Perversely, I was hoping that this Rachmaninov Third Symphony would be a dud, making it easier to recommend unequivocally the recent Noseda/BBC Philharmonic recording on Chandos – fat chance with these forces. EMI (or whatever they’re called now after yet another acquisition) have done their latest star recruits proud in this elusive work, which combines elegance, nostalgia, wistfulness and sheer glamour. The contoured phrasing is as curvaceous as Betty Grable’s hips (not as bizarre an analogy as you might first think, as this work is as suffused – consciously or otherwise –  as much with the spirit of Hollywood as Romanov Russia). The RLPO’s string tone is fabulously lush but the playing is refined without ever a hint of blowziness in the “big” tunes, with both pellucid textures and dramatic energy throughout: I’ve never heard the opening of the finale or its reprise at the very end played with such manic velocity, beautifully captured by EMI’s engineers. The central movement has a captivating tenderness and the rhythms in the Scherzo interlude are whip-crackingly precise. Petrenko also avoids the episodic or fragmented approach one sometimes hears. The other pieces on the CD make it a calling card for the RLPO’s newfound…

I dimly recall a Decca release in the early 1970s of Ashkenazy in the Rachmaninov Suite No 1 (Fantasie Tableau for two pianos, Op 5) with André Previn. I doubt whether it could have had more charm than this performance from Vladimir and his son Vovka. The rapport between the two pianists is seemingly effortless in drawing the listener into this magical music. I particularly responded to the gentle swirling effects of the introductory barcarolle and to the alternating intensity and ravishing lyricism of the central two movements, La Nuit, L’Amour (“Night…Love”) and Les larmes, (“Tears”). Night on the Bald Mountain doesn’t have quite the same spellbinding quality. I found the staccato passages a little relentless, although there’s clearly no other way to play them. Glinka’s Valse-Fantasie lends itself perfectly to duo piano treatment. It could have been penned by Tchaikovsky at his most melancholy.  Wonderful as they are, not even the spectacular virtuosity and chemistry of these two pianists can replicate the colour, glamour and visceral excitement of the orchestral version of Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor. The Scriabin Fantasy in A Minor is somewhat more structured and less amorphous than so much of his… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

Charles ll wrote of his niece Anne’s (later Queen Anne) husband, Prince George of Denmark, “I’ve tried him drunk and I’ve tried him sober and there’s nothing in him”. Well, I’ve tried Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony stone cold sober and after a couple of not-so-wee drams and I still can’t get a handle on it. This sprawling, amorphous behemoth has long been a cult work even among people who’ve never heard it (just about everybody). Attempting to do this work justice in a normal review is a bit like trying to inscribe The Bible on the head of a pin. The first three purely orchestral movements – supposedly connected to the Faust legend – are quite impressive in a guess-the-composer way, with their exciting thrust, especially the manic xylophone solo (rather like the demented organ solo at the end of Janácek’s Glagolitic Mass) although I was never aware of the Guinness World Record-breaking statistics of the orchestral forces involved. There’s none of the sense of heft as there is in, say, Mahler’s Eighth. It’s in the second section – what must be the largest, longest setting of the Te Deum in existence – that things start to unravel…. Continue reading…

Know the tune, but can’t think who composed it? Meet 10 members of classical music’s one-hit club.

Schoenberg’s admiration for Mahler extended to founding an Association for Private Musical Performances to revive Viennese musical life after WWI. They could rarely afford a full orchestra so relied on chamber music reductions. In the case of The Song of the Earth, Schoenberg completed only most of the first song then delegated Webern to the task, by which time the Association was bankrupt. The real hero is Rainer Riehn, who completed the sketch in the 1980s based on Schoenberg’s orchestration. “Mahler arr Riehn” doesn’t have quite the cachet of “Mahler arr Schoenberg”, so you can imagine the push to overstate the latter’s involvement. Nonetheless, the arrangement is a credit to Riehn and this CD is also a credit to Douglas Boyd and his ensemble and singers. The Song of the Earth in any form represents Mahler’s art at its most distilled and offers a tantalising glimpse – as do the Ninth and Tenth symphonies – into how his music would have developed had he lived longer. Even the full orchestral version has many chamber-like textures and it’s anyone’s guess how these two singers would have fared in the more heavily scored passages (Christa Ludwig and Fritz Wunderlich… Continue reading Get…

