Table of contents for October 2019 in Gramophone Magazine

Performers offer us listeners many things – transcendent playing perhaps, or interpretative insight. But some of our most meaningful encounters with musicians happen when they challenge or change our perspective. Christian Tetzlaff is one of those artists, and his new album of the violin concertos of Beethoven and Sibelius is one of those records. Even the instrument he plays – a new one by Peter Greiner, rather than a vintage violin from by an illustrious luthier of centuries past – encourages us to think differently. As he recently told me, he’s not trying to make a statement, he just thinks it’s the best-sounding instrument. It’s a relatively rare stance. Free-thinking, convention-challenging – it’s there in the playing too. Rob Cowan, who reviews the album, and the musicians interviewed by James…

Conductor John Wilson has revived a classic orchestra from the past century, the Sinfonia of London, drawing on some of the leading players from London-based ensembles to make one-off recording projects. The Sinfonia of London was founded in 1955 by flautist Gordon Walker, drawing away many players of the London Symphony Orchestra, to record soundtracks. Among its most memorable albums was a recording with Sir John Barbirolli of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro and Serenade for Strings, and Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis and Greensleeves, issued on HMV in 1963. In its initial incarnation it closed soon after, but was revived in 1982 by Howard Blake for the soundtrack of The Snowman, subsequently recording further soundtracks. Now, under Wilson, it will focus on making recordings for Chandos.…

“The organ of Christ Church, Spitalfields, on which I’ve recorded my new album ‘From Palaces to Pleasure Gardens’ was built in 1735 by Richard Bridge, one of the leading organ builders of the day. Considered to be his masterpiece, at the time it was the largest organ in the country and remained so for the next 80 years. Pipe organs have always been susceptible to the fashions of the day and in the 19th century the Victorians either threw out these old instruments or they altered them beyond recognition. The extraordinary thing about this organ is that so much of it has survived (it even survived the Blitz!), certainly enough for the organ builder William Drake to recreate the original 1735 scheme in the recent restoration. Visually it remains unaltered,…

• Daniel Müller-Schott has just recorded Saint-Saëns’s Cello Concerto No 1 for Orfeo. On August 29, the cellist was at the Jesus-Christus Church in Berlin for the session, for which he was joined by conductor Alexandre Bloch and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. The release date is yet to be confirmed. • Lucy Parham’s ‘I, Clara’ project (see My Music, page 138) was recorded in June for the Deux-Elles label with Dame Harriet Walter as narrator. The pianist and actor were at Air Edel Studios on June 18 for the recording, which will be released in October to coincide with Parham’s performance at the London Piano Festival. • Jonathan Biss was at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York City, from June 9 to 12 to record the ninth…

Piano Quartet No 2 Gould Piano Trio; David Adams va Naxos (A/11) Only performed once in Stanford’s lifetime, this unpublished, brooding work – composed in 1913 – is well worth exploring among the rich panoply of the composer’s concerted chamber works. 38 Preludes Sam Haywood pf Hyperion (6/17) This recording – featuring pieces taken from Stanford’s two sets of Preludes in All the Keys, Op 163 (1918) and Op 179 (1929), each containing 24 pieces – provides a splendid account of the range of inventiveness of Stanford’s little-known piano works. String Quartets – Nos 3, 4 and 7 Dante Quartet Somm (10/18) These virtuoso quartets of 1896, 1906 and 1919, performed brilliantly by the Dante Quartet, reveal not only the technical demands Stanford expected from his players, but also the…

Edward Seckerson hears Semyon Bychkov’s Tchaikovsky Project: ‘This is not an orchestra to wear its virtuosity like a badge of honour – which makes Bychkov such a good fit for them’ Jed Distler admires a disc of 20th-century harpsichord concertos: ‘When you think you’re settling into minimalist comfort zones, Michael Nyman quickly shatters your expectations’ Beethoven ‘The UNESCO Beethoven Symphony No 9’ Symphony No 9, ‘Choral’, Op 125 Erin Wall sop Annika Schlicht mez Attilio Glaser ten René Pape bass Bavarian State Youth Choir; Members of the Bavarian Radio Chorus; World Orchestra for Peace; Würth Philharmonic Orchestra / Donald Runnicles Video director Elisabeth Malzer C Major Entertainment F 749508; F 749604 (70’ + 12’ • NTSC • 16:9 • 1080i • DTS-HD MA5.0, DTS5.0 & PCM stereo • 0 •…

