Table of contents for June 2019 in Gramophone Magazine

A colleague and I were playing that old parlour game the other day: who is the most famous person you’ve ever met? Given our jobs, we’re both privileged to regularly meet some of the most high-profile classical artists today – and yet even the greatest of those are still likely to be trumped by, say, a pop star, or an actor, or royalty. And yet if you’d ever met Pavarotti, then he, most likely, would have given you the winning card. The tenor was, quite simply, one of the world’s most famous people. That a classical artist achieved such fame in today’s world is extraordinary. It didn’t happen that often before either (Jenny Lind, Enrico Caruso and Maria Callas are potential exceptions), and for all the prominence of the likes…

GOUNOD Symphonies Nos 1 & 2 Iceland Symphony Orchestra / Yan Pascal Tortelier Chandos These works are rarely recorded – or indeed, performed – which makes this coupling, full of wit, charm and fine playing, all the more valuable. SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concertos Nos 3-5 Alexandre Kantorow pf Tapiola Sinfonietta / Jean-Jacques Kantorow BIS There’s tough catalogue competition for these works, but this virtuoso’s fabulous performances more than make the case for a new addition. BEETHOVEN Cello Sonatas Leonard Elschenbroich vc Alexei Grynyuk pf Onyx Imaginative and inventive throughout, alive to textural detail, Leonard Elschenbroich and Alexei Grynyuk offer an engaging and beautifully played exploration of these sonatas. REICH ‘Live at Fondation Louis Vuitton’ Colin Currie; Steve Reich; Synergy Vocals; Colin Currie Group Colin Currie Records Colin Currie is at the…

Igor Levit is to release a set of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas in September, ahead of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth next year. Levit, who won Gramophone’s Recording of the Year Award in 2016 for his Sony Classical album of variations by Bach, Beethoven and Frederic Rzewski, and who was shortlisted in the Instrumental category in 2013 for his set of the last three Beethoven sonatas (‘a debut of true significance. Everywhere you turn, you encounter thoughtfulness, an utter engagement with the composer and a clear sense of Levit’s personality’ wrote Harriet Smith in Gramophone), recorded the cycle after performing them in concert. Igor Levit, says: ‘For me, this recording is a conclusion of my past 15 years. The literally life-changing encounter with the Diabelli Variations at…

The Georgian pianist Nicolas Namoradze, the winner of the 2018 Honens International Piano Competition in Calgary, has already impressed pianists of rare knowledge and experience. Like the two Honens winners before him (Pavel Kolesnikov in 2012 and Luca Buratto in 2015), Namoradze will make his debut recording for Hyperion. In July he goes into the studio to record music by York Bowen – a composer in whose revival the label has played a significant role – including the 12 Studies, Op 46 and Fragments from Hans Anderson. The album, hardly a conventional calling-card for a young pianist, will include numerous first recordings and suggests an artist willing to explore interesting areas of repertoire. That sense of exploration may partly stem from Namoradze’s work as a composer. As well as studying…

There is an undeniable thrill in hearing special talent from other cultures embrace our music as their own. A few nights ago I had the pleasure of hearing Vassily Petrenko power the London Philharmonic through the incendiary pages of Walton’s First Symphony – a work that I have grown to admire and love beyond reason over the years. It is without question a total masterpiece, a work full of incident, surprise, febrile excitement, and beauty – probably the best thing Walton ever wrote and frankly was ever going to write. And even that belated finale – arrived at after the deadline for the first performance had passed (necessitating a three-movement premiere) – takes us to a new place. It’s a place called home, a place where this very ‘international’ symphony…

I’m too young to have caught Pavarotti in his prime, and was too impecunious – or slow on the uptake – to have grabbed a ticket for his final Cavaradossi in London. My encounters with him have therefore, alas, been confined to records. But before I’d encountered his recordings of L’elisir d’amore, Rigoletto, La bohème or any other of his more mainstream signature roles, I’d discovered him in Bruno Bartoletti’s 1971 recording of Verdi’s enigmatic middle-period masterpiece, Un ballo in maschera. He was joined in the cast by Renata Tebaldi (tackling Amelia too late), and an equally youthful Sherill Milnes. But I had ears only for Pavarotti’s contributions. In Riccardo, the opera’s ardent, carefree – and somewhat careless protagonist – he seemed to find an ideal role: his golden tone,…

Pavarotti was still in his thirties when he recorded the role of The Unknown Prince in Puccini’s Turandot (9/73). Only at the end of that decade did he perform the part onstage (at San Francisco Opera), and he didn’t return to it often. One aria, however, ‘Nessun dorma’, was a favourite, and after the 1990 World Cup in Italy it stuck to him like glue. It would stand not just as a symbol of Pavarotti’s lung-busting fervour but also as the Three Tenors’ calling card. And for a certain type of Englishman, it was the proper soundtrack to the tear-streaked face of Paul Gascoigne. All of which adds clutter, not lustre, to Pavarotti’s triumphant performance of that role in that zesty recording, so expressively conducted by Zubin Mehta. Mehta and…

