This 3-CD set comes from the 2009 Festival. All the music is capably and sensitively performed.

The longtext was written by one Henry Hamilton, something of a hack. The speeches are relieved by Elgar’s attractive and diverse music but the pretentious exchanges between the voices of Indian cities – as each city argues for its right to be the new capital – requires a deal of patience and historical perspective. Even so, more circumstance and less pomp would have better served Elgar in scoring this curious work. Very little of his original orchestration has survived. As recently as the early 1970s, the full score was lost when the building housing the archive of the music publisher was demolished. All that remained was a piano score and a recording of a suite conducted by Elgar. So the remarkable Anthony Payne again came to the rescue. He is the genius who realised Elgar’s unfinished sketches for his third symphony. Andrew Davis knows how this music works and gets excellent performances from all and sundry. The recording is first-rate and there is some marvellous, undiscovered Elgar for the fans to dine on. Hopefully, Chandos see fit to issuea CD without the tedious spoken text at some point. However, to have the work complete for the first time is very…

A founding member of the Calefax Reed Quintet, he has provided them with arrangements of works by composers as diverse as Bach, Ravel and Rameau. As a soloist, he has arranged Paganini’s Caprices for saxophone and this disc finds him again concentrating on the master violinist’s output. Many of the works on this release are effectively Paganini ‘once removed’ as they are arrangements of other composers’ arrangements. Hekkema is a brilliant saxophonist and he uses his full bag of tricks in attempting to match Paganini’s range. However the result is only partially satisfying, as many of the effects seem forced or not quite right. Frequently the ‘effect’ is heard rather than the musical content but, given that the repertoire for the classical saxophone is severely limited he makes a brave attempt. The highlight is the arrangement of Paganini’s Quartet XV where Hekkema puts aside his bag of tricks and focuses on the music of this wonderful and less well known work. Pianist Eijsacker is a willing and talented partner; the sound is spectacularly captured by Dabringhaus and Grimm’s engineers and the sleeve notes (by Hakkema) are lucid and informative. Ultimately, however, this will be of limited interest to anyone but…

Typically iconoclastic, it opens with a solo piano theme that is answered by the orchestra, before a more traditional ritornello follows – based on the piano theme. The second movement, one of Beethoven’s finest, is a dialogue between an initially angry and strident orchestra and a serene piano that eventually dominates – soothing the orchestra. The final Rondo is a joyous romp. For this recording, pianist Roland Brautigam uses a newly revised score for the outer movements that includes annotations by the composer in 1808, eventually deciphered in 1994. The overall effect of these changes is minimal. Towards the end of 1806, Beethoven also wrote his only Violin Concerto for Franz Clement, which is another strikingly original work with its opening timpani strikes. In 1808, at the request of pianist/composer Muzio Clementi, Beethoven transcribed it for piano. Unfortunately much of the piano transcription is a straight repetition of the violin part with little or no harmonic addition. This can be a little disconcerting for the listener used to the violin version. The cadenzas, however, were newly composed by Beethoven and probably contain the most interesting music in the concerto. Brautigam gives a characteristically reliable performance and the Norrköping Orchestra are…

This is especially true as all of the music is of high quality and lacks both the trivial material that mars so much of his work, and the bleak despair of some of his last quartets. The most attractive work is the Piano Quintet which was written between the Stalinist terror of the late 1930s and the Nazi invasion of 1941, a period when life was fairly secure and consumer goods had become more readily available. On the other hand, the great Piano Trio of 1944 reflects the horrors and privations suffered by the Russian people during the war. The “Jewish” theme of the finale is interpreted now – and was at the time – as a reference to the persecution of the Jews both in Nazi-occupied Europe and the Soviet Union. The Quartet No. 3, written just after the war, begins , according to the composer himself, with a movement describing the “bliss of ignorance” followed by other movements related to the atrocities of the war and a final movement asking the meaning of life itself. Both this and the Quartet No. 7, a depiction of the composer’s late wife, contain moments of real lyrical beauty of which any composer would……

You really have to go over the top these days with this work to draw yourself apart from the pack. Does the SSO succeed?

Back then, the beauty of the best analog recordings was lost in the ferocity of the digital age. It took more than a decade before most studio technicians had developed the skill – or the ear – to again record with natural audio spaciousness and bloom. In this set, the opening waltz is marred by a hard jangly sound in the upper register. It’s impossible to tell if this is from the recording methodology, or studio ambience, microphone placement or from the piano itself, but it sets a discordant tone right from the start. Things do improve as the set continues, but this is a disappointing reading of the waltzes. It seems a rather perfunctory reading. Slower passages in particular, as in the Op 34 No. 3, the Valse Brillante, sound just tired rather than deliciously languid. There are far better accounts of the Chopin Waltzes. The outstanding set, from Romanian pianist Dinu Lipatti, also comes from EMI and is my definite preferred set. The only reason this Jean-Philippe Collard recording could augment a collection is that it collects all 19 waltzes, including four posthumous compositions which are missing from the Lipatti recording. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per…

