Table of contents for July 2019 in Gramophone Magazine

It’s always important to question consensus. It’s not that there’s nothing positive about everyone agreeing, but when they do, there’s always the chance that an alternative view has got pushed out. It applies particularly to art. Cultural history is full of examples of music, architecture or paintings that were collectively ignored (even in some cases derided) only to be subsequently declared significant. Just think of Pre-Raphaelite art. Often that change comes about due to a plucky champion: Leonard Bernstein and the music of Mahler in the US comes to mind, or John Betjeman and Victorian architecture in the UK. That latter example is well worth pondering every time a piece of mid-20th-century modernism is condemned to the wrecking ball. Luckily such destructive decisions don’t need to be made with eminently…

MOZART Piano Concertos, Vol 4 Jean-E›lam Bavouzet pf Manchester Camerata / Gábor Takács-Nagy Chandos Bavouzet inspires, entertains and embodies the playfulness and grace of Mozart’s much-loved works. A very fine recording. SIBELIUS Lemminkäinen Suite BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo Chandos Sakari Oramo has a wonderful command of the majestic sweep and inner detail of Sibelius’s music, this Lemminkäinen evocatively suggestive of mysterious legend. SUK Asrael. Fairy Tale Czech Philharmonic Orchestra / Jirí Belohlávek Decca A fitting final studio recording from Jirí Belohlávek – a powerful recording of this Czech masterpiece, with a deeply committed Czech Philharmonic giving their all. TAVENER The Protecting Veil Sinfonietta Riga / Matthew Barley vc Signum The opening poetry sets the tone – intimate, achingly personal – that pervades Matthew Barley’s beautiful recording of one…

The inaugural China International Music Competition has been won by Tony Siqi Yun, an 18-year-old Canadian. As well as First Prize – worth $150,000 – he also gains representation by Opus 3 in the US and Europe, and Armstrong Music and Arts in China. The win followed a performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto. Second Prize ($75,000) went to the 17-year-old Russian Alexander Malofeev (who, incidentally, is among the 25 pianists shortlisted for the Tchaikovsky Competition this month) while Third Prize ($30,000) went to the 24-year-old American MacKenzie Melemed. The China International Music Competition will be held every year and next year’s competition will be dedicated to the violin.…

Alpha is a label whose approach to A&R is always worth paying attention to, whether it be innovative programmes from established artists like Patricia Kopatchinskaja or Barbara Hannigan, or new discoveries. So it’s with some anticipation that we await the debut from one of their newest signings, due out in September. Even just a short encounter with German-Romanian baritone Konstantin Krimmel on one of the many videos on his website leaves an impression of an intense singer with a dramatic stage presence. And drama certainly lies at the heart of his Alpha debut: Krimmel wanted to ‘tell a story’ for his first album, so has woven together a selection of ballads, ‘genuine operas in just a few minutes’, whose texts – by writers including Schiller, Goethe and Heinrich Heine –…

A barrister who specialises in commercial disputes and international investment arbitration has recorded two of Alkan’s most daunting piano works, the Symphony for solo piano and Concerto for solo piano, both from the 12 Études in all the minor keys, Op 39. Paul Wee, who was born in Australia to Singaporean and Malaysian parents, began learning the piano at the age of four, and later studied with Nina Svetlanova at the Manhattan School of Music, before returning to the United Kingdom to pursue a career in law. In 2016 he performed the Concerto for solo piano at a recital for the Alkan Society at St Mary’s Church in London, which alerted the critic Bryce Morrison to his talent. Enlisting the help of Mike Spring, owner of APR and a fellow…

• Rodger Podger, Gramophone’s current Artist of the Year, has started to record the Beethoven sonatas for piano and violin with the pianist Christopher Glynn. Vol 1 will contain Nos 1, 5 (Spring) and 7. The Channel Classics sessions took place at St John the Evangelist, Upper Norwood and the release is scheduled for next spring. • Pianist Ingrid Fliter joined the Orchestra of the Americas and conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto for a Manuel de Falla album for Linn. Nights in the Gardens of Spain will be coupled with the Three-cornered Hat suite. Due for release this month. • François Leleux, oboist and sometime conductor, directed the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a Linn recording of French orchestral works. Alongside Bizet’s sparkling Symphony in C, the album also includes suites by…