British coronation services are something of a rarity: only three in the 19th century and just four in the 20th. As state occasions, they remain unrivalled in splendour and spectacle, in their visual and aural glory – and also, no doubt, in expense. The musical element of a coronation service, though merely one part of the huge organisational jigsaw, is among the most important, providing entertainment for the congregation, creating the mood, setting the pace of the event, and accompanying processions, hymns and anthems. Very few parts of a coronation do not involve music. An attempt to reproduce the entire service for a recording is ipso facto a mammoth undertaking. One man has boldly ventured to go where none has ventured before: Paul McCreesh who, with the help of his…

Weinberg Symphonies – No 2, Op 30a ; No 21, ‘Kaddish’, Op 152b b Gidon Kremer vn Kremerata Baltica; b City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra /Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla DG F 483 6566 (89’ • DDD) The UK premiere of Symphony No 21 in Symphony Hall last November was a watershed moment for Weinberg’s reputation. It actually proved two things I wouldn’t have dared to predict: that one of his longest symphonies (55 minutes, six movements without a break, composed in 1991) could hold a full-size regular concert audience enthralled from first note to last, and that it could comfortably withstand the comparison with Shostakovich’s Fifteenth in the second half. The appearance of this performance on a major prestige label will surely prove one of the highlights of this, his centenary year.…

• 1967 – Early doors Founder member, with David Munrow, of the Early Music Consort of London, in which he plays keyboards and harp • 1973 – A new sound is born Founds the Academy of Ancient Music, whose first gathering is in September at the recording sessions for a disc of Arne overtures • 1980 – ‘ Like a refiner’s fire’ The AAM’s recording of Handel’s Messiah (recorded the previous year) is widely acclaimed for its fresh take on an old favourite • 1984 – Write on Hogwood’s typically erudite biography of Handel is published • 1987 – Modern maestro Appointed Music Director of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, with whom he records Tippett, Stravinsky and Martinu among others. Further…

This is an enormous undertaking. How long did it take to record 10 discs of Couperin? I have always loved playing Couperin’s harpsichord works. Although I find the idea of ‘complete’ anything very daunting, I felt that if I didn’t record Couperin’s works, I would regret it. But because of the magnitude of the project, I put off making a decision until I realised that I had left myself only one year to record the complete works if it stood a chance of coinciding with Couperin’s anniversary in 2018. I underestimated the size of the project, imagining it to be about five CDs, whereas it turned out to be 10! By the time we were ready, the only sensible solution was to release it as a box-set, with one booklet,…

‘Piano Works’ Rolf Hind pf Dacapo (11/01) The two piano sonatas are among the most important of his earlier works in setting out the formal and expressive qualities that have evolved over the intervening decades into the singular idiom of today. Selma Jezková Sols; Royal Danish Opera / Michael Schønwandt Dacapo Ruders may have been tempting providence by basing this opera on Lars von Trier’s film, but the outcome impresses in its formal economy and emotional veracity. Ylva Kihlberg and Palle Knudsen are charismatic in the main roles. Nightshade Trilogy Capricorn / Oliver Knussen; Odense SO / Paul Mann, Scott Yoo Bridge (1/15) Arguably the most intriguing of Ruders’s numerous trilogies, this evolved over a period of 17 years, while remaining consistent as to its underlying musical trajectory in what…

Richard Osborne on a recent Paris staging of a late Rossini comedy: ‘The orchestra pit doubles as the imagined cellar from which the roistering nuns haul up , their cache of vintage wines’ Mark Pullinger watches Weber’s Der Freischütz from La Scala: ‘Günther Groissböck’s muscular bass is perfect for the role of the tortured forester  in league with the devil’ Auber La Sirène Jeanne Crousaud sop ................................................Zerlina Dorothée Lorthiois sop ...........................................Mathéa Xavier Flabat ten......................................................Scopetto Jean-Noël Teyssier ten .............................................Scipion Jean-Fernand Setti bass.......................Le Duc de Popoli Benjamin Mayenobe bass.................. Nicolaio Bolbaya Jacques Calatayud bar......................................Pecchione Les Métaboles; Orchestre des Frivolités Parisiennes / David Reiland Naxos B 8 660436 (70’ • DDD) Recorded live at the Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne, France, January 26, 2018 Includes synopsis; French libretto downloadable from naxos.com For Naxos’s booklet…

