It’s unusual to find an A-list conductor like Riccardo Chailly recording such (generally)  obscure music on an equally A-list label. Good for him! A few years ago he recorded a CD of some of Verdi’s non-operatic obscurities and this release co-incides with his arrival at La Scala, where 11 of these works were premiered. I didn’t find any neglected gems, but there are no duds either and the La Scala orchestra is wonderfully idiomatic in this fare. The programme is well arranged, with plenty of contrast between succeeding tracks and serves to demonstrate the development of the overture throughout the 19th century and on into the 20th. The earliest work here is Rossini’s Overture to La Pietra del Paragone (1812) (aka the overture to Tancredi) which illustrates the then typical slow introduction followed by a rowdy allegro, which was succeeded by examples like Verdi’s Overture to Il Finto Stanislao (1840) – still a real romp – and Bellini’s more famous Norma (1831), both of which could be termed  typical “medley” overtures, offering snatches of themes from the operas ahead. Chailly and his orchestra are especially impressive in the Norma. (They’re also alive to every nuance in… Continue reading Get unlimited…

This a strange compilation with a convoluted concept, can’t help but be amazed at the sound of the ASMF.

When the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day concerts were first televised, I always enjoyed scanning the audience to see those elderly, distinguished, granite-jawed males, often with sabre-scarred cheeks, and their perma-tanned wives dripping with dubiously acquired bling. Nowadays, they’ve all gone to that great Vahalla in the sky, to be replaced more wholesomely by the likes of Angela Merkel and Dame Julie Andrews. I was interested to read recently that the world’s most predictable (and expensive) concert, with all its schmaltz and leaden, contrived humour, was originally a Nazi propaganda/morale boosting exercise, held on New Year’s Eve! This year’s effort was conducted by the 35-year-old Gustavo Dudamel (aka “The Dude”), the event’s youngest maestro ever. What fascinates me is just how much music the Strauss family composed: one of the pieces by Johann Strauss II this time was opus 436! They seem to have no trouble programming a concert of virtually unknown gems year after year. For me, this year’s hits were Waldteufel’s The Skaters’ Waltz, whose trumpet tune in the opening bars, the otherwise excellent liner notes bizarrely inform us, may have been inspired by the horn calls introducing Bruckner’s Third Symphony. Another gem, alone worth… Continue reading Get…

Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony, subtitled Winter Dreams, was composed when he was 26. It’s probably the best of his neglected early symphonies. Its gorgeous first movement conjures up images of young Romanov aristocrats being swept in sleighs through a winter wonderland and anticipates the snow scene in The Nutcracker ballet. Young Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the Orchestra of St Luke’s capture the magic here. My favourite version has always been the old DG Boston Symphony with a young Michael Tilson Thomas. These forces run them close. They give the second movement a uniquely Russian sense of rhapsodic yearning and exquisite melancholy, with beautifully detailed woodwind solos equally beautifully captured. It’s not the sort of repertoire one expects from Harmonia Mundi but the recording is superb! I don’t think The Tempest is quite out of the same drawer. While the opening depiction of the ocean is brilliant (it reminded me of Rimsky-Korsakov’s later evocation of the ocean in his Tsar Sultan Suite), the work tries to be both a mood picture and a psychological portrait of the main characters – Miranda and Ferdinand and their blossoming love, the grossness of Caliban, (cellos and double basses) and the… Continue reading Get unlimited…

A dignified performance, but does it come close to Bernstein's Enigma?

Gorgeous warm sound, interpretations and playing.

This second volume of British overtures is a cracker and full of vibrant charm. Much of the content has a distinctly nautical feel like William Walton’s Portsmouth Point, played decently here but without the snap that the ‘old’ Philharmonia in its heyday brought to this notoriously tricky score with its constant syncopations and kaleidoscopically fluctuating time signatures. Then there is The Boatswain’s Mate by Ethel Smyth (photographed in what Barry Humphries would call a “Hampstead lady novelist get-up”) and John Ansell’s Plymouth Ho. Even more impressive are the tragically short-lived Walter Leigh’s heraldic Agincourt, in the same mould as Elgar’s Froissart and Walton’s Henry V incidental music, and Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie’s A Nautical Overture, bizarrely dedicated to the Duke of Coburg and Gotha, a sinister German relative of the pre-Windsor British Royal Family, whose own title was then (1895) the same. Parry’s Overture to an Uunwritten Tragedy introduces a darker note (the “unwritten” tragedy turns out to be Shakespeare’s Othello… go figure!)  My three favourite pieces are Roger Quilter’s Children’s Overture, which features a sequence of nursery rhymes, John Foulds’ Le Cabaret, inspired by a French play … Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

