Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly – Impromptu (Onyx)

0

By Norman Lebrecht on 12 May 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

The trouble with keeping records is that library science has yet to devise a method of telling you where any piece of music will be just when you really need it. The Schumann piano concerto, for instance. If I look under Schumann, I find two versions. But then there are four more under Grieg – that’s how the record industry likes to pair them up – and heaven knows how many more in box sets of the lifetime works of individual great pianists. Online, it’s no easier, since the same recording will crop up a dozen times under different covers…

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: Third symphony (Channel Classics)

1

By Norman Lebrecht on 5 May 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

There is no wholly recommendable performance on record of Mahler’s third symphony. The earliest, by F. Charles Adler in 1952, is faultlessly idiomatic, as is Jascha Horenstein’s 1970 LSO account, but both are marred by inferior orchestral playing and poor sound. Claudio Abbado’s 2007 DVD from Lucerne is as good as it gets, though even a lifelong Mahlerian like Abbado struggles with the lop-sidedness of this amalgam of nostalgic pastoralism and saloon-bar philosophy. No-one can satisfactorily explain what Friedrich Nietzsche is getting at in the fourth movement contralto solo. It’s just odd. If you listen just to the second disc…

Lebrecht Weekly – Alexander Lokshin: Clarinet quintet & c. (Melodiya)

0

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

In the dying years of the Soviet Union I became aware of dozens of symphonists who survived on the fringes of musical society, tolerated by the authorities but never given a proper hearing. Once I got past the immense, historic figures of Mieczyslaw Weinberg and Galina Ustvolskaya, both pivotal in the life of Dmitri Shostakovich, I kept discovering other samizdat composers who, for some reason, seemed to speak my language. At a time when western musicians were subjected to a dictatorship of style and serial ideology if they wanted to get on the BBC, these covert Russians were free to…

Lebrecht Weekly – Robert Schumann: Davidsbündlertänze (Hyperion)

0

By Norman Lebrecht on 21 April 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

Do not be put off by the cover, which shows two Victorians of different gender having a pre-Raphaelite snog. What they look like post-Raphael is left to the imagination, as is any thematic connection between Gilbert Baldry’s The Kiss and a set of Schumann pieces that evoke male friendships. Not long ago, record companies employed picture researchers and their covers bore some relevance to the music inside. These days, the images seem to be picked by a computer linked to the Amazon sales chart. Do not be put off either by the coupling of Schumann with a record newbie whose…

Lebrecht Weekly – Karol Szymanowski; Stabat Mater, 3rd Symphony (Warner)

0

By Norman Lebrecht on 13 April 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Choral, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

Never a big Easter bunny, I generally receive the springtime festival releases with the same excitement as I’d feel about a Placido Domingo Christmas record. What comes round, comes round. This one, however, is pure class. The international Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak opens with a Litany to the Virgin Mary that is slow, devout, soulful and twenty shades lighter than one might expect from a Polish Catholic ritual. Kurzak has never sounded sweeter or more comfortable on record. The little-known Litany is followed by the more familiar Stabat Mater and capped with Szymanowski’s third symphony, the ‘Song of the Night’…

Lebrecht Weekly – Rachmaninov: Piano concertos 2 and 3 (Sony Classical)

0

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

It’s raining Rachmaninov concertos and I’m not sure the roof can take any more. The past couple of weeks have brought Vanessa Benelli Mosell on Decca, Marc-André Hamelin on Hyperion and now the exuberant Khatia Buniatishvili on Sony. Benelli and Hamelin both play with London orchestras, neither sounding on peak form. Khatia is seriously challenged by the Czech Philharmonic, who are in terrific shape under Paavo Järvi’s baton. Benelli’s pairing for the C minor concerto is the Corelli Variations, which she does rather well. Hamelin matches the D minor concerto with Nikolai Medtner’s long-neglected second concerto, a curiosity that falls…

Lebrecht Weekly – Verdi: Requiem (LSO Live)

1

By Norman Lebrecht on 31 March 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

The Barbican’s season opener last September was one of the great Requiems of my life. The London Symphony Orchestra had a spring in their step as they came on stage, the chorus had been seriously souped up by director Simon Halsey and the conductor, Gianandrea Noseda, waited at least half a minute until complete silence prevailed before he began. And silent it stayed. I have seldom sat among a more rapt London audience, not a cough in eighty minutes. Every individual in the orchestra displayed ferocious concentration. And, best of all, the quartet of soloists – Erika Grimaldi, Daniela Barcellona,…

Lebrecht Weekly – Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer: Bach trios (Nonesuch)

1

By Norman Lebrecht on 24 March 2017 Baroque and Early, CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Lebrecht Weekly

Hard to know whether to give this confection one star or five. The dominant voice is the mandolin of Chris Thile, an instrument probably unknown to J S Bach who never wrote for it, but used often in modern transcriptions of his works. It sits more comfortably in a Bach score than, say, a tenor sax, but that does not make it remotely authentic. The other instruments at play here are a cello and double bass. What hits the ear from the off are clever, virtuosic trio adaptations of anything from a solo keyboard fugue from the Well-Tempered Clavier to…

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (Sony)

0

By Norman Lebrecht on 17 March 2017 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

This is one of those treasurable major-label releases, made with the best of intentions, in which everything turns out wrong. Mahler wrote The Song of the Earth for high tenor and alto, singing alternate movements. It can also be sung by tenor and baritone if no alto sounds right. The chief requirement is a tenor who needs to sing high and very loud – a Siegfried kind of voice that can surmount the force of full orchestra. This is as much a competition for two soloists and orchestra as a composition. Jonas Kaufmann tells us he has loved the work…

Lebrecht Weekly – Hanns Eisler: Hangmen Also Die! (Capriccio)

0

By Norman Lebrecht on 13 March 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

In the Hollywood walk of composing fame, Hanns Eisler is the forgotten man. Erich Korngold was the founding father, Waxman and Newman the busy bees, Rosza and Herrmann the atmosphere merchants. Eisler, who wrote the first book on composing for film and treated the craft as an art in its own right, is all but pushed off the sidewalk. A Hitler refugee, Eisler landed in New York in 1938, taught for three years at the New School, then moved to Los Angeles to work with Bertolt Brecht. In 1948, he was forced to leave the US during Senator McCarthy’s witch-hunt,…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Lebrecht Weekly – Impromptu (Onyx)

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: Third symphony (Channel Classics)

Lebrecht Weekly – Alexander Lokshin: Clarinet quintet & c. (Melodiya)

Lebrecht Weekly – Robert Schumann: Davidsbündlertänze (Hyperion)

Lebrecht Weekly – Karol Szymanowski; Stabat Mater, 3rd Symphony (Warner)

Lebrecht Weekly – Rachmaninov: Piano concertos 2 and 3 (Sony Classical)

Lebrecht Weekly – Verdi: Requiem (LSO Live)

Lebrecht Weekly – Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile and Edgar Meyer: Bach trios (Nonesuch)

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (Sony)

Lebrecht Weekly – Hanns Eisler: Hangmen Also Die! (Capriccio)

Current Issue