There are few more tantalising torsos to be found in the history of opera than that of Donizetti’s abandoned Le Duc d’Albe. Commissioned to write two works for the Paris Opéra in 1839, the Italian composer, newly resident in the French capital, duly set out to adapt his Poliuto as the more Gallically apposite Les Martyrs, while simultaneously beginning work on the opera whose remains we have here. It is unclear why that second project never came to fruition. Two acts were composed and the remainder planned out when problems arose. Firstly, Donizetti was in a queue behind Halévy and Meyerbeer, neither of whom seemed in any hurry to deliver their commissions. Then there were rumours of a change of prima donna in the offing, potentially rendering his plans for writing a radical spitfire heroine obsolete. Years dragged by. In 1845, one of the librettists, Eugène Scribe, sued the management to free up his text. Donizetti considered doing the same, but a year later he was a spent force, confined to an asylum suffering the final stages of tertiary syphilis. In the end, Scribe tactfully changed the location to medieval Sicily under the Normans and flogged his… Continue reading Get…

The Doric Quartet, operating out of London, challenge all our assumptions about Papa Joe’s string quartets, telling us, “We know Haydn can sound like this, but have you ever considered it could sound like that too?” Haydn’s Opus 76 was the last extended set of string quartets he wrote, contemporary in his output with The Creation and the London Symphonies, music that would distil an entire lifetime of creative discovery into structures where the genuinely sublime felt at ease with the authentically bawdy. If you prefer your Haydn performed within carefully delineated ‘Classical’ limits, then the Doric’s re-examination of the DNA of these late-period scores might represent too much of a walk on the wild side. The quartet splash around wideband dynamics and proto-expressionistic timbres with such obvious abandon we are reminded that Haydn would not only provide a seedbed of ideas for Mozart and Beethoven, but that stirrings of Schubert, Bruckner and Second Viennese School thinking, too, are to be found within the thrusting loins of this music. Op. 76, No 1 gives notice of how every detail will be up for renegotiation. Notice cellist John Myerscough’s free-spirited phrasing during the first movement’s opening theme; but also how the…

The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin (affectionately portmanteaued to ‘Akamus’) gives a blistering re-enactement here of George I’s 1717 noisy barge journey down the Thames. Dance tunes in the French outdoor tradition and a processional, military colour dominate. The three suites each use different instrumentation, a fact that points to their separate origins, and poaching from earlier output. Grammy-winning Baroque specialists Akamus began in East Berlin in 1982. For this recording they are 27 players (to Handel’s 50; probably a good thing) and are operating sans conductor, under concertmaster Georg Kallweit. They bring a perfect blend of ensemble unity and soloistic flair. Oboist Xenia Löffler embellishes the Adagio e Staccato (Suite 1) with supreme artistry. Supersonic tempi transform the horn-centric movements into Olympic feats. Water Music is the first time a pair of horns was heard in an English orchestra; imagine the virtuosic trills of the Allegro (Suite 1) blasting peasant ears near and far. Typical for excellent period ensembles, the rhythmic vigour required of baroque music is really apparent here. In the Bourrée (Suite 3), timpanist Friedhelm May is a standout soloist. The central suite is more intimate than the outer two. Flautist Christoph Huntgeburth and Lutenist… Continue reading Get…

The further removed we are from the era of the American iconoclast Charles Ives (1874-1954), the stranger his music sounds.

Australia’s Seraphim Trio contrasts early Beethoven – the genial G Major Trio – with the later Ghost Sonata (No 5), so named because of the eerily troubled scene conjured up in its central movement. No 4, is sometimes known as Gassenhauer after the popular tune by Joseph Weigl that forms the basis of Beethoven’s variations in the finale. The Seraphim captures the light-heartedness of the early trio with style. Goldsworthy’s delicate piano figuration in the final movement is delightful, and all three musicians display subtle shading throughout, not least in the darker slow movement. In the Op. 70, Nankervis’s cello is eloquent in bringing out a strain of melancholy in the ‘ghostly’ movement, but it is pointless to single out individual performers because unanimity of vision is the Seraphim’s strength. How well they judge the arpeggio passage just before this movement’s close. The robust variations in Op. 11 are lots of fun, and I hear the subtlest sense of ‘heart on sleeve’ in the preceding lyrical Adagio movement. These musicians are clearly enjoying themselves in this lighter side of Beethoven. By comparison, Trio Wanderer on Harmonia Mundi takes a more straightforward approach. Their performances do not remind… Continue reading Get…

