Romantic - my/maSCENA

Bergen Philharmonic Surprises with Berlioz

By Norman Lebrecht on 13 April 2018 Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral, Romantic

Berlioz: Harold in Italy (Hyperion) The pianist Emanuel Ax remarked the other day that performance quality has risen so high in his lifetime that you hardly ever encounter a sub-standard orchestra. On the evidence of this release Bergen in Norway, the rainiest city on earth, boasts a Philharmonic that could be mistaken on a dull day for one in Berlin. Playing Berlioz, grand master of the art of orchestration, Bergen come through with maximum points in all departments and a deep coherence across the spectrum. My only quibble is why the local engineers record the orchestra at a level so…

William Sterndale Bennett’s Piano Concertos Naive Yet Lovely

By Norman Lebrecht on 2 March 2018 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

William Sterndale Bennett: piano concertos (Hyperion) In half a century of listening to music, I have never attended a work by the foremost English composer of the Victorian era, a man who lived and died a few streets from my London house. Bennett (1816-1875) was acclaimed in his teens as the next Mendelssohn for a D minor piano concerto that Mendelssohn himself, sitting in the audience, found promising. Two more concertos followed before the lad was twenty, the third being praised in Leipzig by no less a contender than Robert Schumann. Bennett, on the strength of these successes, became the…

Fanny Mendelssohn-Hensel’s Songs Mature

By Norman Lebrecht on 23 February 2018 Art Song, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

Fanny Hensel, ‘the other Mendelssohn’: Complete Songs (Champs Hill) I’m uncomfortable with the album title. Rather than being ‘the other Mendelssohn’, Fanny was the heart of the Mendelssohn family and a fine composer in her own right – despite patriarchal suppression by her father and angry resentment from her brother, Felix. Fanny, married to a Berlin artist, kept her works in a drawer until her late 30s, when she went out and got them published, to Felix’s amazement and grudging admiration. Sadly, there was little time for her to enjoy the reviews. Fanny died of a stroke at 41 and…

Une attention mémorable – A memorable gift

By Viviane Reid on 8 February 2018 Classical Music, Newswire, Romantic, This Week in Montreal, Vocal

Nous sommes de retour cette année avec une nouvelle édition de levée de fonds des Valentins Chantants. Offrez un cadeau original à votre douce moitié par l’entremise d’une chanson d’amour performée au téléphone par un de nos 7 chanteurs participants. Pour le prix d’un bouquet de fleurs, un de nos artistes invités contactera votre proche et lui chantera la chanson sélectionnée au téléphone! Réservez votre Valentin Chantant dès maintenant! Trouvez toutes les informations ici: https://myscena.org/fr/valentins-chantants-2018/ We are back this year with our new edition of the Singing Valentines fundraising. Offer an original gift to your loved one through a love…

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…

Herbert Blomstedt, © Martin Lengemann

Bruckner and Blomstedt in Berlin are worth the journey

By Arthur Kaptainis on 11 December 2017 Classical, Classical Music, Concert Reviews, Orchestral, Romantic

Did you catch Herbert Blomstedt and Maria João Pires with the Berlin Philharmonic on Saturday? All it took was a smartphone, a subscription to the Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall and, optionally, a better-than-average pair of earbuds. I did it the old-fashioned way and do not regret the decision. Hearing one of the world’s most famous orchestras led by one of the world’s most venerable conductors in one of the world’s most illustrious concert halls added up to one of the best concert experiences imaginable. To risk another one-of qualification, the symphony on the program was one of my favorites,…

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…

Yannick and the Orchestre Métropolitain: A Grand Finale in Paris

By Arthur Kaptainis on 4 December 2017 Art Song, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral, Piano, Romantic, Strings

PARIS – Ever seen a conductor cry on stage? I mean, other than Leonard Bernstein? We can add to this exclusive list the name of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who was seen wiping his eyes discreetly on Sunday after Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a performance that marked the official conclusion of a six-city, seven-concert European tour by the Orchestre Métropolitain. There would be an encore: Ravel’s Pavane pour une infante défunte, done in the supplest tones imaginable. We must resist the temptation to deem the last thing heard as the best. But goodness, what a sound. And what an ovation from the Parisians, who packed…

OM Concert at the Elbphilharmonie was Hamburg Heaven

By Arthur Kaptainis on 2 December 2017 Art Song, Canadian Music, Concert Reviews, Contemporary, Orchestral, Romantic, Strings

HAMBURG – “Suche Karte.” Seeking ticket. This is always a good sign, quite literally, in German-speaking lands, where it is common to advertise your unhappy condition with two words writ large on a piece of cardboard. Sure enough, a visit to the box office of the Elbphilharmonie confirmed that the fifth installment of the Orchestre Métropolitain’s tour of Europe was quite sold out. Eight thousand requests, 2,100 seats. Suche Karte. The huge demand cannot be reconciled with the usual explanations. Soloists Marie-Nicole Lemieux and Jean-Guihen Queyras are reputable enough, but hardly the stuff of a sellout. Yannick Nézet-Séguin is recognized everywhere.…

Kings College Choir Delivers Uplifting English Brahms Requiem

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 November 2017 Choral, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

Brahms: An English Requiem (Delphian) Mary Bevan, soprano Marcus Farnsworth, baritone James Baillieu and Richard Uttley, piano Choir of Kings College London, conductor Joseph Fort This has to be the least expected record of the year – a performance of Ein deutsches Requiem in the original English, at least in the texts of the original English Bible. The work was so popular on reception, at a time when Bismarck was planting German boots all over Denmark, Austria and France, that London impresarios felt it might be prudent to produce it in a less contentious language. Since Victorian concertgoers knew their…

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