chopin with the modal folk melodies of Persia, resulting in a journey through a collection of deceptively simple piano works. The Preludes in particular pay homage to Maroufi’s Polish counterpart. Farid is the perfect interpreter of these tiny gems. One technical trial is the use of a rapid right-hand tremolo, imitating the sound of the Santur, a Persian dulcimer. Farid sustains these rollicking repeated notes with an almost vocal quality. The melodic lines require rapid embellishments, which Maroufi allows the performer to add at their discretion. It’s through these subtle inferences that Farid demonstrates his intimate understanding while getting a chance to show his virtuosic chops in the demanding Charagh-e-Esfahan. If there is…