The first time I met Lionel Meunier was the day that changed his life. I’m not claiming credit, you understand. It’s just that September 27, 2012 – when he came to London to accept a Gramophone Award in the Baroque Vocal category on behalf of his vocal ensemble Vox Luminis for their recording of Schütz’s Musicalische Exequien, and to his very evident surprise also went home with the overall Recording of the Year – was the end of one existence for him and the beginning of another. ‘After the Awards I thought, wow, this is something very big. Somebody was stirring that bubbling water with a very big spoon!’ Meunier – French, very tall, and very much a charmer – smiles as he remembers it: ‘You could definitely look back…

David Threasher hears Schumann from Christian Thielemann: ‘In phrase after elegantly turned phrase, you hear how much this music means to Thielemann’ REVIEW ON PAGE 44 Jeremy Dibble on the latest Vaughan Williams from Andrew Manze: ‘The detail of the Ninth’s Scherzo, with its glittering array of percussion, harp and saxophones, is a revelation’ REVIEW ON PAGE 47 Alfvén ‘Complete Symphonies, Vol 2’ Symphony No 3, Op 23. The Mountain King, Op 37 – Suite. Uppsala Rhapsody, Op 24 Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / ›ukasz Borowicz CPO F CPO555 237-2 (65’ • DDD) As in its predecessor (6/18), there’s more hard labour on display in this attractive second volume of ›ukasz Borowicz’s cycle of Hugo Alfvén’s symphonies. Like Sibelius’s Second and Stenhammar’s serenades, Alfvén’s Third is a Nordic work written in…

How did you discover the music of Catoire and Friedman – and what drew you to the piano quintets? Catoire’s music was not very well known to me, except for a few shorter but exquisite piano pieces, until an English friend and fine viola player suggested the Quintet for a festival in Belgium. I was immediately captivated by this music’s strange beauty. Friedman was another story: I greatly admired his totally inimitable Chopin interpretations and I had played quite a lot of his music – as well as smaller pieces and transcriptions, the Viennese Dances, the Ballade, Op 66, and the magnificent Suite for two pianos. So I was thrilled to discover another of his few large-scale pieces. What can listeners expect from Friedman’s Piano Quintet? The first movement is…

Harriet Smith welcomes compelling Messiaen from Martin Helmchen: ‘Helmchen is scrupulous about gradations of sound and even the loudest moments  are never percussive’ Lindsay Kemp hears Sophie Yates play Fitzwilliam harpsichord music: ‘Yates plays an early 17th-century harpsichord by Boni, a crisp, full-throated  and deep-coloured beauty’ CPE Bach ‘Abschied’ Fantasias – Wq58 No 7 H278; Wq59: No 5 H279; No 6 H284; Wq61 No 6 H291; Wq67 H300. Rondos – Wq56 No 5 H262; Wq57 No 1 H265; Wq58 No 1 H276; Wq59 No 4 H283; Wq61 No 4 H290; ‘Abschied von meinem Silbermannischen Claviere’, Wq66 H272. Variations on ‘La folia d’Espagne’, Wq118 No 9 H263 Vittorio Forte pf Odradek F ODRCD368 (79’ • DDD) For his new Odradek recording, the Calabrian pianist Vittorio Forte has chosen a programme of…

Born Philadelphia, PA, USA, December 18, 1958 Studies University of Michigan (BA, 1980), Yale University (MM, 1986), Princeton University (PhD, 2012) Diverse influences Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Xenakis, Ligeti, Steve Reich, Louis Andriessen, early music and so on Composer-in-residence Dallas Symphony Orchestra (2018-20) Passing the torch Professor of Composition, New York University (from 2009) Wolfe on Wolfe ‘Writing music for me is a constant evolution. I go through an intense search process at the beginning of each piece to figure out just what the piece is about. I work up a kind of maniacal focus’ (2014)…

Jazz Seamus Blake Guardians of the Heart Machine Whirlwind Recordings F WR4375 Having played with practically everybody who is anybody on the highly competitive New York jazz scene over the last quarter century and appeared on almost 80 albums, Seamus Blake can officially put in for his ‘been there, done that’ t-shirt. He’s now relocated to Europe, and after a successful tour with three top young French musicians, Guardians of the Heart Machine is a musical photograph in time of the state of the art of this highly-rated tenor saxophonist. The verdict is that he’s in a good place – the core of his style is a strong melodic sense that guides the internal logic of his well crafted improvisations on pieces like ‘I’m OK’, ‘Sneaky D’, ‘Betty in Rio’…