• 1946 – The start of a career Graffman graduates from the Curtis Institute, shortly afterwards making his professional solo debut with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Three years later he wins the prestigious Leventritt Competition, where awards were given sparingly. • 1952 – Marlboro Festival residency and marriage On George Szell’s advice to explore chamber music, Graffman spends summer 1952 at Marlboro, both studying and collaborating with artistic director and pianist Rudolf Serkin. He marries Naomi Helfman: partner, collaborator and editor till her death, June 17, 2019. • 1955 – First recordings On October 31, Graffman begins sessions at New York’s Webster Hall for his commercial recording debut, resulting in recordings of Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and Prokofiev’s Sonatas Nos 2 and 3.…

1949 Born in Baltimore, Maryland on February 15 1967-71 Studies at Oberlin Conservatory with Richard Hofmann 1971-73 Private studies in composition with George Crumb 1973-77 Graduate studies at Cornell University with Karel Husa and Robert Moffat Palmer 1978-81 Teaches composition at the University of Michigan 1981-2002 Teaches in the composition department at Eastman School of Music 1986 Becomes first Composer-in-Residence with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra 1993 Awarded Pulitzer Prize for music for his Trombone Concerto 1997 Joins the composition faculty of the Juilliard School 2000 Receives honorary doctorate from State University of New York at Genesco 2002 Elected to membership of the American Academy of Arts and Letters 2012-15 Composer-in-Residence with New York Philharmonic…

Jazz Shahbaz Hussain & Helen Anahita Wilson Diwan Golden Girl Records F GOLDG002 Inspired, often off-the-cuff stuff from two musicians whose pairing, unlikely on paper, makes perfect sense on a debut that deftly combines just-so minimalism with dizzying flights of fancy. Brighton-based Wilson is a classically-trained composer and multi-instrumentalist whose PhD studies at SOAS involve researching Indian karnatic classical music. Hussain, a Rochdale resident, is an award-winning tabla virtuoso with technical versatility and an inventive streak nurtured by studies with legendary elders including Ustad Alla Rakha, a frequent accompanist of Ravi Shankar. Opener ‘Azar’ is a trippy, rhythmic joust boasting five different time cycles and a cornucopia of everything from Persian melodies to baroque counterpoint, all of it buoyed by a seven-note jazz riff on piano. Each track is similarly…

One of the many memorable quotes drawn from the thoughts of composer-conductor Michael Gielen, who died earlier this year at the age of 91, is: ‘I cannot live with the conscience of the truth being there waiting to be said and not being said.’ That uncompromising honesty informed most of his performances with the SWR Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden and Freiburg, and the unmissable latest volume of SWR Music’s Michael Gielen Edition centres on a corner of the repertory that Gielen held especially close to his heart, namely the Second Viennese School, which was also associated with the orchestra’s first chief conductor, Hans Rosbaud. The 12 discs include two performances of Schoenberg’s expansive symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande: the first is from 1973 with the Stuttgart RSO and the second,…

David Threasher welcomes a valuable volume of Mozartiana: ‘Keefe’s black book contains the phone numbers of many of the leading contemporary commentators on Mozart’ Nigel Simeone enjoys a weighty book on Stravinsky’s American years: ‘Slim combines infectious enthusiasm for his subject with a close eye for detail and the result is a book that is very hard to put down’ Mozart in Context Edited by Simon P Keefe Cambridge University Press, 350pp £74.99 (HB), £22.99 (PB) ISBN 978-1-107-18105-2 (HB) ISBN 978-1-316-63244-4 (PB) How well do we ever know the composers of the past? We know them through their music, of course, although in many cases even this masks their personalities. Snippets of biography may illuminate stretches of their public and private life – although the variable accuracy and veracity of…

