Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Pfitzner/Braunfels: piano concertos (Hyperion)

By Norman Lebrecht on 16 August 2019 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

The anniversary year of Hans Pfitzner (1869-1949) is marked by the re-emergence of a piano concerto that he wrote at the height of his fame. Pfitzner, acclaimed for his 1917 opera Palestrina, delivered the concerto in 1923, with Walter Gieseking as soloist. If Palestrina echoes Wagner’s Meistersinger, the concerto nods repeatedly in the direction of Brahms’s B-flat – and the nodding is done mostly by the listener. Pfitzner’s fallen reputation is sometimes ascribed to his gruesome flirtation with the Nazis but this concerto suggests something more organically at fault. Each of four movements is introduced by a promising idea, which…

Photo: hindemith.info

Paul Hindemith: Ludus Tonalis (Decca Eloquence)

By Norman Lebrecht on 9 August 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

In the painstaking task of reading page proofs for my next book, I needed something on in the background that would keep my rhythm going without distracting me with an excess of invention. Hindemith, who else? The German composer, damned by the Nazis as a dangerous modernist, was never other than a cerebral conservative with an ear for correct form. Exiled to Istanbul, then to Yale, he reduced students to tears with rigorous lessons in theory and any number of ruthless technical exercises designed to make them better human beings. The 1943 Ludus Tonalis set for solo piano, premiered by…

Jules Massenet : La vie d’une rose (Somm Recordings)

By Norman Lebrecht on 2 August 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

Sally Silver – also known as ‘Silver Sally’ – died last November of cancer at 50 years old, casting a pall over the British opera scene, where she was a vibrant and ever-willing participant. Never a showy diva, Sally landed roles in any opera from Handel to Thomas Adès, pursuing a particular love for French chanson. This posthumous album – curated by Sally, accompanied by her friend Richard Bonynge and produced by her husband Jeremy Silver – is a delight from start to finish. It’s not just the sparkle she brings to Massenet’s somewhat timeworn drawing-room songs – though that…

Joseph Haydn: 3 symphonies (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 26 July 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

The Department of It Never Rains But It Pours has delivered us a set of premiere recordings of three Haydn symphonies, reduced for piano solo. Last week, we reviewed Mozart, shrunk to four instruments. What’s next – Wagner on the mandolin? There are two saving graces at play here. The transcription by Carl David Stegmann (1751-1826) is craftily inventive, leading the ear up paths never fully imagined by the original symphonist. And the interpretation by the Serbian-US pianist Ivan Ilic has a splash of fun – mischief, even – that tells us not to take classical music always at its…

Mozart: The Jupiter Project (Hyperion)

By Norman Lebrecht on 19 July 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

In an age when the majors pump out stars and brands, boutique labels are free to indulge in the cranky, the batty and the frankly off-the-wall. Which self-respecting woke person, for instance, would pay to hear Mozart’s major orchestral works shrunk to fit a Brooklyn or Lewisham bedsit? Mozart reduced to pocket size by his principal rivals Hummel, Cramer and Clementi – do we really need that? Actually, yes, yes, yes! It is totally thrilling to hear the C-major piano concerto K467 played by piano, flute, violin and cello… like a digital scan of Mozart’s mind working at full speed…

Brahms: 3rd Symphony; Dvorak: 8th (Tudor)

By Norman Lebrecht on 12 July 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

The Bamberg Symphony was formed in 1946 by ethnic Germans expelled by the Czechs in retribution for the Nazi occupation. Based in Bavaria, it acquired a sound that was markedly different from the nearby Munich orchestras, let alone others in the state. Joseph Keilberth conducted the group with distinction for 20 years followed by Horst Stein. Since the turn of the century, the sound lost something of its edge under the British conductor Jonathan Nott. Now, in bedrock repertoire, it is reassuring to find that the Czech conductor Jakob Hrusa has restored something of the original sonority, allowing the brass…

Nikos Skalkottas: Piano works (Bis)

By Norman Lebrecht on 5 July 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

The Greek composer Skalkottas died of a ruptured hernia in 1949, shortly after the birth of his second son. He was 45 and completely unknown, his health broken by internment in a camp during the German occupation. Possessed of a questing mind, Skalkottas enrolled in Arnold Schoenberg’s Berlin class from 1927 to 1932, learning how to write ultra-modern serialism and balancing it with his own instinct forMediterranean melody. This collection of piano pieces by the Greek scholar Lorenda Ramou contains three world premieres, all of considerable curiosity. If you’re into 20th century piano music, this should be high on your…

Beethoven: Christ on the Mount of Olives (Naxos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 28 June 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

Never one to leave his audience short of music, Beethoven wrote this oratorio for an 1803 Vienna concert that already consisted of his first two symphonies and his third piano concerto. Since he only finished the oratorio on the morning of the concert, rehearsals were scratchy and the musicians bad-tempered. Even at this distance of time, it is hard to tell how they made any sense of this episodic work, which veers from flights of inspiration to pedestrian note-filling. At its most sublime – the orchestral introduction and the tenor aria ‘my soul trembles’, we hear Beethoven finding raw materials…

Schubert: Die schöne Müllerin (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 June 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

One of the marvels of English music-making in the past couple of years has been the emergence of Roderick Williams in mid-career as one of the most pleasing lieder baritones of our time. Williams, who is 54, has sung Billy Budd and Don Giovanni among other operatic roles. He is also a composer. But it is in Lieder that he has found a true vocation and his performance of Schubert’s love-struck cycle captures all the colours of a bucolic landscape and the clouds of an unattainable desire. What I particularly like is that, unlike Fischer-Dieskau for instance, he neither hardens…

Mendelssohn in Birmingham, vol. 5 (Chandos)

By Norman Lebrecht on 14 June 2019 Lebrecht Weekly

This really useful series has reached a clutch of shorter pieces, all of them offering fresh insights into the life and mind of the travelling composer-conductor. In the overture to St Paul, Mendelssohn plays parlour games with the founder of his faith. The trumpet overture, opus 101, is quite literally a blast and the overture to Athalie has real novelty value. The truth is that, two centuries on, we still have no idea who Mendelssohn was. He is so adept at presenting ideas in a patina of respectability that we are left wondering if this man knew any passion in…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly