I’ve always regarded Ginastera as a sort of Aaron Copland of the Pampas, with a dash of Villa-Lobos thrown in. This CD contains two ballet suites, from Ollantay and Pampeana No 3, and the complete Estancia (Cattle Ranch). Ollantay and Pampeana No 3 are both based on blood-thirsty pre-Colombian themes with descriptions of anacondas slithering through primeval slime and rather beautiful evocations of dawn and night. Ginastera certainly knew how to orchestrate. Most people who buy this release will want it for the rarely heard complete Estancia, rather than the frequently heard Malambo, guaranteed to bring any audience to its feet. This is worth hearing in full, but half the work consists of Malambo-like movements, which anticipate the finale so heavily that Ginastera virtually steals his own thunder. The work’s subject is a city slicker’s attempt to prove himself in a world dominated by machismo-flaunting gauchos (cowboys). Juanjo Mena and the BBC Phil play well but there’s not enough testosterone. The dances sound like a clique of haughty Argentinian polo players who’ve eloped with English heiresses. What’s really bizarre is the narration and songs interpolated into the score, cheesily crooned by Lucas Somoza Osterc. It’s as if Leonard Bernstein recited…

Paired here with Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending and his Tallis Fantasia are several big Elgars: the Introduction and Allegro and Serenade for Strings. A few of Elgar’s ‘pocket tunes’, Salut d’amour, Chanson de Matin and Chanson de Nuit make a welcome appearance. Plus, a novelty! The world premiere recording of Julian Milon’s arrangement of Elgar’s In Moonlight for solo viola (played by Zukerman), strings and harp. Along with Zukerman the Soloist we get Zukerman the Conductor. These days he is equally at home on the podium – in this case the one in front of the orchestra of which he is Principal Guest Conductor: the Royal Philharmonic. Zukerman first recorded the Lark with the English Chamber Orchestra 40 years ago – not the chart-topper then that it is now. He did it as a favour to Barenboim in 1973 at short notice. A casual comparison of durations indicates a more leisurely approach today than on the 1973 ECO recording. The phrasing is uncluttered and fluid. The overwhelming gift of this disk (and especially this work) is Zukerman’s warmth of tone and organic pacing. He brings the intellect of a conductor to these familiar works – so often… Continue reading Get…

Live recording reveals Davis's hero to be surprisingly earthbound.

After earlier Vivaldi and Handel recitals with the Venice Baroque Orchestra and Andrea Marcon, it’s back to the Baroque for Czech mezzo Magdalena Kožená, who again teams up with Marcon for a programme devoted to the music of one of Kožená’s teenage crushes: Claudio Monteverdi. Apparently Kožená was just 16 years old when she co-founded her own early music ensemble to perform the Mantuan master’s music. So this recording is a homecoming of sorts, and if Kožená is nowadays more associated with Romantic repertoire you need only look to the complex, extravagant and emotionally charged music and lyrics of these madrigals and opera excerpts to see how there’s not really that much of a leap between Monteverdi and Mahler. Of course, there’s also a lot more scope for improvisation in Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, and therefore more legitimate opportunities for the performer to stamp their own personality on the score. This heightens rather than diminishes the music’s emotional impact. There is also more room to ‘orchestrate’ in the sense of which instrumental colours to include; here, La Cetra comprises strings, a cornett, lutes, guitar, psaltery, harpsichord, organ and percussion. Thus the opening Zefiro torna, e di soave accenti… Continue reading…