Teatro Comunale, Bolzano & online September 6 Sitting within the South Tyrolean Bolzano Festival Bozen, the Ferrucio Busoni International Piano Competition includes Martha Argerich and Alfred Brendel among its previous laureates. Late in August, 27 pianists arrived to battle it out for prizes including a first of €22,000. September 6 is then Grande Finale night. Live-streamed, the evening sees the three remaining candidates perform with the Haydn Orchestra. concorsobusoni.it, facebook.com/Busoni. Piano.Competition, youtube.com/user/BusoniInternational/ Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg & online September 6 This month sees Alan Gilbert o›icially step into his new role as Chief Conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. On the menu are Symphony No 1 of Hamburg native Brahms, the world premiere of Frontispiz für Orchester by the NDR’s 2019›20 Composer-in-Residence, Unsuk Chin, then three 20th-century works from Gilbert’s homeland: Bernstein’s…

An all-in-one system reinvented, a very comprehensive Nordic amplifier and how the Walkman changed listening for ever. Andrew Everard, Audio Editor Unexpected but in many ways inevitable: that was the initial reaction to the news that Naim’s latest amplifiers now offer a built-in phono stage for use with a record player. After all, the company’s flagship integrated amplifier, the Supernait, has now come full-circle. The original had an array of digital inputs in addition to its analogue connections; the Supernait 2 dropped the digital provision and now the Supernait 3 1 , selling for £3499, remains all-analogue but with the addition of a moving-magnet phono stage of in-house design. The three-stage phono section – gain, passive equalisation and final gain and active equalisation – is built for excellent noise performance,…

Officially called the ‘Naim Mu-so 2nd Generation’, what is almost inevitably shortened to ‘Mu-so 2’ may look just like the groundbreaking model it replaces but is actually substantially updated, re-engineered and reinvented, with the aim of delivering even greater flexibility and performance. For that, no one can accuse the Naim engineers of lack of ambition: after all, the original set new standards in its class – well, actually, it invented its class – and set the company on the path of attracting a whole new range of buyers to its brand. The 2014 launch of Mu-so marked a series of firsts for the Salisbury company. It was its first integrated system, taking the idea of the NaimUniti models to its logical conclusion by building speakers and amplification into a single…

Sir Colin Davis’s Elgar … I greatly enjoyed reading your Collection on Elgar’s Symphony No 1 (August, page 108). Having gone and listened to the Sir Adrian Boult recording, based on your recommendation, I then went back and listened again to my old favourite that wasn’t considered by Geraint Lewis: Sir Colin Davis conducting the Staatskapelle Dresden in a live recording from 1998 released on the Profil label. As good as the Boult recording is, my loyalty remains unchanged. I wonder if it is something to do with the combination of a world class German orchestra that hadn’t been exposed much to this music, alongside a very experienced conductor who could guide them on their voyage of discovery? I would recommend the Dresden/Davis combination for those looking for perhaps the…

The best of the best Our special issue brings you full coverage of our annual Awards. Who will be named Artist of the Year? Which ensemble has the public voted for as its Orchestra of theYear? And which album has been crowned by our critics as Recording of the Year 2019? Oistrakh: a true Icon Tully Potter pays tribute to the legacy of the legendary violinist who captured a unique humanity through his ample tone and supple legato Collection: Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto Which version is the one to own? Charlotte Gardner investigates…

‘Post-concert dressing rooms don’t always make ideal interview scenarios’, admits writer PETER QUANTRILL, ‘but Iván Fischer waved away exhaustion and well-wishers to think deeply about the most famous symphony of all. “Beethoven is a prophet,” he told me. “He changes people’s lives.”’ ‘Hearing Christian Tetzlaff play the Beethoven Violin Concerto live in Berlin was a wonderful experience’, says JAMES JOLLY, ‘so it’s good that the recording reflects my memory of it. It was fascinating discussing music-making with him the following morning, and discovering what motivates this remarkable player.’ ‘It has been highly rewarding to become acquainted with, and exhume, so much of Stanford’s quality music that is still in manuscript’, says JEREMY DIBBLE. ‘Through this feature and many new recordings, I hope that he’ll be appreciated as the master of…

This year’s Gramophone Classical Music Awards takes place at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms, London on October 16. Presented with Apple Music, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute’s Polska Music programme and Medici TV, the ceremony can be viewed live (or on catch-up) at Medici TV where you can join us for the acceptance speeches and some high-class live music-making. The soprano Pretty Yende joins Gramophone’s James Jolly to co-host the Awards, and we’ll also be treated to the vibrant music-making of Poland’s Arte dei Suonatori (the period-instrument ensemble who won the Baroque Instrumental Award in 2003 for Vivaldi’s La stravaganza on Channel Classics). The ceremony starts at 6.30pm (UK time) and will feature the 10 recording awards (see the short list on page 16) as well as awards for Artist,…

