CD and Book Reviews - my/maSCENA

CD Review: Debussy, Szymanowsk, Franck

By Arthur Kaptainis on 15 September 2021 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music

Debussy: Violin Sonata. Szymanowski: Mythes Op. 30. Franck: Violin Sonata Marie Bégin, violin. Samuel Blanchette-Gagnon, piano ATMA Classique ACD2 2850 ★★★★✩ Non vibrato is well established as the modern default condition of early-music tone production. In this recording violinist Marie Bégin, concertmaster of the Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean Symphony Orchestra, applies a streamlined sound to works from the late 19th and early 20th century, including Franck’s Sonata of 1886, which might be regarded by many as a locus classicus for plush and resonant sonority. Remarkably, Bégin’s linear style (aided by a Carlo Bergonzi instrument on loan from Canimex) enhances rather than suppresses expression…

CD Review: Dutilleux: Le Loup

By Paul E. Robinson on 15 September 2021 CD and Book Reviews

Dutilleux: Le Loup; Sonatine for flute and orchestra (orch. Kenneth Hesketh). Sonate for oboe and orchestra (orch. Hesketh). Sarabande et Cortège for bassoon and orchestra (orch. Hesketh) Sinfonia of London/John Wilson Chandos CHSA 5263 ★★★★✩ French composer Henri Dutilleux (1916-2013) wrote music that in his early years showed the influence of Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc, but it was constantly evolving. He was still composing in his 70s and 80s and the later music was as fresh as ever but very much in touch with current trends, including serialism and improvisation. The music on this new recording was composed in his…

CD Review: Love songs

By Arthur Kaptainis on 15 September 2021 CD and Book Reviews

Love songs. Transcriptions for piano of vocal works by Bach, Falla, Fauré, Gershwin, Gluck, Grainger, Grieg, Schubert, Schumann, Strauss; Mahler’s Adagietto Angela Hewitt, piano Hyperion CDA68341 ★★★★✩ Ubiquitous in the era of Hausmusik, transcriptions and arrangements for solo piano are not heard often on the concert stage owing to the depth and strength of the repertoire written originally for the instrument. Here Angela Hewitt gives us a frankly small-r romantic collection of love-song Lieder as rendered purely pianistic by various transcribers, including herself. Gentle selections (including Schubert’s famous Serenade) go well; sometimes pianistic elaboration (as toward the end of Liszt’s…

CD Review: Paris: La Belle Époque

By Arthur Kaptainis on 15 September 2021 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music

Paris: La Belle Époque. Works by Widor, Mouquet, Enescu, Gaubert, Fauré, Debussy Robert Langevin, flute. Margaret Kampmeier, piano Bridge 9555 ★★★★★ Montrealers of a certain age will remember Robert Langevin as the associate principal flute of the OSM who went on to earn the top jobs in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic. In this 77-minute release the Sherbrooke native applies his broad and radiant tone to French music from the decades around the turn of the 20th century, when life in Paris was a sweet if occasionally bittersweet thing. We hear evocative performances of two Debussy…

CD Review: Solem Quartet – The Four Quarters (Orchid)

By Norman Lebrecht on 10 September 2021 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

Thomas Adès: The Four Quarters (works for string quartet by Adès and others) Solem Quartet − The Four Quarters (Orchid) ★★★★★ Emerging from the depths of Covid are some of the freshest ideas we have seen in years. Here, a newly formed string quartet takes a 2012 score by the British composer Thomas Adès and intersects it with works of their own making, very old and very new. The Adès piece describes the earth’s 24-hour rotation on its own axis – neat, but not stunningly original in either concept or content. Like his contemporary Young British Artists in the visual arts,…

Erno von Dohnanyi: My auntie (Capriccio)

By Norman Lebrecht on 20 August 2021 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Newswire

The founder of the Dohnanyi dynasty achieved early success, political controversy and posthumous oblivion. His son, Hans, was an anti-Nazi resistant, hanged on Hitler’s orders in 1945. His grandson, Christoph, became an international conductor. Dohnanyi himself was investigated after the War for having held a Budapest post under the Horthy regime and settling to Vienna in November 1944. No concrete evidence of collaboration was ever presented. He migrated to the US in 1949, teaching for a decade until his death at the University of Florida at Tallahassee. It is hard to take entirely seriously who wrote a comic opera about…

Alice Sara Ott; Echoes of Life (Deutsche Grammophon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 13 August 2021 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

The German-Japanese pianist, a trophy artist on Deutsche Grammophon, is facing the onset of multiple sclerosis with courage, positivism and ingenuity. On her tenth album she seeks to give the preludes of Frederic Chopin a contemporary twist by interleaving them with some of her favourite modern composers. Her daring approach changes the colouring of some of the Chopin so that certain preludes sound like shards of Philip Glass that got left on the mixing desk – not that Glass is present in the mix. The composers she chooses are compellingly more eclectic. There is the Italian Francesco Tristano, who reimagines…

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

CD review: Yannick Nézet-Séguin Introspection: Solo Piano Sessions

By Paul E. Robinson on 27 July 2021 CD and Book Reviews

Introspection: Solo Piano Sessions Music by Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich, etc. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, piano Deutsche Grammophon DG 289 48606184 ★★★★★ The lockdowns and restrictions have been trying for all. For those who care about classical music not to be able to hear music live has been frustrating. And for those who make music for a living it can be soul-destroying or even career-destroying. Yannick Nézet-Séguin has seen his usual whirlwind of concerts in Montreal, New York, Philadelphia and elsewhere reduced to a trickle. Last summer, when he was able to do almost no conducting he reverted to the piano…

Jan Järvlepp

CD review: Jan Järvlepp, CONCERTO 2000 & Other Works

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 24 July 2021 CD and Book Reviews

Jan Järvlepp: Concerto 2000 & Other Works Pascale Margely, flute. Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra/Stanislav Vavřínek;, Zagreb Festival Orchestra/Ivan Josip Skender; Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra/Petr Vronský Navona Records NV6291 ★★★★✩ Enfant terrible of the Canadian contemporary music scene, the Ontario composer Jan Järvlepp last year released Concerto 2000 & Other Works on the Navona label. Known to the general public for his audacious Garbage Concerto (1995), this composer delivers an impressive array of works that affirm the postmodern character of his approach by rejecting the dogmas of new music. Freed from these conceptual shackles, Järvlepp returns unabashedly to tonality and offers accessible…

CD review: Joyce DiDonato and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Winterreise

By Paul E. Robinson on 23 July 2021 CD and Book Reviews

Schubert: Winterreise Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, piano Erato 190295284138 ★★★★★ Schubert’s late song cycle Winterreise (Winter’s Journey) is based on poems by Wilhelm Müller (1794-1827), one of the composer’s contemporaries. Like Schubert, he died young, at the age of only 32. The poems and the song cycle tell no story as such; they simply express the pain of unrequited love. While the composer intended the song cycle for a tenor voice, it has sometimes been performed by women. In fact, there are outstanding recordings by women of the stature of Lotte Lehmann, Brigitte Fassbaender, Christa Ludwig and our own…

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