When Roger Fiske reviewed Eduardo del Pueyo’s first recording of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata in these pages back in November 1959 he commented that, in the first movement, ‘He keeps tearing off in a tremendous hurry and then standing still to get his breath back.’ In the context of ‘The Complete Philips Recordings’ you can sample that brief episode for yourself by accessing disc 3 track 7 from 0'34". Fiske also praised Pueyo for making ‘an intelligent shot at playing the slow movement at 92 quavers a minute (Beethoven’s metronome mark)’, comparing him with Solomon at 60 quavers per minute, which means an astonishing difference in movement timing between 14'53" and 22'20". The interesting point here is that when Pueyo came to re-record the work as part of his complete Beethoven…

Arnold Whittall welcomes a valuable companion to Janácek: ‘Knowing what to leave out in such surveys, and avoiding blandness, is never easy, but Simeone manages it with ease’ Geraint Lewis is full of praise for a monumental Tippett biography: ‘To get inside the mind, and under the skin, of such a complex figure so completely is nothing short of miraculous’ The Janácek Compendium By Nigel Simeone The Boydell Press, HB, 284pp, £60 ISBN 978-1-78327-337-9 There is a serious argument to be made that Mahler (1860-1911) and Janácek (1854-1928) were the most important of all 20th-century composers. Although both lived most of their lives in the 19th century, they only became widely known after the 1950s. But their prominence in concert hall or opera house and recording studio since that time…

While Quad may have a reputation as one of the most sober of hi-fi companies, as one might expect given its nearly 85 years of heritage and the 70 years since its first commercial product appeared in 1949, it has never been afraid to ignore conventional thinking and follow its own path. After all, the best-known Quad development, its electrostatic speakers, were a long way from the designs of the time when they appeared in 1957 and remain so to this day, many generations later. The latest models may not be the only ones of their kind these days – and like the rest of the range they may now be made in China, not Cambridgeshire – but they remain uniquely Quad and instantly recognisable. And Quad likes to spring…

I greatly enjoyed Michael Haas’s reminiscing about Pavarotti recording Otello in Chicago (June, page 22). Pavarotti’s desire to be the dominant voice in Decca operas was well known. As a young lawyer who acted for Decca in the 1970s I was often invited to Kingsway Hall for evening recording sessions where I sat in the control box with the sound engineer. One session was the occasion of Dame Joan Sutherland’s 50th birthday, the work La traviata, with Luciano Pavarotti as Alfredo. I sat with the great Jimmy Lock controlling the sound and balance console; Chris Raeburn the Producer was controlling movement in the famed Decca sonic stage box of numbers in which the singers moved to achieve the full stereo effect. Pavarotti always strained to the front of the box…

There’s something about being the son and brother of professional musicians … My sister is an oboist, my mum’s a horn player, and I think it was always expected that I’d be musical too – but there’s too much practise involved! The true story is that I wanted to be a drummer, and I remember my mum saying that if I wanted to be a drummer, then I needed to be an orchestral percussionist, and would therefore need piano lessons. But after a few weeks of piano lessons I decided that actually I wanted to play the trumpet, and mum, being a brass player, said: ‘Well I can teach you.’ So I went from wanting to be a drummer to having trumpet lessons with my mum, which isn’t fun because:…

‘I’ve long questioned why certain American symphonies of the middle 20th century are rarely performed,’ GERARD SCHWARZ writes. ‘I hope that by expressing my admiration for works by Hanson, Schuman, Creston, Diamond, Mennin, Hovhaness and Piston, readers will want to explore their output further.’ ‘A Collection on Brahms’s meditations on last things was never going to be a bundle of laughs,’ admits RICHARD WIGMORE. ‘But my repeated confrontation with music of such stark beauty and emotional truth, in performances by some of the world’s finest singers, has been a moving and enriching experience.’ ‘It was fascinating to delve into the history of Handel’s London and his two “rival queens”,’ says: ALEXANDRA  COGHLAN, who interviews sopranos Lucy Crowe and Mary Bevan about their new recording. ‘I was surprised to learn that…