Kodály’s majestic Sonata for solo cello, Op 8, is the greatest utterance for solo cello since Bach wrote his six Cello Suites. It is quite a statement for any cellist to set down this work on disc, let alone to have the courage to do so on a debut recording. Nevertheless, Matthew Zalkind, a native of Salt Lake City, Utah, who studied at Juillliard and the University of Michigan, seems unperturbed by this music’s reputation. His debut recording, for Avie (warmly reviewed by Andrew Farach-Colton on page 68), prefaces the Kodály with Bach’s Suite No 6, originally written for a five-stringed instrument but now more usually played (as by Zalkind) on the standard four, and a rather slighter, Baroque-inspired Suite for solo cello by a friend of the cellist, the…

The BBC has commissioned a musical animation of Sir Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book Mimi and the Mountain Dragon. It will feature a score composed by Oscar-winning composer Rachel Portman, to be recorded by the BBC Philharmonic and the Hallé’s family of choirs, and to be broadcast on BBC One this Christmas period. The film was commissioned by Jan Younghusband, Head of BBC Music Commissioning for Television, who had initially approached Morpurgo to write a children’s story that could be set to classical music. Morpurgo – a former Children’s Laureate whose works include War Horse – will introduce the film. Portman’s achievements, meanwhile, embrace a vast number of soundtracks for television and films, including Chocolat and The Cider House Rules, as well as The Little Prince, a children’s opera. The film,…

For the conductor Paavo Järvi, there are two kinds of soloist: ‘Those who leave after they’ve played their concerto and meet you later for dinner. And then there are the people who always take the opportunity to listen to the symphonic work in the second half. And Christian is one of those. He has a profound interest in music – not just violin music – but music in general. It sounds like that should be very normal but it’s not.’ And, as if to prove Järvi’s point, who should be sitting in front of me in Berlin’s Philharmonie a few weeks later for Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, having just given an extraordinary performance of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, but Christian Tetzlaff. That performance of the Beethoven, recorded live over two nights, is…

If something is any good, it’s worth waiting for. Words to live by – at least for Iván Fischer, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Channel Classics, who have made records together for 15 years and counting. Late in January 2017 they gathered at the orchestra’s purpose-built concert hall, Müpa, for three days of Beethoven: the First and Fifth Symphonies, in rehearsal, performance and recording. Only now, the best part of three years later, have the fruits of their labours been laid out. ‘For me, it’s a logical solution that people should rush on during the Fifth’s finale and join the orchestra – it’s a flash mob’ Why the delay? No less than Fischer, his producer Jared Sacks is a busy man. Founder, managing director and lead producer of Channel Classics…

Charlotte Gardner immerses herself in Vivaldi string concertos: ‘L’Archicembalo are big on their bass; for some that’s great fun, but others might prefer a bit less welly’ Pwyll ap Siôn on Miloš’s ambitious new album ‘The Sound of Silence’: ‘Miloš has been on a mission in recent years to bring seemingly incompatible sides of the guitar’s character closer together’ Bartók . Veress Bartók Piano Quintet, Sz23a Veress String Triob a Barnabás Kelemen, Vilde Frang vnsa Katalin Kokas,b Lawrence Power vas Nicolas Altstaedt vc b Alexander Lonquich pf Alpha F ALPHA458 (62’ • DDD) If you pan back to 1954 in search of the year’s finest music, Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto and Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra are among the best-known highlights. But what about Sándor Veress’s only String Trio? It flirts…

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 2 Graffman pf Philadelphia Orch / Ormandy Sony Classical The first unambiguously great recording of this underrated piece stands out for Graffman’s consistently clear, honest fingerwork and intelligent textual syntheses: he uses Tchaikovsky’s unabridged original score in the outer movements, but opts for the ‘traditional’ Siloti version for the slow movement. In turn, Ormandy and his players check their patented lushness and sensuality at the studio door in favour of atypically gaunt, line-orientated support.…

