Yuja Wang’s ability to colour her playing at speed is like nothing we’ve heard since Martha Argerich

A highly detailed and sympathetically recorded account with astonishingly brilliant orchestral playing.

Shostakovich’s cello concertos, both written for legendary cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, swing from smouldering slow movements to flashes of manic, frenetic activity. This new recording from Erato pairs French cellist Gautier Capuçon with Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra in a recording that highlights the exquisite details of Shostakovich’s cello writing, taken from concerts in 2013 and 2014 in Paris and St Petersburg. This is Capuçon’s second recording with Gergiev and Mariinsky, having previously released a CD of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev in 2010. Capuçon hits the spiky five-note motif that opens the First Concerto with restrained intensity. This personal motif, based on the initials of the composer’s name (DSCH), is repeated aggressively in various guises throughout the first movement, returning in the finale to give the concerto a cyclical framework. Capuçon’s tone in the Allegretto is liquid and velvet, but full of depth and crunch as he leans into the low double-stops. The Mariinsky’s strings are lushly dissonant as they introduce the second movement, Gergiev shaping them into flowing arcs before the creeping cello line enters. Capuçon’s glissandi sigh, his sound rich in the lower registers and smooth… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a…

An attractive collection of largely Neapolitan songs given bracing treatment by the talented Señor Flórez.

Editor’s Choice, Jan/Feb 2016 – Opera Francesco Benucci was the star singer of Vienna’s Italian Opera Buffa Company, founded in 1783, and was renowned for his splendid vocalism and good taste – novel qualities for most exponents of the buffa style. He placed musical values first and foremost, characterising roles with elegance and sophisticated wit without descending into vulgar comic shtick. Mozart was delighted by his portrayal of the title role in Le Nozze di Figaro during those nine niggardly Viennese performances before its runaway success in Prague. Benucci later played Leporello when Don Giovanni was revived in 1788 and Mozart whipped up a special comic duet for him and the Zerlina. Hyperion here continues its smart “Arias for…” thematic programming with this tribute to Benucci and has wisely chosen Matthew Rose to convincingly channel the spirit of the original. His dark but nimble tone is ideal for this repertoire, yet not overweight making it fit well within the scale of Jonathan Cohen’s period direction. His musicanship is impeccable, but most importantly he sings ‘on the words’ with subtle changes of colour and emphasis so that the expression… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Editor’s Choice, Jan/Feb 2016 – Vocal & Choral “Those who find everything beautiful are now in danger of finding nothing beautiful.” So wrote Theodor Adorno in Minima Moralia. And yet according to composer Cary Ratcliff, the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda “wrote four volumes of odes to ordinary objects”. Of course that’s not all he wrote; Neruda was after all one of the greatest love poets of all time, and the other two composers featured on this recording of choral settings of Neruda’s poetry have availed themselves of some of his most moving love poems. Texas-based vocal ensemble Conspirare’s director Craig Hella Johnson writes in a booklet note that he hopes these settings “can serve as a conduit for an ever deepening experience with this sublime and powerful poetry.” And indeed they may, so convincingly do they translate Neruda’s delicate emotional chiaroscuro into accessible music of great lyrical potency. In Ratcliff’s Ode to Common Things, it is clear that the poet “loves all things” because of their connections with humanity: whether a bed, a guitar, a loaf of bread or a pair of scissors, they are for the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

It has been clear for some time that Lang Lang has grown into a sensitive, thoughtful musician.

The three works on this disc are custom-made for the Takács with their fearless attack, faultless technique and dazzling emotional range.

