Yundi – he left the ‘Li’ behind on his move to EMI – is the “other” Chinese classical pianist. A rival to Lang Lang, Yundi has a less hysterical fan base (although it is similarly vast) and a more sophisticated European sheen to his sound. Chopin is Yundi’s composer of choice, and this CD is devoted to a live all-Chopin concert given in Beijing in May of last year. The bonus DVD contains the complete concert, plus two extra nocturnes. There is no gainsaying the poise and evenness of Yundi’s technique. One example may be found in the fast scale passages towards the close of the Grande Polonaise Brilliante Op 22: they are beautifully clear. The pianist throws himself with gusto into the tumultuous first movement of the Sonata in B-flat minor, bringing light and shade to his attack so the rapid repeated chords never descend into a bang-fest. The real test of this… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Athough not yet 40, American composer Jennifer Higdon started late on a musical career but is now in hot demand. This 2008 violin concerto, written for and dedicated to her ex-student Hilary Hahn, won Higdon the Pulitzer Prize. The committee called it a “deeply engaging piece that combines flowing lyricism with dazzling virtuosity.”  High harmonics from the soloist introduce the playful first movement, followed by a lyrical and tonal slow movement that rises to a bracing climax before subsiding. The finale gives Hahn plenty of fireworks to play with. It resembles the final movement of Barber’s concerto. She is equally brilliant here, her clean, clear tone perfectly centred throughout. Her fast passagework is immaculate and, beyond technical matters, she brings every phrase to life. On disc Hahn has always coupled a lesser-known concerto with a concert favourite (Bernstein/Beethoven, Schönberg/Sibelius) and does so again here. She is light and lean in the Tchaikovsky, matched all the way by Petrenko’s detailed accompaniment. The effect is like cleaning a century of grime off an old painting. Even if you have several Tchaikovskys on your shelf, this is worth adding.

Mojca Erdmann is a young soprano from Hamburg, best known for her role in Simon Rattle’s Berlin recording of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges and as the soloist in Jonathan Nott’s performance of Mahler Four. In this, her first solo album, she seems perfectly matched to the Classical-period repertoire. Her smallish voice is flexible and pure-toned and she makes good use of vibrato for dramatic purposes, singing with great control, considerable beauty and an obvious awareness of character and dramatic context.  The program consists mostly of Mozart’s lighter roles. She is a pert Zerlina, but less characterful as Susanna. Even so, she manages the legato winningly in Susanna’s aria Deh vieni, non tardar. She throws herself with gusto into Tiger! Wetze nur die Klauen from Zaide, capping the aria with a ringing top D, yet draws out the line of Pamina’s aria from The Magic Flute at a slow tempo to produce a poised and heartfelt interpretation. Erdmann also sings two excerpts from Günter von Schwarzburg by Ignaz Holzbauer, an opera Mozart himself enjoyed, as well as arias by JC Bach, Paisiello and Salieri. Marcon and his “historically informed” band La Cetra play beautifully, another plus for this highly enjoyable…

In the 1990s Maria João Pires recorded all the Mozart keyboard sonatas for DG on a modern concert grand. She played with perfect balance and poise, and the sound was creamily beautiful, even in the allegros. I wouldn’t be without that set, but turn to Bezuidenhout and you’ll notice a more subtle and varied range of colours, especially at the dark end of the spectrum. The young South African pianist plays a copy of an Anton Walter fortepiano from 1802. He finds a burnished depth of tone in the middle register that really works for the plangent andante cantabile of the C major Sonata (K330). This reading is intimate and deeply felt: as much a tribute to Bezuidenhout’s focused, imaginative playing as it is to the tone of his instrument. Similarly, he launches into the finale with uninhibited joyfulness, the rasping accented bass notes delightfully brusque. He is equally deft at wringing emotion out of the chromatic turns of phrase in the minor key works. Among these are the moody Adagio in B minor, thought to be Mozart’s lament upon the death of his father. While the fortepiano’s action inevitably produces a modicum of clatter in forte passages, that is a small…

Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 2 in E minor was written in 1906-7, after the composer had recovered from a bout of depression triggered by the disastrous premiere of his First Symphony. While he wrote significant works in between, the Second Symphony marks his full maturity as a master of the orchestra. This is not only the Rachmaninov of soaring, sequential string melodies but also of bouncing scherzos and piquant woodwinds. In particular, the slow movement requires a truly sensitive clarinettist. There have been several magnificent recordings of this symphony, starting with André Previn’s 1973 version (EMI). Previn’s approach was pliable and “capital R” Romantic. Pletnev (DG) was swift and articulate. Jansons (EMI) combined the best of both worlds, and Pappano does the same in this new live recording. As a leading opera conductor, Pappano knows precisely when to broaden the tempo, when to press forward, and how to shape a long lyrical phrase. The St Cecilia players sound tight as a drum – accompanying figures are never opaque: unsuspected orchestral colours leap out at you. Liadov’s Enchanted Lake is beautifully realised too. The mysterious soft opening trills had me holding my breath. No wonder Liadov was Diaghilev’s first choice to compose The Firebird! The…

Written in 1940, the Symphonic Dances was Rachmaninov’s final orchestral work. Regarded as hopelessly retrospective at the time, it has since been re-evaluated as a masterpiece. The first movement begins with a stamping, syncopated rhythm, alternating with a wistful lament from the alto saxophone. The second movement is a restless waltz that is never content to settle into a single key. The kaleidoscopic third movement closes explosively with the Dies Irae chant, a musical theme that haunted the melancholic composer all his life. Its central episode, a yearning chromatic passage for strings, is as far from the world of dance as could be. The work has been recorded often by more famous orchestras, but Sokhiev gives an impressive and thoughtful performance. His feeling for rubato is spot on. He is not afraid to slow down for lyrical moments, yet the underlying momentum is never sacrificed. Orchestral balance is excellent, and the woodwind soloists play beautifully. The unusual coupling of Prokofiev’s Second Violin Concerto displays the same virtues. The slow movement’s tender melody is spun out effectively by Laurenceau. This young Strasbourg-born violinist made her reputation in chamber music. She plays the tough moments of this concerto accurately, but has neither…

