Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Photo: Angie Kremer Photography

Lebrecht Weekly | Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica: Viktor Kalabis’ Chamber music (Hyperion)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 8 August 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

When the great conductor Rafael Kubelik returned to Prague in 1990 after 42 years in exile, the first people he sought out were composers who had been muted by the Communist regime. Among them was Viktor Kalabis, an old friend who had kept under the radar, writing intimate chamber music, five symphonies and a piano concerto for his wife, the harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova. I remember the electrifying awe that descended when Kubelik entered a church in the Maly Strana to hear a lunchtime performance of music by the suppressed composers. Kalabis is not easy to classify. His music owes something…

Lebrecht Weekly | Silvestrov: …flowering over Lethe… & Violin Concerto

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By Norman Lebrecht on 1 August 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

The leading Ukrainian composer, living in German exile since 2022, defies categorisation. Under Soviet rule, Valentin Silvestrov maintained an aloofness from imposed styles, ignoring political and national pressures. He was twice expelled from the Composers Union and carried on composing in his own stubborn way, mining elements of the past to relate to the unhappy present. Under Ukrainian independence he saw no reason to change. The piano pieces played by Alexei Lyubimov on ECM, belong to the opening years of the 21st century. Some are dedicated to kindred composers Arvo Pärt, Alexander Knaifel, Leonid Hrabovsky – others refer to Glinka,…

Photo: Royal Danish Library

Lebrecht Weekly | The Best Record to Venture Into Nielsen if You Haven’t Before

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By Norman Lebrecht on 25 July 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

At the risk of being sent as a Nielsen missionary to Patagonia, I will try to explain why the music of this island-hopping Dane can be trusted to bring comfort to troubled minds in our times. Raised in stark poverty on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale archipelago, Nielsen would return to his home environment whenever inspiration or happiness deserted him. After the First World War, his long marriage ended by a legal separation order, Nielsen spent time on Jutland, trying to make sense of his world. The fifth symphony alternates sounds of battle – snare drums and woodwind shrieks – with…

Photo: miroslavbeinhauer.com

Lebrecht Weekly | Pianist Miroslav Beinhauer Turns Alois Hába’s Music Into Good Fun

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By Norman Lebrecht on 18 July 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

Around the time Arnold Schoenberg got fed up with atonality and moved to serialism, a Czech composer of no renown decided that the future lay in microtones, A soldier in the Austrian army in the first world war, Alois Hába tried his luck with three fugues for two pianos, tuned a quarter-tone apart. Hardly anyone could hear the difference from ‘normal’ music and the world continued to revolve on its axis. Hába joined the Communist party, palled up with Hanns Eisler and was encouraged to compose in one-sixth of a tone by the ever-curious Ferruccio Busoni. Hába composed string quartets,…

Lebrecht Weekly | Yulianna Avdeeva Brings a Light Touch to Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues

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By Norman Lebrecht on 11 July 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

For the bicentenary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s death, the Soviets sent their top composer to Leipzig to judge a competition in Bach’s name. Having endured Stalinist attacks for two years, Dmitri Shostakovich was caught between a rock and a hard place. A system that denounced him for ‘formalism’ and threatened his freedom was now sending him as a cultural ambassador to a country under occupation where he would be viewed with hostility masked in sycophancy. Not knowing what to say, where to turn, he focussed on Tatiana Nikolaeva, a Russian pianist in the Bach competition who was declared the winner…

Lebrecht Weekly | Schubert: Piano sonata D959, Moments Musicaux (Hyperion)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 4 July 2025 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

So commanding was Alfred Brendel in Schubert’s piano music that other pianists complain they can’t get him out of their fingers. It’s two decades or more since Brendel last recorded late Schubert, and half a century since he made those epochal recordings in Philips, yet his shadow stretches long and no clear contender has since emerged as the Schubert pianist of our time. Steven Osborne can credibly claim to lead the field. A Scot with a strong record in Beethoven, he disdains Brendel’s emotional neutrality at the opening of Schubert’s penultimate sonata and imposes a convincing interpretation of assertive clarity.…

Lebrecht Weekly | Yunchan Lim’s Interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons is Deeply Satisfying

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By Norman Lebrecht on 27 June 2025 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

When a major artist performs third-rate music, it’s either going to be a trifling act of self-indulgence or a stunning revelation. It took me three listenings to work out which this was. Tchaikovsky wrote 12 piano pieces for each month of the year for publication in serial issues of a St Petersburg magazine. The editor appended a poem to each piece without the composer’s involvement. That much is verified fact. Now Yunchan Lim, in a sleeve-note, comes up with a fable relating how the suite describes the last year of a man’s life, a gradual letting-go. Tchaikovsky, who was in…

Lebrecht Weekly | Sir Thomas Beecham: Complete stereo recordings (Warner)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 20 June 2025 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

Some maestros take themselves too seriously. Sir Thomas never did. A fount of wit and self-mockery he made rehearsals fun and performance an inspiration. Adored in Britain, he was received warily abroad although Wilhelm Furtwängler accorded him deep respect and even Toscanini had nice things to say. As for general reputation, Sir Thomas was a master manipulator of media. One night in Liverpool, he invited leading journalists to a champagne reception at the Adelphi, where he proceeded to unscrew light-bulbs and drop them one by one into the hotel lobby from the top floor. The headlines wrote themselves. This box of…

Alkan

Lebrecht Weekly | Alkan’s Early works: Mozartian with Added Chutzpah

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By Norman Lebrecht on 13 June 2025 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

There are four world premiere recordings on this utterly original disc, so if you have even a smidgeon of curiosity about the legend known as Alkan you will probably be buying this album before reading the next sentence. I’ll pause for a second to allow you to complete the purchase. Ready? Charles-Valentin Morhange, called Alkan for short, was the most prodigious French pianist that ever lived. Liszt was in awe of his powers and Chopin nominated him as the only musician capable of completing his unfinished etude. A sensitive Alsatian Jew, Alkan became a hermit after the Paris Conservatoire rejected…

Magdalena Kožená and Mitsuko Uchida

Lebrecht Weekly | Debussy, Messiaen: L’extase (Pentatone)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 6 June 2025 Lebrecht Weekly

There is a line of beauty that runs through French vocal music, from Debussy to Messiaen to Boulez, which exists to the exclusion of all else. When you listen, it sounds as if no other French songs exist – no Ravel, no Poulenc, no Jacques Brel – nothing but this ethereal space in which each consonant is placed with aesthetic precision, like raspberries in a patisserie, or boules in a town square. Singing in this genre can sound precious and showy. Not on this album, however. Magdalena Kožená speaks Czech as mother tongue, English and German at home. While her…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Lebrecht Weekly | Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica: Viktor Kalabis’ Chamber music (Hyperion)

Lebrecht Weekly | Silvestrov: …flowering over Lethe… & Violin Concerto

Lebrecht Weekly | The Best Record to Venture Into Nielsen if You Haven’t Before

Lebrecht Weekly | Pianist Miroslav Beinhauer Turns Alois Hába’s Music Into Good Fun

Lebrecht Weekly | Yulianna Avdeeva Brings a Light Touch to Shostakovich’s 24 Preludes and Fugues

Lebrecht Weekly | Schubert: Piano sonata D959, Moments Musicaux (Hyperion)

Lebrecht Weekly | Yunchan Lim’s Interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons is Deeply Satisfying

Lebrecht Weekly | Sir Thomas Beecham: Complete stereo recordings (Warner)

Lebrecht Weekly | Alkan’s Early works: Mozartian with Added Chutzpah

Lebrecht Weekly | Debussy, Messiaen: L’extase (Pentatone)

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