Mark Pullinger Sir Colin Davis’s Les Troyens was announced with a great deal of fanfare: the first complete recording, released for the Berlioz centenary. So JW had the luxury of around 1200 words for his review (hugely cut down in the version above!). That sense of excitement really comes across on the page, doesn’t it? Tim Ashley Yes, and I think it also reflects the excitement generated by the performance itself – that sense of discovery and exploration, of breaking new ground with the first recording of a work that we now acknowledge to be a masterpiece, but which for many was an unknown quantity at the time, and in some quarters was still considered inferior to the rest of Berlioz’s output. That sense of excitement makes it in many…

Denon 800NE If you’re looking for a less expensive alternative to the Musical Fidelity pairing, the Denon 800NE series is a good entry-level choice, combining fine engineering with an attractive sound. The DCD-800NE CD player is a real bargain at just £349, while the £449 PMA-800NE amplifier offers surprising levels of performance for the money. Find out more at denon.co.uk. Audiolab 6000 Audiolab takes a slightly different approach with its 6000 series duo, which draws on the design of the long-running 8000 series models. The £379 6000CDT is merely a CD transport, with no built-in digital-to-analogue conversion; that circuitry is built into the 6000A amplifier, which sells for £599 and has four digital inputs plus Bluetooth, as well as line and moving magnet phono sections. For more details see audiolab.co.uk.…

The stylish Alfredo Kraus In 1958, near the beginning of his career, Alfredo Kraus sang alongside Maria Callas in the now legendary live recording of La traviata in Lisbon; then, in 1993, the year he made his very last complete operatic recording in the studio, he sang alongside Dame Kiri Te Kanawa – and the work was, remarkably, La traviata again. As Richard Fairman pointed out in his reflection on Kraus’s distinguished career (May, page 62), his voice was little touched by age. A singing career spanning nearly four decades is indeed something for one to marvel at! The longevity of his career can doubtlessly be attributed to his wisely chosen repertoire and his superb breathing technique. As Nicolai Gedda, another tenor who enjoyed a long singing career, once suggested,…

GERALD ENGLISH Tenor Born November 6, 1925 Died February 6, 2019 The English tenor whose long career embraced working with both Barbirolli and Beecham as well as appearing in Simon Rattle’s Proms debut in 1976, has died at the age of 93. A founder member of the Deller Consort, English’s musical sympathies ranged from the Medieval to the modern, and he took part in numerous premieres by the likes of Richard Rodney Bennett, Tippett and Henze. After studying at the Royal College of Music (where he’d later serve as a professor), he made his operatic debut as Peter Quint in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw under the composer’s direction. He would also sing Pandarus in Walton’s Troilus and Cressida (a role he recorded). His repertoire embraced, too, the roles…

In my work, I turn to stories for inspiration because I love the drama of them – but if I need peace or resolution, music nearly always provides the answer. That’s true in my own life, too. I’m often on the road, but so long as I have a book to read and music to listen to, I feel like I’m at home. For Snowblind, my piece for San Francisco Ballet which premiered last April, I turned to Edith Wharton’s novella Ethan Frome. It’s essentially a love triangle – there’s a suicide pact, this great crisis – and it could all seem very melodramatic and rather like a horror story. But using Arvo Pärt’s Lamentate at the end enabled me to find a sense of humanity in it all. During…

What draws you to Palestrina’s music? Late-Renaissance polyphony forms the core of our repertoire, both for concerts and church services. The music of Palestrina, of course, looms large in this canon. In addition to the sheer beauty of his music, I particularly appreciate his many and varied approaches to motet and Mass compositions. He is unquestionably a master of counterpoint. Why did you chose the Missa Tu es Petrus? We performed the Missa Tu es Petrus a couple of years ago, and it immediately became a favourite. There is no mistaking that this is mature Palestrina: it is one of his finest and most ingenious parody Masses, and one of his most luminous compositions. Also, this Mass setting has not been recorded often, unlike, say, the Missa Papae Marcelli. You…

‘In the probable absence of an invitation to the next coronation, the next best thing was being in Ely Cathedral for Paul McCreesh’s thrilling live recording with his Gabrieli forces,’ says JEREMY NICHOLAS, who interviews the conductor this issue. ‘We even got to participate – it was an unforgettable experience.’ CHARLOTTE GARDNER enjoyed chatting with Matthew Barley about recording Tavener’s The Protecting Veil in the footsteps of Steven Isserlis. ‘He told me he didn’t think he could better Steven’s recording, but that he could place it in a different context – and that made for a fascinating interview.’ FABRICE FITCH was delighted to write about Ockeghem’s Requiem for this issue’s Collection: ‘I’ve lived with and thought about this work for so many years that getting to grips with its discography…