The Philharmonia Orchestra has named Santtu-Matias Rouvali, the 33-year-old Finnish Chief Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony and Tampere Philharmonic orchestras, as its next Principal Conductor. Simultaneously, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra has announced that Rouvali will extend his initial four-year contract for another four years taking him to 2025 at the helm of Sweden’s National Orchestra. Rouvali – already the orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor – succeeds Esa-Pekka Salonen at the start of the 2021-22 season, becoming the second youngest conductor to hold a principal conductor post with a major London orchestra (Riccardo Muti was 32 when he was appointed to the top job by the Philharmonia in 1973). Salonen will assume the title of Conductor Emeritus. ‘I am honoured to be the new Principal Conductor of the Philharmonia,’ Rouvali said. ‘This…

The BBC New Generation Artists Scheme has long been a reference point as to who are some of the finest young artists today, its alumni over two decades having gone on to garner acclaim, awards and to play a key role in shaping musical life. More than that of course, the scheme offers its members – who are on the scheme for two years – invaluable experience in broadcasting, recording and collaboration. The BBC has now named its 2019 intake, and they are: pianists Eric Lu and Alexander Gadjiev, viola player Timothy Ridout, mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska, violinist Johan Dalene, the Consone Quartet and jazz guitarist Rob Luft. Some names may already be familiar to Gramophone readers, not least Eric Lu, who won First Prize at the Leeds International Piano Competition…

Podcasts Gramophone’s current Young Artist of the Year is Lise Davidsen, a singer with a huge future ahead of her. James Jolly went to see her at her home in Copenhagen and took the opportunity to talk to her about her new album for Decca, featuring music by Richard Strauss and Wagner. Michael Fabiano, recently in London to sing the title-role in Gounod’s Faust at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, has recorded an album of arias by Donizetti and Verdi. James Jolly caught up with him during rehearsals at Covent Garden to talk about the programme of the recital, and his interest in the operatic music of this period. Orchestra of the Year playlists We’ve created playlists on Apple Music dedicated to each orchestra nominated for the 2019 Orchestra…

We’ve chosen to highlight a celebration of Herbert von Karajan’s legacy in our selection of videos to explore on medici.tv this month. The series, entitled ‘The Boss’, features many of the works for which the conductor was justly celebrated, including the Beethoven and Bruckner symphonies, the Verdi Requiem, and Richard Strauss’s tone-poems. A work Karajan never conducted is Mahler’s Third Symphony – you can catch Lahav Shani and the Rotterdam Philharmonic in the work, a concert recorded this May. Another young artist, the French pianist Lucas Debargue gave a concert in Moscow in May playing Scarlatti, Medtner and Liszt. With voting for the Gramophone Awards under way, why not watch our Opera winner from 2017, Berg’s Wozzeck, filmed in Zurich with Christian Gerhaher in the title-role? And from the archive,…

For the most part, the great American symphonies of the middle 20th century are rarely performed. Of course, there are some exceptions: Copland’s Third, Harris’s Third and Bernstein’s First and Second; Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto and Adagio for Strings are heard often, and are among his repertoire works, but his excellent Symphony No 1 is seldom done. Gershwin did not write a symphony and Ives, though respected as an American innovator, was less successful as a symphonist (though some might disagree). The question is, are there other important American works to fit into this group that are unjustly overlooked? I believe the answer is a resounding yes. I would like to share my love and respect for the following American symphonies: Paul Creston’s Third; William Schuman’s Third; Alan Hovhaness’s Second;…

Signiora Faustina, a famous Italian Lady, is coming over this Winter to rival Signiora Cuzzoni …’, the London Journal wrote in September 1725. An innocuous piece of news at first glance, it was in fact the first warning shot in a dispute that would rage ferociously through the British press and society, prompting battle lines to be drawn in London’s smartest drawing rooms, even dividing the royal family itself. ‘Getting to know Cuzzoni’s voice through music written for her, I sense a woman with huge talent and no fear’ – Lucy Crowe London was a city still newly in thrall to Italian opera. The success of Handel’s Rinaldo in 1711 had established a hunger for a new kind of entertainment and for the exotic European singers who could provide it.…

‘Istarted singing in taverns at 15 lire a time, and now I am the highest-paid tenor in the world.’ Arthur Jacobs’s interview with Mario Del Monaco (1915-82) in these pages (August 1962) makes for fascinating reading. Not only is the Florence-born tenor candid about his fees (refreshingly un-British Jacobs suggests) but also invites his interviewer The voice – constructed of steely girders of ever-reliable tone – seems to have been built on an astonishing natural gift , , to feel his biceps (‘hard’, he reports) and to engage in a trial of strength. One gets the sense of a genial encounter at the Savoy Hotel, but one where Del Monaco might have turned at any moment, bursting into a rage worthy of his most famous character, Verdi’s Otello. Such confidence…