Walton’s First is one of the most outstanding symphonies of the 20th century, the turbulent energies of which are apparently the result of the composer’s failing relationship with one Imma von Doernberg. The exultant final movement burst out after a fresh encounter with one Alice Wimborne. Whatever the inspiration, it stands with the Elgar symphonies at the peak of English orchestral composition. A pity such passion had not fired the Second Symphony; compare the ravishing slow movement of the First with that of the Second… The latter seems almost an afterthought. Premiered in 1957, the Second Symphony fell afoul of the “toot, whistle, plunk and boom” school of music that held contemporary classical music to ransom for the following 40 years. We now know better and the symphony can be seen for what it is: an excellent if minor work. It is drier and less moving than the First, stylistically at one with many great 20th-century composers such as William Schuman, Sibelius and Roy Harris. Never at fault is Walton’s brilliant orchestration. These are excellent performances and good value for money. The finest Walton First is still the 1967 recording with the LSO under André Previn on… Continue reading Get…

Mikhail Pletnev once recorded a sensational piano transcription of the Nutcracker suite. His traversal of the entire ballet isn’t quite in that class. Tchaikovsky’s score has more glamour, charm and sheer magic than almost any other music, ballet or otherwise. I suppose its nearest rival would be his own Sleeping Beauty. I’ve never really heard a bad Nutcracker but I doubt this reading surpasses the two wonderful Doratis or my own favourite: André Previn with the LSO (EMI). It’s unfortunate Ondine couldn’t have filled the first CD and found something else to fill the second, as both have less than 50 minutes of playing time.  Sometimes the orchestra sounds rather flatly recorded, especially the brass. The traditional highlights, such as the Waltz of the Flowers and the dancing snowflakes, remain somewhat earthbound. The pistol shot at the start of the mouse battle sounds like a popgun and the castanets in the Spanish dance are poorly captured: they’re barely there. I always judge the performance by the Arabian dance – if the sinuous sensuality is there, the rest will usually take care of itself. Well, it’s not… Look, there’s nothing catastrophically wrong with this version, but… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

As a teenager, I once bought a recording of Shostakovich’s Twelfth. I played it once and, mystified, put it back on the shelf and hadn’t heard it again until this CD turned up! I’m still mystified but, as I always opine with Shostakovich symphonic cycles, you have to take the good with the bad – and the Twelfth is pretty bad. Not even Petrenko, who is developing into one of our best Shostakovich conductors, can do much with this turkey, but he does manage to invest the Adagio with a generalised eeriness. The Sixth is another matter: unduly neglected, it’s arguably Shostakovich’s most inscrutable and abstract symphony, whose lopsided construction does interpreters no favours, since the second and third movements combined are barely half the length of the preceding Largo and, as a skittish Scherzo and jokey presto respectively, are uncomfortably similar. Petrenko manages to distinguish them effectively and also achieves a haunting effect in the hugely spanned opening movement. It also sounds genuinely Russian: the “moodiness” of the strings with their undercurrent of sinister power and the piquant woodwind in the latter movements (something Haitink never managed in his recording with the LPO). The four stars… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…