Given the sheer volume of Thalberg’s opera fantasies, how did you choose these particular works for your latest album? As with the first disc of Thalberg’s music I recorded, I simply went through all of these pieces and chose what I felt most drawn to. Of course, back then I had a sort of programme in mind, which was to focus mainly on works based on Italian opera. This time, I wanted the focus to be on composers of the French grand opéra (Auber, Halévy and Meyerbeer) who, I feel, have not only been underrepresented as composers themselves, but almost entirely neglected within the sphere of Thalberg’s fantasies, paraphrases and transcriptions (three of the tracks on this album are first recordings). Aside from this, I chose works where I feel…

Der gerettete Alberich. Rapture. Violin Concerto Cho-Liang Lin vn Evelyn Glennie perc Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra / Leif Segerstam Ondine (6/04) Rouse’s most quixotic concerto (for violin) coupled with his most straightforward (for percussion), along with the most accessible among his orchestral pieces, in what is an excellent introduction to this composer. Kabir padavali. Seeing Talise Trevigne sop Orion Weiss pf Albany Symphony / David Alan Miller Naxos Schumann and Skip Spence are disparate yet potent influences on Rouse’s piano concerto Seeing, here coupled with a song-cycle that represents his music at its most sensuous and inviting. Odna Zhizn. Prospero’s Rooms. Symphonies Nos 3 and 4 New York Philharmonic / Alan Gilbert Dacapo (8/16) Two markedly contrasting symphonies juxtaposed with two equally characterful orchestral pieces testify to the success of Rouse’s…

Every now and again one chances upon a musician whose ability to convey the elevated essence of great music promises a rewarding experience at each fresh encounter. One such is the conductor Hans Rosbaud, whose combination of sound musical instinct and technical prowess (Rosbaud could perform competently on virtually all of the orchestra’s instruments) immediately inspires confidence. As with Toscanini, Rosbaud’s performances imply a will of iron; both men led excellent radio orchestras which delivered, largely without fuss or affectation, profoundly focused interpretations. SWR’s latest Rosbaud releases – with his SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden – include a remarkable Brahms set where a First Symphony, as broadcast in 1955, alternates vigorous drama (in the outer movements) with a rapturously beautiful account of the Andante sostenuto. The fifth CD features an alternative…

Stockhausen In June this year, Dutch opera-goers joined Stockhausen enthusiasts from around the world in a former gas-holder-turned nightclub on the western edge of Amsterdam. Over three days they (we) were dazzled, puzzled and bewitched by almost half (about 15 of the 29 hours) of Licht, the seven-day opera cycle that stages life, the universe and everything through the eyes of Karlheinz Stockhausen. The Idagio platform presents a CD-length plate of canapes to the full tasting menu that is Licht. None too helpfully labelled, they begin by pitching us into the middle of ‘Michael’s Journey around the World’, the virtuosic concerto conceived for the composer’s trumpet-playing son and enacting his own well-travelled path to fame in the ’60s. Subsequent highlights include the shattering climax of ‘Lucifer’s Dance’ – in the…

Type Network music system Price £1299 Inputs 3.5mm stereo analogue, optical digital, USB Type A, HDMI with ARC and CEC Networking Ethernet, Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac) Streaming Apple AirPlay 2, Bluetooth, Chromecast built in, UPnP, Spotify Connect, TIDAL, Roon Ready, Internet Radio File formats (depending on input) PCM-based to 384kHz/24-bit, DSD to DSD128 Audio Three-way stereo speakers, actively driven with 450W (6x75W) of amplification Accessories supplied Remote handset, black speaker grille Dimensions (WxHxD) 62.8x12.2x26.4cm naimaudio.com…

Although I was pleased that last month’s Gramophone devoted space to film music why is this subject so often only discussed from a Hollywood-centric point of view? There is a great tradition of fine European/art house movie composition that is neglected. Apart from the popular Michel Legrand what about other French New Wave cinema composers like Georges Delerue and Antoine Duhammel? Both wrote music for films made by Truffaut and Godard (most notably Jules et Jim and Pierrot Le Fou). As for classic Italian cinema of the ’60s it often appears to be only represented by Nina Rota’s work with Fellini. But there is also the undeservedly forgotten Giovanni Fusco who wrote brilliantly for the iconic films of Antonioni (L’avventura and L’ecllise) and Alain Resnais – Fusco’s chamber music from…

