Thomas Tallis was destined, as the old Chinese curse puts it, to live in interesting times. Luckily, for him and for us, he defied fate and kept his head joined to the rest of his body through many of England’s religious troubles. Andrew Carwood and his expert singers have produced an engaging program of works that reflect both the liturgical and musical diversity of the period. At the centre of this disc is the imposing seven-voice Missa Puer natus est, which seems to have been written in the reign of Mary Tudor. While being based on the cantus firmus of the plainsong introit for Christmas, its lack of a high treble part and solo sections attest to the composer’s ability to adapt his craft to available forces (in this case, Philip II’s Chapel Royal). On the other side of the ecclesiastical ledger, we are given a sonorous setting for lower voices of the Benedictus (Blessed be the Lord God of Israel) to be sung at Mattins according to Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer. A Latin Magnificat (probably Tallis’s earliest surviving work) makes a fascinating contrast not only with the plainer English setting but with his later Catholic works. Two well…

It was a strange prospect to say the least; the whole of Debussy’s La mer (not to mention various Ravel orchestral works) on the organ. Even as an organist, I wondered whether there could be a transcriber, a player and an instrument to do due honour to such richly detailed and subtly orchestrated scores. Gunnar Idenstam, a Swedish concert organist and composer certainly gives it his best shot. The organ of St Martin’s, Dudelange, Luxembourg is an excellent choice with its synthesis of the best of the French, German and English schools of organbuilding. The spatial disposition of the four-manuals in the clear but reverberant acoustic allows the all-important sense of orchestral background and foreground to be recreated. Idenstam brings an excellent technique and a generous sense of drama to the task at hand. While the Debussy has many exciting moments, I couldn’t help feeling that in attempting to reflect the changing orchestration of the original somehow the transcription lacked cohesion and instead of a unified musical tableau I was listening to a succession of colourful moments. The shorter Ravel works fared better. Pavane pour une infante défunte is particularly effective and La valse along with two of the Valses…

Leonidas Kavakos and Yuja Wang here give a hearty, if rather cold, performance of Brahms’ much-loved violin sonatas. Wang has proven her virtuoso skills with her previous recital CDs, but this is the first recording she’s made of chamber music. It’s concerning, then, that this release feels a little like star players working well together, but not connecting as deeply as befits the repertoire. More could be made of many of the most ethereal moments in the music (some of them seem to pass without notice), and there’s an almost palpable sense of relief from the players when the big tunes kick in. Take, for example, the piano’s turn at the theme partway through the first movement of the Violin Sonata in G, accompanied by a delicate pizzicato violin. In other recordings, this return to the theme is a hushed and delicate remembrance, almost magical in its simplicity. Here, it’s merely pretty. Similar issues arise in the other sonatas. The A Major’s grazioso third movement sounds wooden, with none of the grace and lightness of touch that, for example, Arthur Grumiaux and György Sebo˝k give it. This is very heavy Brahms, then, played solidly and weightily. Kavakos and Wang fare…

It is not often I take any notice of reviews on Amazon, but the three I found of this new release were not full of praise. They accuse Nézet-Séguin’s Schumann of being “shallow”, too fast, and devoid of the “expression” that these listeners were used to from Bernstein’s late recordings or (for less extreme examples) Kubelik and Sawallisch. In other words, Nézet-Séguin discarded the interpretive signposts that this music has picked up over 150 years of performance practice. Personally, I never learned to love Schumann’s symphonies until I heard the recordings by Neville Marriner (with the Stuttgart Radio Orchestra) – a conductor who knows something about clarification of texture. Later, original instrument readings from Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique proved a further revelation. It seems to me unfair that Schumann should be expected to provide depth and sorrowful resonance in every note – his symphonies were written mostly when the composer was in a bracingly good mood. This set is played on modern instruments by the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, renowned for their ensemble and bright clarity. They are conducted by the young Canadian (chief conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2010), who is very well aware of…