It’s hard to know at whom this release is aimed. Wagner’s idiom changed perhaps more radically than that of any other famous composer. Listen to the overtures to Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love) and The Fairies and you’d think you were listening to Offenbach or even Gilbert and Sullivan, not the man who went on to compose Tristan and Isolde, The Ring and Parsifal. This strangely assembled program contains an orchestral tribute to The Mastersingers by one Henk de Vlieger, about whom no information whatever is vouchsafed, other than that he was born in 1953. This attempt at a symphonic synthesis is surely based on The Ring: An Orchestral Journey brilliantly recorded by Lorin Maazel and somewhat less excitingly by Edo de Waart. The difference is that, while the Ring Cycle is studded with orchestral interludes and even accompanied vocal passages which have become showpieces in their own right, The Mastersingers has very few. Which brings me back to my original point: who really wants to hear a sort of operatic soundtrack which is hardly self-sufficient? Järvi and the Royal Scottish orchestra are in fine form and the Chandos acoustic is deep and rich, but I… Continue reading Get…

Long ago, I heard a magnificent Rachmaninov 2 with Tadaaki Otaka, and that predisposed me favourably to this release. By and large, he and the MSO don’t disappoint. I suppose this reading could best be described as “middle-of-the-road Romantic”. The tempo in the first movement is steady, (reminiscent of Klemperer’s magnificent traversal – without his gothic touches) although the Largo, at a few seconds under 12’, is on the flowing rather than fast side. In the Scherzo, he delineates every strand – again, like Klemperer – and highlights the delightful way various instruments mimic each other. In the Finale, the work’s ambivalent ending is emphasised. Recently, in this very publication, Mark Wigglesworth opined that the New World Symphony is essentially Czech (or Bohemian) and was inspired by homesickness as much as the wide open prairies and “big sky” of America. The MSO plays well, and I especially like the forward, fruity woodwind which give the work a “Czech” feel. I have two reservations: Otaka omits the first-movement exposition repeat. This, I feel, is a mistake because it renders the movement too short in relation to the subsequent slow movement. Second, I think he slows down a little… Continue reading Get…

If this release was intended as a snapshot or showcase for the current state of the Sydney Symphony, it would zoom into the five-star category. The playing is some of the best I’ve ever heard from them. The felicities are too numerous to mention here, but I’ll cite the quadruple flute passage in the first movement development; the horns cover themselves with glory in the slow movement and Emma Matthews is fine in the finale, sounding innocent and then appropriately dreamy. Alas, a clear recommendation is not that simple – the playing and engineering are outstanding, but I’m still not convinced that Ashkenazy has anything especially interesting to say about Mahler. The first movement hums along well enough but lacks any lyrical intensity. I’m not suggesting Mengelbergian rubato pulling the music out of shape, but a slightly more varied pulse and more inflection would be welcome. The second movement effectively blends rustic awkwardness with a dark undercurrent (as with the equivalent movement in the Sixth Symphony, where it’s hard to tell whether the music depicts children at play or a sinister troupe of marionettes). The “Heaven’s Gate” climax in the adagio (relatively swift, like Klemperer’s) is well… Continue reading Get unlimited…

No one can yearn like a Russian. Rachmaninov’s Third Symphony has yearning aplenty. Beneath the suave, almost louche, art deco glamour – clearly influenced by his years in the United States – there lies an undercurrent of nostalgia for Mother Russia. I believe it was Jascha Heifetz who once described Rachmaninov’s Piano Trio as “silk underwear music”. It was probably one of those you-had-to-be-there moments but in listening to this gorgeous score, I think I know what he meant. My favourite moment is the first movement’s second subject, which sidles in with cellos wafting above woodwind melismas. Gianandrea Noseda’s finesse in letting the music unfold naturally and seductively enhances its beauty. It’s hard not to fall back on that overworked adjective “elusive” to describe the kaleidoscopic, mercurial moods of this symphony. The central movement, with its plangent horn calls and swooning harp and then its strange sudden lurch into a scherzo is just as haunting. The finale is a 20th-century take on a Russian dance. The BBC Philharmonic is in top form in all departments and Noseda allows every strand of melody to shine through in what can only be described as a luminous recording.  The two… Continue reading Get unlimited digital…