My involvement in Lucy Parham’s ‘I, Clara’ came out of ‘Beloved Clara’, which we’ve been performing together for some years, and which explores the letters and diaries of Robert and Clara Schumann. These projects, whereby the exploration of composers’ lives throws light on their musical creations, are endlessly fascinating – of course, you don’t need to know about a composer to appreciate his or her work, but to listen to a Robert Schumann piece having learned it was the last piece he wrote before being committed to an asylum allows you to be drawn into his music through an added lens. Lucy and I started to feel more and more strongly that, particularly with this year being the bicentenary of Clara’s birth, she should be celebrated on her own terms…

Montreal can be spelt with or without an accent aigu, an option that partly explains the abundance of music in this city. Where one symphony orchestra, new-music collective, Baroque band or chamber society would do for most North American towns of about two million people (depending on where you draw the urban boundaries), Montreal offers two or more. And while memories of the origin of these divisions are receding, French and English speakers (the latter now distinctly in the minority) can enjoy in the 21st century the fruits of the linguistic duality of the 20th. In few other cities on this side of the Atlantic are two rival orchestras led by conductors of comparable repute The largesse is apparent in the Maison Symphonique, the sleek concert hall that opened in…

KORNGOLD Symphony, etc Sinfonia of London / John Wilson Chandos You can read the story behind this orchestra in our news pages, but suffice to say this remarkable group of players gathered by John Wilson offer a Korngold Symphony of striking beauty. ‘SILK BAROQUE’ Wu Wei sheng Holland Baroque Pentatone The sheng, masterfully played by Wu Wei –the soloist who introduced the Chinese mouth organ to readers in our February issue’s Artists & their Instruments – fits movingly into this Baroque programme. ‘IBERIA Y FRANCA’ Imogen Cooper pf Chandos Imogen Cooper’s characterful performances lend a heady and charming air to these works evocatively exploring the links between France and Spain, including music from Albéniz, Debussy and Ravel. BARTÓK Piano Quintet VERESS String Trio Vilde Frang vn et al Alpha This…

With their red trousers and blue jackets, the National Youth Orchestra of the USA cut quite a dash and their playing is pretty impressive too. If you missed their visit to the Proms catch them at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie – the programme includes including Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été (with a colour-coordinated Joyce DiDonato) and Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, conducted by Antonio Pappano. Catch the Tchaikovsky Competition’s Woodwind Gold Medallist Matvey Demin in Ibert’s delightful Flute Concerto at a Pacific Festival Concert in Sapporo under Valery Gergiev. On the opera front, you can watch one of this year’s Award nominees, Brett Dean’s Hamlet, filmed at its premiere run at Glyndebourne. Dipping into the archive, we have a 1980 performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto with Itzhak Perlman and the Philharmonia, Giulini conducting.…

Podcasts The Gramophone Podcast series is essential listening, featuring interviews with the leading artists and composers of our time. It is free to enjoy on the podcast platform of your choice or via the Gramophone website. Recently, Editor-in-Chief James Jolly met Danny Elfman, who is known to millions for his scores for over 100 movies, including many collaborations with the director Tim Burton, not to mention his inimitable title music for The Simpsons. This summer he released a new album on Sony Classical containing his Violin Concerto and Piano Quartet. The concerto, written for and played by Sandy Cameron, joined by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by John Mauceri, was the subject of a fascinating conversation, but they started by talking about the emergence of the specialist film composer…

It’s always exciting when a significant new voice arrives on the music scene and Decca really pushed the boat out a couple of months back for the debut release of the young Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen. She might just be the most important signing to the label since the glory days of Birgit Nilsson. As voices they couldn’t be more different – a fact that Davidsen was keen to stress when I interviewed her at the launch – but lazy comparisons are apt to be drawn when a singer inhabits the repertoire of a lyric/dramatic fach and as some of us know all too well one size does not fit all. Davidsen’s voice comes from a much more lyric place than other weighty voices in her fach – as witness…

