CD and Book Reviews - my/maSCENA

CD Review – Mia Brentano’s River of Memories: A Mystery Trip

By Justin Bernard on 21 November 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Uncategorized

Mia Brentano’s River of Memories: A Mystery Trip Benyamin Nuss, piano, Andy Miles, clarinets & bass clarinets and friends Mons Records, 2019, MR874621 After Hidden Sea, released in 2018, Mia Brentano comes back with a new album, named River of Memories: A Mystery Trip. Over the course of 15 pieces, the composer alternates between a vast array of styles. From various forms of jazz, using piano and clarinet, to almost pop-sounding music, using electric guitar; from aquatic sounds – underwater and rain, more specifically – to what we would be tempted to call “modern music.” With its warm and sensual…

CD Reviews

By La Scena Musicale Team on 6 November 2019 CD and Book Reviews

Shostakovich plays Shostakovich Dmitri Shostakovich, Iosif Volovnik, Daniil Shafran, David Oistrakh, Maxim Shostakovich, Miloš Sádlo, Nina Dorliak, Zara Dolukhanova, Aleksei Maslennikov, Mieczysław Weinberg, Alexander Gauk, Samuil Samosud Melodiya MELCD1002596 Five CDs. Total time: 5:42:00 5/5 Most records are disposable. A few are memorable, a small handful are treasurable and every now and then now one comes along that is indelible. This box is something else. I think this is the first time I have ever described a record set as indispensable. The five CDs collect all the Russian state recordings of Dmitri Shostakovich playing his own music. The composer was…

Critiques CD Reviews

By La Scena Musicale Team on 3 October 2019 CD and Book Reviews

Skye Consort & Emma Björling Leaf Music, LM225 4/5 Sentez l’air frais du nord s’insinuer dans vos oreilles avec cette rencontre remarquable entre la chanteuse suédoise Emma Björling et l’ensemble Skye Consort formé de Seán Dagher (bouzouki, banjo, voix), Alex Kehler (nyckelharpa, violon, voix) et Amanda Keesmaat (violoncelle, voix). Né grâce à la complicité des artistes et au retard fortuit de l’avion d’Emma lors d’un retour de concert au Québec, l’album Skye Consort & Emma Björling compile des airs traditionnels scandinaves, anglo-saxons et acadiens ponctués de compositions instrumentales. L’album est bien équilibré dans le choix des pièces; le groove fleuri…

Lise Davidsen/Renee Fleming (Decca)

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 June 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

A soprano at the start of her journey cuts a debut album as another reaches what must be the end. The contrasts are simply too compelling to ignore. Lise Davidsen, a Norwegian, came to attention in the Kathleen Ferrier competition four years ago, though her voice is more Flagstad than Ferrier. This is a genuine Wagnerian instrument, fully formed at 32 years old and equal to a massive orchestra. Two Tannhäuser arias are surmounted here with what sounds like nonchalance, a walk in the Bayreuth park in a really pleasant breeze. The shortcomings are exposed in a set of Richard…

Off the Record: Four Pianos All in a Row

By Marc Chénard on 4 June 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Scena Jazz

Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn: The Transitory Poems (ECM Records, ECM 2644) Nine years after their first concert performance, duo keyboardists Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn have finally released their recording debut. Just shy of 75 minutes, the album captures a performance staged in Budapest a little over a year ago. Eight tracks flow almost seamlessly, the pauses between them so short that the listener barely has the time to take a single breath. The players never lose focus, as they are so in tune with each other and so able to compose on the spur of the moment. Blessed as they…

Photo: Terry O'Neill

Pavarotti: Genius Is Forever: Entertaining, even for experts

By Adrian Rodriguez on 29 May 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Film, Interviews, Opera

Pavarotti: Genius Is Forever, a documentary directed by Ron Howard, opens on June 6. La Scena Musicale got exclusive access to the two-hour film before the release. In the past, this acclaimed Hollywood director and producer explored the world of music with The Beatles: Eight Days a Week and, most recently, with Made in America, a documentary that involved the participation of rap mogul Jay-Z. In his new effort, Howard emphasizes the human side of Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti. He chronicles his life trough a mix of interviews with the singer’s family, colleagues, live concerts and backstage footage. We are…

Musique actuelle: Book Review

By Marc Chénard on 28 May 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Experimental Jazz

A keen observer of the new music scene in Montreal, Réjean Beaucage has taken to the task of demystifying that slightly strange bird known as musique actuelle. His book on this subject, released last February, is but a logical extension of his first one of eight years ago that recounted the history of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec. In close to 200 pages, he embraces a good half a century of musical activity, its alpha point in 1961 with the Semaine de musique actuelle and further manifestations such as the FIMAV, founded in 1983 and still around to this…

Josef Suk: Asrael (Decca)

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 May 2019 CD and Book Reviews, La Scena Online, Lebrecht Weekly

The symphonic monument Asrael, written in memory of the composer’s wife Otilie and her father Antonin Dvorak, embodies for Czech musicians what Verdi’s Requiem does for Italians – a summit of national loss and hope. Unlike the Verdi Requiem, it has never caught on outside its heartland. Its great interpreters on record have all been Czech – Talich, Ancerl, Kubelik, Pesek and now Jiri Belohlavek. To the latest interpreter the heritage must have weighed particularly heavy since he knew he was mortally ill and this recording would stand as his legacy. Never a flamboyant conductor, Jiri Belohlavek goes for large…

Photo: Tommy Persson, Olga Rakhalskay.

Mieczyslaw Weinberg : Symphonies nos 2 and 21 (Deutsche Grammophon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 10 May 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

There was never any question what was going to be my album of the week once the envelope disgorged this little twin-set from DG. I started writing about Weinberg in the early 1990s when he was unknown outside Russia and forgotten within. Some emigres played me his string music and I found the communication so direct and personal that I could not understand his neglect. A Polish Jew, Weinberg fled to the Soviet Union in 1939, was befriended by Shostakovich and narrowly survived incarceration in the Stalin murder machine. Although there are common gestural elements with his friend and mentor,…

Photo: Clive Barda

David Matthews: 9th symphony (Nimbus Alliance)

By Norman Lebrecht on 3 May 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Classical, Lebrecht Weekly

You may recognise the composer’s name as one of two brothers who assisted Deryck Cooke and Berthold Goldschmidt in creating the first performing edition of Mahler’s tenth symphony. Now 76, David Matthews has come a long way from those early Gustavian speculations. Where his brother Colin drew close to Benjamin Britten, David veered to the wilder fantasies of Michael Tippett while staying close to English roots and traditions. His ninth symphony, receiving its world premiere on this release, is a kind of summation. Starting with a self-composed carol and extending to a Bach chorale, it represents the best of British…

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