Nicholas Collon, Principal Conductor of the Aurora Orchestra, has been named the new Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He will become the first non-Finn to hold the post. Collon’s three-year deal – with an additional two-year option – will begin in autumn 2021, and he will be with the orchestra for a minimum of 10 weeks every season. Aurora – the chamber orchestra which Collon co-founded with Robin Ticciati in 2004 – has become famed for its eclectic repertoire, innovative approach to performance, and a commitment to contemporary music. Consequently, the young conductor has already developed a diverse and growing discography, including appearing on such albums as the music of Finzi on Decca, a John Adams programme on Warner Classsics, and an Augusta Read Thomas survey on…

The BBC Proms has announced its 2019 season, featuring key themes including marking 150 years since the birth of Proms founder Sir Henry Wood (33 works that Wood introduced at the Proms are being reprised, with another 33 new commissions receiving their first performances), and 50 years since the Apollo 11 moon landing. As always, some of today’s most revered artists and ensembles will take to the Royal Albert Hall stage throughout the eight weeks of events, including, this year, the Vienna Philharmonic under Bernard Haitink (with Murray Perahia in Beethoven), the Bavarian RSO under Mariss Jansons, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (in a complete performance of Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini), the Gewandhaus Orchestra and Andris Nelsons, and the Orchestre de Paris and Daniel Harding. There…

Podcasts Subscribe to the Gramophone podcast to enjoy weekly interviews with leading classical recording artists. Recent instalments feature saxophonist Amy Dickson who talks to Editor Martin Cullingford about her latest album, which evokes the deserts of Australia, the rolling countryside of Southern England, and the Scottish Highlands as conjured up by Sir James MacMillan in a concerto written especially for Dickson. James Jolly meets tenor Michael Fabiano to explore the connections between the music of Verdi and Donizetti. And Andrew Nethsingha talks about ‘Locus Iste’ – his new recording with St John’s College Choir, Cambridge, which celebrates the 150th anniversary of the consecration of the College’s chapel and also happens to be the choir’s 100th recording. Facebook, Twitter & Instagram Join our ever-growing community of classical music devotees on Facebook,…

• Marc-Andé Hamelin has been in the Teldex studios in Berlin recording opera paraphrases by Liszt (including those on Bellini’s Norma and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, as well as the collaborative Hexaméron) and Thalberg (including Don Pasquale and Moses) for Hyperion. This is music that has long been in Hamelin’s repertoire, and the prospect of hearing it on record will whet the appetites of piano-lovers everywhere. Look out for it in the spring of 2020. • Also for Hyperion, the Takács Quartet and pianist Garrick Ohlsson have been in the studio at Wyastone Estate in the Wye valley to record piano quintets by Elgar and Amy Beach. Elgar’s Quintet was part of the late flowering of chamber music he composed towards the end of the First World War, while the…

Pavarotti’s acting skills were often dismissed, but he could actually do comedy very well. Even in a serious role such as Cavaradossi, the way he teased Tosca in Act 1 always had a knowing smile. But his finest comic role was undoubtedly Nemorino, the country bumpkin in L’elisir d’amore, smitten with Adina. His first – and finest – recording of the role was in 1970 for Decca, with Richard Bonynge opening up all the cuts. From his first entry, ‘Quanto è bella’, you can’t help but fall for Pavarotti’s lovestruck Nemorino; the open voice, the bright, forward sound and boyish charm have the quality of aural sunshine as he sings Adina’s praises. The scene where the quack Doctor Dulcamara sells him an elixir – in reality a bottle of cheap…

The inclusion, in a tribute to Pavarotti, of his performances as Ancient Egypt’s compromised army captain might seem controversial, even perverse. Critics in Italy and America wondered if the role was not a little too heavy for him and might even spoil his more lyrical tones. Yet Radames sits, like many later 19th-century opera roles, on the borders of the lyric, the robust and the dramatic – all descriptions that fit Pavarotti’s voice. And he had much to contribute to the role, as did Jussi Björling, another supposedly ‘lighter’ voice – and a comparison that Pavarotti himself drew in interview. This was always a voice which was remarkably successful in ensemble with louder and lower partners because of its clarity and concentration. It was never merely a question of volume…

Were you to attempt to draw some sort of visual chart of Matthew Barley’s musical exploits to date, you’d be setting yourself a fearsome challenge. The mass of separate genre and activity categories dotted around the page would likely resemble an inky, abstract fireworks display, such would be the sheer number of separate lines shooting out of each category to then explode with those from others. The same approach to his discography would yield similar results: a fizzing cornucopia of new classical works mixed with world music, electronic music and jazz, none of it repeating anything previously recorded by any other artist. So while it was clear that this cellist and I would begin our chat with a focus on his new recording of Tavener’s The Protecting Veil, it was…

