Warm, intimate, gentle and yet absorbing, it belies Berlioz’s reputation for overstatement and is known chiefly for the ‘Shepherds’ Farewell’. This recording, almost half a century old, is just perfect with its all-French cast, except obviously for de los Angeles (in radiant voice anyway), and the then standard French-sounding orchestra with its slightly tart woodwind adding the last touch of Gallic authenticity, overlaid with the master touch of Cluytens. The characters in this tableau vivant are much more three-dimensional than those in most oratorios and genuinely interact to create a genuine snapshot of life at the time of Christ’s birth. The Romeo and Juliet excerpts are another story. It’s one of a handful of recordings made by Giulini in the mid-1970s for EMI in Chicago when he seemed a civilising influence able to tame this orchestral beast after the occasional brutality of Decca’s Solti. Giulini brings insights into the extended slow pieces such as ‘Romeo Alone’ and maintains the note-to-note tension without any micro-managing, while the faster, more extrovert numbers radiate a visceral brashness amid the wonderful virtuosity quite appropriately. The Queen Mab scherzo is a model of truly knife-edge ensemble. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per…

It’s unlikely that even with the powerful and eloquent advocacy of Gautier Capuçon (who claims to have loved the work since he was a child – some people must have strange childhoods) Prokofiev’s Sinfonia concertante will ever supplant either the Dvorák or Elgar concertos in the concert hall. This is a pity as the work certainly deserves more acknowledgement than it has ever received. Sure, it has the skittish wit, brittle elegance and lyrical warmth of the composer at his best but I’m tempted to think he just poured too much material into it. Composed for Rostropovich, it first appeared as the composer’s ‘Cello Concerto No 2’ in 1952 but was then renamed with its current title. The Concertante is misleading, as the cello’s part is as demanding as that in any conventional concerto, with what the excellent sleeve noted refers to as “bitingly confrontational exchanges with the orchestra”. For me, the most bizarre section occurred in the last movement where we hear parodies of Mahler, Rossini and Britten. Gautier’s performance is a tour de force. His exquisitely nuanced Rococo Variations take this work to a new level with the Third Variation assuming a gorgeous balletic quality. Continue reading Get…

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

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…

Nicholas Angelich certainly has the measure of this gigantic work. Any performance lasting more than 50 minutes is usually in trouble; any lasting less than, say, 46, likewise. At just over 48, Angelich is splendidly central – in terms of tempi at least. However, his opening movement reveals his technique, insights and sensitivity as equally impressive, with Olympian grandeur tempering this storm-tossed music. In the scherzo, Angelich is truly demonic, but more adversarial than belligerent in his attitude to the orchestra. The cello solo at the opening of the slow movement I find slightly mundane, but it seems more eloquent in its subsequent appearance. Here, Angelich finds much beautifully veiled yet profound emotion, whereas in the finale, he is delightfully skittish. The eight Klavierstücke Op 76 are an excellent complement. Although composed at much the same time, they occupy a different world. Titled either Capriccio or Intermezzo, all are gentle and introspective, except No 2, sprightly and even spiky, and No 5, with its touches of restrained rhetoric, providing a foretaste of the radiant autumnal quality of Brahms’ later piano pieces. Angelich reveals more sense of Innigkeit – “inwardness”, very important in Brahms – than Ciccolini or even Gieseking. Continue reading Get…

For once, the hype is justified. I’ve joined the ranks of reviewers who’ve dived for the thesaurus to unearth new superlatives for Steven Osborne’s Beethoven CD. It’s not easy to cast new light on the Waldstein, let alone the Moonlight or Pathétique sonatas, but somehow he’s managed it. The Moonlight’s opening movement, piano’s equivalent of the Mona Lisa’s smile, radiates not only sublime mystery, but also charm, as Osborne navigates his way through this strange landscape. Upon hearing the unexpected courtliness of Osborne’s second movement, one is reminded of Liszt’s insightful description of it as “a flower between two abysses”. The Waldstein is even more of a tour de force than usual: time really does seem to stand still in the transition from the adagio to the final rondo. And Osborne invests the central movement of the sonatina-like Op 79 with a touchingly demure melancholy. Transcendent is a dangerous adjective, but here it is fully justified. The emergence of the Waldstein’s main theme is gloriously unhurried and quite sublimely handled, culminating in a refulgent effect. No wonder this sonata is usually referred to in France as L’Aurore – The Dawn. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month…

This release can be placed without hesitation beside those of the other great Richard Strauss ensembles – the Royal Amsterdam Concertgebouw, The Dresden Staatskapelle and the Berlin Philharmonic. It was fascinating to hear the slightly kapellmeisterish Sawallisch in Also Sprach Zarathustra, the quintessentially bourgeois Strauss’s take on Nietzsche’s weird ruminations on the meaning of life. The result is outstanding, both interpretively and sonically, as Sawallisch completely avoids the blowzy schlockfest this work can become in the wrong hands. Nor does he attempt to achieve a more Hollywood effect by interfering with the duration of the opening chords. The Heldenleben is another superb achievement. This hero is less the armchair-bound Colonel Blimp of, say, Mariss Janssons – I always think Mahler nailed his carping critics far more effectively in the Rondo-Burleske movement of his Ninth Symphony than Strauss does. Sawallisch also resists the tendency to slow down unduly in the two quieter sections, which can turn them into a becalmed and interminable coda. Opting for the ending without horns also works better. The perspective and inner detail make this a demonstration-quality CD. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

