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…

Casper David Friedrich’s painting The Wanderer Above The Sea Of Mist has been trotted out for countless album covers, but for Austrian baritone Florian Boesch’s latest collaboration with Roger Vignoles it couldn’t be more appropriate. From the English pianist’s gloomy opening chords we almost feel the fog that enshrouds the mountains and valleys surveyed by the figure on his lonely crag. Boesch’s gentle, expressive baritone paints in the hopeless despair of a man who wanders “silent and joyless, and my sighs forever ask: Where?” That’s the Wanderer of D489, but this collection of 19 songs is not all Weltschmerz, although Boesch does resignation very well with his lovely sotto voce. In Aus Heliopolis II we hear a more assertive narrator and Auf der Bruck has singer and piano cantering along. Schubert is a competitive market at the moment. So why buy this one? Well, Boesch is a compelling singer. He already has Winterreise and Die Schöne Müllerin under his belt with accompanist Malcolm Martineau (who has recorded the same repertoire with Bryn Terfel), but he and pianist Vignoles have a great chemistry. This complements their previous outing of songs by the lesser-known Carl Loewe. Boesch’s lines are poetic and beautifully…

Bach’s Goldberg Variations has become a piece of cultural capital, used as a prop for intellectual pretensions, and with so many recordings available I must admit to a grumpy scowl as I loaded this disc into my player. Here we go again, another pianist thinks the world needs to hear his thoughts on this venerable masterpiece, this had better be good. Press play and the Aria is elegant and straightforward, Var I is crisp and playful – good so far. As the disc went on a smile spread from ear to ear – this is rather special, you know. Denk’s limpid tone and judicious pedalling maintains clarity while his architectural grasp integrates each variation into a grand plan while characterising each with a specific mood and attitude. He sees patterns where others merely see notes. Voices move forward and back by way of subtle lighting effects rather than glaring follow-spots; the descending chromatic bass at the beginning of Var XXI is tinted with a darker baritonal colour on the repeat – classy! The fughetta of Var X is stern but not hectoring; indeed Denk never makes an ugly sound and doesn’t peck. There are sensual delights such as his gleaming touch…

The third volume of Paul and Huw Watkins’ survey of British cello music turns to sonatas written after 1945 by Edmund Rubbra, Alan Rawsthorne, and EJ Moeran. All three are works that haven’t entered mainstream repertoire, but this CD makes a compelling argument that they should. Rubbra’s Sonata in G Minor shows his preoccupation with counterpoint and the music of the 16th century, even extending to authoring a short but fascinating book entitled Counterpoint – A Survey (now, disappointingly, out of print). Cello and piano work together in a way that’s reminiscent of the Renaissance masters of polyphony, but with a piquant 20th-century touch. By contrast, Rawsthorne’s work is highly chromatic and passionate, with moments of crystalline delicacy as well as shattering power. Similarly, Moeran’s Sonata is a stirring piece, sounding at times like a more chromatically dense Brahms. There are hints at his interest in folk music, particularly in the dark and roiling first movement. All three works are finely played and recorded but I have reservations about programming. Rawsthorne and Moeran back-to-back results in a solid 35 minutes of similar weight; both Rubbra and Moeran wrote short works that could have been added to cleanse the palate. A…

Maurizio Pollini’s two previous recordings of Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto, both conducted by Abbado, are the stuff of legend – the 1995 live recording in particular often being regarded as simply the greatest ever made of this strangely-structured but ultimately deeply revealing insight into the composer’s complex psychology. So why record it yet again? Well, because Pollini’s towering musical genius (and yes, that description is offered by way of sober assessment) just grows and grows with time. Indeed, nearly 20 years is too long to wait for this, his latest State-of-the-Musical-Union address on what makes this four-movement work in B Flat such a compelling experience, even when it doesn’t quite have the bravura or colour-and-movement of its D Minor predecessor. And again, Pollini, now in his 70s, delivers with everything we’ve come to expect from him – the poetry most of all, especially as the piano enters after the famous cello melody at the start of the slow movement. Then there’s the humanity of it – you can tell just from the sound that there is a great, compassionate spirit animating it. And of course, for all the magnificence of Pollini’s playing, it still sounds simply like a direct line…

I’ve always thought Khachaturian’s ballet music superior to his concertos. Even James Ehnes’ customary fusion of virtuosity and insight cannot convince me otherwise. Despite the contribution David Oistrakh made to its composition, if I had to sum up the Violin Concerto in one word, I’m afraid it would be “racketty”. Even the “exotic” arabesques, which must have seemed original in the 1930s were much better when used by composers like Dmitri Tiomkin and Miklós Rózsa in 1950s “sword and sandal” epics. Ehnes ennobles virtually every piece of music he performs but I think his prodigious talent is wasted on this work. The rest of the disc contains string quartets performed by Ehnes’ eponymous quartet, a curious juxtaposition because, while the Khachaturian has never really entered the “canon” of great violin concertos, it certainly does have audience appeal. Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet is his only work in this genre to have gained permanent status in the repertoire, but it’s still a hard nut to crack for the uninitiated listener. It’s a work of emotional extremes, although the very opening is played here with a warmth I’ve never heard before. The second movement is demented (even by Shostakovich’s standards) but these wonderful……

A comic opera about wife beating? Not sure how it would go down today but in 1841, Donizetti penned Rita, a one act, to a French libretto. Due to various vicissitudes, not the least of which must have been the composer’s advancing case of the clap, it was never performed in Donizetti’s lifetime, premiering posthumously at Paris’ Opéra-Comique in 1860. It’s a slight affair. Believing her husband Gasparo drowned at sea, Rita has married the timorous Pepe. Gasparo used to beat Rita, she now beats her new spouse. When Gasparo, who fancies wedding another hapless maid in Canada, turns up hoping to destroy his old marriage certificate, Pepe sees his chance to escape his matrimonial obligations. Several farcical twists and turns involving games of chance and fake disabilities end in a duel, at which point Rita sees the value of Pepe after all and Gasparo heads into the sunset advising Rita to keep her fists primed for the future. Opera Rara have done their usual superb job with recording and packaging but it can’t quite disguise the thinness of the material. It’s late Donizetti, therefore it’s tuneful and crafted fare. The orchestra and conductor couldn’t be bettered and the three…

David Robertson’s interpretation of Stravinsky's ballet is a fine one in conception if compromised in execution.

Canadian baritone Gerald Finley teams up with one of today’s finest accompanists.