Classical CDs
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphony No 3, Strauss: Horn Concerto No 1 Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra/Manfred Honeck, William Caballero (horn) (Reference Recordings)Funny how one's first experience of encountering a piece can still cast a shadow decades on; I first heard Beethoven’s Eroica on an old LP conducted by Otto Klemperer. Gaunt, tense and weighty, it's how I thought the piece had to go, and I've only got used to faster performances in recent years. Manfred Honeck’s live Pittsburgh performance doesn't quite hit Beethoven’s aspirational metronome mark but it opens pretty swiftly, his basic tempo Read more ...
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Christmas on Sugarloaf Mountain Apollo’s Fire/Jeannette Sorrell (Avie)Subtitled "an Irish-Appalachian celebration", this disc follows the Scottish and Irish immigrants who pitched up in rural Virginia in the 19th century, fleeing unemployment, exploitation and famine. In Jeannette Sorrell’s words, “Appalachian music is the voice of the down-trodden,” and that Christmas is an ideal time to sing in celebration of “history's greatest advocate for the poor.” If you buy just one Christmas CD this year, my advice would be to get this one, an electrifying sequence of folk songs, traditional Read more ...
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Beethoven: Symphonies 2 and 7 Wiener Symphoniker/Philippe Jordan (WS/Sony)Philippe Jordan’s cheery face adorns this third volume of Beethoven symphonies from Vienna’s other orchestra, setting the tone fairly well. These are overwhelmingly positive, uplifting performances, superbly played to boot. Nimble speeds, hard timpani sticks and what sound like natural horns and trumpets are a concession to modern (ie. historically informed) practice, but these are at heart big-boned, well-upholstered readings which should improve anyone's mood. How much of an advance Beethoven 2 is over its Read more ...
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A Walk with Ivor Gurney Tenebrae, Aurora Orchestra, Sarah Connolly, Simon Callow, Nigel Short (conductor) (Signum Classics)Ivor Gurney was a genuine polymath, a talented composer and poet whose career was disrupted by serving with the Gloucestershire Regiment in World War I. He continued to write verse and music while posted to the front, picking up a serious shoulder injury along the way and later becoming the victim of a gas attack (an experience he stoically described as “no worse than catarrh or a bad cold”). This double album presents four Gurney works alongside pieces by composers Read more ...
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Josquin: Missa Gaudeamus, Missa L’ami Baudichon The Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips (Gimell)That music composed in the 14th and 15th centuries can be enjoyed and performed today is mind-boggling. As is looking at one of Josquin des Préz’s manuscripts, close enough to conventional modern notation for even a hick like me to get an inkling of what the music might sound like. This latest Tallis Scholars release features two contrasting Masses, the mature Missa Gaudemas’s intensity set against the earlier, breezier Missa L’ami Baudichon. Peter Phillips has his three tenors sing the plainchant Read more ...
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Abbandonata: Handel Italian Cantatas Carolyn Sampson (soprano), The King’s Consort/Robert King (Vivat)The young Handel’s desire to be an opera composer prompted him to spend the years 1706-1710 in Italy. He was already a superb academician and master of counterpoint, but a colleague recorded that Handel felt that his melodic gifts needed honing. Where better to go than Italy? There, he composed much church music, a couple of successful operas and scores of chamber cantatas. These were mostly written in Rome – a city in which opera had been banned by papal decree as penitence for an Read more ...
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Bernstein: The Complete Naxos Recordings Marin Alsop (conductor) (Naxos)One of the best reasons for investing in this superb Bernstein box set lasts less than two minutes and isn't even by Lennie. Turn to Disc 7 and John Corigliano’s contribution to A Bernstein Birthday Bouquet, eight 70th birthday variations on On The Town’s “New York, New York” from composers with personal connections to Bernstein. Corigliano mixes Copland with Sinatra, to brilliantly witty effect. You hope that the dedicatee was amused. Luciano Berio's opener is a treat, and there's plenty of fun to be had in Read more ...
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Handel: Works for Keyboard Philippe Grisvard (harpsichord) (Audax)Mention Handel's keyboard output and most folks (including saps like me) will think of his eight imposing Suites… and that's about it. Which is why harpsichordist Philippe Grisvard’s new collection is so useful in plugging the gaps, an attempt “to explore the different faces of Handel”, taking in the years between 1700 and 1740. Grisvard also throws in short pieces by musicians who played a key role in Handel's development. Like his teacher Friedrich William Zachow, whose little Capriccio in D minor is a treat: its four minutes Read more ...
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Brahms & Ligeti: Horn Trios André Cazalet (horn), Guy Comentale (violin), Cyril Huvé (piano) (Calliope)This is a reissue from the last years of the early digital era (ie 1989), but it's a seriously good one. György Ligeti’s 1982 Horn Trio is a fascinating piece, ‘un hommage à Brahms’ which contains some striking tunes and virtuosic valveless horn writing but never sounds remotely like Brahms’ own horn trio. Ligeti did acknowledge that the work had “a little to do with Beethoven”, the violin's first entry obliquely quoting the opening of the Op81a Piano Sonata. There's plenty of Read more ...
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Jãnis Ivanovs: Symphony No. 5; Juris Karlsons: Music for Symphony Orchestra 1945 Latvian National Symphony Orchestra/Andris Poga (Skani)Jãnis Ivanovs’ promising conducting career was kyboshed by the outbreak of war and the Soviet invasion of Latvia. After Riga’s liberation in October 1944, it's believed that Ivanovs was responsible for broadcasting one of the five surviving records belonging to the reactivated state radio station, and his Symphony No. 5 was completed during the following spring. Asked about the symphony's meaning, Ivanovs replied that the music “contained everything Read more ...
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Bernstein: Wonderful Town Danielle de Niese, Alysha Umphress, Nathan Gunn, London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (LSO Live)Wonderful Town’s one problem is that it isn't On the Town or West Side Story. If you didn’t already know those scores, you'd consider it a belter, a brilliant sequence of very witty, tuneful songs. That the words are great isn't a surprise, Bernstein teaming up again with Betty Comden and Adolf Green, the trio holed up in a cramped New York apartment in 1953 and finishing the piece in around five weeks. Based on a popular 1940 play, Wonderful Town follows two Read more ...
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Boris Blacher: Dance Suite, Hamlet, Poème, Concertante Music Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin/Johannes Kalitzke (Capriccio)Boris Blacher’s stock would presumably be higher had he opted to leave Germany when the Nazis came to power. He was an influential teacher whose later pupils included Aribert Reimann and Kalevi Aho, though his progressive musical sympathies meant that he was prevented from teaching during the war years. As heard on this disc, Blacher’s orchestral music is fluent, transparently scored and diverting while it lasts. His stylistic range was broad: traces of Poulenc, Read more ...