Australian flautist Derek Jones’ new album Flute Perspectives opens with Peter Sculthorpe’s Songs of Sea and Sky, an adaption of a traditional dance song from Saibai, an island in Torres Strait. Originally for clarinet and piano, the music juxtaposes distinctive melodies from the region with the music of the missionaries, whose melodies and forms seeped into those of the Torres Strait Islands in the 19th century. The tension between these ideas styles is most potent in the fourth movement, Mission Hymn. A simple hymn tune in the piano, played by Leigh Harrold, is both peaceful and anachronistic against bird-like chirping and fluttering in the flute part. Sculthorpe’s influence on Australian music was pervasive and reverberates through many of the works on this disc. A student of Sculthorpe, Barry Conyngham’s Flute alternates burbling, flourishes in the instrument’s low register with declamatory snatches of melody. Australian jazz musician Brian Brown, Sculthorpe’s contemporary, improvised the dance-like Lily’s Garden, playing through a midi channel into computer notation software. The work celebrates the birth of Lily Jones – Derek Jones’ daughter and Brown’s granddaughter. Jones’ own composition on the album, Stillness, first appeared on his self-published album Sun Down Moon Up and is also grounded……

Boston Early Music Festival singers and period instrument players, co-directed by lutenists Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, are in cracking form on this studio recording of Handel’s buoyant pastoral. The vocal ensemble are exceptional, especially in their opening number O the Pleasure of the Plains (which always reminds me of For unto us a Child is born from Messiah). Handel wrote Acis and Galatea for the Duke of Chandos to celebrate his marriage and the building of his lavish mansion, the Cannons, in Middlesex. The house had its own orchestra as well as extensive gardens with the latest water features. It didn’t survive for long, however, for within 20 years it was demolished and its features sold off when Chandos’s fortune took a dive in the South Sea Bubble. In Ovid’s tale, the shepherd Acis is metamorphosed into a fountain by his lover Galatea after the jealous cyclops Polyphemus launches a boulder which crushes him. Thus the gardens of Cannons made the perfect setting for this pastoral tale. Handel was briefly the Duke’s resident composer while things were quiet in London (and where he was having trouble managing to stage his Italian operas). Hats off to the excellent soloists, tenor…

Through a Glass is the world premiere recording of a series of songs by Martin Bussey, a choral scholar at King’s College, Cambridge. The opening work Blue Remembered Hills introduces baritone Marcus Farnsworth and pianist James Baillieu with immediacy, delving into an obscurity marked by dissonances and startling dynamics. Through a Glass, Darkly was crafted with text from different authors. The composer’s notes tell us the work refers to the relationship between reality and dreams and is “the most ambitious musically and thematically”. The fourth song The Secret Sits breaks the flow with a trumpet that simply sticks out. The closing song in the cycle Lay Your Sleeping Head crafts brief whirlwinds of angst before resolving into the most conventional sounding progression of chords we’ve heard yet – a happy ending to an eccentric piece. Farnsworth is superb – not only for the clarity in his timbre but for allowing us to identify every word. Though he leans into every note almost theatrically, Through a Glass, Darkly shows unexpected changes in character. By contrast, The Windhover is part-challenge, part-conversation between Farnsworth and solo violin, while Garden Songs features texts written across the centuries about flowers and trees. The final song…

Alfred Schnittke’s early life, with a Jewish father, Volga German mother and a musical education in occupied Vienna, was haunted by the fears and tensions of the outsider. The ‘polystylist’ language he eventually developed, with its wild juxtapositions of the ‘banal’ and ‘refined’ and a jabbing irony that confounded Soviet apparatchiks, may thus have been a fortified wall shielding a serious avant-gardist, but he risked coming across as a composer in search of a voice. As time passed by and regimes began to crumble, he allowed cracks to appear in that wall and offer glimpses of the vulnerable artist within. Declining health in the 1980s revealed spiritualist tendencies, most apparent in the Penitential Psalms for mixed choir a cappella, written in 1988 to commemorate the millennium of the Christianisation of Russia. Setting poems for Lent by anonymous monks from an anthology of Old Russian texts, the principal themes are that of original sin, the wrongs of the past and the need to repent and forgive; significant sentiments as the Soviet Union was breaking apart and old scores were being settled. The work has elements of traditional Russian Orthodox Liturgical chant with syllabic declamation and hummed drones, but… Continue reading Get…

