Editor’s Choice, Jan/Feb 2016 – Vocal & Choral “Those who find everything beautiful are now in danger of finding nothing beautiful.” So wrote Theodor Adorno in Minima Moralia. And yet according to composer Cary Ratcliff, the great Chilean poet Pablo Neruda “wrote four volumes of odes to ordinary objects”. Of course that’s not all he wrote; Neruda was after all one of the greatest love poets of all time, and the other two composers featured on this recording of choral settings of Neruda’s poetry have availed themselves of some of his most moving love poems. Texas-based vocal ensemble Conspirare’s director Craig Hella Johnson writes in a booklet note that he hopes these settings “can serve as a conduit for an ever deepening experience with this sublime and powerful poetry.” And indeed they may, so convincingly do they translate Neruda’s delicate emotional chiaroscuro into accessible music of great lyrical potency. In Ratcliff’s Ode to Common Things, it is clear that the poet “loves all things” because of their connections with humanity: whether a bed, a guitar, a loaf of bread or a pair of scissors, they are for the… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Agostino Steffani (1654-1728) set words to music as only a master linguist and singer could. His beautiful chamber duets were influential on Handel’s essays in that genre, while Steffani’s sacred music and French-influenced operas seem to grow out of the duet as a fundamental unit of composition. Steffani spent two decades working in Munich and Niobe, Regina di Tebe, composed in 1687, was his final opera for that city. Based on an episode in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Luigi Orlandi’s libretto tells the story of Queen Niobe’s downfall after being handed the regency by her husband Anfione, King of Thebes. Assailed by love and hate in equal measure – Tiberino, son of the King of Alba, wants Thebes for himself; the vengeful magician Poliferno assists lovestruck Creonte in his own ambitions for queen and kingdom – Niobe ultimately succumbs to pride and is duly punished by the gods. The music is glorious, Steffani’s adroit handling of recitative and aria matched by his generous orchestrations utilising strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion. Captured live at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, this performance conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock and featuring Véronique Gens as Niobe, Jacek… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Purcell’s Revenge is based on a live gig, and Concerto Caledonia again teams up with folk musicians.

Girl bands comprising recorder consorts probably aren’t going to catch on anytime soon. But if they do, UK ensemble Consortium5 could lay claim to being supergroup of the recorder world. Not only do they regularly collaborate with contemporary composers and performers in unique and challenging ways; they are also committed to the preservation of earlier music for what was for centuries one of the most popular instruments in Europe. The consort – a set of matched instruments such as viols or, as here, recorders, in different sizes – which flourished in Europe between the late 15th and early 17th centuries, undoubtedly quickened the development of complex instrumental music in its own right. Elizabethan consort music however represents one of the high points of the genre, with the free exchange between transcriptions of vocal polyphonic works, so-called In Nomines, and more abstract fantasias and dances further enlivened by consort songs and broken consorts (usually strings and winds). Performing on a set of 10 Renaissance recorders, this release finds them moving among the In Nomines of Byrd and Tye, the dances of Ferrabosco and Dowland, the madrigalian fantasias of Coperario… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

For the first time, we asked our readers to vote for their favourite artists. Combined with our critics’ votes, this is who you chose. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Heard This and Thought of You plays with ideas of memory, possibility and friendship over time and distance.

The Slovak composer Eugen Suchoň (1908-1993) possessed a rich, distinctive voice that drew as much on the diatonicism of late-Romanticism and the modality of Slovak folk music as on Impressionism and chromaticism. But what most astonishes when listening to these three impressive large-scale orchestral works from the mid-1930s and mid-1950s is Suchonˇ’s subtle yet expansive orchestrations and fulsome narrative drive. It’s easy to be reminded that he did a lot of piano improvising for silent films. Metamorfózy (Metamorphoses, 1953) is quasi-programmatic, the portrait of the artist around the time of World War II. Each of its five sections is exquisitely crafted but the final Allegro feroce, with its rushing strings and explosive brass and percussion, steals the show. The earlier Baladická Suita opens in a mood of bustling energy through which one can glimpse the gorgeous lyricism of the following Adagio, which in turn submits to a frenetic Allegro molto that is itself conquered by the final movement’s lush impressionism. Completed in 1956, Symfonietta Rustica is adapted from parts of the composer’s Sonata Rustica for solo piano and is dominated by the spirit of folk song and dance…. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already…

Astonishingly, the Belgian composer, organist and pianist Joseph Jongen (1873-1953) entered the Liège Conservatoire at the age of just eight. So one can imagine the gifts bestowed upon a musician who was at one time considered the greatest living Belgian composer and who is today chiefly remembered for his organ music. This is Volume 85 in Phaedra’s In Flanders’ Fields series, which aims to give listeners some idea of the richness and beauty of Flemish and Belgian classical music, past and present, performed by Flemish musicians. According to Phaedra’s website, the enterprising Flemish label wants to shine “a light on music by composers from the Low Countries, especially from Flanders and Wallonia… to save them from indifference and oblivion.” Here the spotlight is on Jongen’s chamber music for winds, with and without piano. The earliest work is the Lied for horn and piano; the most mature, the Concerto, Op. 124 for woodwind quintet (1942). 5 Beaufort (the Brussels Woodwind Quintet), which comprises players from the National Orchestra of Belgium, and Belgian pianist Hans Ryckelynck, choose however to open with the uncharacteristically modernist Rhapsodie, Op. 70 for woodwind quintet and piano (1922). The remaining works are an attractive blend of Saxon late-Romanticism…

Each chapter in Peter McCallum’s fascinating and informative history of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, in this, its centenary year, feels like a movement in a musical suite. That’s not to say McCallum’s language is especially florid or poetical, or that his voice rings off the page; indeed, McCallum, Associate Professor at the Conservatorium and Chair of the Academic Board of the University of Sydney, prefers the clear, level tone of the academic who knows how to write well for a general audience. As a regular music critic for The Sydney Morning Herald, you could say he gets his daily practice. No, it’s more that each chapter has an individual flavour and character, which the various personalities, shifting fortunes and changing fashions impart as unifying themes or motifs. The result is a more than highly readable account of an important part of Australia’s cultural heritage. One could go so far as to say it has helped define us as a nation. First, there is the unique nature of the Conservatorium’s original building – converted stables dating from 1821 which with their Gothic turrets… Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Edward Gardner continues the series he began as the newly-appointed Chief Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra with a second volume devoted to Janácek’s orchestral works.

One of the most profoundly thrilling and beautiful musical experiences of this reviewer’s life. Continue reading Get unlimited digital access from $4 per month Subscribe Already a subscriber? Log in

Ohlsson delivers an incisive yet fulsomely poetic reading of Brahms' massive First Concerto.