Andrew Farach-Colton explores some lesser-known Saint-Saëns: ‘The Adagio is so lovely I wish it were at least three times longer, while the Scherzo takes us  on a wild and thrilling ride’ Charlotte Gardner rejoices in the recorder-playing of Maurice Steger: ‘Extreme ensemble virtuosity, and the crackest of crack continuo units, are non-negotiables  when Steger’s around’ Beethoven Complete Symphonies Laura Aikin sop Ingeborg Danz contr Maximilian Schmitt ten Tareq Nazmi bass WDR Radio Choir; WDR Symphony Orchestra / Jukka-Pekka Saraste Profil M e PH18066 (5h 44’ • DDD • T/t) From the early days of its work with Klemperer, Wand and Rosbaud, and then the ’60s tenure of Christoph von Dohnányi, the radio symphony orchestra in Cologne has a distinguished history of Beethoven performance in the school of ‘new objectivity’ which…

Harriet Smith listens to the Albion Quartet playing Dvorák and Suk: ‘The players make a strong case for this youthful piece, powerfully refuting the notion that it took  Dvorák time to hit his stride’ David Threasher enjoys lively period-instrument Schubert: ‘Modern instruments have developed to be better-behaved but these players exult in  the timbral differences’ Antheil ‘Complete Violin Music, Vol 1’ Violin Sonatas – No 1; No 2; No 3; No 4 Alessandro Fagiuoli vn Alessia Toffanin pf AVI-Music F AVI8553934 (79’ • DDD) Antheil composed his first three violin sonatas in 1923-24, while he was living and working in Europe. They are cut from similar cloth, with striking use of repetition and stark juxtaposition, yet each has its own distinct personality. Stravinsky’s influence is readily apparent in all three…

Jeremy Nicholas listens to the debut album from Martin James Bartlett: ‘In the vicious, visceral reading of the second of Prokofiev’s “War Sonatas” Bartlett shows his true pianistic colours’ Michelle Assay on Lang Lang’s educational ‘Piano Book’: ‘The choice of repertoire is eclectic: from folk tunes to silly tunes (Chopsticks), from “classic favourites” to film themes’ JS Bach Six Cello Suites, BWV1007-1012 (arr for violin) Rachel Podger vn Channel Classics M 2 CCSSA41119 (128’ • DDD/DSD) Because she can; and why not? Rachel Podger has earned the right to deal briskly with the rights and wrongs of appropriating the Cello Suites. It was Gustav Leonhardt, no less, who transcribed them for harpsichord (recorded by Roberto Loreggian on Brilliant Classics). Viola players, guitarists and gambists have long hugged them close. Like…

Hugo Shirley enjoys Christian Thielemann’s Verdi Requiem: ‘All four soloists come together for one of the most touching versions of the “Lacrimosa” I’ve heard in a while’ Tim Ashley explores reason in madness with Carolyn Sampson: ‘Sampson’s silvery tone suggests fragility from the outset, and she admirably conveys the vagaries of desire, distress and confusion’ JS Bach St Mark Passion, BWV247 (reconstr Grychtolik/Savall) David Szigetvári ten Evangelist Konstantin Wolff bass Christus Marta Mathéu sop Raffaele Pé counterten Reinoud Van Mechelen ten La Capella Reial de Catalunya; Le Concert des Nations / Jordi Savall Alia Vox F (two discs for the price of one) AVSA9931 (111’ • DDD/DSD • T/t) Recorded live at the Chapelle Royale, Château de Versailles, March 26, 2018 JS Bach St Mark Passion, BWV247 (reconstr Fischer) Matthias…

Jazz Alicia Olatuja Intuition: Songs From The Minds Of Women Resilience Music F RMA007 Vocalist Olatuja was a standout performer on pianist-arranger Billy Childs’ acclaimed Laura Nyro tribute Map To The Treasure, but this album shows her ability to front a covers project that also has an ambitious premise. As the subtitle states, Olatuja celebrates women composers, and casts the net far and wide, stylistically speaking. That means that Western pop staples such as Sade’s ‘No Ordinary Love’ share the spotlight with the classic Chilean folk of Violeta Parra’s ‘Gracias A La Vida’. Olatuja’s re-imaginings are tastefully done each time. Backed by an excellent coterie of musicians, of which drummer-producer Ulysses Owens impresses, she brings a harmonic sheen to the material without encroaching upon the spirit of each piece. No…

