Classical CDs
graham.rickson
Bliss: Miracle in the Gorbals, Metamorphic Variations BBC Philharmonic/Michael Seal (Chandos)We are coming towards the end of the year marking 50 years since the death of Arthur Bliss, and I’m pleased to have covered a number of live performances and recordings that have exposed some underexposed music. The latest of these is a recording pairing his ballet Miracle in the Gorbals, a big success in its time, and the expansive Metamorphic Variations, played by the BBC Philharmonic under Michael Seal.This was Bliss’s 1944 follow-up to his hit ballet Checkmate of 1937. Where the latter was a Read more ...
graham.rickson
British Piano Concertos: Walton, Britten & Tippett Clare Hammond (piano), BBC Symphony Orchestra/George Vass (BIS Records)I really liked this programme of neglected British piano concertos by the always excellent pianist Clare Hammond, accompanied by conductor George Vass, himself committed to the cause of promoting British music over many years. Britten’s one-handed Diversions, written for Paul Wittgenstein, and Walton’s Sinfonia Concertante are both full of youthful vivacity, although both have troubled histories.Best known by far is Michael Tippett’s Piano Concerto, a top-three Read more ...
graham.rickson
Corelli/Handel: Sonatas Michaela Koudelková (recorders), Monika Knoblochová (harpsichord), Libor Mašek (cello), Jan Krejča (theorbo) (Supraphon)This disc’s bright, piquant flavour makes it an irresistible acquisition. I dived into recorder player Michaela Koudelková’s new album after several days spent wallowing in Vaughan Williams orchestral music (see below), and it made for an invigorating palate-cleanser. Try the little “Furioso” from Handel’s Recorder Sonata in D minor, two minutes of exuberant froth, Koudelková’s dancing solo line having the upper hand (just) over a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Kabalevsky: Cello Concerto No. 2, Schumann: Cello Concerto Theodor Lyngstad (cello), Copenhagen Phil/Eva Ollikainen (OUR Recordings)This disc’s sleeve note suggests that Kabalevsky’s Cello Concerto No. 2 “owes an obvious debt to the composer’s colleague and one-time neighbour Dmitri Shostakovich”. It does indeed, several passages sounding like direct pastiche. That doesn’t make the work any less enjoyable and entertaining, the first movement’s “Allegro molto e energico” section very similar in tone to the opening movement of Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1. Though Kabalevsky begins Read more ...
graham.rickson
Joan Sutherland: The Complete Decca Recordings - Operas 1959-1970 (Decca)The legend of "La Stupenda" was born at Covent Garden in 1959, when Joan Sutherland sang and – by all accounts – acted her socks off as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. But she had been singing roles at the Royal Opera for seven years already – not just small parts but major ones such as Mozart’s Pamina and Countess, Verdi’s Desdemona and Amelia, Jenifer in the world premiere of Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage and Mme Lidoine, the courageous new Prioress, in the UK premiere of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Shostakovich: Symphonies; Concertos; Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District Yuja Wang (piano), Baiba Skride (violin), Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Boston Symphony Orchestra/Andris Nelsons (DG)Shostakovich: The Symphonies Gürzenich-Orchester Köln/Dmitrij Kitajenko (Capriccio)Here are two big Shostakovich boxes, released to mark the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death. Dmitri Kitajenko’s symphony cycle, a mixture of studio and live performances, was recorded between 2002 and 2004. Originally boxed up as a set of SACDs. Capriccio’s budget priced reissue gives us just the stereo mix, the engineering Read more ...
graham.rickson
Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, Ravel: La Valse Orchestre de Paris/Klaus Mäkelä (Decca)Rereading the composer’s memoirs and performing the Symphonie Fantastique have rekindled my interest in all things Berliozian, so this new album arrived at a good time. Bits of it are really impressive, Klaus Mäkelä audibly relishing some of Berlioz’s more outré effects. How could a 27 year-old from a non-musical background write something so radical? The first movement’s tonal shifts are brilliantly managed by Mäkelä – try the moment at 10’40” where the clouds suddenly descend, and note how he gives Read more ...
graham.rickson
Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht: The Complete Erato Recordings (Erato)We’re fortunate that Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht (1880-1965) actually got as far as making a career in music. The aspiring violinist and composer was expelled from the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 16 by a harmony professor, dismayed that his young student was slumming it by earning extra money playing in cafes and music halls. Undeterred, Inghelbrecht secured a second violin post in the Orchestre l'Opéra, supplementing his income through working as an orchestrator. Conductor Pierre Monteux recognised Inghelbrecht’s Read more ...
graham.rickson
Thomas Adès, Oliver Leith, William Marsey: Shanty, Aquifer et al Hallé Orchestra/Thomas Adès (Hallé)This album on the Hallé’s own label, rounds up recent works by Thomas Adès, alongside pieces by two British composers he has championed, Oliver Leith and William Marsey, all conducted by Adès himself. The first two Adès pieces both date from 2020, that year of uncertainty and cultural suspension. Shanty has an appropriately tentative air, mechanical lower plucked strings are set against sliding upper strings in a hypnotic web, repetitive but never quite repeating, Read more ...
graham.rickson
Michel Béroff: Complete Erato Recordings (Erato)My associating French pianist Michel Béroff with ‘modern’ music says more about my age than it does about Béroff’s actual specialities. If you were looking for Messiaen in an early 1980s record library you’d probably find his EMI LPs of Turangalîla, the Quatour pour la fin du Temps and the Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus on the shelves, the last named a work which Béroff played extracts from to its composer in 1961, at the age of 11. The mind boggles; as it does when you learn that the earliest recording in this 42-disc box is the Quatuor Read more ...
graham.rickson
Antal Doráti in London: The Mercury Masters Vol. 1 (Decca Eloquence)A couple of recent YouTube videos show DG engineers hard at work remastering Karajan’s 1970s Bruckner and Mahler recordings for new vinyl LP pressings. The process looks tortuous, the multitracked master tapes painstakingly examined and reassembled, artificial reverb added using an empty stairwell. Listen, say, to Karajan’s Berlin performances of Mahler 6 and Bruckner 8 and you’re struck by the density of sound, the orchestral sonority almost oppressive in loud tuttis. Yes, the playing is accomplished, but there’s a Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
This album Firedove (Sony Classical), surely, has to be seen as part of a bigger story: that of organist, choir director and broadcaster Anna Lapwood, who, still in her twenties – just – has become an essential part of the (often cautious and conservative) classical music fabric of this country at a pace which defies belief. She works punishingly hard and has thoroughly earned her pivotal position both as performer and as advocate. Her passion for the organ as an instrument with a unique power to appeal to large audiences has already upturned perceptions, changed attitudes, broadened Read more ...