‘The Mass has a wonderful harmonic sense, infinitely varied scoring and a most satisfying shape and form’ – Adrian Partington Today it almost seems like a platitude to extol the virtues of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s church music. For well over a century it has been sung and admired by Anglican choirs all over the world for the originality of its abundant melody, liturgical appropriateness, variety and, above all, its symphonic vision, qualities that no other composer in the idiom has achieved with the same aplomb. And no one could argue with the extraordinary imagination that produced The Blue Bird, perhaps one of the greatest English part-songs ever written. In the last 30 years, however, Stanford has been liberated from many of the straitjackets in which he was erroneously placed,…

Beethoven . Sibelius Beethoven Violin Concerto, Op 61a Sibelius Violin Concerto, Op 47 Christian Tetzlaff vn Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin / Robin Ticciati Ondine F ODE1334-2 (71’ • DDD) a Recorded live at the Philharmonie, Berlin, November 16-17, 2018 ‘Tetzlaff’s sweet, delicately spun tone contrasts with, or should I say complements, Ticciati’s occasionally bullish accompaniment’ What we have here is by my calculations Christian Tetzlaff’s third recording of Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, the first two under Michael Gielen and David Zinman respectively. Having reviewed the latter in these pages back in June 2006, I noted then that ‘the main stumbling-block on so many rival recordings of this work is a sort of romantic reverence, a trend challenged by Zehetmair, Kremer and others. For all its many moments of profound repose, Beethoven’s Violin…

Lindsay Kemp on Scott Ross’s sadly curtailed Bach survey: ‘I seriously wonder if anyone has ever played harpsichord fugues more excitingly’ Harriet Smith finds much to enjoy in Mark Viner’s Thalberg: ‘If you’ve never encountered Halévy’s opera Charles VI then fret not – Thalberg offers a whistle-stop tour of the action’ JS Bach . M Brown . Kodály JS Bach Solo Cello Suite No 6, BWV1012 M Brown Suite Kodály Solo Cello Sonata, Op 6 Matthew Zalkind vc Avie F AV2406 (76’ • DDD) By choosing two of the most demanding works in the solo cello repertory for his recording debut, Matthew Zalkind seems to be laying all his cards on the table – and I’m delighted to report that he shows a winning hand. The American cellist’s interpretation of…

Alexandra Coghlan listens to Josef Myslivecek’s cantata Adamo ed Eva: ‘Despite a healthy recording catalogue, he is best remembered today as Mozart’s promiscuous friend’ REVIEW ON PAGE 85 David Patrick Stearns hears the mezzo Marta Fontanals-Simmons: ‘This is recommendable to anyone interested in the landscape of American art song’ REVIEW ON PAGE 91 Berlioz Grande Messe des morts (Requiem), Op 5 Michael Spyres ten London Philharmonic Choir; Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra / John Nelson Erato F (CD + ) 9029 54306-4 (82’ • DDD • T/t) Recorded live at St Paul’s Cathedral, London, March 8, 2019 We’re immediately back on the old concert Requiem dilemma of devotion or drama. Leading candidates on disc from the past (Munch, Beecham, the first Colin Davis, McCreesh) have tended much towards the latter –…

Peter Quantrill gets to grips with a provocative opera by Wolfgang Rihm: ‘Jakob Lenz is a young man’s opera, no less the work of a disturbingly ingenious mind than Adès’s Powder Her Face’ REVIEW ON PAGE 100 Mike Ashman watches Wagner’s Lohengrin from Bayreuth: ‘Becza›a fits the title-role like a glove, with the Italianate sound that one may dream of and more than enough stamina’ REVIEW ON PAGE 102 Bartók Duke Bluebeard’s Castle John Relyea bass...................................................Bluebeard Michelle DeYoung mez ..............................................Judith Pál Mácsai spkr..........................................................Prologue Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner Chandos F CHSA5237 (59’ • DDD/DSD) Includes libretto and translation Both John Relyea and Michelle DeYoung have recorded these roles before – both, as it happens, with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting. I missed the DVD from the Paris Opéra featuring Relyea (ArtHaus,…