Artur Schnabel famously described Mozart’s piano sonatas as being ‘too easy for children, too di›icult for artists’. Is there merit in this? I don’t think I’ve ever felt that Mozart’s sonatas are too easy. I guess when you’re growing up you might find the musical language rather ‘childlike’ and innocent alongside, say, the overt virtuosity of Liszt, but the older you get the more you find this vision or memory of childhood – the sheer humour, wit and happiness, and some sadness of course – utterly moving. This representation of the purest emotions, which we sometimes seem to have lost touch with, appears to us as a miracle. But finding the tone for this music, not to mention the sometimes freakish technical di›iculties (the first movement of K310, for example),…

‘Dark Full Ride’ Robert Black db Lisa Moore pf Matthew Welch bagpipes Talujon Percussion Quartet Cantaloupe Four quarter-hour explorations of tone colour, including the title-work for a quartet of drum kits and the mesmeric Lad for nine bagpipes. Steel Hammer Bang on a Can All-Stars; Trio Mediaeval Cantaloupe (A/14) Wolfe’s meticulous deconstruction of the John Henry ballad blends her trademark urban dynamism with the luminosity of Appalachian traditional music. Anthracite Fields The Choir of Trinity Wall Street / Julian Wachner; Bang on a Can All-Stars Cantaloupe (1/16) Wolfe’s gritty, postmodern take on the oratorio looks unflinchingly at the lives of Pennsylvania coal miners. Through humanising this dark and difficult subject, Wolfe’s music ultimately uplifts.…

Hugo Shirley I’m reluctant to say how long it had been since I’d listened to this Aida. That’s sometimes the problem with ‘classics’ – they risk gathering dust as part of the furniture of a collection. Like Alan Blyth in his original review, though, I listened through to this again in one sitting. Dusty it certainly ain’t! Neil Fisher Absolutely no dust here, except the stuff blowing past the pyramids while, six feet under, Radames and Aida are snuffing it. Writing notes as I listened to the recording, I actually scribbled down ‘This production COOKS!’ Age hasn’t cooled the enthusiasm of the soloists, nor the strikingly individual approach taken by conductor Riccardo Muti. He’s definitely got something to prove, hasn’t he? HS Yep! I’m struck by that youthful picture of…

After he had grown that famous patriarchal beard in his late forties, Brahms seems to have enjoyed appearing prematurely grizzled. Yet when he completed his Vier ernste Gesänge (‘Four Serious Songs’) on his 63rd and last birthday, May 7, 1896, he had every reason to feel his age. Over the previous few years the composer had suffered a string of bereavements, including his former pupil and close musical confidante Elisabet von Herzogenberg, née Stockhausen. His beloved Clara Schumann lay mortally ill (she died on May 20). And he himself was already suffering from the first symptoms of the liver cancer that would kill him the following April. Brahms’s friend and biographer Max Kalbeck remarked how the agnostic composer ‘always liked to seek out the godless texts from the Bible’. Like…

Yes,’ said a colleague to me, as we sat drinking coffee in the press room at the High End Show in Munich, ‘but who’s it all for? I mean, I was just listening to a system I thought was quite acceptable, and then they told me the total cost was somewhere just over half a million. Have they taken leave of their senses?’ He had a point. Notwithstanding the fact that the name of the show should alert you to what you’re letting yourself in for, this year’s event – held at the beginning of May – did seem to have an awful lot of ‘if you need to ask the price, you can’t afford it’ systems. That £500,000 set-up my friend had heard was by no means extraordinary in…

JÖRG DEMUS Pianist and composer Born December 2, 1928 Died April 16, 2019 One of the major song- and chamber-pianists of our time has died at the age of 90. Born in Austria, Demus was one of the first pianists, along with Paul Badura-Skoda (with whom he often performed as a duo), to explore performance on the fortepiano. As an accompanist he worked with some of the most significant Lieder singers of the post-war period, including Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Elly Ameling, Peter Schreier, Theo Adam and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (with whom he recorded extensively for DG). Of the Fischer-Dieskau/Demus Winterreise of 1966, Alan Blyth wrote: ‘That this is the most interior, unadorned and undemonstrative of Fischer-Dieskau’s readings perhaps arises from the fact that Demus, a discerning musician and sure accompanist, is the…