Sea Eagle is a survey of seven pieces from the British horn repertoire, recorded by venerable hornist Richard Watkins. Released by NMC Recordings, its name comes from the Peter Maxwell Davies work with which this album begins. This is the oldest work on the disc, composed for the hornist in 1982, and is the only featured solo work. Watkins approaches Maxwell Davies’ challenge with an intense conviction; his sharp-sighted tone and innate ability to convey such contoured phrasings make him a true rhetorician of the instrument. This is especially apparent in the Adagio, in which Watkins soars freely between registers as if slipping between a series of up and downdraughts. The turbulence of his trills and flutter-tongued notes in the outer movements are always well measured and add a marked contrast to the surrounding legato sections. Gerald Barry’s trio for voice, horn and piano (Jabberwocky) is entirely raucous in the best sense of the word and is a perfect marriage to Lewis Caroll’s nonsensical text. Here the hornist possesses an electric cuivré that penetrates the ears, matching Mark Padmore’s fierce and guttural German pronunciation and Huw Watkins’ jaunty and well-judged piano. My only qualm with this album is that the remaining… Continue reading Get…

Recording of the Month – May 2016 The title of Swedish clarinettist Martin Fröst’s Sony Classical debut says it all while implying so much more. Growing out of a live music project Fröst was already working on in Stockholm, Roots is an entirely organic listening experience, resembling (not so much contemplating) an ancient, solitary tree but strolling through a fragrant garden where a profusion of different plants brings forth flowers and fruits in eclectic abundance. Apart from Crusell’s famous Introduction and Variations on a Swedish Air and specially commissioned works by Anders Hillborg, the rest of the music here has undergone multiple metamorphoses, whether through transcription, arrangement, variation, improvisation or a new setting. Unfolding chronologically through time and space, the programme seamlessly connects each work by avoiding spaces between tracks; implicit is the invitation to find further connections in a shared heritage of dance and song, sacred ritual and secular entertainment, as well as folk and art music. Roots opens gently with Hildegard of Bingen, Fröst’s solo clarinet gliding between declamation and song before choir and orchestra enter almost surreptitiously; the following presto from a Telemann concerto originally for recorder and flute thus feels like a rude… Continue reading Get…

We’ve had “the next Callas”, “the next Sutherland”, “the next Wunderlich”, now, we’re hearing 28-year-old Georgian pianist, Khatia Buniatishvili touted as “the next Argerich”. Not on the strength of this CD, featuring works each of which exists in an orchestral guise (and in which I’d much rather hear all of them)! The Guardian critic unleashed as much bile on Buniatishvili’s Wigmore Hall performance of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as his feminist colleagues routinely do on signet ring-wearing, old Etonian Tory politicians who ride to hounds. Broadly, I’m forced to agree: the very opening of this recording is promisingly imaginative, with the Promenade played tentatively – as if the viewer is intimidated by art galleries (though The Promenade connective tissue convincingly becomes bolder as the performance progresses). The Old Castle is hypnotically, but interminably slow. This works, but Bydlo, the ox cart, sounds as though it’s lost a wheel. Other movements – like Baba Yaga (the Hut on Fowl’s Legs) – are dispatched in such a helter-skelter way that they become virtually meaningless. What should be a magical transition between Baba Yaga and the gravity and grandeur of The Great Gate of Kiev is completely botched… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Initially, listening to Dorothea Röschmann singing Oh Smania! Oh Furie! from Idomeneo, I was aware of some alarming shouting. In the next track, Deh, Se Piacer Mi Vuoi from La Clemenza di Tito, I thought her singing had improved considerably until she hits a top note with what can only be described as a bit of a shriek. This happens a few times, exacerbated by minor audio peaks on the recording. Porgi, amor, from The Marriage of Figaro fares much better, with less abrasiveness on top notes and a more beguiling style throughout. In Dove sono, requiring less forte singing, the loveliness of her voice is once more to the fore. The weightier demands of Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata from Don Giovanni, suit her stentorian style well, and in E Susanna non vien! we find a Countess who is not as put upon as some. Back to Idomeneo, she sings the moving Solitudini Amichi beautifully and with considerable feeling. Ecco il punto from Clemenza, has spirit, her rich bottom notes a feature. This substantial aria requires that the singer range across many moods in order to bring the piece off successfully, which she does. Finally the concert… Continue reading Get unlimited…