In the epic first movement, he’s not afraid to slow down daringly for the lyrical second subject and at various other points, nor is he at all prim about portamenti. No one will ever sound as craggy or implacable as Klemperer in this movement, but it’s a more than promising start. The minuet movement has just the right mixture of charm and momentum so as not to sound like a cross between the score to a televised Jane Austen adaptation and Little Bo Peep. The scherzo conveys the relentless tyranny of the mundane with the trio effectively contrasted as an oasis. Alice Coote is fine in Urlicht (“Primaeval Light”) as is the bizarrely cast Natalie Dessay, but it’s in the vast sprawling and kaleidoscopic final movement where Järvi and company excel. The tempos are excellently judged; textures are always kept lucid; and dynamics scrupulously observed, without any feeling of micromanagement. The cathartic moments are all brilliantly realised. One particularly memorable touch – hardly cathartic – is the exchange between the flute and piccolo at the Last Trump, which conveys a genuinely bleak almost creepy sensation. Järvi and his forces manage this vast and complex canvas breathtakingly. Continue reading Get unlimited…

Charles Kœchlin is a prolific French composer remembered, if at all, almost exclusively for his 1933 Seven Stars Symphony, which had movements dedicated to Marlene Dietrich, Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo; Belgian composer Joseph Jongen is known mainly for organ works. If nothing else, the release demonstrates material for solo viola is much richer than generally imagined. By far the longest work (at 30’) is Kœchlin’s Sonata Op 53 (1912-5), a rich addition to this repertoire. Benedict’s playing is mesmeric, conveying moods varying from languorous to ruminative, and is always darkly beautiful. The third movement andante seems to anticipate Messiaen, with the ethereal voice of the viola floating above pointillistic piano chords. The other pieces which engaged me were Kœchlin’s Quatre Petites Pieces, on which Benedict is joined by the French horn of Ben Jacks. Two complaints: why do the liner notes not follow the performance sequence, causing listeners to keep having to flip back and forth tediously to remind themselves which particular piece they’re listening to? And why does Ivan March state in them “it seems likely that Koechlin intended this [the finale of the sonata] as a threnody [i.e. lament] for Milhaud, the loss of his great friend…”…

Another milestone in Vassily Petrenko’s magisterial Shostakovich Symphony survey with this cracking Eighth, a work rapidly gaining stature as the equal of the Fifth and Tenth. Petrenko’s timing in the opening movement, 25’, is splendidly central (although this is by no means a middle of the road performance). Mark Wigglesworth, a fine Shostakovich interpreter, takes 29’ and the equally fine Oleg Caetani takes 20’, proving there’s more than one way. The latter three movements – allegretto (actually a scherzo), largo (essentially a ghostly passacaglia) and a second allegretto ­– fascinate me as superb examples of emotional ambiguity. These are equal, I think, to anything in Mahler. The playing throughout is magnificent and it’s obvious conductor and orchestra have developed a spectacularly effective synergy. All sections acquit themselves nobly (this is not a work which tolerates any orchestral “passengers”) but the woodwinds in particular (rapid flute trills) convey that sense of bleakness unique to Shostakovich. The ambiguity intensifies in the last movement as repeated “attempts” to lighten the mood come to nothing, unable to prevent a central traumatised paroxysm. The beautifully paced final bars, with flute and pizzicato strings sounding like the breath ebbing from a dying body, are especially haunting….

The Neptune movement is conspicuously faster than in his earlier EMI version, but without sounding in any way perfunctory. Mercury also whips along. Boult is not the only conductor to distinguish himself: André Previn and the LSO, during their halcyon days, turn in a wonderful performance of the ballet music from his failed opera The Perfect Fool, alternately boisterously rollicking and ethereally magical. But if I had to nominate one work to hear on this masterly anthology, it would be Egdon Heath, subtitled “Homage to Hardy”. In the almost continuous soft playing, Previn and co. evoke perfectly the sense of haunting loneliness in the place Hardy himself described as “singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony.” The other discoveries are three of the Sanskrit hymns the composer set from the Rig Veda, which make me wonder whether any other composer “does” the mystical and otherworldly as well as Holst. Sir Charles Groves, Sir Malcolm Sargent, Norman Del Mar and Imogen Holst also make valuable contributions to this invaluable collection. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

The excerpts from Spactacus and Gayenah conducted by the composer himself with the London Symphony in its palmy days not long before his death, bring these two scores with their heady exoticism to life. The Concertos are a different story. Neither has ever become mainstream repertoire, despite the advocacy of the seriously underrated pianist Mindrew Katz and the peerless David Oistrakh in the Violin Concerto, in which he apparently had serious input. In the Piano Concerto, Katz invests this often racketty score (replete with phoney orientalisms) with genuine poetry, and the lyrical episodes are well handled by Boult in acceptable 1950s sound. Where the work momentarily comes unstuck is in the disastrous inclusion of the flexatone, a kind of musical saw, wisely omitted from Willaim Kapell’s recording. Unlike the theramin in Miklos Rosza’s score to Hitchcock’s Spellbound, where it adds to the sinister ambience, the flexatone sounds like a demented audience member whistling along. The Violin Concerto benefits similarly from Oistrakh’s virtuosity and imagination. For me, the most interesting work in the set is the Suite from the 1942 ballet Masquarade, based on Lermontov’s reworking of the Othello story, where Khachaturian’s sardonic portrait of Leningrad society could almost have been…