Gramophone Magazine September 2021

JS Bach ‘Metamorphosis’ Viola (Cello) Suites – No 1, BWV1007; No 2, BWV1008; No 3, BWV1009 Zachary Carrettín va Sono Luminus Ⓕ DSL92247 (65’ • DDD) Having played Bach’s Solo Cello Suites on a cello da spalla, an electric Baroque violin with ‘unlimited reverb possibilities’ and a violin in concert halls, Zachary Carrettín chose an anonymous 18th-century viola set up historically – ‘the finest brush’, he noted – to demonstrate with the first three Suites his principle that the treatises and other primary sources are there ‘to provide possibilities, not to limit our scope’. He plays Bach not only as music but as speech, line, colour, dance, harmonic sonority, balance and clarity of contrapuntal lines. He uses turns and appoggiaturas in spontaneous dialogue and moments of delight. Melodies wander and explore. ‘Metamorphosis’, Carrettin says, represents ‘the…

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The life-affirming power of live performance Attending my first live concert in over a year felt wonderful. In the atmospheric Battersea Arts Centre Nicola Benedetti and her handpicked ensemble of some of period performance’s finest players were performing works from her new album of Italian Baroque music, on a sultry summer evening pushing 30 degrees, conditions which couldn’t have felt more authentic short of exchanging the Thames for the Tiber. Even the stage backdrop, Battersea’s bare brick evoking the faded grandeur of an ancient palazzo, played its part. The format was part determined by circumstances, and part by this ever-exploratory violinist’s desire to reach people in different ways – a one-hour programme repeated twice over four days (during which the stubborn heat granted our intrepid ensemble no relief). And it was glorious.…

‘In the year of Covid, Igor Levit reached out to new audiences with his now famous Twitter “House concerts”,’ recalls MICHELLE ASSAY. ‘I was expecting that the artist who has also recorded some of the most monumental contrapuntal piano works would himself be highly complex – I was right.’ ‘Op 130 has been a favourite of mine ever since I saw the Aeolian Quartet perform it on BBC Two early in 1975,’ says RICHARD WHITEHOUSE, who surveys Beethoven’s work in this month’s Collection, ‘so it was gratifying to write about it in the aftermath of the composer’s 250th anniversary.’ ‘I can’t remember a time when the music of Malcolm Arnold wasn’t a part of my life,’ says author RICHARD BRATBY, ‘but the more one learns about him, the more complex he seems.…

RECORDING OF THE MONTH JOURNEY THROUGH A CENTURY’ Sueye Park vn BIS ROB COWAN’S REVIEW IS ON PAGE 26 An extraordinary album of solo repertoire, Sueye Park transcending the technical demands with performances of vivid character, drama, emotion and engagement – captured in superb sound too. HAYDN Symphonies Nos 6-8 Il Giardino Armonico / Giovanni Antonini Alpha ‘A spirit of shared enjoyment’ writes reviewer Richard Wigmore – a description that embodies this team’s many superb Haydn recordings, to which this is a triumphant addition. ▶ REVIEW ON PAGE 34 ‘LA CLARINETTE PARISIENNE’ Michael Collins cl Noriko Ogawa pf BIS Master of the clarinet Michael Collins’s beauty of tone and impeccable shaping of phrase seems an absolutely perfect fit for these early (or turn-of-the-) 20th-century French works. ▶ REVIEW ON PAGE 48 ‘ECHOES OF AN OLD HALL’ Music from the Old Hall Manuscript Gothic Voices Linn Music from the Old Hall manuscript, a…

Jakub Hrůša has been named as the Principal Guest Conductor of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The appointment reflects a close bond that has developed over appearances every season since Hrůša’s debut with the orchestra in 2016, and including conducting a special concert at Rome’s Quirinale Palace to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Italian Republic. The Czech conductor has been highly praised in our pages this year – most recently in April with a recording of Mahler’s Symphony No 4 with the Bamberger Symphoniker on Accentus, which prompted David Gutman to write: ‘Taut, refreshing, often inspired, never bland. Such music-making confirms Hrůša as among the very finest Mahler conductors of the younger generation.’ Back in January he conducted Frank Peter Zimmermann in Martinů’s Violin Concertos Nos…