Shostakovich’s Symphony No 14 is a hard nut to crack, and I admit it’s a long way from my comfort zone. It’s like an ugly descendent of Mahler’s Song of the Earth – without the charm or poignant nostalgia. “When you’re dead, you’re dead” is the message. No regret, no sentiment. The 11 poems are by Rilke, Lorca and Apollinaire, who all died tragically young. No one does bleakness like Shostakovich, but this work is somber and death-suffused even by his standards. Parts of it make the Fourth Symphony sound like Offenbach! Even the poems are bizarre: one starts with the words, “Look, Madame, you’ve dropped something. It’s my heart”. It’s pretty off-the-wall stuff. Petrenko’s penultimate addition to his highly impressive Shostakovich cycle, which more than anything else, has cemented his reputation as ‘one to watch’, is certainly masterful. His Liverpool band is pared back to chamber-like proportions of strings and percussion (much fewer, I imagine, than Rattle’s luxuriant Berlin forces) and establish and maintain an admirable spareness of tone. The singers, Alexander Vinogradov, a genuine Russian bass, with all the vocal resources that implies, and Gal James (an Israeli with more than a hint of Slavic earthiness in her…

The latest batch of re-releases from Eloquence includes two Deutsche Grammophon double sets from the 1950s and 60s and some of Mozart’s dance music from the Decca archives. The Rita Streich double set showcases the Russian-born soprano’s versatility by combining her 1950s Waltzes and Arias recordings (some of the tracks in mono), with her Folk Songs and Lullabies collection recorded in 1962 when the doyenne of the Vienna State Opera was still at the height of her powers. Much of the material is lighter fare – Johann rather than Richard Strauss – but we also get a sense of her expressive power in Dvorˇák’s Song to the Moon from Rusalka and her consummate control and technique in Saint-Saëns’ wordless The Nightingale and The Rose, with its seemingly endless trill. The spiritual Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen shows off her rich and mellow chest voice. While we’re all excited by Jonas Kaufmann’s stellar versatility in both Italian and German roles, there was another tenor who was equally at home with Verdi and Wagner but whose voice is seldom heard these days. Hungarian Sándor Kónya trained in Germany and Italy where he developed the thrilling open voiced high notes which made…

The aptly named Alpha & Omega is the last of three discs of choral music dedicated to the pugnacious Scottish composer James MacMillan by Cappella Nova, a choir with whom he has been associated since at least 1994 when they commissioned his Seven Last Words from the Cross. To say that they are inside his idiom, then, is an understatement. The first two volumes were exemplary, and this new SACD is no exception. MacMillan refers to his attraction to a “soft English modernism” as opposed to the Darmstadt school, which he has always found problematic. His own sound is direct, yet complex; ecstatic, yet grounded in a deep humanity and a desire to communicate his faith – in this case Catholicism. But don’t let that put the rest of you off – his is an engaging sound world with a message that transcends dogma to touch the heart and soul. The major work here is his Missa Dunelmi, written for Durham Cathedral, and here conducted by the composer himself. MacMillan’s melismatic lines and soaring melodies are faithfully conveyed (with a capital F) though the soprano line can feel a little abrasive at times. The other six works are all premiere…

The Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha (1923-2009) had an established career and several recordings behind her when she changed agents and signed with Herbert Breslin, who famously managed Pavarotti. (“Managed” is the word!) Breslin got Larrocha a contract with Decca and made her an international star. She was best known for her strength in Spanish music; I heard her play Albéniz’s immensely taxing Iberia live in London in the 1970s, and was amazed by her stamina. As these reissues reveal, another area she was at home in was music of the Classical and pre-Classical periods – perhaps because she had small hands. The three-disc set gives us Mozart’s Piano Sonatas Nos. 4, 8, 9, 10, 11 Alla Turca, 12, 14, 16 and 18, the Fantasia in D Minor, and two recordings of the Fantasia in C Minor. Larrocha’s Mozart is not over-refined, but focussed on clarity and legato of line. Her unaffected approach puts no interpretative quotation marks around the Rondo from the Alla Turca, or the first movement of the C Major Sonata facile, even though both are almost hackneyed in their familiarity. Her Haydn Concerto in D is delightfully breezy. In Scarlatti her pianism is fluid in an…

