Mendelssohn’s Lieder ohne Worte (or Songs Without Words) were a bold step forward in Romantic writing. The title suggests much of the meaning behind the music – that it was possible to give purely instrumental music the emotional depth of a song, even without the added help of words to create imagery. The liner notes point out that the Songs Without Words generally stick to placing the melody in the upper voice, combined with a chordal accompaniment in ABA form. While this is broadly true, what variety Mendelssohn achieves from such a simple set-up! With this disc covering Books 5 to 8 of the set, fortepianist Ronald Brautigam has now recorded the complete Songs Without Words.  These later books contain some of the best-known pieces, including the famous Frühlingslied (Spring Song). There are some delightful links between the composers of the 19th century here – Book 5 is dedicated to Clara Schumann, who had to encore some of the pieces multiple times in her concerts. With this sense of history in mind, Brautigam plays these pieces as they should be heard, and with no sense of artifice. This is honest playing with some of the most natural phrasing I’ve heard…

Editor’s Choice: Instrumental, August 2016 Among the 31 (mostly) short pieces on Butterflying is Lullaby for Nick, an adult embellishment of Elena Kats-Chernin’s first composition, written at age six. Lyrical and wistful, it is a fascinating early manifestation of the prodigious talent that developed into the powerhouse that she is today. This new double CD is a selection of music composed for her first instrument and love, piano, and on which she teams up with a fellow virtuoso who also began her musical career as a child prodigy. Tamara-Anna Cislowska gave her first public performance at two, playing Bartók, commenced studies at the Sydney Conservatorium at six and won the ABC Young Performer Award in 1991 at 14, the youngest ever winner. Although Cislowska’s repertoire spans five centuries, she has come to be particularly associated with contemporary Australian composers, winning an ARIA Award in 2015 for her ABC recording of Peter Sculthorpe’s Complete Works for Solo Piano. Ten years in the making, that project involved extensive collaboration between performer and composer; so too did Butterflying. In Cislowska, Kats-Chernin has found the perfect transmitter and musical partner who combines technical prowess with a particular depth of… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

The twin verismo peaks of ‘Cav’ and ‘Pag’ have oft appeared on the same programme since they were first shackled together by the Met in 1893 (bizarrely, they’d previously coupled ‘Pag’ with Gluck’s Orfeo in a staging where Melba sang Nedda). Less frequent has been the same tenor singing both Turiddù and Canio on the same evening (Domingo and Vickers pull it off on DVD), while a double role debut is even less common. Now you can add Jonas Kaufmann to that list (at the 2015 Salzburg Easter Festival), and here he is on film to prove it. Philipp Stölzl’s compartmentalised staging works well, solving problems inherent in the Salzburg stage – one of the widest on the circuit – and his mix of dramatic snapshots and live video pulls the action together in intriguing and illuminating ways. Take for instance the opening of Cavalleria Rusticana. Instead of an offstage serenade, Kaufmann’s Turridù is discovered in the attic garret he shares with Santuzza and their young child (spot the backstory) singing dreamily over the rooftops to Lola who lives across the street. Projected large on the opposite side of the divided stage, what might be hard for an audience to……

Written at the height of his powers, Bedrˇich Smetana’s third opera Dalibor polarised critics and failed to capture the public imagination. What a loss, for as the liner notes to this magnificent BBC recording point out “Dalibor is Smetana’s loveliest operatic score and a great deal subtler than his first two works for stage,” (The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride). In fact, Smetana grew resentful of the Bride’s success, dismissing it as a “toy” for those who thought he was incapable of writing a comedy. The tragic chivalric tale of Dalibor with its plot reminiscent of Fidelio is full of superb music, particularly the beautiful duet in Act 2 when Milada, disguised as a minstrel boy, smuggles an old fiddle into Dalibor’s cell. Packed with great solos shared among five major characters, the vibrant score covers a broad canvas and there are some great theatrical moments, including the pompous Judges’ March which almost pre-empts Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. However, the Prague musical establishment considered Dalibor too Wagnerian for the new national musical movement and it was shelved. Although revived in the 1890s after Smetana’s death, with Mahler conducting a performance in Vienna, it has… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Johann Simon Mayr’s delightful two-act opera Saffo, here receiving its first recording, features a love triangle between the eponymous poetess (soprano Andrea Lauren Brown) her former lover Faone (soprano Jaewon Yun), whom Saffo still desires but who still pines for his late wife, and the poet Alceo (tenor Markus Schäfer), in love with Saffo. Set in and around a Greek temple near the Rock of Leucas, from which dejected lovers are prone to throw themselves, the opera includes a host of other characters such as the oracular priestess Amfizione (mezzo Marie Sande Papenmeyer). The first of 70 operas by the Bavarian composer (1763-1845), Saffo premiered at La Fenice in 1794. As Marion Englhart writes in her booklet note, “Perhaps Mayr’s musical achievement was not least to combine innovations from the so-called Viennese School of Classicism with the Italian ideal of bel canto.” But it is his peculiar ear for orchestral colour, which comes to the forefront in this fine recording under Franz Hauk on Naxos. To sample the aforementioned qualities, one need look no further than Saffo’s first aria L’onda del mar, che al vento, where she compares her sufferings to a breaking wave. The undulating melodies… Continue reading Get…

The album provides a snapshot of a vocalist with plenty of time to hit his stride.

A new selection of Australian songs brings together a most eclectic bunch of musical minds.