The 2nd and 11th are among Shostakovich’s least known symphonies. Chronologically they bookend Stalin’s reign in Soviet Russia, a period of great personal anxiety for the composer, which paradoxically produced his symphonic masterpieces (the 5th, 6th, 8th and 10th symphonies). Shostakovich was only 21 when he composed the 2nd, a relatively short work for chorus and orchestra. In its harmony, structure and technique it is pure 1920s avant-garde, but strip away the wailing sirens and shouting chorus effects and you’ll find a Soviet pot-boiler. There is a visceral immediacy to the work’s depiction of the uprising of 1917, but those qualities of ironic jokiness and despair that characterise his best music are entirely absent. By contrast, the 11th, which deals with the aborted revolution of 1905, is a vast orchestral canvas. Quoting revolutionary songs of the period, the work is drawn out in the manner of a Russian novel. Shostakovich’s audience knew these themes – the songs held deep significance for them – but that is not the case with today’s listeners. The composer’s expert use of the orchestra does not negate recurring episodes of stasis or bombast. It is best to approach this symphony as a monumental and dramatic…

Australian pianist Stephanie McCallum is renowned for tackling the 19th-century virtuoso repertoire. Schumann presents an entirely different degree of difficulty. Though by no means easy to play, his music also demands a high level of empathy. His three-movement Fantasie exemplifies the composer’s stormy marriage of form and content. In my opinion, the emotional aspect is already written into the notes: Schumann, like Chopin, does not benefit from extra rubato or exaggerated dynamics. Judging from this recording, McCallum feels the same way. Her gradations of tone colour are subtly judged, and discreet pauses in the music’s progress are never underlined. Nothing is over-pointed. This is true throughout the whole recital. No thundering out the Novelette’s opening deluge of notes for her! In the Scenes from Childhood suite’s best known movement, Traumerei, she plays the famous theme gently but still with youthful energy. The suite ends with a piece entitled The Poet Speaks, in which Schumann recollects his childhood from a mature vantage point. McCallum effectively deepens her tone in response. In the early suite, Papillons, McCallum’s textural clarity is a great asset. Recommended.

Giuseppe Verdi was not the most devout composer of his time, but in Italy he was the most popular. When Rossini died, Verdi set about organising a requiem in the older master’s honour. That project foundered, and Verdi’s Libera me found its way into his full Requiem, written in 1873 in memory of Alessandro Manzoni. From the start, Verdi’s Requiem was more about public than private grief. It is operatic in style and scope – indeed, three of the original soloists sang the leads in the European premiere of Aida. Some conductors try to emphasise the spiritual side of the work, but Verdi’s Requiem is a matter of blood and guts as much as life and death. The chorus’s doomed Requiem aeternam is suffused with the portent of high tragedy. The opening of the Dies irae, with its drum whacks and shattering minor chords, is as tempestuous as Otello’s shipwreck, while the mezzo’s Liber scriptus is direr than any curse hurled out by a gypsy fortune-teller. Muti, an opera conductor par excellence, understands this, and the Chicago Orchestra have a reputation for piling on the decibels when required. The soloists are strong, only lacking an Italianate warmth (apart from Borodina)….

Robert Schumann composed two cycles from the set in 1849, for mixed voices and, in the case of the Spanische Liebeslieder Op 138, two pianists. Hugo Wolf later drew on Geibel’s work for his Spanish Songbook, a setting much better known today than Schumann’s, partly because the earlier cycles require multiple musicians. Looking to the warmth and freedom of southern Europe was a common theme of German Romantic art but, typically, Schumann’s choice of poem tends towards the melancholy. The duet from Op 138, “Cover me with flowers for I am dying of love” more or less sums up the dichotomy. Yet there is a sombre side to the Spanish soul that chimes perfectly with the “tortured genius” of Schumann’s muse. (Most of the songs in both sets are in the minor key.) The only overt Spanish-sounding note is in the instrumental Nationaltanz of Op 138, where the composer imitates the strumming of guitars and (possibly) the stamping of feet. These are stunning performances. The four young singers – none of whom I had encountered before – have strong, clear voices and the ability to colour the dramatic points of the poetry. Both pianists are sensitive, and the recording quality…

People also expected Chopin to be interpreted that way, with tons of rubato and an emphasis on lyricism over structure.When the Polish pianist Adam Harasiewicz appeared on the scene in the 1950s, he was ahead of his time in his approach to Chopin. He simply played the music straight, revealing the importance of structure in the composer’s work and bringing out a Classical influence. Harasiewicz recorded all the composer’s works for Philips but remained a cult figure and is largely forgotten today. Despite that, he paved the way for such modern masters as Murray Perahia, who no longer feels the need to pull Chopin’s music around. In Harasiewicz’s hands, the First Piano Sonata sounds Mozartian in its clarity; the Funeral March from the Second Sonata grieves with an aristocratic dignity and no hint of hysteria. He executes the fast scales and arpeggios of the Scherzos accurately without drawing attention to his technique. It is only in the inward-looking moments of the Ballades and the tender Barcarolle that his dry-eyed, straightforward style fails to pay dividends. Nevertheless, this is an interesting reissue, with sound quality that belies the age of the recordings.

Harms’s robust Octavian and Gore’s slightly mature sounding Sophie are fine – but it’s Kenny’s show. If you’re a fan you won’t be disappointed.