The Austrian Felix Weingartner (1863-1942) is nowadays best known for conducting the first recordings of the Beethoven and Brahms symphonies. In his own day, though, he was equally renowned as a composer, especially of symphonic music and opera. Die Dorfschule (The Temple School) was his tenth out of a grand total of 12. The plot comes from a gripping Kabuki play about 10th-century Japanese feudal politics. An exiled chancellor’s son, Kwan Shusai, has been secretly brought up by Genzo, a loyal samurai who, along with his long-suffering wife, is now running a school. When the noble, Matsuo, demands the boy’s severed head, Genzo murders a recently enrolled pupil instead. Only at the end do we discover the dead boy is actually Matsuo’s own son who he enrolled in Genzo’s school as a decoy to save the life of Kwan Shusai. A contemporary of Strauss, Weingartner’s music sounds a little leaner, yet he’s very much a student of the post-Wagner school. But where the symphonies are often sumptuous, Die Dorfschule has an austerity that marries perfectly with its grim tale of honour and sacrifice. Only in the Imperial march does the composer let his hair down. The cast are… Continue reading…

A fitting tribute to one of the 20th century’s musical giants.

If this well produced disc is anything to go by, Krzysztof Penderecki, the grandfather of Polish music, remains a powerful expressive force, both as composer and conductor. Spanning nearly 60 years of compositional endeavour, the works display Penderecki’s prowess in the field of large-scale religious works. His 2014 Dies Illa, written to commemorate the victims of World War I on the centenary of its outbreak, is a vivid soundscape that takes inspiration from Verdi’s Requiem. The Warsaw forces perform expertly and soloists (soprano Johanna Rusanen, mezzo  Agnieszka Rehlis and bass Nikolay Didenko) deliver texts with empathy and commitment. Two 1997 commissions demonstrate Penderecki’s ability to bring his keen appreciation of history to bear on works for grand occasions. Hymn to St. Daniil for the 850th anniversary of the foundation of Moscow, has a strong flavour of Orthodox chant, culminating with brass and bells. Hymn to St Adalbert for the millennium of the city of Gdan´sk grows into a fervent and exultant outpouring of praise. Psalms of David from 1958 won the composer several prizes that helped establish his international reputation. A fascinating blend of avant-garde and traditional, they have a likeable freshness and originality that has not dimmed in the…

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…

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…

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…

Michael Finnissy was born in 1946 in London and has been active as a performer (pianist) and composer since the mid-1970s. He served as President of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) from 1990-96, and is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Southampton. His works are renowned for their demanding technical requirements, and often consist of transformative rearrangements of material by other composers: his Verdi Transcriptions for piano (1986) is one of the better-known examples. Finnissy has also completely reworked two sets of songs by George Gershwin for solo piano – Gershwin Arrangements and More Gershwin – and it is the first of these that is presented here in a new recording by Belgian pianist Dirk Herten. Thirteen famous songs, including How Long Has This Been Going On, Love is Here to Stay, Shall We Dance? and Embraceable You have been examined and dissected under the Finnissy microscope, with extremely rewarding results. Spacious and delicately spikey, these arrangements are quite fascinating –Gershwin’s unmistakable melodies are instantly recognisable but embedded within new modernist frameworks that are at once compositionally sophisticated and completely accessible. Herten’s thoughtful and delicate reading prompted Finnissy himself to comment on its demonstration of a…

In Volume 6 of her magisterial traversal of the Beethoven piano sonatas, Angela Hewitt reminds us that Beethoven could be the god of small (musical) things. Her performances of the three “little” Sonatas in this set illustrate this perfectly. The Schubertian (Hewitt’s apt term) Allegretto of the Op. 14 No 1 Sonata has an ambience similar to that of Mozart’s last Piano Concerto, the composer smiling through tears. Another example is the delightful, slightly torpid four-note intoduction of the Op. 49 No 1 Sonata. The final movement of the Op. 49 No 2 is the same Minuet as the one in Beethoven’s early Septet and Hewitt makes it just as charming. By the time we come to the Op. 31 No 1 Sonata, we’ve really turned a corner: the slow movement is marked Adagio grazioso – almost a contradiction in terms and, at 11 minutes, by far the longest movement on this CD. Hewitt plays along in beautifully cantabile mode with the notion that it’s both tribute to and parody of Italian opera. The Op. 81a Sonata Les Adieux refers to Beethoven’s separation from his patron and probable… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