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 Nepilova • Jeremy Nicholas • Christopher Nickol Geoffrey Norris • Richard Osborne • Stephen Plaistow • Mark Pullinger • Peter Quantrill • Guy Rickards Malcolm Riley • Marc Rochester • Patrick Rucker • Edward Seckerson • Mark Seow •…

Christopher Gabbitas, a former member of the renowned vocal group The King’s Singers, has been appointed Artistic Director of The Phoenix Chorale. He was chosen following a two-year search process by the American choir as it looked for a replacement for Charles Bruffy, who had held the post from 1999 until 2017. During his 15 years with The King’s Singers, Gabbitas appeared on more than 30 albums and performed in almost 2000 concerts. He’d joined the group having been a choral scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge, subsequently singing with groups including Polyphony, The King’s Consort and the choir of the Temple Church while working as a lawyer. Reflecting on his appointment, and his experience of English and American choral traditions, Gabbitas said: ‘During my time with The King’s Singers…

Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu will be staying in Helsinki when he steps down as Chief Conductor of the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2021: right at the start of the following year he will take over as Chief Conductor of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet. Lintu’s collaborations with the company have already included Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (2016), Sibelius’s Kullervo (2017) and Berg’s Wozzeck (2019), with Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos to follow next year. According to a statement by his agents, the move reflects the conductor’s shifting focus towards opera. As Lintu himself put it: ‘it’s so exciting for me to be able to focus on one of the greatest and most challenging artistic achievements: the symbiosis of music, words and the stage.’ The four-and-a-half-year tenure will also…

A number of years ago, during the run of my erstwhile BBC Radio 3 show Stage and Screen, I took to the stage of the Royal Opera’s Linbury Theatre with the soprano Renée Fleming for an in-depth conversation about her ever broadening and ever more spectacular career (at that point there was no indication that an asteroid would one day bear her name as it does now). But before we arrived on stage I played her rather startling version of Joni Mitchell’s ‘River’. There must have been a few in the audience that night who will have wondered if they were at the right event on the right day, such was the vocal transformation – and indeed even the astute vocal coach Mary King was momentarily taken in and taken…

Paul Creston: Symphony No 3, Op 48, ‘Three Mysteries’ Seattle Symphony / Gerard Schwarz Naxos S D 8 571203 (12/92) Paul Creston: Invocation and Dance (and other works) Seattle Symphony / Gerard Schwarz Naxos B 8 559153 (4/04) William Schuman: Symphony No 3 New York Philharmonic / Leonard Bernstein DG F 419 7802 (11/87) David Diamond: Symphony No 2 (and No 4) Seattle Symphony / Gerard Schwarz Naxos S 8 559154 (9/04) Howard Hanson: Symphony No 3 (and other works) Eastman-Rochester Orchestra and Chorus / Howard Hanson Mercury Living Presence F 434 3022 Peter Mennin: Symphony No 3 (rec 1954) New York Philharmonic / Dimitri Mitropoulos Naxos S D 980248 (3/55) Alan Hovhaness: Symphony No 2 Dallas Symphony Orchestra / Andrew Litton Dorian F DOR90224 (6/00) Walter Piston: Symphony No…

Andrew Farach-Colton listens to the Girard Quartet’s Saint-Saëns: ‘They have a warm, beautifully blended tone and negotiate the work’s myriad rhythmic and textural intricacies with élan’ REVIEW ON PAGE 57 Liam Cagney explores the music of Christopher Trapani: ‘We’re treated to a wonderfully rich acoustic palette through virtuoso playing and mobile harmonic polarities’ REVIEW ON PAGE 58 JS Bach Goldberg Variations, BWV988. Suite No 1, BWV1066 (both arr Václav Vonášek) Arundo Quartet Supraphon F SU4261-2 (54’ • DDD) Presently a bassoonist with the Berlin Philharmonic, Václav Vonášek founded the Arundo wind ensemble as a trio in 2003, and invited a basset-horn colleague to join them for this Bach project. In arranging the Goldberg Variations, he explains in the booklet, he was most challenged by the virtuoso ‘arabesque’ variations that require…