In the early 1780s, Baron von Swieten of Vienna held soirées every Sunday. He had been ambassador to the Prussian Court in Berlin, where he became enamoured with the music of Handel and Bach. Among the musicians in attendance was Mozart, who contributed string arrangements of Bach manuscripts. Mozart worked from hand-written copies; Bach’s keyboard music was not published until the early 19th century. The fugues come from both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier, but new adagio introductions replace Bach’s original preludes, which were apparently unknown to the Viennese musicians. Scholars originally assumed the adagios were Mozart’s work, but it is now thought his arrangements were straightforward transcriptions of von Swieten’s manuscripts. He did however contribute music of his own in the style of Bach, notably an Allegro (unfinished) and Fugue in C Minor for two fortepianos. The Akademie für Alte Musik, who had a hit at this year’s Sydney Festival, have put together a disc. Most are played by strings, but one is heard in a wind arrangement. Four out of nine have no Köchel number, indicating doubt about whether Mozart arranged the others. They are played on period instruments by a skilful and sensitive band. If the sound…

The first thing I noticed about this CD was what fine form the Suisse Romande is in nowadays. Marek Janowski and Neeme Järvi have created a better orchestra in a short time than Ansermet did in 40 years! A century ago, Raff’s output was regularly featured in concerts but gradually fell into neglect. The second striking thing here is Järvi’s duration for the symphony at 40’. Bernard Herrmann’s 1970 self-financed recording takes 56! Herrmann ranked it with the Symphonie fantastique and Lizst’s Faust Symphony, and he was right. Lenore is a young girl whose sweetheart dies in battle but whose spirit returns and carries her off on horseback. As usual, the whole thing ends, gothically, in tears. The wild ride doesn’t conjure up anything like the visceral terror of the ride to the abyss in Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust, but it’s still impressive. The March, however, miraculously anticipates Mahler’s militaristic songs in Des Knaben Wunderhorn: I say miraculous, because Raff was born in 1822, almost 40 years before Mahler. It has a tune I couldn’t get out of my head for days. The excellent liner notes describe the work in terms of a single tempo, ingeniously manipulated by altering note…

Mark-Anthony Turnage is one of the UK’s biggest names in contemporary music, known for thinking outside the classical box. He’s not averse to crossing genres (he did study with American jazz great Gunther Shuller), and is pretty up-to-date as far as opera’s concerned (his most recent told the lifestory of Anna Nicole Smith). The music here is Turnage’s foray into the world of dance. Undance (2011) was a collaboration with choreographer Wayne McGregor, and finds its creative origins in a concept artwork by Mark Wallinger. Opposing verbs like dig/twist, jump/hammer, spill/throw, form the basis of each section. Turnage’s music ranges from jaunty, jazz-like band music with an almost Stravinskian sonority to soft, melancholic strings. Crying Out Loud (2002-2003) was originally composed for Ensemble Modern and used in Heinz Spoerli’s Peer Gynt ballet. Much of the music bears traces of jazz and other non-classical traditions. Turnage’s rhythmic language has a perky groove and is relentlessly unstable, conjuring images of jerking dancers all akimbo. The members of the Rambert Orchestra manage the transparent writing with assurance, and become a discrete jazz combo in the final work, No Let Up (2003), with flute, soprano saxophones, bass clarinets and brass. The sound world of…

The British recording label NMC has done wonders making available the rarer works of British composers, and during the Britten centenary turned to that master. With Britten To America they focus on perhaps Britten’s second most important collaborator, the great modernist poet WH Auden, with whom in the 1930s he collaborated in works for radio and stage. Although Auden’s ‘cabaret’ songs would become popular from recitals with Britten’s life partner, the tenor Peter Pears, it’s wonderful to discover them in their original choral context as music for the play The Ascent of F6 (1936), written by Auden in conjunction with Christopher Isherwood on the subject of mountaineering. The other substantial piece here, On the Frontier, comes from the following year and is also written by those two playwrights with a contemporary political eye on a transfer to the West End. Others – namely An American in England and the closing setting by poet Louis Macneice, Where do we go from here?, stem from contemporary BBC radio programmes. Whilst these works may be regarded as peripheral to Britten’s output, there is no doubt as to the professionalism of the group of performers involved and Britten’s compositional brilliance shines through, even in…