Rachmaninov
David Nice
Shortly before his death, Rachmaninov proposed recording the two-piano version of his swansong Symphonic Dances with Vladimir Horowitz. A curse on that RCA executive who turned the offer down. What amazes is how much pianistic magic can make up for the orchestral wizardry of the more familiar incarnation. The Kolesnikov-Tsoy duo is the one to redisover it now, and they did the same for Mikhail Pletnev’s recreative genius in music from Prokofiev’s Cinderella.The pairing makes perfect sense, as in irrational non-sense, where everything unpredictable flies and soars. There’s contrast in these Read more ...
David Nice
Who’d have thought Florence Price, Rachmaninov, Gershwin and Brahms would all fit the (unspoken) theme of 1930s America? Brahms made the bill by virtue of Schoenberg’s 1937 arrangement of the C minor Piano Quartet, so outlandish and camp that you’d be tempted to credit Stokowski as the orchestrator. Like Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini, it needs vertiginous audacity: that came in spades from conductor Joshua Weilerstein and pianist Martin James Bartlett.Weilerstein and an orchestra sounding especially lustrous in the string section made the best possible case for currently 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 ...
graham.rickson
The Playhouse Sessions: Bjarte Eike, Barokksolistene (Rubicon)The Playhouse Sessions is a follow-up to the irresistible Alehouse Sessions, in which Bjarte Eikke and his Barokksolistene recreate a 17th century London pub gig, where sea shanties and rumbustious dance tunes rub shoulders with Purcell. I was very disappointed to miss the recent live London outing for both these projects (reviewed by David Nice for theartsdesk) and while nothing can quite match being in the room, the Playhouse Sessions in recorded form still offers more musical revelation and sheer fun than anything else I Read more ...
Robert Beale
As Sir Mark Elder begins his penultimate season as music director of the Hallé, it’s clear that his command of, and communication with, the orchestra are as complete and purpose-driven as ever. It’s the first Thursday series concert of the new season, and at last a full set of concerts is in the offing, after three years of interruption and adaptation, but change is in the air.The orchestra’s new leader, Roberto Ruisi, takes his place and there are some guests in other principal roles as well. But this is still very much the orchestra Elder has moulded, with the sound he crafted and at least Read more ...
graham.rickson
Mozart: The Piano Sonatas (Robert Levin, playing Mozart’s fortepiano) (ECM New Series)There is no doubt about the brilliant uniqueness of pianist, conductor, musicologist and one-time Nadia Boulanger pupil Robert Levin, an influential Harvard Professor for more than two decades until his retirement in 2014. Turn the clock back 30 years, and Levin’s presentational style was much more disputative back then than it is these days: in a memorable contribution to Derek Bailey’s 1992 Channel 4 series on improvisation “On the Edge” he railed against Mozart performances that were “ Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms Lieder Anna Lucia Richter (mezzo-soprano), Ammiel Bushakevitz (piano) (Pentatone)Ein süßes Deingedenken: A Tender Memory of Thee – Lieder by Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn Kateryna Kasper (soprano), Dmitry Ablogin (piano) (TYXArt)These two recitals of German Lieder, both of them gloriously and intelligently sung, offer really interesting contrasts. Anna Lucia Richter is the better-known singer of the two and more frequently recorded. Her new album consists mostly of better-known Brahms songs. She has fabulously clear diction, and her booklet essay demonstrates quite how deeply she Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
To stage a double bill of unusual 20th century Russian operas would be brave at the best of times. To do so in the Fair City of Perth amply demonstrates Scottish Opera’s laudable commitment to extend its influence beyond the Edinburgh-Glasgow cultural axis. Perth is blessed with a fine old theatre and a superb modern wood-panelled concert hall, but it’s a good 90 minutes from Scottish Opera’s base in Glasgow and more often than not simply bypassed by holidaymakers heading for the heather and snowclad peaks of the Highlands.Rachmaninov’s The Miserly Knight and Stravinsky’s Mavra are an Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“The past is never dead,” William Faulkner famously wrote. “It’s not even past.” Funny to think that I approached 2022 bored in advance with all the glib celebrations of post-WWI international modernist breakthroughs that the centenary of Ulysses and co. heralded. Yet here we are, the year only a couple of months old, standing eagerly for a national anthem in a packed concert hall. It comes in the middle of a programme that delivers not just a fervent, but a nearly ecstatic, celebration of European cultural identities in all their Romantic passion and singularity. The anthem, of course, Read more ...
Ian Julier
Who could have imagined the table-turning controversy that might have cast doubt on the inclusion of works by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky when planning this programme?Before raising the baton, Holly Mathieson expressed the hope that Russian music written before the current crisis would survive to be performed after it. Vociferous applause from the audience and bravo to the Association of British Orchestra and its members for their announcement of a measured approach and refusal to cancel Russian music. Let’s hope other arts institutions follow their cue. Completed in 1940 and bearing Read more ...
Ian Julier
Focusing on music composed in the former countries of the old Soviet Union, the BSO’s latest concert in Kirill Karabits’ ongoing enterprising series Voices from the East featured the UK premiere of the Second Symphony by Chary Nurymov (1940-1993), a composer much lauded in his native Turkmenistan.Composed in 1984 in memory of the assassinated Indian president Indira Gandhi, the 20-minute symphony is a powerful expression of grief and anger ultimately assuaged by the wish for goodwill, reconciliation and peace to prevail. The idiom sits closest to Shostakovich, but with a more forthright Read more ...