CD and Book Reviews - my/maSCENA

CD Review – Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1

By Paul E. Robinson on 7 February 2018 Canadian Music, CD and Book Reviews, Classical, Classical Music, Contemporary, Piano

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 1 Bartók: Piano Concerto No. 3. Forsyth: Piano Concerto. Jane Coop, piano. Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra/Mario Bernardi. Skylark Music Sky1703. Total Time: 67:01. Born in New Brunswick and raised in Calgary, Jane Coop studied with Anton Kuerti in Toronto and went on to teach at the University of British Columbia from 1980 to 2012. In an era of limited recording, Coop has done the next best thing in re-issuing recordings from the 1980s, originally produced by the now defunct CBC Records. Her collaborations with the late Mario Bernardi (1930-2013) invariably produced excellent results. Short at 16 minutes,…

CD Review: CRAZY GIRL CRAZY

By Paul E. Robinson on 7 February 2018 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Contemporary, Opera, Vocal

CRAZY GIRL CRAZY Berio: Sequenza III. Berg: Lulu Suite. Gershwin: Girl Crazy Suite (arr. Bill Elliott & Barbara Hannigan). Barbara Hannigan, soprano and conductor. Ludwig Orchestra. Alpha Classics 293. Total Time: 57:23. At 47, the Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan has emerged as an international star, praised for her work in such operas as Berg’s Lulu, George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten, Louis Andriessen’s Writing to Vermeer and, notably, an excerpt from Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, which she both sang and conducted. Here she sings and conducts Berio, Berg and Gershwin. Arguably less about music than all…

CD REVIEW – Inspired by Canada Notre Pays

By Paul E. Robinson on 6 February 2018 Canadian Music, CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Classical Music, Contemporary

Inspired by Canada Notre Pays Music by Seitz, Léveillée, Joni Mitchell, etc. Amici Chamber Ensemble. Mireille Asselin, soprano; Joaquin Valdepeñas, clarinet; David Hetherington, cello and Serouj Kradjian, piano. Marquis 774718148520. Total time: 62:00. The Amici Chamber Ensemble recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. It is amazing that the group (clarinetist Joaquin Valdepeñas, cellist David Hetherington and pianist Serouj Kradjian, who has succeeded the retired Patricia Parr) has endured for so long considering that apart from trios by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, there is little important repertoire for this configuration of instruments. Amici gets around this problem by performing duos (for clarinet…

Lebrecht Weekly Album of the Year 2017

By Norman Lebrecht on 14 December 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

In these diminished times, any year that yields a couple of releases that can rank with, and perhaps displace, the legends of recording history must be counted a good one. On these terms, 2017 was a pretty good vintage. There was an impressive Berlioz Requiem from Erato, a Hänssler retrieval of the last known recital of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the first in a promising Chandos series of the orchestral works of Richard Rodney Bennett and, at the opposite end of the scale, a Jonas Kaufmann assault on both tenor and mezzo parts of Das Lied von der Erde – a Sony…

Lebrecht Weekly – DG Trout Quintet Lacking

By Norman Lebrecht on 7 December 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic, Strings

Schubert: Trout quintet (DG) Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin), Daniel Trifonov (piano). Hwayoon Lee (viola), Maximilian Hornung (cello) and Roman Patkolo (bass). There are five trouts on the cover of DG’s new release and it’s clear from the photo that some are more pouty than others. Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin) takes up the most space, reclining on a divan. Sitting on the bare floor is Daniel Trifonov (piano). In the dark background are Hwayoon Lee (viola), Maximilian Hornung (cello) and Roman Patkolo (bass). If this were just a ranking of record industry hierarchies it would hardly be worth a mention, but the recording…

Lebrecht Weekly on the Fence with Barloli’s Dolce Duello

By Norman Lebrecht on 17 November 2017 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera

Cecilia and Sol: Dolce Duello (Decca) Cecilia Bartoli, mezzo Sol Gabetta, cellist I am about to break another of my hard-and-fast rules. A while back, I swore never to give another three-star review as long as lived on the grounds that such things are cop-outs for critics who cannot make up their minds, one way or another, about the recommendability of a record. One way or another, I stand by that judgement. So why the exception? The present album brings together the super-mezzo Cecilia Bartoli, the highest-selling diva on record since Callas, and Sol Gabetta, an Argentine cellist of mostly…

Lebrecht Weekly – Krystian Zimerman’s Schubert Sonatas on DG

By Norman Lebrecht on 10 November 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

Schubert: Sonatas D959, D960 (DG) Some records grab you by the ears, others take longer to impress. It is in no sense to Krystian Zimerman’s discredit that his first attempt at late Schubert took three spins on my deck before I grasped the originality of his interpretation. Rather, it is a mark of Zimerman’s thoughtfulness that the heart of the music is revealed layer by layer in a manner that makes you want to listen again and again. Winner of the 1975 Chopin competition, the Polish pianist has been playing these pieces for half his life before he was ready…

CD Reviews

By Paul E. Robinson on 6 November 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Classical Music, Uncategorized

Seiji Ozawa: Looking back at a thrilling career Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta Concerto for Orchestra. Boston Symphony Orchestra/Seiji Ozawa/Rafael Kubelik. Pentatone PTC 5186247. Time: 69:53. New Year’s Concert 2002 Music by Johann Strauss, Josef Strauss and Josef Hellmesberger. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra/Seiji Ozawa. Arthaus Musik DVD 109315. Time: 109:00 + 32:00 (special features). Haruki Murakami: Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. 325 pages. This past September Seiji Ozawa celebrated his 83rd birthday. In spite of a serious cancer in recent years, Ozawa remains active as a conductor.Next summer he plans to…

Blue Notes and Book Notes

By Marc Chénard on 6 November 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Uncategorized

Mark Miller: Claude Ranger — Canadian Jazz Legend Toronto, 2017; ISBN 978-1-77302-559-9 Canadian jazz lore has its fair share of exceptional figures. Drummer Claude Ranger is one of them, albeit for none of the usual reasons. If not mistaken, he is the only musician whose career was equally divided between the country’s three main centres, Montreal for his formative years, Toronto in mid-life and Vancouver for the final chapter, one that remains open-ended with his disappearance in November 2000, age 59. Seventeen years later, his whereabouts are still unknown, and a missing person’s file remains open at an RCMP detachment. But…

Lebrecht Weekly: Berlioz: Les Troyens (Erato)

By Norman Lebrecht on 3 November 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera

Berlioz: Les Troyens (Erato) John Nelson, Joyce DiDonato, Michael Spyres, Marie-Nicole Lemieux Almost every new release I sampled this week should never have been made. One album after another lacked conviction, coherence and, sometimes, pulse. These are records where label and artist ask one another what to do next without either side asking aloud whether this project is absolutely necessary. None of which can be said about the present release. The need for a new-gen recording of Berlioz’s epic opera is pressing, given that the last two trustworthy attempts, by the late Sir Colin Davis, are wearing thin. Erato’s no-holds-barred…

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