British pianist Jonathan Plowright continues his much-lauded coverage of Brahms’ solo piano music with this third volume in the series for BIS. It opens with the 15 Variations on a Hungarian Melody from 1853 (Op. 21, No 2), an earlier manifestation of Brahms’ fascination with Hungarian gypsy music that stemmed from his relationship with violinist Eduard Reményi and received fuller expression in the gypsy rondo of his First Piano Quartet, Op. 25. Like Brahms’ gypsy forays, his 16 Waltzes, Op. 39 (from 1865) were regarded by some critics as unconscionable descents into mainstream sensibility; they are indeed popular works, but no less delightful for this, and delivered by Plowright with sprightly vigour and zest. The influence of Beethoven and Schubert is evident in the Eight Klavierstücke of Op. 76 (1878), which move into deeper, more mysterious territory. Finally, with the Six Klavierstücke of Op. 118 (1892), we are plunged headlong into deep, stream-of-consciousness introspection, contemplation juxtaposed with volcanic anguish. The last of these is particularly disquieting, foreshadowing Debussy and defying resolution as it erupts and disappears into the mist. There is a dizzyingly broad spectrum of emotional terrain to traverse over these four sets of pieces, and Plowright navigates it……

“Two magicians, two master architects, amongst the most wildly imaginative and brilliant of their era; two composers who also tried to capture echoes of grand theatre with the palette offered by their keyboard.” Thus does 25-year-old French harpsichord prodigy Jean Rondeau characterise Rameau and the young Turk snapping at his heels, Royer; thus does Rondeau set the stage for a sweetly bellicose suite in which Rameau and Royer wage war across a Prélude and three entrées – Poetry, Music and Dance – before settling on Royer’s exquisite L’Aimable. The venue is the Château d’Assas. The instrument is its famous harpsichord, favoured for its capacious sonority; its rich bass, its unexpectedly warm middle register and its crisp, silvery, flute-like upper register. Here, Rondeau is free to indulge his fancy and conjure up the complimentary worlds of the theatre and salon in pieces such as Rameau’s delicate Les Tendres Plaintes and more vigorous Les Sauvages, and Royer’s dramatic Le Vertigo and tender La Zaïde. Rondeau’s playing, as always, seems locked in a struggle between lyricism and contemplation, passion and detachment. Which is part of its magic. And if one is in danger of being – pleasantly, it must be said… Continue reading…

Baldassare Galuppi is one of those unfortunate composers who were hailed in their lifetimes as being among the finest music-makers…and then promptly forgotten. Galuppi’s writing is in the galant style, essentially the precursor to the Classical era – his melodies might be simple, but they’re never simplistic. This sort of music, so full of elegance and warmth, can sound a tad trite if it’s not played with panache. However, that’s not a concern in this case! Andrea Chezzi brings brilliance to these sonatas when required, but most enjoyably, a definite sense of playfulness. For example, the opening Sonata No 1 in C Major, Op. 1, is given some additional tonal shifts from some well-timed use of the harpsichord’s stops, cheekily jumping from a dark sound to something more nasal in an echoed phrase. On the more reflective side of things, the slower movements are given a lovingly rounded sense of melody. The liner notes point out that this collection of sonatas was never composed as a set but was collated by Galuppi from various works. As a result, some of the sonatas are in three movements, while others are a single movement. While this might sound like… Continue reading Get…

Franz Schubert’s late piano music has a deceptive simplicity about it: a surface naivety masking emotional depths. The surface purity and the Romantic soul need to be kept in balance; with Schubert it is always a question of less is more. That is why the most thoughtful and self-effacing of the great pianists – Alfred Brendel, for example – make such fine Schubertians. Geoffrey Saba, an Australian-born pianist resident in London, is one of this breed. He maintains the necessary equilibrium with skill and understanding. In the second Impromptu of D935, for instance, he transitions deftly between rippling semiquavers and the stately, somewhat melancholy chorale that closes the piece. In the following Impromptu, a theme and variations, he employs subtle rubato: enough to create a feeling of spontaneity that underlines the work’s title. Schubert could have called these four pieces a sonata, but he did not. The first of the Klavierstücke belongs to the same troubled world as Winterreise, and contains the seeds of desperation beneath a restless surface. Both works include passages of major-key frenzy that collapse into the minor. Saba judges such moments unerringly. I find the piano sound on this disc a trifle hollow. It lacks the warmth of… Continue reading…

Serious record collectors should regularly light a candle for Robert von Bahr whose label BIS has brought so many fine artists to our attention; his willingness to green-light projects of dubious financial return is much appreciated by those of a completist turn. Ronald Brautigam’s surveys of Haydn and Mozart keyboard works were distinguished not only by the exceptional performances of the major masterpieces as by his diligent attention to every extant scrap from the composer’s desk. This latest release in his Beethoven cycle includes some of Ludwig’s least inspired scribblings but does have some gems to treasure. The lesser works can be a bore on a modern piano so the lovely characterful sound of the period instrument, an impeccable copy of an 1819 Conrad Graf by Paul McNulty, does wonders for their charm factor. This particular instrument featured heavily in earlier volumes and is a magnificent device with a lovely liquid top register and engagingly nut-brown bottom-end. Brautigam wrings the maximum expression and colour out of the instrument without ever pushing through the tone, while the light action abetted by his superb technique make for some thrilling flourishes. For the slyly charming variations on God Save the King, Rule Brittania…