After George Szell’s death in 1970, István Kertész was the overwhelming favourite of the Cleveland Orchestra members to succeed him as Music Director. The board opted instead for Lorin Maazel – who had also just turned 40 – perhaps bearing in mind the brilliance and intensity of his early recordings. While sharing Szell’s background, Kertész distanced himself from his Hungarian émigré heritage – understandably so, not only to make his own mark but because he shunned an autocratic style of leadership; you can hardly imagine either Szell or Maazel remarking, as Kertész did to Alan Blyth (1/68), that ‘You must not be a dictator. If you have 80 players in front of you, they must somehow feel that you are the 81st.’ Such collegial tendencies made him a natural fit…

Here, briefly, is the route map of The Carnival of the Animals, with the French/English titles of each section, and some notes on some of the internal musical references. 1 Introduction et Marche royale du Lion (‘Introduction and the Lion’s Royal March’) – with perhaps a nod and a wink to his song ‘La brise’ (the first of Mélodies persanes, Op 26) dedicated to Pauline Viardot. 2 Poules et coqs (‘Hens and Cockerels’) – see also Rameau, one of Saint-Saëns’s favourite composers. 3 Hémiones (usually translated as ‘Wild Asses’) – the original title was ‘Animaux véloces’, now the movement’s subtitle. ‘Hémiones’ are ‘onagers’, says the dictionary unhelpfully, though there is, apparently, a subspecies called a Persian onager (see Mélodies persanes, above) while a ‘dziggetai’ (also seen in some translations) is…

Handel Agrippina is everywhere at the moment. The Bavarian State Opera’s production arrives at Covent Garden this autumn, and a different production from the New York Met is coming to a cinema near you on February 29 next year. It’s a witty opera from Handel’s early years in Italy that satirises the goings-on at the court of the Emperor Claudius in ancient Rome, and Walter Sutcliffe’s modern-dress production from the Grange Festival does it full justice. The revolving set by Jon Bausor consists of raked rows of theatre seats that become a flight of steps leading, half-way into Act 2, to a garden. Its latter configuration enables the characters to hide, eavesdrop and appear as if from nowhere – all beautifully handled by Sutcliffe. Three characters are familiar, operatically speaking,…

Rotel RA-1572 A model such as the Rotel RA-1572 offers a lower-price alternative to the Hegel, though it lacks the streaming capabilities. It does have a USB Type B input for a computer, however, and a healthy 120W-per-channel output. See rotel.com for more details. Krell K-300i Step up beyond the Hegel to an amplifier from a famous name from the USA, and the Krell K-300i is available either with or without a built-in streaming module, which brings it in line with the Hegel’s capabilities. Even slimmer than the H390, it nonetheless delivers 150W per channel, and is both simple to use and capable of striking performance. For more, see krellonline.com. Mark Levinson No5805 Finally, another US brand has a striking new contender in this market. The Mark Levinson No5805 is…

SPIRO MALAS Bass-baritone and actor Born January 28, 1933 Died June 23, 2019 The Greek-American bass-baritone Spiro Malas, a leading singer with New York City Opera for many years, has died in New York at the age of 86. Born in Baltimore, Malas began his vocal training at Peabody Conservatory alongside attending and subsequently teaching at Towson State College in Maryland. The young Malas caught the attention of Rosa Ponselle, and made his operatic debut in his hometown in 1959. In 1960, he won both the American Opera Auditions and the Met Council Auditions, and made his New York debut that same year. After sparking the interest of Joan Sutherland and her husband Richard Bonynge, he was invited on a tour of Australia with the Sutherland-Williamson International Opera Company, the…

Deak BB Wolf (An Apologia)a . Bye-Bye!b . The Legend of Spuyten Duyvilc . The Snow Queen Finale: The Ice Palaced b Julia Bogorad-Kogan fl/narrc Chris Gekker tpt d Pamela Goldsmith vaa John Deak db/narr a Judith Lynn Stillman pf/narrcd Cabrillo Festival Orchestra / Marin Alsop narr Naxos American Classics B 8 559785 (53’ • DDD) Recorded live atcd Cabrillo Festival Hall, Santa Cruz, CA, July 31 & August 1, 1993;ab 820 West End Ave, New York, December 15, 1998 Narrators, like humour, are notoriously difficult to integrate into musical works. For every successful endeavour – Schoenberg rather had the knack, as in Gurrelieder, A Survivor from Warsaw and the Ode to Napoleon – the failures are legion. Works such as Britten’s Young Person’s Guide and Prokofiev’s Peter and the…