I enjoyed this Brahms cycle. Fortunately, Asher Fish is not a member of the “Brahms Lite” Chapter or a Chailly/Gardiner – style speed merchant. What’s more, unlike the hapless, battle-jacketed George W Bush standing on the deck of that aircraft carrier, under a sign proclaiming “Mission Accomplished”, Asher Fisch really has accomplished his “mission” to transform the West Australian Symphony Orchestra from merely good into a potentially great instrument, on the strength of theses performances at least. It plays with confidence, sheen and finesse. The buoyant galumphing rhythm of the opening movement of the First Symphony is just right (no repeat observed – presumably because of the plan to fit this and the Second Symphony on a single CD) without diminishing the inherent drama. The second and third movements are really like lightly scored serenade movements buffering two huge epic book-ends, but it’s here the quality of the woodwind phrasing (and the depth of the orchestra’s talent) becomes apparent. This is warmly shaped, with oboe and clarinet solos notable but also a lovely extended reverie by concertmaster Jackson duetting with horns. The Finale, with its deliberately tentative opening, is always problematic but Fisch guides his players through treacherous shoals… Continue reading Get unlimited…

In Volume 6 of her magisterial traversal of the Beethoven piano sonatas, Angela Hewitt reminds us that Beethoven could be the god of small (musical) things. Her performances of the three “little” Sonatas in this set illustrate this perfectly. The Schubertian (Hewitt’s apt term) Allegretto of the Op. 14 No 1 Sonata has an ambience similar to that of Mozart’s last Piano Concerto, the composer smiling through tears. Another example is the delightful, slightly torpid four-note intoduction of the Op. 49 No 1 Sonata. The final movement of the Op. 49 No 2 is the same Minuet as the one in Beethoven’s early Septet and Hewitt makes it just as charming. By the time we come to the Op. 31 No 1 Sonata, we’ve really turned a corner: the slow movement is marked Adagio grazioso – almost a contradiction in terms and, at 11 minutes, by far the longest movement on this CD. Hewitt plays along in beautifully cantabile mode with the notion that it’s both tribute to and parody of Italian opera. The Op. 81a Sonata Les Adieux refers to Beethoven’s separation from his patron and probable… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

The expression “homage” is somewhat overused. The homage here is to earlier composers and, less specifically (and, in this case, convincingly), genres. Busoni’s treatment of JS Bach’s famous Chaconne for solo violin is here played very emphatically and majestically by Grosvenor. There’s no question as to his artistry or interpretative imagination but I found the experience wearing.Mendelssohn’s tribute to Bach sees vibrant preludes with kaleidoscopic embellishments and grand fugues with admirable ebb and flow, not to mention, architecture. I’ve always found Franck’s Prélude, Chorale and Fugue rather academic but Grosvenor maintains both the seemingly endless tendril-like legato (and rubato) effectively. I found the homage concept less cogent in the Chopin and Liszt component, but the music more engaging. The notoriously tricky Barcarolle is beautifully brought off with just the right swinging rubato. No one will ever replace Dinu Lipatti, but that’s no reflection on Grosvenor. In Liszt’s Venezia e Napoli, from the Italian component of his Years of Pilgrimmage, he, similarly in Gondoliera, captures the innocence of a gondolier serenading his beloved. For me, the best came with the download bonus of the six-movement Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin. (He orchestrated only four). Grosvenor takes the Prélude… Continue reading Get…

The classical music recording industry must be in better shape than we think: this is the culmination of Osmo Vänskä’s second Sibelius cycle in little more than a decade. The first with Finland’s Lahti orchestra was widely regarded as “the one to have” but these BIS performances with the Minnesota orchestra (which seems to have at last survived its travails, fortunately) have run that cycle close. This CD lasts 82 minutes – with magnificent sound. As an aside, why, one wonders, can’t more CD’s offer such outstanding value? The Third, Sixth and Seventh are, each, in its own way, emotionally ambiguous and unconventional and occupy their own unique sound world’s, just as do the symphonies of Beethoven and Vaughan Williams. The Third Symphony has always been one of my favourites, despite, or perhaps, because, of being, along with the Sixth, the least performed, but arguably, the most original, even by Sibelius’ standards. The coherent whole transcends the disparateness of the individual movements. I love the Haydnesque bustle of the opening movement and that sudden pause shortly after the start, which seems like a sort of gasp from someone suddenly realising they’re hovering on the edge of… Continue reading Get unlimited…

Nicola Benedetti scales the heights from Tzarist charm to Stalinist menace.