Classical CDs
graham.rickson
Antal Doráti: The Mercury Masters – The Mono Recordings (Decca Eloquence)The great Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti (1906-1988) enjoyed a long and prolific recording career, stretching from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s. This beautifully produced 30-CD package is one of two dedicated to Doráti’s 11-year stint in charge of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (now known as the Minnesota Orchestra). Doráti’s predecessor was the charismatic, erratic Dimitri Mitropoulos. His penchant for new and challenging music wasn’t to all tastes, and in 1949 Doráti took charge of an ensemble whose Read more ...
graham.rickson
Otto Klemperer: The Warner Classics Remastered Edition (Warner Classics)The young Otto Klemperer’s conducting career was encouraged by no less than Gustav Mahler, Klemperer’s meteoric rise leading him to become director of Berlin’s Kroll Opera from 1927 to 1931. The first two CDs in this set comprise recordings made during his tenure there; dim mono sound aside, these fiery readings of Wagner, Brahms and Strauss defy their age. The following decades saw the conductor faced with exile in Los Angeles and range of physical and personal catastrophes, including brief imprisonment. Do listen Read more ...
graham.rickson
Louise Farrenc: Symphonies 1-3 Insula Orchestra/Laurence Equilbey (Erato)Louise Farrenc (1804-1875) is not perhaps the best-known name among pre-20th century women composers garnering increased attention recent years – but she might be the best. She managed to achieve success in her own lifetime, even in the field of the symphony – the form most guarded by the high-art (male) gatekeepers – before pretty much disappearing from music history. This release of Farrenc’s three symphonies (plus two overtures) by the Insula Orchestra, playing on period instruments, makes a very persuasive Read more ...
graham.rickson
Michael Blake: Afrikosmos Antony Gray (piano) (Divine Art)It’s all in the name; the six volumes of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos were indeed the model for Afrikosmos, a sequence of 75 short pieces by South African composer Michael Blake (b.1951). As with the Bartók, Blake’s epic work is a six-volume compendium of studies, dances and character pieces in ascending order of technical difficulty, Blake seeking to explore “the range of traditional music in sub-Saharan Africa”. Each of the three discs in this set can be listened to as a discrete hour-long programme, Blake further categorising the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bruch: Violin Concerto No. 1, Florence Price: Violin Concertos 1 and 2, Adoration Randall Goosby (violin), Philadelphia Orchestra/Yannick Nézet-Séguin (Decca)There’s much to enjoy here, but how frustrating that this disc’s sleeve notes reveal next to nothing about the main reason for listening to it. Thank goodness for Wikipedia, which tells us that Florence Price’s two violin concertos date from 1939 and 1952 and were rediscovered in 2009 as part of a stash of papers and manuscripts found in her abandoned Illinois summerhouse. In Alex Ross’s words, “a large quantity of Price’s music Read more ...
graham.rickson
Isata Kanneh-Mason: Childhood Tales (Decca)Ernst von Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Song is one of the great concertante works for piano and orchestra, rightly compared to a full-scale concerto by soloist Isata Kanneh-Mason. You’ll struggle to hear a live performance though in the UK, though; hopefully this high-profile release will give the work a leg up. My favourite joke comes at the very start, with Dohnányi’s portentous, brilliantly scored intro dragging us into the depths before a naïve, familiar tune enters as if nothing untoward has happened. This big-hearted piece is Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: The Four Symphonies, Piano Quartet No. 1 (orch. Schoenberg) Luzerner Sinfonieorchester/Michael Sanderling (Warner Classics)Some like their Brahms thick and dark. Others, well, will like what we get here, a more transparent, less granitic take on four of the most-recorded works in the orchestral repertoire. Michael Sanderling’s conductor father Kurt had a reputation for dourness and intensity, but these performances tend towards the light and lyrical. You’ll find more doom-laden accounts of Symphony No. 1’s slow intro, but the fast main section is as exciting as any on disc, and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Shostakovich: Symphonies 8, 9 and 10 Berliner Philharmoniker/Kirill Petrenko (Berlin Phil Media)Potential purchasers worrying that the Berlin sound might be a little too well-upholstered for Shostakovich needn’t worry; one striking aspect of the performances captured in this set is their rawness and bite. Herbert von Karajan made two superb recordings of Symphony No. 10 with the Berlin Philharmonic in the 1960s and 1980s, and Kirill Petrenko’s new one is similarly involving. That he’s got an orchestra capable of playing the second and fourth movements up to tempo is a plus: I’ve rarely Read more ...
graham.rickson
Thomas Adès: Dante Los Angeles Philharmonic, Los Angeles Master Chorale/Gustavo Dudamel (Nonesuch)I have been eagerly awaiting this disc of Thomas Adès’s Dante since seeing the Covent Garden production in late 2021, which grabbed me, no natural balletomane, with a firm grip. I realised at the time that it would work – indeed probably have most of its subsequent life – as a concert work. In that respect, its 90 minute duration is cunningly broken up into three standalone sections that can be programmed separately. But it’s only in hearing the three together, with their distinctive Read more ...
graham.rickson
Nadia & Lili Boulanger: Les Heures Claires - The Complete Songs Lucile Richardot (mezzo), Stéphane Degout (baritone), Raquel Camarinha (soprano), Anne de Fornel (piano), Sarah Nemtanu (violin), Emmanuelle Bertrand (cello) (Harmonia Mundi)This 3-CD set of 63 songs and instrumental pieces by the Boulanger sisters, Nadia (1887-1979) and Lili (1893-1918) really is a treasure-trove. It is claimed that it is the first “intégrale” of the songs by both sisters; these are occasionally interwoven with instrumental pieces. To over-generalize, the first two CDs give an insight into the level of Read more ...
graham.rickson
Debussy: Piano Works Volume 2 Dennis Lee (piano) (ICSM Records)I’m a huge fan of Colin Matthews’ idiomatic orchestral transcriptions of Debussy’s Préludes, so much so that it’s been a good few years since I’ve listened to the piano originals. This disc caught me unawares and made me reflect on just how difficult this music is to bring off. Bringing out every detail can impede the music’s flow, while concentrating too much on colour and atmosphere can make everything sound a bit blurry and vague. This is Malaysian pianist Dennis Lee’s second Debussy collection, and it’s something special Read more ...
graham.rickson
Eleanor Alberga: Wild Blue Yonder (Navona Records)This is a belated review for an album that came out in 2021, but one well worth a retrospective appraisal. Eleanor Alberga (b.1949) is a British-Jamaican composer, perhaps best known for her 1998 setting of Roald Dahl’s version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She has also had a successful career as a pianist as well as composer, and is an important figure in the British musical landscape. The opening and closing tracks are duets for violin and piano, featuring the composer as performer alongside her husband, Thomas Bowes. The opener Read more ...