Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly – Felix Mendelssohn: Songs without words (BIS)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 8 July 2016 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

As a general rule, I would rather eat porridge that has been left to stand overnight than listen to music of the romantic era being played on what is supposed to be a period instrument and is actually a modern replica, made the year before last. In this case, a reproduction of an 1830 Paris Pleyel that was manufactured by Paul McNulty in 2010. I mean, why….? Then again, ask any composer if he or she wanted their music to be played on the best possible soundboard or on a washboard and you’ll get an answer far more conclusive than…

Lebrecht Weekly – Glazunov, Khachaturian: Violin Concertos (Avanti)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 1 July 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic, Violin

The archetype Russian violin concerto – Tchaikovsky’s – looms so large over the musical landscape that all others seem no more than sidebars. Two concertos (each) by Prokofiev and Shostakovich are rooted in political circumstances, inseparable from their history. Miaskovsky’s concerto never took off, despite the advocacy of David Oistrakh, Weinberg’s is emerging too slowly to be counted and the rest barely make up a respectable quorum. Apart from the present pair. Alexander Glazunov wrote his concerto in 1905 for the violin professor Leopold Auer, a formidable authority who once refused to premiere Tchaikosky’s concerto unless he made extensive changes.…

Lebrecht Weekly – Lucas Debargue (Sony)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 24 June 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

This is a great time for piano lovers, a terrible one for young pianists. The past four years have flung up the most phenomenal range of new talent, more than listeners can take in. Daniil Trifonov, the 2011 Tchaikovsky winner, set a new benchmark. Since then, the 2015 Chopin competition has yielded Seong-jin Cho and Charles-Richard Hamelin, the Van Cliburn has brought forth the prodigious Beatrice Rana, the BBC Young Musician winner Benjamin Grosvenor has quickly made a name for himself and there are more coming through all the time. And then there’s Lucas Debargue. Placed fourth in the 2015…

Lebrecht Weekly – Dmitri Shostakovich: piano trios and viola sonata (Decca)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 17 June 2016 Chamber Music, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

The three works on this album encompass an entire composing life. The first piano trio was written by a 17 year-old for his girlfriend in 1923. The mastery is already undeniable and the thumbprints instantly recognisable: pathos, scepticism and the juxtaposition of polar opposites. This is not the way most of us would go about wooing the love of our life. Shostakovich was always an original, even at his most eclectic. Everything he writes can be interpreted equally as its opposite, a device that became the key to the composer’s survival in Soviet Russia. The second piano trio, written in…

Lebrecht Weekly – Cameron Carpenter: All you need is Bach (Sony)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 10 June 2016 Baroque and Early, Lebrecht Weekly

Before we go any further, let me declare once and for all that I am done with three stars. Everywhere else, critics award three stars as a kind of neutral, no-harm-done mark for something they neither love nor hate. Myself, I’ve stopped reviewing that sort of thing. If it doesn’t make you want to laugh or cry (for better or worse), why steal a nanosecond of your readers’ attention by discussing it? So no more three stars on this site. They’d be wasted, anyway, on Cameron Carpenter. The flamboyant American organist, more used to playing in a singlet than a…

Lebrecht Weekly – Feldman, Crumb: Piano pieces (Hyperion)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 3 June 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

Every few months I take my ears out for a cleaning. This is not as easy as it sounds. Finding music that is original, unfamiliar, astringent, elevating and altogether uncomplacent restricts the seeker to the dustiest corners of recorded repertoire. And no sooner do you find a box that fits the bill than what you thought was household detergent comes stuffed with sticky minimalisms. Anyway, this week, I’ve struck lucky with some top-grade industrial ear cleanser from a British pianist I’d normally associate with Beethoven, Rachmaninov and Messiaen. Steven Osborne, though, has a quirky turn of mind and a wonderful…

Lebrecht Weekly – Anonymous: Six concertos (CPO)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 27 May 2016 Baroque and Early, Lebrecht Weekly

The best fun I’ve had all week is trying to identify the composers of six 18th century concertos that have turned up in the vaults of the Saxon State University library in Dresden. Five of the concertos are for flute, which suggest a possible Frederick the Great connection, the sixth is for cembalo. All are entertaining, accomplished, professional – top-drawer music for a courtly dinner party. But who wrote them? The obvious suspects are the Dresden concertmaster Johann Georg Pisendel (1687-1755) and the singer and composer Carl Heinrich Graun (1704-1759). Both turned out music of high quality and near-memorability but,…

Lebrecht Weekly – Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphonies 2 and 8 (Onyx)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 20 May 2016 Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral, Romantic

Unless you live in England – and, in most of the country, even if you do – you will have few opportunities to hear live performances of the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, the dominant national composer between Elgar and Britten. A passing violinist may offer The Lark Ascending and a string orchestra might play VW’s setting of the Tudor tune ‘Greensleeves’, but the meat of this great composer, his symphonic work, is seldom served and then only with apology. There has only ever been one live cycle of the symphonies – by the late Richard Hickox – and the…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Lebrecht Weekly – Felix Mendelssohn: Songs without words (BIS)

Lebrecht Weekly – Glazunov, Khachaturian: Violin Concertos (Avanti)

Lebrecht Weekly – Lucas Debargue (Sony)

Lebrecht Weekly – Dmitri Shostakovich: piano trios and viola sonata (Decca)

Lebrecht Weekly – Cameron Carpenter: All you need is Bach (Sony)

Lebrecht Weekly – Feldman, Crumb: Piano pieces (Hyperion)

Lebrecht Weekly – Feldman, Crumb: Piano pieces (Hyperion)

Lebrecht Weekly – Anonymous: Six concertos (CPO)

Lebrecht Weekly – Anonymous: Six concertos (CPO)

Lebrecht Weekly – Ralph Vaughan Williams: Symphonies 2 and 8 (Onyx)

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