Classical CDs
graham.rickson
Gabriel Jackson: The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ Emma Tring (soprano), Guy Cutting (tenor), Choir of Merton College Oxford, Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia/Benjamin Nicholas (Delphian)This Passion sets a libretto compiled by the Chaplain of Merton College, Simon Jones. He draws on each of the four Gospel accounts and adds to them poetry ancient and modern, each poet having a connection with the college. Bach’s surviving Passion settings are epic schleps, whereas Gabriel Jackson’s vibrant new one is in just seven sections and lasts 70 minutes. This is an unabashedly diatonic, very Read more ...
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Mozart: The String Quintets Klenke Quartet (with Harald Schoneweg, viola) (Accentus Music)The viola was Mozart's instrument of choice when playing chamber music, his fondness for the instrument's warm timbre prompting him to add a second viola to the quartet line-up when composing his six string quintets. Listen to this set through good headphones and it's as if you’ve turned up the bass a notch or two. The augmented Klenke Quartet make a superbly sonorous, rich sound, one so fulsome that you could mistake their sound in the denser passages for that of a small chamber orchestra. They Read more ...
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Brahms: The Cello Sonatas The Fischer Duo: Norman Fischer (cello), Jeanne Kierman (piano), with Abigail Fischer (mezzo-soprano) (Centaur Records)Comparing Brahms’s pair of cello sonatas is like looking at the two piano concertos. There’s the youthful, three-movement grumpy one. Then a long gap before a major key work in four parts, with a last movement frothy and exuberant. Veteran cellist Norman Fischer describes listening to both works as giving “a full Brahmsian yin-yang experience”. As with the piano concertos, I’m more yin than yang, and the earlier work’s craggy magnificence is Read more ...
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Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1-5 Mitsuko Uchida (piano), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)You can pick up a superb set of Beethoven piano concertos for under a tenner with little effort. This box set is a tad pricier, but worth the outlay, a reminder of a time when new classical releases commanded wider attention than they do now. Mitsuko Uchida’s live performances were taped in 2010. She's outstanding, nailing the distinct character of each concerto within seconds, and treated to high-class backing by Rattle’s Berliners. Rattle’s Berlin Read more ...
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Martinů: The Complete Music for Violin and Orchestra Bohuslav Matoušek (violin), Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Christopher Hogwood (Hyperion)You can't overdose on Martinů: four reissued discs of concertante music for violin and orchestra might sound heavy going but I challenge anyone to get bored. There's an embarrassment of riches here, most of it seldom heard in the UK. You could do worse than start with the sublime Rhapsody-Concerto, soloist Bohuslav Matoušek switching to viola. Martinů characterised his lyrical late period as marking a shift from “geometry to fantasy”, and here the Read more ...
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Mahler: Symphony No 3 Düsseldorfer Symphoniker/Adam Fischer, with Anna Larsson (alto) (Tonhalle Düsseldorf)Mahler's vast Symphony No 3 is his longest and most ungainly on paper, but on record it’s one of the easiest to get right. At least I can't think of many dud performances. This huge, six-movement work is relatively easy to follow – a picaresque, picturesque journey from murky uncertainty to radiant positivity. Adam Fischer gets pretty much everything right in this compelling live performance from his Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, one of Germany’s oldest orchestras but one not well Read more ...
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Bach: Cello Suites 1, 2 & 3 Amit Peled (CTM Classics)Pablo Casals famously recorded Bach’s six Cello Suites in 1936, his accounts largely responsible for changing public perceptions of these works. Previously regarded as little more than technical studies for students, Casals’ decision to include the suites in concert programmes transformed their status. If you know and love the Casals set, you'll want to hear this disc, if only for the fact that Amit Peled plays the 1733 Gofriller cello once owned by Casals and used back in 1936. As heard here, it does make a delicious, earthy Read more ...
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Brahms: Symphony No 4, Dvořák: Symphony No 9 Bamberg Symphony Orchestra/Jakub Hrůša (Tudor)Brahms became a close friend and mentor to Dvořák, the two men first meeting in 1877 after Brahms had helped the younger composer win a scholarship. Dvořák was described as “a talented individual”, who was pleased to take on Brahms's advice in replacing “the many bad notes“ in his D minor string quartet with better ones. Brahms soon came to value his friend as an equal, admiring his melodic invention, while his own “high degree of skill” was envied by Dvořák. Coupling Brahms's 4th with Dvořák’s Read more ...
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Vyacheslav Artyomov: In Memoriam, Lamentations, Pietà, Tristia I (Divine Art)Born in 1940, Vyacheslav Artyomov trained as a physicist before switching to music. He joined forces with fellow composers Sofia Gubaidlina and Viktor Suslin in the mid-1970s to form a group specialising in improvisation with unconventional instruments. Like Shostakovich and Prokofiev before him, Artyomov fell foul of the Soviet authorities, his music effectively banned for several years. Though Tikhon Khrennikov, the famously cantankerous chief of the Composers’ Union, performed a volte-face a decade later and Read more ...
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Mahler: Symphony No 6 Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (Berliner Philharmoniker Recordings)This lavish box set documents Sir Simon Rattle’s final appearance as the Berlin Philharmonic’s principal conductor: his performance of Mahler's Sixth last June was streamed live to cinemas around the world, and it's also available on the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall. Cannily, this release couples it with Rattle’s Berlin debut back in November 1987, conducting the same work. The two performances are remarkably consistent. Maybe there’s a greater sense of terror, of risk in the Read more ...
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Et la lune descend – piano music by Claude Debussy Olga Stezhko (Palermo Classica)Olga Stezhko writes in her extended sleeve note of wanting “to look beyond the multifaceted beauty of Debussy’s piano pieces and bring out the edge and ambiguity…” There's the danger that this repertoire can be treated as sophisticated chillout music, with production values to match. One thing I really like about this anthology is the recorded sound. Close and on the dry side, it lets us hear everything; this Debussy looks forward far more than back. Try Stezhko’s thrilling account of the little “Mouvement Read more ...
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Adventures In Sound (él records)Dipping in and out of this highly desirable box set recalls 1950s sci-fi visions of the future, looking forward to a time when we'd all be driving flying cars and living under a benevolent one-world government. Alas, this is 2019 and things aren't quite so rosy. There's some seriously strange music here, undoubtedly forward-looking but very much of its time. Begin with Pierre Shaeffer, a French radio engineer who began playing with turntables to manipulate and distort sounds as early as 1948. His Cinq études de bruit was a groundbreaking example of Read more ...