CD and Book Reviews - my/maSCENA

Harry Freedman: The Concert Recordings

By Paul E. Robinson on 1 September 2017 Canadian Music, CD and Book Reviews

Danish National Radio Choir, Elmer Iseler Singers, Swedish Radio Choir, Toronto Children’s Chorus, Esprit Orchestra/Alex Pauk, Toronto Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Davis. Centrediscs CMCCD 23517, 77 min. Composer Harry Freedman (1922–2005) played English horn in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) for nearly 25 years. This new CD brings together five of his major orchestral works covering a period between 1960 and 2003. For listeners too young to have known Harry Freedman when he was alive, this album offers an excellent opportunity to become acquainted with his legacy. The oldest piece in this collection is Images composed in 1960. On the whole, this…

Jazz Fall Previews: The Record Haul

By Marc Chénard on 1 September 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Jazz contemporain, Mainstream Jazz, Scena Jazz

Those who believe in the death knell of the CD better think twice. Justin Time Records and Disques Effendi, the local jazz labels, don’t seem to buy into this dire prediction. The former kicks off the season this month with three new titles. Matt Herskowitz Trio + 1 – Forget me Not (Homage to Lew Soloff) Quadro Nuevo with Cairo Steps – Flying Carpet Cecile McLorin Salvant – Dreams & Daggers Not to be outdone, Effendi has four titles on tap for this fall. Simon Legault – Hypnagogia Polis Emie R Roussel Trio – Intersections Tevet Sela / John Roney…

Lebrecht Weekly – Hans Werner Henze: Kammermusik 1958, Neue Volkslieder (Tudor)

By Norman Lebrecht on 25 August 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Modern composers, when they die, go into limbo for about a decade before their reputation settles. It has been five years since Henze left us and I miss bumping into his music, on the radio, at festivals, anywhere. It has all gone rather quiet. Which may account for my excessive pleasure at encountering these otherworldly pieces, rich in references to a forgotten age and its leisurely pace. The Kammermusik, for tenor, guitar and eight instruments, is dedicated to Benjamin Britten in thanks for introducing Henze to the guitarist Julian Bream. But although Henze quotes a Britten phrase and dabbles wistfully…

Lebrecht Weekly – Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus (Hyperion)

By Norman Lebrecht on 18 August 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

The US composer Bunita Marcus worked for seven years with Morton Feldman and subsequently accused him, after his death, of sexual abuse. Feldman wrote this piece as an act of homage to Marcus. It begins with what appears to be a visit by an extremely unhurried piano tuner and proceeds by its own logic into a sound world where time and motion lose all meaning. It lasts for 72 minutes and 38 seconds and unless it has succeeded in transcending such mundane measurements the experience will probably feel like eternity. The pianist Marc-André Hamelin reports that “the first time I…

Lebrecht Weekly – Joyce El-Khoury, Michael Spyres (Opera Rara)

By Norman Lebrecht on 11 August 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Romantic

Now here’s a surprise. A new release from Opera Rara usually consists of some bel canto work that has languished forgotten in a vault since its premiere 160 years ago, and usually for good reason (as becomes apparent when you’re halfway through the unreviewable second disc). This package, though, is different: a pair of debut releases by two fast-rising singers, soprano and tenor, mingling well-known arias with the fairly obscure. El-Khoury, a Lebanese-Canadian, sticks mostly to well-trodden tracks, albeit with interesting variations. The Berlioz setting of a Freischütz piece is new to me, as is anything from Hérold’s Le Pré aux clercs, which turns out…

Lebrecht Weekly – Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (DG)

By Norman Lebrecht on 4 August 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Choral, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

The first thing you need to know about Daniel Barenboim’s live performance with the Staatskapelle Berlin is that it is the best-sounding Gerontius on record. No British string section has ever played the work with such sweet serenity. No British winds ever breathed with such deep assurance. Strange as it may seem, the Berlin musicians and chorus singers feel this most English of works in their fingers and bones. There is something akin to love in their playing. This is not to disparage past recordings, all by English forces, notably the Halle’s with John Barbirolli and two-thirds of a dream…

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: 5th symphony (Bis/BR Klassik)

By Norman Lebrecht on 28 July 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

If you go out and buy the Minnesota Orchestra’s Bis recording of Mahler’s fifth symphony, rest assured that you need never buy another. It’s resoundingly well played in every department, devoid of the bravado that impairs some American performances, and discreetly shaped by the music director Osmo Vänskä, who finds organic solutions for some of the more abrupt shifts in the score. Vänskä’s approach is coolly objective. He plays what is in the score and allows the listener to find his or her own level of emotional engagement. The Adagietto, at twelve and a half minutes, is slower than is…

Thoughts on Kaufman and his documentary My Italy

By Adrian Rodriguez on 27 July 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Concert Reviews

History has taught us that every generational talent in the music business has had one common feature: they possess idiosyncrasies that set them apart from the norm, and are able to grow from there by staying true to their talent. Jonas Kaufmann is one of these generational talents. Evidently, he has a tenor voice – a voice, however, noticeably different from the customary Italianate light and sunny sound that made Luciano Pavarotti so recognizable and that influenced many tenors that followed. Kaufman’s voice is instead dark and full-bodied, more comparable to a stout German beer than to an Italian sparkling…

Lebrecht Weekly – Walton: Violin concerto, Hindemith variations (Hyperion)

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 July 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

Any new recording of the Walton concerto will always be measured against Jascha Heifetz, who commissioned the work in 1935, edited the solo part and gave the first performances, throwing down a challenge to all others to do it better, or different. Ida Haendel and Yehudi Menuhin were able to soften the granitic contours but few others have suggested that there is more to the piece than the mighty Heifetz mined out of it. Now along comes Anthony Marwood and turns our ears around. From first utterance, he finds an expansive, Elgarian colour to the piece, a breadth of phrase…

Lebrecht Weekly – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Julia Varady: Romantic duets (Hänssler Profil)

By Norman Lebrecht on 14 July 2017 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

I spent a morning with the great baritone in his Berlin home a couple of years before he died. Fischer-Dieskau was in morose mood. His wife Julia was out teaching, he told me twice, seeming to resent her absence. ‘I did too much,’ he confessed, regretting his dominance in Lieder, a field in which he covered not just German song but English, Russian and French. Still, sometimes too much is not enough. The present release is a 1989 duet recital he gave with his wife and the pianist Robert Höll at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, expecting that it would be…

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