• 1940 – March 20 Del Monaco makes his professional debut as Turiddu ( Cavalleria rusticana ) at the Teatro Comunale, Cagli. • 1950 – July; and November 27 He makes his debut as Otello in Buenos Aires, and later that year makes his Metropolitan Opera debut as Puccini’s Des Grieux. • 1962 – June 30 He sings Otello at Covent Garden, returning to London for the first time after his debut there 16 years previously. • 1975 – Official retirement from the stage He makes his final appearance as Canio in Vienna on May 1. Seven years later, on October 16, 1982, he dies at Mestre, near Venice, aged 67 – and is buried in his Otello costume.…

Alexandra Coghlan hears the latest album from Magdalena Ko›ená: ‘Kožená has chosen the repertoire with care, with a really delectable selection, and the emotional range is exhilarating’ Edward Seckerson basks in the sunshine with Elina Garanca: ‘Just when you think you might overdose on lovelorn romanticism, we get Piazzolla’s edgy, fiery tango’ Amner Complete Consort Music Dublin Consort Singers; Fretwork / Mark Keane Rubicon F RCD1032 (73’ • DDD • T) A near-contemporary of Gibbons, Tomkins and Weelkes, John Amner (1579-1641) left just one publication behind at his death (though a generous selection of other works have been preserved and subsequently edited). His Sacred Hymns of 3, 4, 5 and 6 parts for Voyces and Vyols was printed in 1615 and its contents, recorded here in full by Fretwork…

Richard Bratby relishes Kálmán’s very first operetta: ‘Demanding textual purity in operetta is like seeking an “authentic” recipe for goulash:  rather beside the point’ Hugo Shirley listens to the tenor of the late Johan Botha: ‘The voice is focused and well supported: Botha’s well-schooled technique can be  heard in every phrase’ Bielawa Vireo: The Spiritual Biography of a Witch’s Accuser Rowen Sabala sop ...........................................................Vireo Gregory Purnhagen sngr .........Priest/Doctor/Lawyer Maria Lazarova mez ..................................................Mother Emma MacKenzie sop ............................................Caroline Laurie Rubin mez..........................Voice/Witch/Pernette Ryan Glover ten ..........................................................Raphael Kirsten Sollek contr ...............................................Cow/Lion Deborah Voigt sop ............................... Queen of Sweden Matthias Bossi drums ...........................................Drummer Michael Parker Harley bar......................................Farmer Jennifer Koh vn.................................Violinist in the Snow Matt Marks sngr.....................................................Policeman Musicians include Kronos Quartet, San Francisco Girls Chorus, Alarm Will Sound and American Contemporary Music Ensemble / Lisa Bielawa…

If you want the briefest of sampling points to reveal the virtues of Jaap van Zweden’s Hong Kong Philharmonic Ring cycle try track 7 on the first disc, the point in the first scene of Das Rheingold where Alberich (Peter Sidhom) climbs the rock where the gold is resting, angrily curses love, makes off with it and leaves the Rhinemaidens distressed; or maybe Fafner and Fasolt’s Jurassic-style stamping on track 12. With excellent sound, singing that is often way above average and a production team that appreciates the stormier elements of Wagner’s humbling rhetoric (try the Act 3 Prelude to Siegfried with its vivid peals of thunder), we have a Ring that shoots straight from the hip. The vocal star, at least for me, is the charismatic and darkly imposing…

Aida Caballé sop Domingo ten et al ROH Chor, Trumpeters of the Royal Military School of Music, New Philharmonia Orch / Riccardo Muti Warner Classics Muti is for me the undoubted hero here. Verdi would have liked his concentration on essentials and the way he suggests a real theatrical experience. So compelling is the interpretation that I played through the opera in the first place at one session. There are no weaknesses in the cast. Caballé begins with some uncertainty, but once at ‘I sacri numi’, she comes into her own, phrasing the cantabile of ‘Numi, pietà’ unforgettably with long-breathed, carefully weighted tone and without a hint of self-indulgence. Her solo in the Nile Scene is still better, and she rises to a dolce, pp top C that puts even…

Venues across Moscow & St Petersburg & live on medici.tv Tchaikovsky Competition, June 17-29 Held just every four years, the International Tchaikovsky Competition is one of the most famous international musical contests, with past winners including pianists Van Cliburn, Grigory Sokolov and Daniil Trifonov, soprano Deborah Voigt, and violinists Gidon Kremer and Viktoria Mullova. Size-wise it’s also huge, because unlike other competitions that rotate disciplines, the Tchaikovsky runs all of its genres in each competition. Plus, this year, wind and brass are added for the very first time alongside the established piano, voice, violin and cello. Then, beyond the prestige and cash rewards that accompany a win, the competition also offers the chance to perform before an array of major – and influential – stars. For instance, Valery Gergiev heads…