Imagine the archaeological thrill of tracking down musical manuscripts and finding works which have been unheard for centuries. In 2011, the Morgan Library in New York acquired a manuscript which alternates sonatas by Soler and Domenico Scarlatti (who influenced Soler’s writing deeply). Of Soler’s works in the collection, 29 were previously unknown and are recorded here for the first time. With a treasure trove of new music before him, harpsichordist Diego Ares can enjoy the interpretive freedom afforded by works without the weight of expectation. While he was composing in Spain in what is ostensibly the late Baroque, to my ears Soler’s style is more similar to that of style galant composers like CPE Bach, with an emphasis on the melodic line and musical twists aplenty. Ares’ playful style perfectly suits this music, which often breaks into a spirited flurry of semiquavers or dashes away with another fresh melody just when it is least expected. Soler’s improvisatory compositional style is reflected in some clever programming. Ares’ notes discuss Soler’s publication of rules for improvising modulations to remote keys, and indeed Ares uses a similar method to insert a few linking passages in between sonatas. Though brief, these… Continue reading Get…

The Marsyas Trio’s A Triple Portrait presents the haunting chamber music of Russian composer Elena Firsova (b. 1950). Firsova, a student of Aleksandr Pirumov and (unofficially) Edison Denisov, moved from Moscow to London just before the fall of the Soviet Union. This disc is the first dedicated to her introspective, personal chamber music. The Marsyas Trio – named for the musical satyr – consists of Australian flute player Helen Vidovich, Canadian cellist Valerie Welbanks and New Zealand pianist Fei Ren. The album opens with the rich sound of Welbanks’ cello in Homage to Canisy, a work inspired by the French castle, Chateau de Canisy, where the composer visits each year, and where the work had its premiere performance in 2010. The centre-piece of the album, A Triple Portrait Op. 132 – from which the disc takes its name – was commissioned by the trio in 2012. The first movement Andante rubato is purely solo flute, the Adagio a short, eloquent trickle of piano notes and the third movement opens with cello and piano, before the flute rejoins to complete the trio. A plucked, walking bass line from the cello gives the movement a smear of blues. Vidovich and Welbanks are…

portrait of North America’s vibrant and diverse classical music culture, with works for cello, with and without piano, performed by brothers Paul and Huw Watkins. Both eminent musicians, Paul has played with the Emerson Quartet and manages a career as a conductor, while Huw is also a notable composer. Both bring technical refinement and a keen musical touch to their performances. Both Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein’s works are appealing, thanks to an attractive lyricism in the former’s case, and jazzy, eclectic beats and rhythms in that of the latter. Paul’s playing is full of passion, but also nuanced in capturing the lighter shades of both works. Elliott Carter’s Sonata for Cello and Piano was an important work for the composer, marking a crucial change away from a lyrical neoclassicism, to melodic angularity and radical rhythmic and metric invention. The pair’s performance here is as fresh and articulate as the work. George Crumb’s Sonata for Solo Cello is an invigorating experience. The work is a masterpiece – expertly paced, passionate, with beautiful harmonic language and an authentic approach to virtuosity. It is the best demonstration of Paul’s expert musicality. Finishing with music from Aaron Copland’s old-school American classic Billy the…

Poor old Max Bruch! First, he opted for a flat fee instead of a royalty percentage for his phenomenally successful First Violin Concerto and then persisted in trying to replicate that success – with little success. He lived beyond his creative period and was still influenced by Schumann, Mendelssohn etc. in an age when Wagner and Richard Strauss were the rage. Having said that, I’m absolutely smitten with one of the works on this CD: the A Minor Serenade, Op. 75, composed in 1899. At 36 minutes it almost outstays its welcome (Accardo and the late deeply lamented Kurt Masur on Philips are even slower) but its dreamy first movement, followed by a jaunty march (which has a meltingly lovely Trio section) a ravishing Nocturne and the Finale, which ends as serenely as the work began, make for a delightful diversion. As does the Op. 42 Romance, also in A Minor. Liebeck’s account of the G Minor Concerto is fine but unexceptional. What can there possibly be left to say about it other than his is more demure than some recent renditions? The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins sounds alert and makes this warhorse sound as freshly minted…