Deutsche Grammophon announces this as Lang Lang’s first CD of chamber music and, on the whole, it is successful. The Tchaikovsky Trio was written in 1881 in memory of Nicholas Rubinstein, pianist and founder of Moscow’s Conservatory – a man who had both praised and denounced Tchaikovsky and who aroused conflicting emotions in him. It consists of two movements – a Pezzo elegiaco and a theme with 11 variations and a coda. The second movement was considered by Tchaikovsky’s contemporaries to be a musical portrait of Rubinstein’s many-faceted personality. The music does not sound particularly elegiac. It is typically Tchaikovskian in its melodies and depth of emotion, but sometimes seems a bit too long for its material. The distinguished performers treat the music sensitively, accurately and with considerable exuberance. At times, particularly in the coda of the second movement, they might be considered too vehement and sometimes push their tone too much. The Rachmaninov Trio (not to be confused with his later and better known Trio elegiaco) is a youthful work written in four days when the composer was 19. It is in one movement with many tempo variations and many contrasting moods. It is a self-contained piece of music of considerable drama and…

Are we living in a golden age of music-making? It’s inevitable that we always reference the past. No generation before ours has had its immediate predecessors so thoroughly chronicled. The musicians of the past are not just the stuff of legend – they are with us every day. Philippe Jaroussky need not worry about such comparisons. His is a counter-tenor whose falsetto voice is so high that it has almost lost all characteristics of that genre. As Australian audiences know, his voice is so clear and white that it is unnervingly close to a female soprano. He may lack the utter purity and beauty of the best sopranos in the highest register but replacing it is an almost unnerving other-world open-edged timbre. The period accompaniment from the Cercle de l’Harmonie is deft and assured. The lively lyricism of JS Bach’s youngest son is heard here in a way that has perhaps not been possible for a couple of centuries. Jaroussky is an idiosyncratic counter-tenor. He certainly does not supplant my memories of past greats such as Michael Chance or our own Graham Pushee. But he is perhaps unique amongst today’s counter-tenors and must be heard to be believed. This is truly…

This entire performance lasts just a few seconds under an hour (one of the longest in the catalogue) and the Sydney Symphony plays well, with a convincing pulse. They played it repeatedly under Ashkenazy’s predecessor Edo de Waart but the strings are lacking the last ounce of luxuriance and the brass tone refulgent throughout. I enjoy hearing these wonderful heartfelt melodies unfold in a leisurely rather than manic way, however, I would have appreciated a little more urgency, and that uniquely Slavic sense of yearning in this beautiful, highly strung score, rather than languor bordering on lethargy. One thing I did like was the authentic final chord where Ashkenazy dispenses with the timpani thwack leaving just a morose grunt from the double basses. Things improve with the spiky, Prokofiev-like scherzo (taken at a moderate tempo) and the soft-centred trio is ravishingly handled. In the emotional core of the work, the famous adagio, Ashkenazy creates just the right flow without mawkish sentimentality or excessively overwhelming climaxes. The finale also radiates festive exuberance with the climaxes carefully controlled and gradated. The youthful Caprice Bohémien makes a very generous fill-up played with great abandon. Sound and balances are satisfactory. Continue reading Get unlimited…

EMI is celebrating his birth by releasing this treasure trove of wonderful music. There is something for everybody: Do you want one of the loveliest works for string orchestra? Here’s the famous Adagio – as well as the string quartet from which it comes. How about one of the best violin concertos written in the last century? Do you prefer something with more orchestral zing? Then the Overture to‘The School for Scandal’ will fit the bill. Barber’s orchestra style was pungent and full of restless energy. The Essay for Orchestra is a good example. The opening is reminiscent of the Adagio. From there the work moves forward nobly and more energetically. What is clear in a work such as this, is the composer’s assuredness, clear musical view and an ability to create well structured and compelling works in a familiar and yet original way. That said, I have heard more exciting performances of this fine work. This version under Leonard Slatkin is well played, while Barbara Hendricks gives a sympathetic reading of Knoxville. Some of his other lovely song settings are very English in style and effect. This is not a criticism, but interesting nonetheless. Thomas Allen sings them superbly,…

So assuming we start with only limited knowledge of him or his music, we can at least hear that he left this world while in a rather sombre mood. If one had to pin down one key characteristic of Roger’s style, it would be a sensitivity to the nature of individual instruments, when he scores them as interactively as he does here. For example, in the Quintet for clarinet, two violins, viola and cello, he lets the clarinet participate in proceedings, rather than dominate them, finding a pitch for it that at times actually masks its identity as a clarinet. Given that the next item here happens to be the earliest of these works, his Piano Sonata (1943), the fact they share the same feeling means we do not need long to mark a consistency in Roger’s work. On the way through, he lifts the mood with a slightly less dour feel at mid-point for the Trio, and reveals a shade more thoughtfulness in the earlier Variations. Roger writes with no sign of heavy-handedness, delivering an overall sound that is modern, tonal mid-20th century, without conforming to any particular program or movement. The overall experience is that of an agreeable…