‘Small is beautiful’, ‘less is more’, ‘the master manifests himself through restriction’: these and similar pearls of wisdom sit at the hub of the Baroque string specialist Sigiswald Kuijken’s subtle art. Accent’s two sets of Concertos and Chamber Music feature among their voluminous contents Kuijken’s latest thoughts on Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos (two versions preceded them) where he uses the cello da spalla – a small cello played braced against the shoulder – which lends a brighter, more transparent texture at the bass end of the sound spectrum than we often encounter. These performances by La Petite Bande are deft and responsive, and arranged across two discs in the order Nos 3, 5, 1, 4, 6 and 2. The Orchestral Suites are programmed on a 79-minute single CD, in the order…

Les Troyens Sols; Royal Opera House Chor & Orch / Colin Davis Philips Colin Davis’s command of the score in all its splendour has never seemed to me more complete. A splendid rhythmic impetus lies at the heart of his interpretation, matching the nervous intensity of the metres and the constant sense of unrest. Energy characterises the performance so much that it is difficult to allow the sections where repose and a sense of stillness fill the score to assume their role without imposing a pull back. But this is exactly what they must do; and even so simple and touching a song as poor drowsy, homesick Hylas’s ‘Vallon sonore’ needs more calm than Davis seems willing to allow. Andromache’s marvellous scene is oddly tame: the clarinet is too determined,…

OperaVision Stuart MacRae’s Anthropocene, May 17 ‘In the frozen Arctic wastelands, an expeditionary team of scientists becomes trapped. Tensions rise and relationships crumble; and then something appears, out of the ice...’ So reads the teaser to Anthropocene, Stuart MacRae’s fourth operatic collaboration with librettist Louise Welsh which Scottish Opera premiered to acclaim earlier this year. This first run consisted of only five performances, split between Glasgow, Edinburgh and London. However, OperaVision filmed it, and this month it arrives on its platform for free on-demand viewing. The production is directed by Matthew Richardson, and features a strong cast: Scottish Opera Emerging Artist Jennifer France, who’s fast making a name for herself, plus the soprano Jeni Bern and the baritone Stephen Gadd. Stuart Stratford conducts. operavision.eu Concertgebouw Recital Hall, Amsterdam & online…

THIS MONTH An all-new duo from a British brand become Austrian, a do-it-all disc player – and are we seeing a ‘real hi-fi’ revival? Andrew Everard, Audio Editor Exotic headphones are now well established in the market but the Chinese manufacturer Shanling thinks it has a new twist. The company behind the little M0 player, seen in these pages last year, now has a high-quality in-ear headphone design, complete with aluminium housings and detachable cables, selling for a very sensible £99 1 . The ME100 model features a 10mm dynamic driver using a mix of plastics in the diaphragm to deliver a balanced, clean sound and is driven by powerful magnets and a lightweight voice coil. These are mounted in a low-resonance aluminium housing and connected to the outside world…

Two questions arise when one first encounters the Pioneer UDP-LX800. The first is: who in their right mind would pay £2200 for a machine at first glance offering nothing much you can’t get from a £200 offering from the likes of Sony or LG? The second is even more prosaic: what exactly is a high-end video player doing in these pages? From being a high-end replacement for DVD, offering higher-resolution sound and vision from films on disc, Blu-ray has rapidly become commoditised to the point that there are now players available for less than £100, with the least expensive – an LG capable of 4K high-resolution video and 3D (if anyone remembers that, or cares) – at just a shade over £50. What’s more, LG’s Korean rival, Samsung, has recently…

In 1948, coming from a family with sparse knowledge of, or interest in, music, I won a state scholarship to Dulwich College (Alan Hacker, Anthony Payne and David Greer were among the music naturals of my time). In the 1960s, working with Michael Kaye (later General Manager of the LSO) on the setting up and running of the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation, I met André Previn on several occasions. I mentioned to him that my passion for classical music had exploded into life in my first week at school, when we were seated in the music room and told: ‘All you have to do is listen to this gramophone record.’ It was the original recording of Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music, and life was never the same again. André smiled beatifically…

Gerard Schwarz’s guide to rare 20th-century US symphonies The American conductor flies the flag for works by Schuman, Hanson, Creston, Diamond, Mennin and Hovhaness Vox Luminis at 15 Founder Lionel Meunier’s vision for his early music French vocal group has never waivered, he tells long-time devotee Lindsay Kemp Four Serious Songs Brahms’s final song set has attracted a range of singers to its dark sound world, finds Richard Wigmore in this issue’s Collection ON SALE JUNE 19 DON’T MISS IT!…

