CD and Book Reviews - my/maSCENA

CD Review – Transient Canvas, Wired

By Arnaud G. Veydarier on 4 February 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary

Transient Canvas, Wired / New Focus Recordings, 2018 The latest creation of the American duo Transient Canvas, Wired continues the exploratory work undertaken by Amy Advocat (bass clarinet) and Matt Sharrock (marimba) on their first release Sift. Once again, the musicians display undeniable technical know-how, obvious complicity and an in-depth understanding of the artistic vision of the composers who contributed to Wired. Dedicated to the interpretation of current works, this duo offers seven premieres with surprisingly varied styles that boldly exploit the possibilities of two instruments to which electronic devices are added. The result is strikingly original and flirts with avant-garde…

CD – Mathieu/Rachmaninoff, Jean-Philippe Sylvestre

By Benjamin Goron on 4 February 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Piano

Mathieu: Concerto No. 4. Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op. 43 / Jean-Philippe Sylvestre, piano. Orchestre Métropolitain, Alain Trudel, conductor / ATMA Classique ACD2 2768 Mathieu’s posthumous Concerto No. 4 owes much to Gilles Bellemare, who, from fragmentary sources, reconstructed and orchestrated this post romantic gem while seeking to reproduce the composer’s vision faithfully. Under Alain Trudel’s blazing baton, the piece charges forward like a locomotive, paying no heed to the superfluous or stopping stations along the way. Pianist Jean-Philippe Sylvestre navigates the piece with remarkable ease, in his element performing a work after his own heart. His…

Forgotten Russians (Nimbus Alliance)

By Norman Lebrecht on 1 February 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

There were those that Stalin murdered or suppressed, those who went abroad and the few who stayed at home and kept very quiet for most of their lives. I thought I knew them all, but the New York pianist Vladimir Feltsman has put together a gallery of peripherals, each of whom adds a vital dimension to the Russian picture. Alexei Stanchinsky (1888-1914) was a Scriabin-like figure who wrote vaguely modern sonorities and suffered intermittent mental lapses. He drowned two months into the First World War, possibly a suicide. Samuel Feinberg (1890-1962) taught most of his life at the Moscow Conservatoire,…

Mozart: Symphonies 40 and 41 (Pentatone)

By Norman Lebrecht on 26 January 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

The conductor Hans von Bülow once described Mendelssohn’s music as ‘something to be got over in childhood, like measles’. I feel the same way about much of Mozart and listen to very little, making an exception now and then only when I have a particular purpose to study a piece – in this case, the Jupiter Symphony, Mozart’s last. It so happened that a Pentatone CD with the NDR Radiophilharmonie landed just as I was reaching up the shelf for the unassailable Abbado/LSO on DG and its arrival proved more than just instructive. The Hannover radio orchestra, not always the…

Wilhelm Stenhammar: 2nd symphony, Serenade (BIS)

By Norman Lebrecht on 18 January 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

Ever bought a record just for the opening track? You’d be sorely tempted by this offering from the Gothenburg Symphony and Herbert Blomstedt, a pairing of the second symphony by a pal of Sibelius’s with his orchestral serenade. Swedes regard Stenhammar’s 2nd, dated 1914, as their best symphony after Sibelius and some have argued the case with me alcoholically far into the unbroken winter’s night. I am not persuaded. Stenhammar might have enjoyed a drink or few with Sibelius but the most he got out of these sessions was an imitative gift and a blinding hangover. The first movement of that…

Rebecca Clarke: Viola sonata (Hyperion)

By Norman Lebrecht on 4 January 2019 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

There are so many misnomers about Ms Clarke that it’s worth taking a sentence or two to put them straight. Clarke (1886-1979) is widely regarded as one of the first English women composers. But her father was an American photographic executive, her mother was German and as soon as she reached 30 Clarke sailed off to the US to spend the better part of her life over there, playing mostly English music in a trio. Her own music is English in rather dated sense of the term, heavily reliant on folk music and simple modulations. Her viola sonata is not…

Mozart: Piano concerto 23 (Deutsche Grammophon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 28 December 2018 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

To end the year, up pops a Mozart with five stars written all over it. As a matter of course, I do not listen to new Mozart piano releases. There is such an abundance of unsurpassed recordings on my shelves – Ashkenazy, Brendel, Gilels, Haskil, Kempff, Richter – who could ask for anything more? But I slipped on this latest offering as an early-morning tune-up and, before I knew it, I was I heaven. I am sure the good folk at DG had a go at Seong-Jin Cho not to risk Mozart at this stage, but the Chopin competition winner…

Lebrecht’s Records of the Year – The ones we missed

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 December 2018 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

As the year nears its end a pile of albums stares at me pleading for attention. So I dig in a find some that I cannot allow to pass unnoticed. The Alagna-Kurzak recording of Massenet’s rarely-heard La Navarraise (Warner ****). Sumptuous singing and gorgeous sound, recorded in New York wth a pick-up ensemble that sounds like it can play anything sight unseen. If you wanted to hear Bach on the piano, would you go to Iceland? Seriously? And played by the winner of the Iceland Optimism Prize? Vikingur Olafsson is altogether unexpected. His compilation of pieces by Bach, interleaved with…

CD Review – Nadine Sierra (Deutsche Grammophon)

By Norman Lebrecht on 14 December 2018 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

We do this so you don’t have to. The flow of Christmas albums has slimmed in recent years but there is still a belief in the music industry that nothing sells at Christmas like an opera singer. Is that still true? I sampled Bryne Terfel’s DG Santa sock which includes duets with Katherine Jenkins and Emma Thompson. Need I say more? I dipped into Renée Fleming’s Broadway disc on Decca and quickly dipped out again. I attended with sadness to the great John Tomlinson’s Schubert Swansong on Signum. And then I heard Nadine Sierra’s debut album and all was light…

Gorecki: String quartets (Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 December 2018 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

Ever wonder what Henryk Mikolaj Górecki did before he hit the jackpot with that million-selling third symphony? The sage of Katowice never stuck to any doctrine or style, allowing himself to develop from modernism to minimalism and all points between. His first string quartet, commissioned by Kronos in 1988, is titled ‘Already it is dusk’ and appears to lament the dying day in meditative fragments, as if to suggest that nothing is ever finished. The second quartet, written three years later, bears the title ‘Quasi una fantasia’ and emerges slowly, hypnotically, from the simplest of themes. In between the two,…

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