THIS MONTH A classic reinvented by Quad, bargain high-end earphones and the latest show news from Munich. Andrew Everard, Audio Editor However you look at them, the newly reintroduced Klipsch La Scala AL5 speakers will have an imposing presence in any listening room. Originally introduced as a professional-use model in 1963, the design took its name from the Milan opera house and featured a horn-loaded three-way design, delivering sufficient efficiency to allow it to be driven to high levels with the low-power amplifiers of the time. The new AL5 version 1 , selling for £12,000 a pair, maintains that high sensitivity at 105dB/2.83V/1m but uses more modern materials in its drivers, mounted in an imposing cabinet built from 2.5cm-thick panels of birch ply and MDF. This may be a smaller…

Pro-Ject MaiA S2 The Pro-Ject MaiA S2 is just 20cm wide and less than half the height at 3.6cm tall but can still deliver an impressive 25W per channel, which is more than enough to drive speakers of decent sensitivity. It also has a phono stage and both digital and analogue inputs, and sells for £425 – more details at project-audio.com. NAD D 3020 amplifier Taking a different approach, but again with a phono stage added in its latest V2 version, is NAD’s D 3020 amplifier, which sells for £399. Analogue and digital inputs, plus Bluetooth, complete the specification and the 3020 can be used in either horizontal or vertical orientations to save space. Find out more at nadelectronics.com. Marantz HD-AMP1 Retro appeal is core to the Marantz HD-AMP1, with…

Praise for the BBC Phil The BBC orchestras have been rightly praised for their remarkable work over many years but I would like to use your pages to say, in particular, ‘hats off’ to the BBC Philharmonic – with the loyal and magnificent support of Chandos. The Philharmonic’s recordings of less well-trodden areas of orchestral repertoire provide consistently stimulating, top-quality performances in brilliant recordings … the sheer adventurousness from a record label is something of a wakeup call to other, let’s say, less enlightened sources. We’ve had symphonies by Bax, Dutilleux and Dohnányi, of all people. The Roussel discs conducted by Yan-Pascal Tortelier are outstanding – please let’s now have properly idiomatic performances of the four symphonies from this team (for pity’s sake not just the Third). There’s plenty of…

Raising their voices in the Baltic states Arvo Pärt has increased the profile of Estonian choral music, but what about composers from Finland, Latvia and Lithuania? Ivan Moody explores what links the choral music of these countries, and what makes each country’s musical voice unique Benedetti plays jazz A chance encounter between the violinist and Wynton Marsalis led to the jazz legend writing a concerto for her, premiered last year and now recorded. Charlotte Gardner meets them Elgar: Symphony No 1 Geraint Lewis explores the best recorded versions in the ‘Gramophone Collection’…

Copland . Ravel . Stravinsky ‘Symphonic Dances’ Copland Appalachian Spring – Suite Ravel Daphnis et Chloé – Suite No 2 Stravinsky The Firebird – Suite (1919 version) Park Avenue Chamber Symphony Orchestra / David Bernard Recursive Classics F RC2061415 (64’ • DDD) You have to hand it to New York’s Park Avenue Chamber Symphony and their intrepid leader David Bernard for sheer pluck and pure chutzpah, as they once again record repertoire warhorses that are more than sufficiently represented in the catalogue by world-class orchestras. As it happens, the three ubiquitous ballet suites featured on their latest release represent some of the organisation’s best work. In Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, one cannot help but be impressed by the rhythmic discipline and the colourful allure in the brass and woodwinds. The introduction…

Across the United States, the pressure is on to redefine longstanding classical music institutions that otherwise face potential extinction. The West Coast in general commands a reputation for spearheading this sort of innovation, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic in particular tends to be singled out as its epicentre. But LA has a contender of late over 1000 miles to the north, where the Seattle Symphony Orchestra (SSO) – with a fraction of the LA Phil’s annual operating budget (just under $30 million versus $120 million) – has been similarly winning attention for its efforts to revamp the American orchestral profile. In March the SSO launched a new venue at the corner of its home concert complex (Benaroya Hall) in downtown Seattle: Octave 9, which boasts state-of-the-art tech allowing for sophisticated…