T Harris Rosemoor Suitea . Aulos Triptychb . Concertino for Horn and Chamber Orchestrac . Flowersd . Sonata for Two Bassoons and Pianoe . Concertino for Flute and Chamber Orchestraf abf Alice Kogan Weinreb,b Aaron Goldman,b Carole Bean,b Leah Arsenault Barrick flsad Nicholas Stovall obad Paul Cigan clad Truman Harris,e Sue Heineman,e Steven Wilson bnsacd Laurel Bennert Ohlson hnbe Audrey Andrist pfcf Eclipse Chamber Orchestra / Sylvia Alimena Naxos American Classics B 8 559858 (76’ • DDD) Naxos’s American Classics series turns to Truman Harris (b1945), his tenures as bassoonist in Washington’s National Symphony and Eclipse Chamber orchestras explaining why woodwind features prominently across his output – with the present disc a representative selection. His fluency is well demonstrated in both the vignettes of Aulos Triptych and the laconicism of…

With the July 9 opening of the Hollywood Bowl on the horizon, LA’s classical music season hurtles to a close, becoming more youth-orientated, more culturally diverse, decentralised and expansive, with a flourishing new music scene. The city also seems to have turned a corner on how to build a classical music community in a city laid out over such vast distances and without robust public transportation. The answer may lie in the many series and home concerts springing up to satisfy and create local demand, whose growth fuels the interest in bigger theatres and performing arts centres. The season started in September with an eight-mile street party entertained by 1800 musicians, artists and dancers, connecting the LA Philharmonic’s two homes: Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown and the Hollywood Bowl eight…

Andrew Achenbach • Nalen Anthoni • Tim Ashley • Mike Ashman • Michelle Assay Richard Bratby • Edward Breen • Liam Cagney • Alexandra Coghlan • Rob Cowan (consultant reviewer) Jeremy Dibble • Peter Dickinson • Jed Distler • Adrian Edwards • Richard Fairman • David Fallows David Fanning • Andrew Farach-Colton • Iain Fenlon • Neil Fisher • Fabrice Fitch • Jonathan Freeman-Attwood Charlotte Gardner • David Gutman • Christian Hoskins • Lindsay Kemp • Philip Kennicott • Richard Lawrence Andrew Mellor • Ivan Moody • Bryce Morrison • Hannah Nepil • Jeremy Nicholas • Christopher Nickol Geoffrey Norris • Richard Osborne • Stephen Plaistow • Mark Pullinger • Peter Quantrill • Guy Rickards Malcolm Riley • Marc Rochester • Patrick Rucker • Edward Seckerson • Hugo Shirley •…

Osmo Vänskä will become the new Music Director of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra next year. As reported in our January issue, the Finnish conductor will step down from his current post as Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra when his contract expires in 2022. His recording of Sibelius’s Symphonies Nos 3, 6 and 7 with the American ensemble was shortlisted for a Gramophone Award in 2017, while he has also recorded a well-received Beethoven symphony cycle with them for BIS. Vänskä was also an acclaimed chief conductor of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra for two decades, winning Gramophone Awards for recordings of Sibelius’s music, including the Violin Concerto (with Leonidas Kavakos, 1991), the Fifth Symphony and En Saga (1996), and a programme of orchestral works called ‘Rondo of the Waves’ (2003).…

The month saw two signings of young pianists by major labels. The first was Isata Kanneh-Mason, who joined Decca Classics – thus also joining her brother, cellist Sheku, on the label – and will begin the partnership with an album devoted to the music of Clara Schumann. The release, marking the composer’s 200th anniversary, will be released in July. As well as the Piano Concerto (recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under the New Zealander Holly Mathieson) the album contains solo piano works, including the G minor Piano Sonata, and the three Romances for violin and piano, Op 22, for which Isata is joined by the former BBC New Generation Artist Elena Urioste. The second signing comes from Warner Classics, which has added Mariam Batsashvili to its prestigious roster of…

“The didgeridoo is part of a strong cultural heritage, coming as it does from the bush, from the Australian landscape. It’s made from the branch of a tree that has been hollowed out by termites, but it ends up becoming an extension of your voice and your body. The sound of the didgeridoo is affected by the tree’s quality (which is, in turn, determined by what part of Australia it’s growing in), and the thickness, length and diameter of the wood (the last two factors influence the pitch). How it is cut from the branch also has a bearing, in terms of how easy it is to play fast rhythms and quick articulations. For example, it may have a narrow mouthpiece but flare out at the bottom, rather like an…

My earliest memory of Pavarotti is in a revival of La bohème at the Royal Opera House. As his Rodolfo leant over Kiri Te Kanawa’s shoulder and offered her ‘un po’ di vino’, he sounded momentarily like a well-spoken waiter in a high-class Italian restaurant. None of the Rodolfos I had seen before had come across half as Italianate as this, or sung words that were so crystal clear (it was fascinating, later in his career, to hear him talk about the daily exercises his teacher set him to achieve this level of clarity). Then, in the love duet, that golden tenor came pouring forth. No strain, no forcing, no unevenness: the voice filled the theatre effortlessly, seeming to envelop those of us in the cheap seats at the top.…

