Performances of Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto range from the romantic/rhapsodic (Shaham/ Boulez/BPO) to the gritty, abrasive and uncompromising (Mullova), with Mutter somewhere in- between. Thomas Zehetmair, a native of Salzburg, has been around for a long time but I wouldn’t have had him down as an arch exponent of the mighty Bartók Second Violin Concerto, one of the greatest concertos for any instrument of the twentieth century. Well, he is! There’s something excitingly kaleidoscopic and mercurial about this 1995 performance. His rhythms are nimble, his tone slender but full of coruscating folkloric colours. One thing I initially found disconcerting are his tempi: he takes 35’ over the work which makes it sound quite different; Shaham takes over 40’ which, I think, is closer to the norm. The Budapest Festival Orchestra, generally regarded for some years as Hungary’s premier ensemble, especially under Ivan Fischer, enhance the soloist and conductor in what amounts to a symphonic accompaniment wonderfully captured. The companion piece is Bartók’s First Violin Concerto, an early work sometimes dismissed as an expression of love-sickness over his inamorata, Stefi Geyer. It wasn’t discovered until after both the composer and Geyer had died, in 1956. It’s OK but very much a…

Bach’s keyboard concertos, despite their obscure provenance (all are thought to be arrangements of earlier instrumental concerti), stand tall as the earliest masterpieces of the genre, brimful of contrapuntal invention. As such they offer endless possibilities for imaginative interpreters, yet performances and recordings played on harpsichord are not as common as you might suppose in the era of historically-informed performance practice, and are well outnumbered by those on modern piano. To overcome the problem of balancing the harpsichord against the standard Baroque string ensemble, the current fashion is to play them one-to-a-part, as recorded here by London’s critically acclaimed Retrospect Ensemble with their inspired young leader Matthew Halls. He plays a superb instrument with a robust yet refined tone and inflects the solo part with illuminating details, crisp rhythmic articulation and clever yet tasteful ornamentation. The ensemble perform with a clean transparent sound and fine intonation but are a times a little restrained and polite – this certainly allows the soloist to be heard to good advantage but doesn’t always reach the ideal of “a first among equals” – the players seem reluctant make the bold dramatic gestures one hears from their leader. Their short-breathed phrasing and avoidance of expressive…

The Bach family seems set on becoming as inescapable as the Kardashian fungibles. Once again, music by all sorts of profoundly obscure Bachs, as well as by JSB, Carl Philipp Emmanuel, Wilhelm Friedemann, and Johann Christian, has been covered. And yes, we behold here a piano in all its tonal glory, not a harpsichord, let alone a clavichord. The trumpet-piano combination has seldom generated original music (among front-ranking composers only Hindemith employed it, and even he struggled to make it interesting). Still, in these arrangements, carried out by pianist Daniel-Ben Pienaar from a bewildering variety of organ, chamber, and orchestral originals – even the theatre is acknowledged, an overture from JC Bach’s 1779 opera Amadis of Gaul having been included – it works like the proverbial charm. Jonathan Freeman-Attwood is a real find. His trumpet timbre resembles the late Maurice André: intrinsically straightforward but with judicious vibrato for emotive purposes, and with boundless panache. The pianism of his colleague avoids both undue pedalling and tiresomely excessive staccato. On occasion fast speeds impair chorale- preludes’ contrapuntal lucidity; yet overall, jaded sensibilities will consider this production a very agreeable tonic. Both performers benefit from remarkably vivid, well-balanced sound. May we have a…

When a jury comprising Martha Argerich, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Alexis Weissenberg, Nelson Freire and Joachim Kaiser announced Kazan- born, now Munich-based Anna Gourari the winner of the First International Clara Schumann Competition in 1994, apparently praising her “almost mystical playing”, she knew she had arrived. Nearly 20 years and nearly a dozen recordings later, it’s astonishing she isn’t better known internationally. Because she is that rare thing – not merely a pianist with a formidable technique; not merely a musician with a knack for clarifying the underlying musical structure as Michelangelo clarified the skeleton and musculature of the human body, but a true artist and poet. If there is one work on this recording capable of revealing the full range of Gourari’s technical, interpretative and yes, artistic gifts, it’s Busoni’s magisterial piano arrangement of Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor for solo violin. Quite simply, this is one of the finest interpretations of this work that I have ever heard – and my favourites include wonderful recordings by Arthur Rubinstein and Alicia de Laroccha. Despite Gourari’s having technique to burn, her playing is spacious, lyrical, profound, imbued with an almost Celibidache- like mysticism. Not that there is any lack of excitement in……

This set is a cornucopia of glorious conducting and orchestral playing. While it’s impossible to generalise about works as gargantuan as Wagnerian melodramas, I can’t help thinking, having soaked up this set over a period of weeks, that people who find the contemporary interpretations of Levine, Barenboim & Thielemann faceless, may be onto something. The recordings range from Hans Knappertsbusch with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1927 or 1928, to his Munich recordings of 1962. The sound ranges from the just acceptable to the relatively modern. Knappertsbusch was famously – or notoriously – slow, depending on your point of view, in Wagner. However, there was never any dissent about his unique ability to preserve a line or arc, gradually and convincingly accumulating tension. When it came to architectural grandeur, no one could top “Kna” in these excerpts from Rienzi, Die Fliegender Höllander, the Lohengrin Act 1 Prelude (aptly described by the liner note writer as Wagner’s first piece of truly transcendent music) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg Overture and Parsifal Prelude in Munich and another Meistersinger Overture coupled with extracts from Die Walküre, Parsifal & Tannhäuser in Berlin. Intriguingly, the Meistersinger Overture in 1928 took 8’34. By the 1962 Munich performance, it……

Globalisation, in terms of international orchestral performing standards, seems to be the high tide which has lifted many boats! Excellent Bruckner performances are no longer the exclusive domain of the illustrious ensembles of Berlin, Vienna, Leipzig, Dresden and Amsterdam. Last year I reviewed a persuasive Bruckner Five with Philippe Herreweghe and the Champs-Elysées forces – an orchestra of only 68! Donald Runnicles had critics diving for the thesaurus with his 2012 Proms Bruckner Eight (which he also conducted in Sydney a few weeks earlier) with the BBC Scottish Orchestra. His flair for maintaining lucid textures while blending different orchestral voices was singled out for particular praise, as they are here in Bruckner’s Seventh. That said, however, I take issue with the Guardian reviewer who spoke of this performance as expansive. At 60 minutes? You must be joking! Even Solti, who rarely stopped to smell the flowers, managed to take 70 minutes in his second recording. Runnicles provides an uneccentric account. The stopwatch can be an unreliable ally, especially here where, paradoxically, his tempi don’t actually sound as swift as the overall duration would indicate. They are also well integrated and the gradation of the climaxes. His ability to know how…

Andreas Ottensamer is one of these frustrating overachievers who are obscenely good at everything. Born into a family of clarinetists, the Viennese wunderkind walked away from Harvard to pursue a career in the Berlin Philharmonic where, at the tender age of 24, he now occupies the principal post in his section. It’s a mystery how the first solo clarinetist ever to be signed to the Yellow Label also manages to model part-time and keep up his game in the football club he founded: the Wiener Virtuosen. I don’t want to penalise Ottensamer for his abundant gifts, but his Deutsche Grammophon debut Portraits just seems a little too perfect, much like the chiselled features highlighted on the album cover. Amongst these diverse musical portraits were a few leaky watercolours but not enough to spoil the exhibition; Ottensamer’s articulation is so flawlessly legato that occasionally it’s difficult to shake the ear out of its reverie, especially in the arrangement of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin. Copland’s pointillistic, madcap concerto glides smoothly by in the slow opening movement, until the cadenza kicks in – dazzling, if a little cautious in comparison, for example, with Martin Fröst’s plucky, devil-may-care version, which accelerates…

This mammoth tribute to the great Renaissance philosopher Erasmus could well be considered a folly (at least from a business point of view) in these times of global economic woes. Encased in a lavishly illustrated hardcover book are six discs; three of them containing the complete program, which includes both music and narrated excerpts (in French) from the works of Erasmus and his contemporaries, while the other three discs contain the music alone. A voucher accompanying the book allows the purchaser to download the narrated program in an impressive six other languages of choice, including English, from the Alia Vox website. It is no surprise that the first disc entitled ‘Praise of Folly’ pays homage not only to Erasmus’s great work of that name, but also to the famous dance music tradition of ‘La Folia’. The second disc, ‘Time of Reflections’ surveys events surrounding the earlier life of Erasmus while the third disc, ‘Time of Confrontation’ chronicles the advent of Machiavelli, the Reformation, and the death of Erasmus. The literary and musical breadth of the program, conceived by Jordi Savall and his late wife Montserrat Figueras, is monumental. By using recent recordings as well as some from as far back……

