Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly – Boris Tishchenko: 8th symphony (Naxos)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 24 February 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral, Violin

Try as I might, I can’t stop listening to these late works of a Russian composer who was close to Shostakovich but never tried, as others did, to imitate him. The eighth symphony, written in 2008 when Tishchenko was mortally ill, draws the ear into an eerie landscape of ghosts, trolls and spooks, weird and possibly political. The composer thought it might make a good companion piece to Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony. He was right: it would. But where is the conductor or orchestra manager that dares to do such a thing in timid 2017? Unlike Schubert, there are expressions here…

Lebrecht Weekly – Not bad music, just not very good Bartók

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By Norman Lebrecht on 17 February 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

The unique selling point of this release is what appears to be the first recording of Bartók’s piano quartet in C minor, an unpublished work that the composer began in high school in 1898 and his publishers somehow forgot. The gushing sleeve note says nothing about where this work was found, or what state it was in. We have to judge from the performance why Bartók and his publishers considered it unworthy of inclusion in his mature output. The reason, by my best guess, is lack of originality. The Allegro and Scherzo sound like warmed-over Brahms, while the Adagio could…

Lebrecht Weekly – Complete piano music of Vítězslava Kaprálová is compelling listening

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By Norman Lebrecht on 10 February 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

Don’t look away just because the composer’s name is unfamiliar and has too many syllables. Kaprálová (1915-1940) is a vital link in Czech music, her death at 25 the closure of a century of genius. Daughter of a Leoš Janáček student and herself the secret lover of Bohuslav Martinů, Kaprálová flowered in France and Britain in the last years before the Second World War. In addition to composing she was an active conductor, the first woman to raise a baton on BBC television – unscreened, in an experimental studio – and she was widely praised at a London international festival…

Lebrecht Weekly – A Renée Fleming record that can’t end soon enough

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By Norman Lebrecht on 3 February 2017 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Popular Music

I hope this is not Renée Fleming’s final record. The American soprano, in her late 50s, is closing her stage career with the voice unblemished and the memories fond. It would be a pity if her legacy on Decca was to be concluded by this album, which plays to all her weaknesses. Samuel Barber’s lyric rhapsody Knoxville: Summer of 2015 requires a rich soprano voice and a capacity to articulate James Agee’s achingly nostalgic English text. Ms Fleming has the first quality. Pronouncing the words has never been her forte. The best ears will strain here to catch more than…

Lebrecht Weekly – Leonard Bernstein: Symphonies 1 and 2 (Naxos)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 27 January 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

Bernstein’s three symphonies have not enjoyed much exposure on record. Aside from the Sony and DG releases conducted by the composer, my database calls up only three other versions – Leonard Slatkin at the BBC, James Judd in New Zealand and an LA Phil DG download conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. While the composer’s edition must be considered in some sense definitive, his take on the two works has failed to ignite the public imagination. What catches my ear about Marin Alsop’s new recording with the Baltimore Symphony is how strikingly it diverges from her master’s voice. In the Jeremiah symphony,…

Lebrecht Weekly – Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies (ECM)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 20 January 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

When I first started writing about Weinberg quarter of a century ago, there was no consistent western spelling of his surname (mostly printed Vainberg) and his first name was given as Moisei (pronounced Moshe), consistent with Soviet policy of identifying racial minorities. As for the music, it was unknown beyond the Soviet bloc, where it was more familiar to musicians in private performances than it was to public audiences. Today, thanks largely to proselytism by Gidon Kremer and his friends, Weinberg is no longer obscure but a musical giant, waiting to be discovered. The musician closest to Shostakovich – each…

Lebrecht Weekly – Boris Giltburg Plays Shostakovich

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By Norman Lebrecht on 13 January 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

What is remarkable about both piano concertos is that neither was intended for virtuoso performers. Shostakovich wrote the first in 1933 for himself to play with the Leningrad Philharmonic and the second in 1957 as a birthday present for his son Maxim, who was intent on a conducting career. The lack of flash effects in the score intensifies the directness and sincerity of both works. Listen with eyes closed and you can imagine the state-harassed composer playing the first concerto in some remote corner of the Soviet empire, sharing the limelight with the local trumpet player and Kazak strings. Shostakovich’s…

Lebrecht Weekly – Pietro Mascagni: Guglielmo Ratcliff (RTE Lyric)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 6 January 2017 Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Romantic

Whenever I watch any opera by Mascagni and Leoncavallo other than ‘Cav’ and ‘Pag’ I have no trouble understanding why the two composers went down in history as one-hit wonders. True, there are those who make claims for Leoncavallo’s La Boheme (Mahler deemed it vastly inferior to Puccini’s) and others are thrilled by Mascagni’s sex-slave Iris, but neither work has struck me as more than a barrel-scraping of the short-lived 1890s verismo craze, deservedly occupying the fringes of musical memory. All the more reason, then, to eat a few of my words on this first encounter with Guglielmo Ratcliff, a…

Lebrecht Weekly – Last Album of 2016

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By Norman Lebrecht on 30 December 2016 Art Song, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Pictures of America: Natalie Dessay (Sony Classical) News of a Natalie Dessay release always stirs me to a fevered expectation. The French soprano, now retired from the opera stage, has an extraordinary ability to find character between the lines of a song, even one that is overly familiar or resistant to shades of interpretation. Why, she once won me over to choose a Debussy set as my album of the year… So my curiosity was well and truly piqued when Ms Dessay announced an album of American songs based on her reaction to well-known American paintings by Edward Hopper. What…

Lebrecht Weekly – J. S. Bach: The complete keyboard works (Erato)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 16 December 2016 Baroque and Early, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

Amid the seasonal rock fall of weird-shaped box sets and unopenable recorded turkeys, one project stands out as indispensable in both musical and moral dimensions. In 1965, a little-known harpsichordist began recording the Bach keyboard works for a niche French label. By the time she finished ten years later, Zuzana Ruzickova and Erato had received every French record award, wresting harpsichord Bach away from deadhand American academics back to a middle-European vivacity. Ruzickova, resisting celebrity, Communism and the temptations of the music world, taught the next three generations of leading harpsichordists from her home in Prague. A survivor of four…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Lebrecht Weekly – Boris Tishchenko: 8th symphony (Naxos)

Lebrecht Weekly – Not bad music, just not very good Bartók

Lebrecht Weekly – Complete piano music of Vítězslava Kaprálová is compelling listening

Lebrecht Weekly – A Renée Fleming record that can’t end soon enough

Lebrecht Weekly – Leonard Bernstein: Symphonies 1 and 2 (Naxos)

Lebrecht Weekly – Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies (ECM)

Lebrecht Weekly – Boris Giltburg Plays Shostakovich

Lebrecht Weekly – Pietro Mascagni: Guglielmo Ratcliff (RTE Lyric)

Lebrecht Weekly – Last Album of 2016

Lebrecht Weekly – J. S. Bach: The complete keyboard works (Erato)

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