The lyra viol is a 17th-century instrument that, like the viola d’amore, has resonating strings inside the body of the instrument. It’s played between the knees like the bass viol, but is a little smaller. In many ways, however, the lyra viol is most similar to the lute. Like the lute, the lyra viol has a significant solo repertoire, and its music is notated in tablature. Tablature notates the location of the notes for the player, but not what those notes are. Given that the lyra viol often uses completely different tunings, using tablature makes performing music where each string might be different from the norm considerably easier. Although he’s most well known for his music for viol consort, William Lawes wrote prolifically for the lyra viol. Richard Boothby here performs the entirety of the solo repertoire, most of which are dances – it’s a lushly warm performance of Almains, Sarabandes, and Corantos. Though Boothby’s playing is beautifully hypnotic, I’d have liked more bite to some of the faster dances. Lawes’ consort music is known for his startling use of dissonances and rhythmic shifts, which could have been exaggerated more. On this disc, these works can… Continue reading Get unlimited…

The expression “homage” is somewhat overused. The homage here is to earlier composers and, less specifically (and, in this case, convincingly), genres. Busoni’s treatment of JS Bach’s famous Chaconne for solo violin is here played very emphatically and majestically by Grosvenor. There’s no question as to his artistry or interpretative imagination but I found the experience wearing.Mendelssohn’s tribute to Bach sees vibrant preludes with kaleidoscopic embellishments and grand fugues with admirable ebb and flow, not to mention, architecture. I’ve always found Franck’s Prélude, Chorale and Fugue rather academic but Grosvenor maintains both the seemingly endless tendril-like legato (and rubato) effectively. I found the homage concept less cogent in the Chopin and Liszt component, but the music more engaging. The notoriously tricky Barcarolle is beautifully brought off with just the right swinging rubato. No one will ever replace Dinu Lipatti, but that’s no reflection on Grosvenor. In Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli, from the Italian component of his Years of Pilgrimmage, he, similarly in Gondoliera, captures the innocence of a gondolier serenading his beloved. For me, the best came with the download bonus of the six-movement Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. (He orchestrated only four). Grosvenor takes the Prélude… Continue reading Get…

And so one of today’s most singular young harpsichordists comes to one of the most singular works ever written for the instrument, JS Bach’s Aria with 30 Variations, aka the Goldberg Variations. The legend, propagated by one of Bach’s great early biographers Forkel, is well-known. In 1741 an insomniac Count von Keyserlingk of Dresden commissions from Bach a work which the Count’s harpsichordist, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, subsequently performs for his master to while away the sleepless hours. Now considered an apocryphal story, it is no less attractive for that. But one thing is true: that in the last century and this one at least, both exponents and listeners of the piano or the harpsichord have spent many an hour in thrall to one of Bach’s most original and grandly conceived work for keyboards. Whether playing Rameau and CPE Bach or Steve Reich and Górecki, the Tehran-born Esfahani always seems to be asking not whether he has something new to say about the music but whether the music has something new to say to him. In other words, a merely novel interpretation isn’t the endgame – though it may be a byproduct. The aria, a stately sarabande that encloses the… Continue…

This is the debut release from the Rautio Piano Trio, and it’s an assured debut indeed. They perform three of Mozart’s Piano Trios (he only managed to write six, more’s the pity), the Trio in B Flat K502, the Trio in E, K542, and the Trio in G, K564. Mozart wrote these trios over the course of several years, during which time he also wrote The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. It might be me being tempted to hear things Mozart never intended, but I feel as though the breezily conversational writing of these trios is indebted to his operatic writing. There’s plenty of cheerful Mozartian melodic lines passing around the ensemble that can’t help but bring a smile to one’s face. These trios were composed specifically for Mozart himself to perform in Viennese concerts. Being well aware of the monetary potential in creating music that could sell, you can almost imagine Mozart composing with one eye on the audience as the movements unfold. The trios are filled with an almost palpable sense of delight in the way the music twists and turns. Pianist Jan Rautio performs… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…