Classical CDs
graham.rickson
Fauré: Complete Songs Cyrille Dubois (tenor), Tristan Raës (piano) (Aparté/ Palazzetto Bru Zane)Forget streaming. Go and buy albums. This 3-CD box set of Fauré songs by tenor Cyrille Dubois and pianist Tristan Raës comes to life when it is paired with its brilliantly put-together 140-page booklet, of essays and words and translations, making the whole enterprise worthwhile. The essays tell the story of the phases in Fauré’s songwriting clearly and thoughtfully. And if there’s a single unidiomatic translation or misprint lurking somewhere in the acres of text, I haven’t yet found Read more ...
graham.rickson
John Ireland: Orchestral Music Sinfonia of London/John Wilson (Chandos)Anyone new to John Ireland’s music should start with his effervescent Piano Concerto, via the superb recording by pianist John Lenehan on Naxos. That disc is conducted by John Wilson, who returns here with his Sinfonia of London to give us this fizzing anthology of orchestral music. There are some wonderful things here. Take A Downland Suite, composed in 1932 as a brass band test piece. Ireland later arranged two of its four movements for strings, the task completed by his pupil Geoffrey Bush in 1978. The brass Read more ...
graham.rickson
Gail Kubik: Symphony Concertante, Gerald McBoing Boing Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose (BMOP Sound)Gail Kubik (1914-1984) should really be remembered for writing the score to William Wyler’s 1955 noir The Desperate Hours, but Paramount decided that Kubik’s score was too modern and scrapped most of it. An intriguing, under-appreciated 20th century American composer and teacher, Kubik’s influences are brazenly displayed in the pieces collected here. His 1959 Divertimento No. 1 is heavily indebted to Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks, even down to the prominent use of a Bach quote. Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven, Berg, Bartók: Violin Concertos Frank Peter Zimmermann Berliner Philharmoniker/Daniel Harding, Kirill Petrenko, Alan Gilbert (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)Recent Berliner Philharmoniker own-label releases have included hefty Bruckner and Mahler cycles; this one is a more modest two-disc set comprising Frank Peter Zimmermann’s live readings of four large-scale violin concertos, taped under three different conductors between 2016 and 2020. Large-scale doesn’t include Bartók’s unfairly overlooked Violin Concerto No. 1. Written in 1907 for the violinist Stefi Geyer, it was Read more ...
graham.rickson
Karel Ančerl: Live Recordings (Supraphon)Karel Ančerl’s nascent conducting career was interrupted by World War II, Ančerl and his family being sent to the Theresienstadt camp in 1942. Two years later, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz. Ančerl’s wife and son were murdered; he survived, returning home and gaining a conducting post with Radio Prague. There’s an inspiring quote in this set’s booklet, Ančerl recalling that, “despite having witnessed the abysmal depths of that which a human is capable of doing to a fellow human, I did not lose faith in people – I returned with full Read more ...
graham.rickson
Jugendstil: Music by Mahler and Schoenberg Beatrice Berrut (piano) (La Dolce Volta)“Is transcription betrayal?” asks pianist Beatrice Berrut in her booklet essay. Emphatically not, Berrut seeing transcription as “an act of homage to the genius of a music whose essence does not change.” Berrut’s arrangement of the “Adagietto” from Mahler 5 is a brilliant reinvention, not a pale imitation. You wonder how she’ll handle Mahler’s sustained lines, so easily playable on orchestral strings, and then grin when you hear the unobtrusive, syncopated Brahmsian accompanying figure that she adds to Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mozart, Hummel and Vanhal – Bassoon Concertos Sophie Dervaux (bassoon/conductor), Mozarteumorchester Salzburg (Berlin Classics)The performance of the Hummel Grand Concerto for bassoon from 1805 here is just superb. French-born Sophie Dervaux (née Dartigalongue, just like the armagnac) is principal bassoon in the Vienna Philharmonic, and she has said of the instrument she plays: “What makes the bassoon special for me is this flexibility, this warmth in the sound.” Her previous CD for Berlin Classics included some classics of the French song repertoire (try the gorgeous “À Chloris” Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mahler: Symphony No. 4 Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov,with Chen Reiss (soprano) (Pentatone)Semyon Bychkov’s Mahler 4 is the first volume of a projected cycle from an orchestra with a surprisingly small Mahler discography. Mahler was born in what is now the Czech Republic, and the fanfares and funeral marches which fill his symphonies echo those he heard while growing up in Jihlava. The Czech Philharmonic does have recorded form in Mahler: Vaclav Neumann’s late 1970s symphony cycle on Supraphon is as idiomatic as they come, and there’s a thrilling vintage version of No. 9 Read more ...
graham.rickson
JS Bach: Magnificat, CPE Bach: Magnificat Gaechinger Cantorey/Hans-Christoph Rademann (Accentus Music)Coupling this pair of Magnificat settings on a single CD makes so much sense. JS Bach’s 1723 Magnificat is wonderfully served here, Hans-Christoph Rademann’s Gaechinger Cantorey turning in a performance which marries lyricism with rhythmic zest. Rademann’s 19-voice choir make a thrilling sound at full pelt (listen to them in the “Fecit potentiam”) and there’s some exquisite orchestral playing from recorders and natural trumpets. Solo voices, drawn from the chorus, are exceptionally good Read more ...
graham.rickson
Eric Nathan: Missing Words (New Focus Recordings)“Inspired by words from Schottenfreude by Ben Schott” reads this double album’s tagline, a high-concept project based on Schott’s 2013 lexicon of newly-invented German compound words. Words like “Rollschleppe” ("the exhausting trudge up a stationary escalator"), or “Brillenbrillanz” ("the sudden clarity afforded by new glasses"). Six collections of these "missing words" are assembled here, variously scored, Schott’s booklet introduction thanking Eric Nathan for taking “a superficially frivolous idea, and treating it with a seriousness Read more ...
graham.rickson
Leroy Anderson: Complete Orchestral Works BBC Concert Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin (Naxos)There’s a lot more to Leroy Anderson than the ubiquitous Sleigh Ride. Though his teachers at Harvard included Enescu and Walter Piston, the polyglot Anderson had intended to pursue a career in languages until the Boston Pops Orchestra’s conductor Arthur Fiedler heard his “Harvard Sketches” in 1936 and commissioned him to write some short pieces. Harvard Sketches is one of many surprises contained in this five-disc set, a brief section depicting a library reading room full of Ivesian effects, the five- Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven for Three – Symphonies 2 and 5 Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, Yo Yo Ma (Sony)I’m all for small-scale Beethoven. Liszt’s piano transcriptions hit the spot for me, and the composer’s anniversary year welcomed several superb discs containing chamber performances of the symphonies. Boxwood & Brass’s abridged wind octet version of Symphony No. 7 was my favourite. Now rivalled by this starrily-cast Sony pairing of Symphonies 2 and 5, played by Emanuel Ax, Leonadis Kavakos and Yo Yo Ma. No. 2 comes in the piano trio arrangement attributed to Beethoven’s friend and pupil Ferdinand Read more ...