Classical CDs Weekly: Ince, Previn, Rossini

This week we’ve a grandiose choral work inspired by a composer’s love for the beautiful game, along with two noisily enjoyable attempts to portray physical movement in musical terms. A frighteningly young Russian soprano’s debut recital is released - a selection of flamboyant Rossini arias accompanied by a famous period instrument specialist. And there's the first recording of a new opera based on a terribly, terribly English story, composed by an American musician fondly regarded in the UK.

Kamran Ince: Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant, Requiem Without Words, Before Infrared, Symphony No 5, ‘Galatasaray’ Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, Turkish Ministry of Culture Choir/Kamran Ince (Naxos)

There are surprisingly few football-related pieces of classical music; British composer Benedict Mason’s opera Playing Away was commissioned by Opera North in the early 1990s, and Honegger wrote a tone poem describing a rugby match. Turkish-American composer Kamran Ince’s Fifth Symphony was composed in honour of the centenary of Galatasaray, Turkey’s most successful football club. If you started listening without knowing the subject matter, you’d easily mistake the work for a grandiose, Slavic-tinged religious oratorio, or a programmatic choral work from Eastern Europe extolling the tractor manufacturing industry. It is oddly compelling, if overlong, and Ince’s music effectively balances the meditative with the motoric. Izzeddin Calislar’s text comes across clumsily in translation – my advice is not to read it while listening. The Requiem Without Words, a response to the 2003 terrorist bombings in Istanbul, makes effective use of traditional-sounding elements. You don’t doubt Ince’s sincerity for a moment, but the work again feels overlong.

More fun are the two purely orchestral works on this nicely performed disc; Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant and Before Infrared are well-structured showpieces, attempts to convey irresistible forward movement, occasionally disrupted by Ince’s shifting offbeat thwacks and crashes. Before Infrared concludes in a mood of twinkling, shimmering serenity – a pleasant few minutes of calm after the relentless kinetic energy of what’s gone before.

• Find Kamran Ince: Galatasaray on Amazon

André Previn: Brief Encounter Elizabeth Futral, Nathan Gunn, Kim Josephson, Houston Grand Opera Orchestra/Patrick Summers (DG)

When he was music director of the London Symphony Orchestra in the 1970s, André Previn had a house in deepest Surrey. In a newspaper interview given three years ago, he claimed to still miss living there, and it’s tempting to hear Brief Encounter as an expression of that longing. Commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera and first performed in 2009, Brief Encounter is Previn’s second full-length opera, and this handsomely produced DG set was taped during the first performances. John Caird’s libretto follows Noel Coward’s screenplay with relatively few plot changes, the most significant being the decision to portray Laura’s husband Fred as a less passive, more prominent character. Brief Encounter is perhaps beyond parody; at times I feel alone in being the only person not to have enjoyed the slapstick in Kneehigh’s recent stage version, an adaptation which only seemed to find its feet when playing it straight.

This is a commendably sober, faithful retelling. Previn’s defiantly tonal score sounds exactly as you’d imagine it would – an amalgam of all the composers who he’s remembered for conducting well. Walton, Prokofiev, Strauss and Bernstein all feature heavily, as does Britten, including a chord sequence that could have been stolen from Billy Budd. It’s not especially original, but it does work. Previn’s vocal writing is gracious, the orchestra is handled brilliantly, and Caird’s text is unfussy and elegant. This is an opera which it’s very hard to dislike, and it’s easy to imagine a good production packing a powerful emotional punch. For now, I’ll ignore the awkward mockney banter between Albert and Myrtle in the station buffet and think of the final scenes, the brilliant, brutally realised train sounds giving way to an indecently fruity orchestral eruption as Laura and Fred are reconciled. It’s well played, very well sung and surprisingly touching. Elizabeth Futral’s Laura is the highlight, her passion for Nathan Gunn’s Alec audibly bubbling away under the stiff upper lip.

• Find Brief Encounter on Amazon

Julia Lezhneva: Rossini Arias Sinfonia Varsovia, Warsaw Chamber Opera Choir/Marc Minkowski (Naïve)

This disc is Moscow-born soprano Julia Lezhneva ’s first recording, a well-chosen set of Rossini arias. Barely into her twenties, Lezhneva possesses an extraordinary voice – clean, clear and agile, with a depth and body that belies its youth. And she’s accompanied by the brilliant Marc Minkowski, here directing the modern instrument Sinfonia Varsovia. Even in dramatic, serious mode, Rossini is one of those composers who can make life feel better – it’s all those chirruping piccolos and cymbal crashes. Lezhneva’s vibrant pyrotechnics during "Tanti affeti" from La donna del lago are as wittily entertaining as they are musically appropriate.

This is a well-planned recital where the sparkier, more flamboyant moments are offset by gorgeous bel canto ones, as with "Bel raggio lusinghier" from Semiramide. Lezhneva ends the disc on a refreshingly downbeat note with the final aria from L’assedio di Corinto; witness her final prayer fading away with exquisite control. There’s crisp support from the Warsaw chorus and effortless, gossamer-light orchestral backing. Remarkable indeed.

• Find Julia Lezhneva: Rossini Arias on Amazon