In 1819 the publisher Anton Diabelli asked several composers each to write a single variation on a fairly nondescript waltz of his own. Beethoven set the task aside for four years – possibly the collegiate nature of the commission held little appeal – but eventually returned to Diabelli’s theme, proceeding to de- and re-construct every aspect of it in a monumental set of 33 variations. A major work, it postdates the piano sonatas and was composed at the same time as the Choral Symphony. This is late Beethoven, the deaf and obsessive composer who pushed the envelope and for whom an executant’s stamina was no longer a consideration. The variations display a double dose of virtuosity. For one thing, they stretch the pianist technically: the rapid Variations 17, 25 and 28 are as dazzling and difficult as any of Chopin’s Etudes. They also showcase the brilliance of Beethoven’s musical imagination. Paul Lewis has recorded Beethoven’s sonatas and concertos to great acclaim. While he responds to the gradations of tone and dynamics required, he is more “old-school” than some other young pianists (Brendel was his mentor). Some critics have found Lewis stolid, even dull: I don’t think so at all. His…

It’s been a charmed career so far for Hayley Westenra. At the age of 16, her crossover album Pure became the fastest selling album in the history of the classical charts, fuelled by Westenra’s blend of choirgirl voice and angelic looks. That was 2003, this is now, and the 23-year-old Westenra, after a stint with crossover hotties Celtic Woman, has scored an astonishing coup in getting Ennio Morricone to provide new bespoke arrangements for an album of his songs. The classic theme from The Mission has been given lyrics for the first time (penned by Westenra), reemerging as Whispers in a Dream alongside tracks freshly squeezed from Cinema Paradiso, Once Upon a Time in the West etc. All these arrangements are conducted by Morricone with his 120-piece orchestra, the Sinfonietta di Roma –  no synthesized strings here. Westenra’s voice has retained all its fabled choirgirl purity; and although it’s far from smooth across its range, she is always pitch-perfect, which is all you need for melodies that basically sell themselves. The final result is as schmaltzy as all get-out, but Westenra deserves plaudits for pushing the boundaries of the crossover canon beyond Danny Boy and You Raise Me Up.

The little English early music choir with the wacky Italian name (I Fagiolini means “the beans”) has made it to the big-time with its Decca debut, which has outstripped albums by pop stars such as Eminem and Bon Jovi on the British charts. I also say “big-time” because the madrigal specialists have augmented their lineup for this premiere recording of a long-lost High Renaissance masterpiece in forty individual parts. Like Monteverdi a generation later, Alessandro Striggio was employed by the court of Gonzaga and patronised by the powerful Medicis. But his name is associated more often with Thomas Tallis, who famously heard one of Striggio’s 40-part offerings and indulged a little one-upmanship with the same polychoral forces in the famous Spem in alium.  Tallis may streak ahead of his competition in mastery of intricate contrapuntal strands, but Striggio is adept at dispatching block choral effects garlanded with soloistic, florid detail. The latter’s Agnus dei swells to a staggering 60 individual parts. I Fagiolini’s sense of grandeur does not overshadow more intimate moments such as the soprano-led opening of the Sanctus, delicately accompanied by lute and viol. Hollingworth’s decision to double each sub-group with a different instrumental section delineates choral entries:…

This release becomes a magnificent final testament to one of the greatest interpreters of Czech music. Asrael, named for the angel of death (for both Jews and Muslims) was the product of Josef Suk’s grief after losing his father-in-law Dvorák and his young wife in rapid succession. What fascinates me more than anything about this genuinely neglected masterpiece – a genre which in the age of Naxos is becoming rarer – is the dignity of Suk’s suffering: he rarely descends to the Manfred-like lugubriousness of Tchaikovsky or the self-dramatisation of Mahler. Only at the end of the first movement with screaming strings and manic drums does his suffering become uncontrollable, a moment perfectly calibrated by Mackerras and the Czech Philharmonic, who play like real angels throughout.   From the opening bars, Mackerras captures the elegiac atmosphere with the soulful cor anglais over pizzicato strings. In the second movement Andante, these forces distill the exquisite numbness of grief. However, what makes this work so marvelous is the Scherzo, described by one critic as exuding the nocturnal creepiness of Mahler’s Seventh (exactly!), and bringing a real element of orchestral virtuosity to this miraculous music.  The fourth movement is, again, dreamlike and almost Debussyesque, which makes the violent…