I’m not sure Charles-Marie Widor would have liked to be remembered simply as the man whose Toccata provides happy couples with the second most popular wedding recessional in history. But there’s not much danger of that with organists the calibre of UK-born Joseph Nolan (currently Organist and Master of the Choristers at St George’s Cathedral, Perth) keeping the sacred flame burning. Nolan here offers the first fruits of seven nocturnal recording sessions in a row, during which he put down all ten of Widor’s organ symphonies at the console of the superb four-manual, 60-stop, 4426-pipe Cavaillé-Coll organ of La Madeleine, Paris. The first two symphonies of Widor’s Opus 42 are grandly Romantic, five-movement behemoths that balance huge multicoloured edifices of devilish complexity with softer-lit landscapes populated by angelic choirs of varying dimensions. Nolan hovers over all like some musical demiurge, fleet of feet and fingers as he negotiates the massive chords and filigree passagework of faster movements such as the closing Vivace of Symphony No 6; thoughtful and sensitive yet smouldering with creative tension in slower movements such as the multi-faceted Andantino quasi allegretto and mellifluous Fifth Symphony Adagio. And “that” Toccata, with which the Fifth… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Orchestral Editor’s Choice, December 2013 Those of you who still haven’t cottoned onto the idea that Widor wrote a hell of a lot of brilliant organ music, most of it far superior to that Toccata, really need to hear this third volume in UK-born Perth-based organist Joseph Nolan’s recordings of Widor’s ten organ symphonies, part of his traversal of the composer’s complete works for organ. Like the previous two highly acclaimed volumes, this one’s been recorded on the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ of La Madeleine, Paris. Cavaillé-Coll was a friend of Widor’s and the composer’s music is inextricably linked to his instruments, which Widor played throughout his career. The four organ symphonies which comprise Opus 13 were first published in 1872 and later dedicated to Cavaillé-Coll. Taken together, the Symphony No 3 in E Minor and the Symphony No 4 in F Minor form a contrasting diptych, the more overt romanticism of the first contrasting with the neo-Baroque qualities of the second. Both however are equally imbued with delicacy and drama – qualities that are brought to the fore by Nolan with such nuance and insight that you feel you learn more about Widor by listening to these… Continue reading Get…

Ensemble Bios is an Italian group led by conductor Andrea Vitello, dedicated to performing works of the 20th and 21st centuries. Their first outing for Italy’s Continuo label features “actress of the voice” Anna Clementi in Schoenberg’s 1912 song cycle Pierrot Lunaire. Broken into three lots of seven (reflecting the composer’s obsession with numerology), it famously utilises Sprechstimme, a semi-spoken technique associated at the time with melodrama and to some extent Lieder and cabaret. Clementi’s delivery is deft, mocking and expressionistic, soaring and plunging while detailing Pierrot’s macabre exploits as the instrumentalists sensitively weave around her vocalisations. A century on, it still sounds thrillingly modern. It’s paired here with a recent work by Florentine composer Andrea Portera (b. 1973), whose symphonic, theatrical and chamber works (over 120) have met with critical acclaim and two silver medals from the President of the Italian Republic. Red Music consists of three quite beautiful pieces for chamber ensemble, all just over four-minutes long, and dedicated to Prokofiev, Shostakovich and Rostropovich respectively. Each work subtly evokes the subject of its dedication – the frenetic dynamism of Prokofiev’s piano works, Shostakovich’s deeply unsettling strings, or… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe…