Basing a Mendelssohn cycle on his appearances in Birmingham with the local band is a rather jejune connection. Was there anywhere Mendelssohn didn’t go? That said, I greatly enjoyed these performances in which Edward Gardner, yet another glamorous and talented young conductor, cuts a swathe through familiar works. I’ve never heard the last movement of the Italian Symphony dispatched with such brio. It’s altogether sunnier than Brüggen’s recent recording. I also commend the way Gardner observes the first movement repeat, which has what must be the loveliest ‘lead backs’ in music. The Reformation Symphony was composed to mark the 300th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, a major milestone in the formation of the Lutheran Church. (Despite his Jewish heritage, Mendelssohn became a Lutheran convert.) In the Symphony, he uses ‘Catholic’ polyphony which is ultimately overcome by the Lutheran Chorale Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott. Scoring and structure are simultaneously grandly architectural and austere, though I was bemused to read one description of the waltz in the scherzo as “louche”. Calling anything by Mendelssohn “louche” is like saying one of Bruckner’s scherzos is “chic”. Chandos’s sound and the CBSO’s playing are gorgeous, especially the Principal Flute, which intones the hymn tune. This work deserves the same…

Hyperion continue their excellent work in unearthing rare concerti, giving the lie to the cliché that interest in classical music, especially non-mainstream works, is in decline. Music by two Polish composers from the late 1800s is under the microscope on this occasion, wonderfully played by violinist Eugene Ugorski and the Scottish Orchestra conducted by Michał Dworzyński. Emil Młynarski studied composition with Liadov and orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov. The brilliance of the latter’s instruction is clear in Młynarski’s work. He was a conductor of opera and orchestras, working across the musical spectrum in Poland all his life. His two concertos are fine, romantic works, so good as to wonder at their eclipse over the last century. Twenty years separate the two concerti, the second emerging as the more subtle of the two. The Ukrainian, Aleksander Zarzycki, studied in Berlin before settling in Warsaw in 1871. A popluar dance at the time known in Paris as the cracovienne and in Vienna as the krakauer, emerges here as the attractive two-part Introduction et Cracovienne. The Mazurka is dedicated to the Spanish composer, Sarasate. For me, it is the most familiar piece on the disc; a delightful work. These are all very attractive… Continue reading Get…

Christian Thielemann may have attracted some unfavourable headlines in his time – fallings out with big opera companies and run-ins with Simon Rattle and Daniel Barenboim – but there’s no doubting he’s a worthy keeper of the flame when it comes to the core Austro-German repertoire. The boyish-looking 55-year-old’s new “dream job” as chief conductor of Staatskapelle Dresden is already producing treasures with this DVD set of Brahms’s four symphonies. The live performances in Dresden and Tokyo are compelling viewing and listening with the orchestra’s famed soft and burnished sound ideal for this material. Thielemann is authoritative and punctilious throughout, setting excellent tempi and showing us how well he absorbed his work experience jobs with Karajan in Berlin and Barenboim at Bayreuth. An added bonus is a fascinating documentary in which the conductor is a companion on this journey through the symphonies. He shows us each work’s distinctive character and points out pitfalls for the unwary. He says the third symphony is the most enigmatic, mainly because it “implodes” rather than ending in a blaze of triumph. “There’s a kind of archaic violence that emanates from Brahms… if violence can be positive then it is in Brahms,” he concludes. You may… Continue…

The BBC Symphony plays this Sibelius cycle very well, and the sound is as excellent as the playing.

The range of pieces here is so wide that all I can do is comment on the individual works. But I must admit I like live performances, where we know that minimal ‘tarting up’ has taken place. Drawn from a concert given at the Lugano Festival in 2013, we begin with Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto. This delightful work proceeds with more punch than usual and Argerich is in fine form. The last movement, arguably the bounciest piece Beethoven ever wrote, is splendid. Argerich delivers the same incisive standard in the rarer Second Cello Sonata. The cellist, Gautier Capuçon, does not quite match the level of his accompanist. One would be hard pressed to recognise the usually flamboyant Respighi, the composer of the great Roman orchestral triptych, by his more sober and formal Violin Sonata. Workmanlike is the best word I can find for it; still it’s worth having, especially the lyrical final movement. Minor Liszt and less familiar Shostakovich follow, both initially hiding their identities, they give cellist Capuçon some fine opportunities to shine. The third disc is soley devoted to French music, beginning with the rapturous Ravel Violin Sonata. Wistful and elegant, it wends its way for 16 minutes across……

Riccardo Chailly’s way with Mahler is a known quantity thanks to his superb CD cycle with the Royal Concertgebouw, probably the most recommendable complete set with magnificent orchestral playing and stunning sound. He occupies a pragmatic middle ground between the two schools of Mahler style; the classically restrained, if sometimes dull, with the emphasis on structural logic versus the wildly emotive, if self-indulgent, with live-for the-moment thrills and spills. His acute ear for sonority reflects his progressive tendencies but his old school operatic training is evident with his projection of a singing line and careful dramatic pacing. Since moving to Leipzig he seems to have refined his approach to suit the different character of his orchestra with its dark hued strings, mittel-Europa wind timbres and gleaming brass. The mark of a great orchestra is the quality and focus of playing at the lowest dynamic levels – listen to the closing moments of the Adagietto; the strings fading to the merest whisper yet still perfectly blended together like a delicate silken thread. Chailly’s ability to clarify telling details is typified by the empty rattle of hard-stick timpani strokes in the opening funeral march that are so often lost in… Continue reading…

I’ve long considered William Walton’s First Symphony as equal to Elgar’s two masterworks, although seriously underrated as one of the pillars of 20th-century symphonic repertoire. It also marked one of the great “breakthroughs’  in 20th-century music, when Walton served notice he had broken free of the louche, epicene aristocrats of his early creative life – from Bright Young Thing to Angry Young Man. I recently heard Walton’s music described as “tame”. I suggest the writer consult an audiologist. The First Symphony’s greatest recording is almost universally judged to be André Previn’s 1966 LSO, all the more amazing since Previn’s exposure to British music had been minimal. The composer’s own recording of the work with the old Philharmonia in its palmiest days was also excellent (giving the lie to the notion that most composers, except Bernstein, made lousy interpreters of their own scores). Previn’s reading captured the rubber-on-tarmac, pedal-to-the-metal velocity, brilliantly maintained tautness and rugged glamour, not to mention one of the best “travelling tunes” ever composed. Edward Gardner doesn’t surpass Previn in any of these but gives a performance that is, nonetheless, impressive and highly enjoyable. The timpani strokes in the first movement are also impressive in their precision. The…

For long regarded as a lower grade symphonist by sniffy critics of the past, Robert Schumann’s orchestral output has been reassessed thanks to illuminating period aware performances that have aerated his supposedly thick orchestration and revealed a timbral spectrum that was obscured by the overlay of late-19th-century orchestral technique. Conductors on the traditional side have overcome problems with textual tampering while revelling in the weighty sound at their disposal, so it’s no surprise that Sir Simon Rattle chooses to sit on that particular fence considering the character of his orchestral forces. Despite the essay espousing the Berliner Philharmoniker’s long tradition of Schumann performance, today’s orchestra sounds very different to earlier incarnations with a vibrant transparency and a responsive flexibility that allows the ensemble to turn on a dime – a long way from the luxurious juggernaut of yesteryear.  The string sound, while still luxuriant, is exquisitely focused and supple while the wind section is predictably magnificent, boasting starry names such as Emmanuel Pahud and Albrecht Mayer. Symphonies 1 & 4 (here in its original 1841 form) inhabit a Mendelssohnian sound world that suits Rattle’s approach and for me the fourth symphony is the standout performance of the… Continue reading Get…

Founded in 1937 under the Boston Symphony’s legendary conductor Serge Koussevitzky, the Tanglewood Festival is one of the most famous in the world. Based in the hills near Boston, it has a superb site and access to some of the world’s best tutors and soloists. Programs such as this are usually a mixed bag. How many of us are going to buy a DVD with such disconnected compositions? Not many by my guess. Copland’s Fanfare is splendidly done by the BSO, as are the dances from On The Town. Bernstein’s second musical is a marvellous piece and the Bostonians rattle it off to the manor born. The outstanding track contains Anne Sophie Mutter’s dazzling rendition of Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy. It is superb. On the down side are James Taylor’s poorly sung American Songs. He’s lost it and it is painful to endure. In the classical department, Emanuel Ax turns in a slightly idiosyncratic performance of the second two movements of the Haydn Piano Concerto and Peter Serkin delivers a straightforward account of Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. The orchestras and choir perform well and it is always a delight to see so many talented and dedicated young people flying the flag for classical…

This program was the opening concert of the 2013 Lucerne Festival and Abbado would die a few months later. It is an intensely moving memorial. For conducting students this is a lesson in economy of means as his frail state dictated that he achieve so much with so little effort. His beloved “hand-picked” orchestra respond to his slightest gesture; what an extraordinary ensemble they are – a hyper-attentive giant chamber group all listening to one another, shaping phrases with love and care. The Schoenberg is a treat with two extracts from Gurrelieder; the Orchestral Interlude with its luscious ultra-Tristanesque harmonies and soaring Tove melody, and the Song of the Wood Dove sung by the lovely Mihoko Fujimura who inhabits the role. The main work is the Eroica Symphony and may divide opinion; some may consider the tempi too broad in the grand old manner but I was captivated. This was a loving performance crafted from years of experience and deep wisdom with phrases floating weightlessly and moments of breathtaking stasis and innigkeit. There is some exquisitely beautiful playing here such as that by oboist Lucas Macias Navarro. It is rare to hear such finely graduated dynamics and perfectly balanced textures…

If CDs can be judged by their covers then this intriguing release from the Zurich-based Galatea Quartet could be Record of the Year. And with typical creativity they don’t pair the venerable Debussy Quartet with its usual Ravel bedfellow, but instead throw in Milhaud’s First Quartet. And what a pleasant surprise it is, a work of real lyrical beauty and elegiac sensibility, until the vibrant finale whose darting rhythms and jack-in-the-box mood-swings so suits the playing style of this seriously engaging and altogether contemporary-sounding ensemble. The Debussy too is excellently played, sounding crisp and fresh with the kind of youthful vigour, at which the Ebène are the current masters, and which typifies the current crop of outstanding new-generation string quartets. But perhaps most interest lies in the closing, three-movement Sonatine for String Quartet by Pierre Menu, a prodigiously gifted young French composer who at just 23 died from the effects of poison gas during the First World War. While the quasi-impressionist work itself isn’t especially individual, this world premiere recording does suggest that his premature loss to French music justified the grief expressed by his contemporaries. It’s a close-miked recording, making some instrumental timbres and studio noises a touch too…

In a review, one critic referred to the “period instrument colonization” of 20th-century French orchestral repertoire, which set me thinking about those fears we used to have about an historically informed performance of Wozzeck. I have many older LP recordings of French repertoire performed by French orchestras which are so distinctly “Gallic” in the slightly flatulent horn sound and the (usually) delightfully vinegary woodwind, as to be instantly identifiable. Over the decades, this sound has virtually disappeared. Perhaps these recordings mark a reaction. Immerseel and Anima Eterna achieve a sound in Mother Goose which, in terms of sheer exquisiteness, is hard to beat. I instantly admired the way the cor anglais has been caught but the flute and clarinet are equally beguiling. The strings are similarly gorgeous. Did anyone ever compose anything as civilized? Pictures at an Exhibition is equally suave, perhaps a touch too much so. I like the trumpet slurs throughout the promenade sections but I think this super-refined playing isn’t really earthy enough: after all, it’s hard to depict a Polish ox cart as anything other than a Polish ox cart. The Great Gate of Kiev lacks the grandeur we normally associate with it. My main problem is…