Best known for orchestral works and grand opera, the Russian group of composers known as “The Mighty Handful” (Balakïrev, Borodin, Cui, Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky) are found here in the salon, with a bouquet of piano works. The centrepiece is Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, played in the original version. British pianist Philip Edward Fisher is most convincing in its lighter episodes, serving up an effervescent Ballet of the Chickens in their Eggs. For the hulking Polish cart Bydlo and the rousing Great Gate at Kiev finale, his playing is a touch too staid and introspective, never rising above forte or the constraints of “niceness”. Balakïrev’s Islamey, meanwhile, is dissected by Fisher with refreshing rigour. It’s a laudable attempt to make musical sense of a work often abused as a vehicle for virtuosity, especially by competition pianists. Still, although technically assured, Fisher’s account doesn’t quite gel: the pedalling is dry, the transitions between passages choppy. Not much Orientalist rapture here. Happily, Fisher relaxes into a more lyrical mood for Borodin’s beguiling, rather Tchaikovskian Petite Suite – the real discovery of this release. One wonders why its dreamy Serenade is not heard more often on compilations of the Piano-Music-to-Make-You-Swoon variety. The very forgettable Cui…

In the post-war years of severe, avant-garde experimentation, it was music made with the human voice that was unafraid to embrace humour and joie de vivre. English choral adventurer Paul Hillier describes the spoken-word, sung, screamed and belched works (composed between 1940 and 1980) on this eclectic disc as “pieces [that] tell a story… but avoid getting to the point”. Or to take a leaf out of John Cage’s philosophy book: “I have nothing to say and I am saying it”.  Literature buffs will get a kick out of Cage’s rhythmic, irritatingly catchy Story, a setting of Gertrude Stein’s Dr Seuss-esque children’s verse, “Once upon a time the world was round/and you could go on it around and around,” which pings around in fragmented repetitions as five vocalists revel in the collapse of language. The full effect is closely miked and rendered powerfully in SACD sound. Looming large on the Lichtenstein-style front cover is Cathy Berberian, Berio’s first wife and a singer-actor, who championed unusual techniques and presides over the spirit of the album as fairy godmother. Her Stripsody is the most versatile and virtuosic piece here, a “Pop Art aria” exploring the onomatopoeic world of comic strips – “Vrrop”, “Yowee”,…

The very first Mozart violin concerto I ever heard was the composer’s first, dating from 1773, when Mozart was just 17. The performance was by David Oistrakh, and I found it simply wondrous, especially the Adagio movement, with the violin arching with aching beauty over the orchestra. That was many years ago, when I was a very young teenager. It was the natural springboard to the other four violin concertos, which each mirror Mozart’s increasing maturity. I love that concerto still, and Richard Tognetti and the ACO capture perfectly its youthful brilliance and zest. In fact, all three concertos heard here, plus the Rondo and Adagio, are presented in a way which confirms that our ACO is one of the very finest chamber orchestra ensembles performing anywhere in the world today. Particularly delightful in this recording are Richard Tognetti’s cadenzas, which seem to have grown organically from the source-material. There is… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Is this another example of repertoire creep? Recently I reviewed (favorably) a Bruckner symphony played by a chamber orchestra. Now Brahms’s Violin Concerto turns up. The Mahler Chamber Orchestra is the ideal partner here, as Isabelle Faust’s reading eschews the sprawling grandeur of some interpretations but it’s in no sense Brahms-Lite. Poetry and introspection abound in Faust’s playing, while her vibrato is restrained and her phrasing warm. At 37 minutes, it’s on the swift end of the tempo spectrum but is never remotely perfunctory or generalised. One interesting aspect is her use of Busoni’s 1913 cadenza with timpani accompaniment (inspired by its similar use in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto?) Brahms had a soft spot for Busoni, once declaring he would mentor the younger composer in the same way Schumann did Brahms. The Second Sextet, almost equally significant to the concerto, makes me marvel at how Brahms, even at a relatively young age, could suffuse his music with an autumnal melancholy and sense of yearning, seldom more than here in a work allegedly written “on the rebound”. Yet there remains an exquisite ambiguity of veiled emotions here. The performance of the Sextet begins with what seems like an extended trill on the…

The Cello Symphony was one of Britten’s few substantial pieces of abstract symphonic music, and rather than dubbing it a concerto he places the soloist on more equal footing within the orchestral texture. The orchestration is just as vivid as his music for voice, but it is also one of the composer’s most fierce and challenging scores. The Chandos sound gives much-needed warmth to this angular, thorny terrain. The cello is less forward – and more introspective – than in Pieter Wispelwey’s recent recording, maintaining Britten’s desired balance. By the same token, Paul Watkins doesn’t have quite as much bite as the work’s dedicatee Rostropovich in the 1965 premiere recording conducted by Britten. Watkins maintains edge-of-your-seat energy throughout, particularly in the gutsy Presto inquieto where his virtuosic flair is matched by profound lyricism. The third-movement cadenza and its burnished trumpet obbligato are a highlight. In the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, Edward Gardner expertly explores the contrast in Britten’s palette, most effectively in the limpid precision of the BBC Philharmonic strings. The North Sea’s vast beauty, the lilt of maritime village life, and the underlying warning of what the harsh elements may have in store – all these are…

This performance of Tchaikovsky’s music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest may well inspire the listener to exclaim “O brave new world that hath such people in it”, but I doubt whether the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture would provoke a similar reaction in this surprisingly staid excursion by firebrand conductor Gustavo Dudamel. To take one example, the canonic exchanges between the lower woodwinds and the strings in the first fight sequence lack the needed tension. The Tempest fares better. The exquisite evocation of the magic island and surrounding ocean is simply ravishing and well captured by Dudamel and co. Likewise the love music, initially “tender and restrained” (to quote the sleeve notes), gradually becomes almost incandescent – and certainly more dramatic than the equivalent scene in the play. Here the French horn sounds a little tentative but strings and woodwinds are alert and Dudamel certainly knows how to milk the climaxes.  Unfortunately,… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Is there really room for yet another recording of these two Rachmaninov warhorses? For Yuja, yes. Her playing is fresh and wondrously alive, in both pieces. And Claudio Abbado’s conducting is astonishing, delineated with absolute chamber-like clarity. Wang combines strength and delicacy, but most appealing in her playing is her sharp articulation of phrasing and that indefinable stamp of pianistic authority. In the Rhapsody the famous 18th variation has all the limpid beauty it demands, and the 24th accentuates the fantastical, swaggering pseudo-Orientalism of its finale. Her final dying notes have all the wry sarcasm which so cleverly and affectionately mocks all that has gone before, delivered with an offhand grace I’ve seldom heard before. It’s totally delicious stuff. And the Second, deservedly the most famous of Rachmaninov’s concertos, is played with a poise and steel which totally belies the impish pianist’s image on the CD cover.  These special readings seem to come from live performances – the Concerto gives this away with a snatch of applause at the end, but there is no other indication of this. The sound quality is as detailed as the finest studio recording; both the piano and orchestra are caught in awesome fidelity. This…

This fanciful biopic casts light on Mozart’s older sister Maria Anna “Nannerl”, a fine singer and instrumentalist in her own right whose ambitions naturally took a backseat to the boy wonder’s prodigious gifts. Based in part on the correspondence of their demanding father Leopold Mozart, the account is a quintessentially French one set in the 1760s when the children are aged 10 and 15, following the imagined events that unfold during performing tours to Paris and Versailles. Nannerl’s journey centres on two fictionalised encounters with French royalty. The first, with the cloistered, illegitimate 12-year-old daughter of Louis XV, echoes the tragedy of her own thwarted potential. As Louise de France, Lisa Féret is blandly benign and monochrome, making it difficult to care about the rapport between the two young girls, who are in fact real-life sisters. Meanwhile, the teenage Nannerl’s sexual awakening becomes a focus with the help of the brooding Dauphin’s smouldering gaze (Clovis Fouin). The attraction is inextricably linked with his intense admiration of her music, freeing her creative spirit – temporarily, at least. She is forced to dress as a boy in order to consort with the prince in public, but this narrative tool, again designed to…