The true mark of an exceptional jazz ensemble is their ability to achieve tight, flawless unison whilst ensuring balance and clarity. Mark Isaacs’ latest offering from ARIA nominated Resurgence, “Duende” manages to consistently to achieve this with a rare mix of sophistication and impressive honesty. In terms of original material, the Australian composer’s pieces are sleek and polished. Rather than falling into a ‘search for musical revolution’, these pieces are certainly innovative and definitely fresh, but somehow they still retain the roots of good jazz. The album itself is diverse and provides ample opportunities to demonstrate the immense talent of the artists involved. Isaacs stays away from featuring the vocalist too prominently. You Never Forget Love is smooth and sultry, with just enough dissonant crunch to keep the listener interested. It makes a surprisingly mature showpiece for 24 year-old vocalist Briana Cowlishaw, her voice effortless with absolutely no tension in the sound. Aside from this piece, Cowlishaw is as much an ensemble member as the rest of Resurgence. That said, it would be nice to hear more from her in the future – maybe the next CD? First Light is a rare gem. It is heart-wrenchingly understated and possesses a…

Paving the way for the triumph of home-grown music over continental, Saul was presented in 1739 as part of a London season notable for the complete absence of Italian opera. It was a revolutionary work in many ways. It was the first English oratorio with a male lead; it was the longest English music theatre work to date; and it required larger forces than any theatre work previously performed in England. Harry Christophers delivers a highly charged, dramatic reading of the score, from the grand, ceremonial opening choruses, through the more intimate court settings, right up to the spooky scene where the Witch of Endor raises the spirit of Samuel. Listen to the sonorous use of three trombones (a German import in their day) in the battle music. Military kettledrums (which Handel borrowed from the Tower of London) enhance the famous Dead March. David’s ravishing harp solos and a specially commissioned carillon complete the novel line up and Christophers gives each its moment in the spotlight. Christopher Purves is Saul, a fine baritone and an even finer singing actor. His kingly descent through jealousy, fury and despair is meticulously mapped out with singing of enormous bite and panache. Although the…

Over recent years Universal has released a series of well-priced box sets showcasing their labels with individual discs nostalgically packaged in mini LP covers and a hefty booklet documenting the history of the label. The frustrating mix of mainstream favourites with a handful of rarities has proved the proverbial curate’s egg for hard-core collectors, who will be tempted by unreleased gems. Archiv Produktion was founded in 1947 as a sub-label of Deutsche Grammophon specialising in early music, and this celebratory box gives us a chronological selection including a Bach organ recital by Helmut Walcha and some important first CD releases of 1950’s pioneers. More recent releases include a tempting taster from the superb 10CD box of Victoria by Michael Noone’s Ensemble Plus Ultra. For the first 20 discs period instruments are a rarity apart from encounters with mavericks like Jurgens and Harnoncourt. To modern ears most of the early releases now sound quaintly “ye olde musicke” with tootling recorders and “birdcage rattled by a toasting-fork” harpsichords. They caught up by the 1980s signing Reinhard Goebel and his supergroup Musica Antiqua Köln and the finest of British groups, John Eliot Gardiner’s English Baroque Soloists and Trevor Pinnock’s English Concert. Bach lovers…

The only gripe I have with this otherwise splendid CD is the fact that the three works are not presented in chronological order, especially as they represent the three distinct musical periods in Szymanowski’s chameleon-like composing career and are quite different from each other in idiom. The otherwise excellent Chandos usually gets this sort of thing right. In its “spangled bumptiousness”, as one deathless description had it, the Concert Overture, composed in 1904, is an unashamed homage to Richard Strauss, especially reminiscent of Don Juan with the opening vaulting motif followed by the a tender, lyrical theme. I hope it won’t be the kiss of death when I reveal that the Second Symphony (1909-10) was influenced by Max Reger’s fin-de-siècle hothouse chromaticism, although, fortunately, it lacks his academic dryness. The idiom is more akin to the intense ambience of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande, though without its thicket-like orchestral textures. It begins curiously with a violin solo, and moments of intimacy are overshadowed by a hankering for expressive climaxes. The second movement opens with a lovely string melody followed by charming Rococo variations including a gavotte and a minuet before the various strands are woven into a highly convincing contrapuntal finale….