CD and Book Reviews - my/maSCENA

CD Review | Moongate (Self-published, 2023)

By Zenith Wolfe on 31 July 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Ottawa, Romantic, Strings

Moongate Victor Anastacio, guitar; Philippe Charbonneau, bass; Colleen Leslie, flute Self-published, 2023 Moongate, the debut album by composer and acoustic guitarist Victor Anastacio, is a hidden gem. The work sounds deceptively simple at first. The titular Moongate, as well as Amethyst Sky and Northern Lights, are easy to digest: light and peaceful, with an emphasis on the play between Leslie’s disjunct flute melodies and Anastacio’s fingerpicking. Gathering Wind’s more staccato performance breathes energy into the album before the deep, slow notes of Charbonneau’s bass rein in the two treble instruments for a few compositions, creating a more melancholic experience. The…

CD Review | A Dream of Colour (Self-published, 2023)

By Kristen Whittle on 31 July 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Strings, Visual Arts

A Dream of Colour Emma Rush, guitar Self-published, 2023 Emma Rush is a renowned Canadian classical guitarist who has spent the past two years living between Halifax, N.S., and Hamilton, Ont. Her newest album, A Dream of Colour, includes the works of seven Canadian composers that Rush commissioned, with inspiration for each piece stemming from William Blair Bruce’s impressionist paintings. The album showcases the different identities and styles of the various composers, uniting them through the imagery of Bruce’s paintings. This unifying theme gives the album cohesion, despite the composers having complete artistic freedom over their compositions and the paintings…

CD Review | Weyn Allah (Self-published, 2023)

By Zenith Wolfe on 31 July 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Vocal, World Music

Weyn Allah Al Qahwa ensemble Self-published, 2023 Their first album explored the traditional songs of the Middle East; the second, Egypt, and the third, South Africa. Al Qahwa’s latest addition to their discography, Weyn Allah, is a much more ambitious venture: uniting humanity through original world music. No two songs are alike on this album. The titular Weyn Allah (Where is God) addresses social issues of inequity and racism to the tune of a qanun, saxophone and busy backing choral group singing in Arabic and English. Peace and Safety (Salma Ya Salama) incorporates French lyrics that promote acceptance, and Humanity…

CD Review | Néo-Romance (Secret City Records, 2023)

By Zenith Wolfe on 31 July 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Piano, Romantic

Néo-Romance Secret City Records, 2023 Alexandra Stréliski, piano and organ; Natalia Kotarba, violin; Fayçal Cheboub, viola; Julia Kotarba, cello; Pierre-Olivier Rioux, double-bass Although Néo-Romance plays with the romantic genre in inventive ways, the musical fidelity is overshadowed by a glaring audio quality issue. The works on this album are initially reminiscent of slow, meditative, romantic solo piano repertoire until The first kiss surprises the listener with the addition of cello and violin. These bring a great deal of emotional weight and dynamism to the album. In Air de famille, however, listeners may begin hearing the felt striking the piano’s strings…

Lebrecht Weekly | Eugène Ysaye: Solo violin sonatas (Deutsche Grammophon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 28 July 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

Every era has its defining violinist. For the second half of the 19th century it was the avuncular Joseph Joachim, for the first third of the 20th the mischievous Fritz Kreisler. Then came Heifetz, Menuhin, Perlman, briefly Vengerov and Anne-Sophie Mutter. If there is a defining violinist in the present century I suspect it is Hilary Hahn. American to her pop-socks, forged from age ten in the Curtis foundry, she has hardly put a career foot wrong, limiting her concert engagements and taking time out to have two daughters. At 43, she stands head and a shoulder pad taller than…

George Frideric Handel in a painting by Denner. Photo : Lebrecht Music and Arts Photo Library / Alamy

Lebrecht Weekly | Mr Händel im Pub: Baroque meets folk (Arcantus)

By Norman Lebrecht on 22 July 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

I had high hopes of this album, an attempt by period musicians to recreate the kind of stuff that might – repeat, might – have been performed in London pubs during the early 18th century. Henry Purcell, who hung out far too much in London hostelries, was recently dead. Handel, who went in for heavy eating rather than heavy drinking, was newly arrived from Germany and still finding his way around the city’s entertainment venues. Match their music with the rougher folk trade that, then as now, played at esoteric drinking holes and the collusion promised possible enlightenment. The first…

Lebrecht Weekly | Sergei Rachmaninov: Symphonies 2 and 3, Isle of the Dead (DG)

By Norman Lebrecht on 30 June 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

The opening bars of this live performance assert that the Philadelphia Orchestra owns these works. The orchestra eases into the second symphony like an Olympic swimmer into a public pool, totally in its element, fearless of hazard or challenge. The strings are silken, the woodwinds ethereal. And then it all goes choppy. The Philadelphia Orchestra was involved with Rachmaninov from his arrival in America as a refugee in 1918 to his death 25 years later. Its music directors, Leopold Stokowski and Eugene Ormandy, championed his works and invited him to play them. The third symphony, his first important exile work, was…

Lebrecht Weekly | Brahms: Double concerto (Sony)

By Norman Lebrecht on 2 June 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Strings

Craving a dose of Brahms, I landed on a new release of his violin and cello double concerto, written in 1887 and the last score he composed for orchestra, a decade before his death. The concerto was a conciliatory offering to his lifelong friend Joseph Joachim. It followed a bitter falling-out over the violinist’s divorce from his wife, Amelie, in which Brahms was suspected of taking Amelie’s side. Joachim had accused her, falsely, of infidelity with a publisher. When Robert Hausmann, a member of Joachim’s string quartet, wondered in Brahms might write him a cello concerto, the composer designed the…

Summer Reading Suggestion | House Concert (Polity Books, 2023)

By Zenith Wolfe on 30 May 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Piano

House Concert by Igor Levit and Florian Zinnecker Polity Books, 2023 ISBN 978-1509553556 With his debut at Carnegie Hall postponed indefinitely by COVID, virtuoso Russian-German pianist Igor Levit didn’t have anywhere to perform. So he made his own stage at home, in Berlin. In House Concert, journalist and Die Zeit deputy desk manager Florian Zinnecker explores the transformation of Levit’s career during the pandemic. His livestreams—a series of house concerts broadcast from his living room on Twitter—kept the musician sane, but they also encouraged him to break out of classical performance traditions and carve his own musical journey. Combined with…

Summer Reading Suggestion | Every Good Boy Does Fine (Random House, 2022)

By Paul E. Robinson on 30 May 2023 CD and Book Reviews, Piano

Every Good Boy Does Fine by Jeremy Denk Random House, 2022 ISBN 978-0812995985 Last year, in Calgary, I heard a remarkable recital by American pianist Jeremy Denk. A wonderfully gifted pianist equipped with a fabulous technique, a refreshing approach to programming and an insatiable curiosity, Denk likes to address the audience at his concerts and always has something interesting to say. As readers of his blog Think Denk or his occasional New Yorker articles know by now, he is a brilliant writer, too. His first book—Every Good Boy Does Fine—is subtitled A Love Story, in Music Lessons. Basically, it’s a…

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