Editor’s Choice, Jan/Feb 2016 – Orchestral Nearly 30 years ago Simon Rattle recorded a cycle of the Sibelius symphonies in Birmingham and despite the adulation of some critics the set left others cold with their infuriating undercutting of brilliant insight with arch mannerisms. His textural clarity and bold delineation of dynamics that served him so well for Stravinsky was evident, but his tendency to prod and poke at phrasing and rhythms tended to pull the rug from under Sibelius’s carefully prepared climaxes. His latest readings bear similar traits, and while that implies a consistent point of view, he hasn’t yet convinced me, despite the glorious playing. Rehearing earlier accounts from Karajan, Kamu or Levine reminds one how different today’s Philharmoniker sounds from that of old; gone is the luxuriant plush sound with laser-like focus and bottomless reserves of tone. In its place is a lean transparency and limpid beauty of sound, but still with plenty of weight and malleable sonority. Sample the opening of the Third Symphony. It’s as cool and transparent as melt-water while the moments of hush have remarkable focus at a barely perceptible dynamic. Or… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

It may surprise you to learn that there were three editions of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto: the first from 1875, the second a revision of 1879, and the third a posthumous version published in 1894. It is the latter that has been performed ever since, though it differs in many ways from the earlier versions. Gerstein gives us the premiere recording of the 1879 version. Differences are notable, beginning with the opening, where the piano chords are arpeggiated rather than played as blocks. With the piano a kind of uber-harp, it brings the music closer to the world of Tchaikovsky’s ballet scores. This edition is a prettier work, with fewer opportunities for barnstorming. Cuts in the third movement have been opened up. Gerstein’s performance is lighter in texture than most; he and Gaffigan made this deliberate choice. At times I miss the passion and momentum of the young John Ogdon, but on its own terms this performance has integrity. Prokofiev’s Second Concerto is similarly detailed and fluent, but occasionally cautious. The running scales of the scherzo could be more devil-may-care. In the first and third movements Gerstein’s humming… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Editor’s Choice, Orchestral – December 2015 Andris Nelsons has intimate first-hand knowledge of growing up under the cosh of the Soviet regime. As an impressionable 12-year old in 1990 he saw his native Latvia declare independence from the Soviet Union, and among the adjustments to be made was the joyful reappearance of his ‘disappeared’ grandfather, who had spent the previous 15 years holed up in Siberia. Is it because Nelsons understands instinctively the political lunacy that shaped this composer that he can play the music of Shostakovich as opposed to allowing his interpretations to become overstacked with symbolism, metaphor and mythology? Other conductors, of course, shared comparable experiences – Rozhdestvensky, Ashkenazy and Maxim Shostakovich, the composer’s son. But how rare it is to hear Shostakovich’s musical motivation so starkly delineated which, in turn, illuminates the politics. This first installment in a projected cycle to be released with the tag ‘Under Stalin’s Shadow’, opens with a sonic emergency. Shostakovich’s 1936 opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was the source of all subsequent bother that the composer would have with the regime. Denounced in Pravda as “petit-bourgeois formalism”, Nelsons needs… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a…

Daniel Barenboim’s 1967 set of the Brahms Concertos with Barbirolli and the New Philharmonia grabbed the moment as the young pianist embarked on a voyage of discovery safe in the knowledge that his mentor was on the podium. Barenboim’s 1980s remakes with Mehta and the New York Philharmonic have always struck me as curiously unlovely; the work of two hard-nosed pros with nothing to prove, or lose. These new recordings stand somewhere between the two, a reminder that Brahms has been as much tormentor as mentor to Barenboim. The Staatskapelle Berlin is Barenboim’s own orchestra and Gustavo Dudamel is clearly having a ball pushing levers and turning knobs that, no matter what he does, are preset to generate a stylistic Brahmsian sound. Riccardo Chailly’s Leipzig set with Nelson Freire arguably finds pliant subclauses within their comparably authentic sound; but Dudamel doesn’t put a foot wrong. Barenboim’s playing comes, of course, loaded with gravitas, but he is not immune from moments of routine. The Second Concerto’s Allegro appassionato benefits from a temporary lift as Barenboim lightens textures during the repeat. But otherwise he defaults to rather monochrome dynamics and… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…