Although the Organ Symphony (No 3) is well known, Saint-Saëns’s other symphonies are rarely heard. Why do you think this is? Saint-Saëns was 51 years old when he wrote the famous Organ Symphony. The other four symphonies are early works, and are invaluable treasures, offering both musical delight and understanding of Saint-Saëns’s utopian music writing. They are a feast of effervescence and fresh ideas. With the Utah Symphony, we decided to perform and record the entire cycle in one season, and so had the privilege – symphony by symphony, month after month – to experience the evolution of Saint-Saëns’s personality. We went from surprise to surprise: from the sparkling A major Symphony and the blazing Symphony No 1, both teenage works, through Urbs Roma and the bright and dramatic Symphony…

Were he alive to read this article today, Christopher Hogwood would, one suspects, politely dismiss the idea of being an icon. He was surely always too gentlemanly to think himself that. But whatever it was – vision, sussedness, intellectual curiosity, academic dogmatism? – that drove him to follow the pathways of historically informed practice just as they were beginning to really lead somewhere, the wholeheartedness with which he did it turned him into a prolific and influential recording star. The new sound world was illustrative of his favourite metaphor of removing the dirty varnish from an old painting Born in Nottingham in 1941, he studied music and Classics at Cambridge and could have made a mark either as a harpsichordist – his solo recordings of Byrd, Louis Couperin and Bach’s…

F Couperin ‘Complete Works for Harpsichord’ Carole Cerasi hpd Metronome S j METCD1100 (11h 12’ • DDD) A recording of the complete harpsichord music of Fran ç ois Couperin is a major project in any circumstances. But to record all 10 discs’ worth in the space of a year and time their release for the 350th anniversary of the composer’s birth looks not just like a labour of love but also a real statement of intent, not least because in a recording career that began in 1997 with a Gramophone Award-winning set of the complete harpsichord music of Jacquet de la Guerre, Carole Cerasi has always chosen carefully when and with what to enter the studio. One need not suspect her of throwing this one off, then, and indeed it…

1949 Born Ringsted, Denmark, March 27 c1965-70 Trains as organist and studies orchestration with Karl Aage Rasmussen, though essentially self-taught as a composer 1980 Four Compositions for chamber ensemble marks start of compositional maturity 1985 Manhattan Abstraction premiere, Danish RSO, Copenhagen, February 7 1996 Concerto in Pieces premiere at Last Night of the Proms, London, September 14 2000 The Handmaid’s Tale premiere, Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen, March 6 2002 Listening Earth (2001) premiere, Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin, November 29 2004 Final Nightshade premiere, New York Philharmonic, New York, June 10 2005 Kafka’s Trial premiere, Royal Danish Opera, March 12 2010 Selma Jezková premiere, Royal Danish Opera, Copenhagen, September 5 2011 Symphony No 4 premiere, Dallas SO, January 20 2019 The Thirteenth Child premiere, Santa Fe Opera, July 27…

Mostly major maestros Among the many first-time releases that excited our senses in the 1960s and ’70s when the Arturo Toscanini Society launched a series of LPs was a February 1941 NBC broadcast of Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben that topped virtually any rival for spirit, intensity, heroic bravura and, in ‘Des Helden Friedenswerke’ and ‘Des Helden Weltflucht und Vollendung’, an ardently singing line. In short, it was everything one hoped it might be, and Pristine Audio’s newly refurbished transfer reignites that sense of excitement, especially with respect to the percussion in ‘Des Helden Walstatt’, which now sounds clearer than ever before. Another boon is the (uncredited) violinist Mischa Mischakoff’s virtuoso portrayal of ‘Des Helden Gefährtin’: terrific playing by any standards. Ein Heldenleben reappears as part of an all-Strauss set, from which…

Hugo Shirley reads a concise introduction to the world of opera: ‘Schweitzer’s easy-going, informal prose is nicely gauged to be inviting and unburdened by jargon’ Nigel Simeone enjoys sharing the company of Howard Skempton: ‘No matter what music by Skempton one might encounter, it is likely to intrigue and ensnare us into its crystalline sound world’ A Mad Love An Introduction to Opera By Vivien Schweitzer Basic Books, PB, 288pp, £13.99 ISBN 978-0-465-09694-7 One imagines several decisions have to be made early in the process of writing a brief introduction to opera, and such books have tended to present various narrative strategies to cover the 400-plus years of this extravagant art form’s history. Vivien Schweitzer’s A Mad Love opts for what’s perhaps the most straightforward – and simultaneously arguably the…