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Lebrecht Weekly – FolksLied: Beethoven, Britten, Haydn (BR Klassik)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 25 March 2016 Art Song, Classical, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Viennese masters, always short of cash, picked up commissions from rich British tourists for composing drawing-room settings of national heritage. Haydn and Beethoven filled their boots with Scottish and Welsh ballads for two ducats a song. Haydn wrote about 200, dressed up with piano, violin and cello accompaniments. Easy money. The first surprise in this absorbing recital by Christian Gerhaher is that he sings the Haydn ditties in German, in a 1920s translation. It’s disconcerting at first but gradually deepens with hints of the nearness of these simple sentiments to the core topics of German Lieder: springtime, love and loss.…

Lebrecht Weekly – Debussy, Elgar &c: violin sonatas (Onyx)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 21 March 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

After two years of creative trauma that silenced almost every leading composer, the latter half of the First World War yielded works of extraordinary intimacy. Claude Debussy, responding to a terminal diagnosis of rectal cancer, wrote three intense sonatas for varied instruments and piano. In the last concert of his life, in September 1917, Debussy accompanied Gaston Poulet in the violin sonata, a work of fizzing energy, utterly lacking lament or regret. Gone is Debussy’s distancing feline detachment. The sonata closes on a ‘very animated’ springlike dance, a smiling might-have-been. Debussy died in March 1918, within sound of German gunfire,…

Lebrecht Weekly – British Clarinet Concertos 2 (Chandos)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 14 March 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

An unknown work by Benjamin Britten sets the pulse racing. It turns out to be fragments of a concerto he started writing for Benny Goodman in 194. What with Pearl Harbour and Peter Grimes, it got pushed to the back of the desk. Before Britten sailed home to England in March 1942, the only finished movement was seized by US Customs was seized on suspicion that it contained espionage codes. The movement did not see light of day until 1989 when it was retrieved and orchestrated by Colin Matthews, Britten’s composing assistant, and premiered by the clarinet virtuoso Michael Collins.…

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: 1st Symphony (BR Klassik)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 7 March 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s interpretation of Mahler’s first symphony is beautifully played by Munich’s (some say Germany’s) best orchestra and thoughtfully structured by an impressive guest conductor. I think I am safe in saying that it is conceptually different from any of the 120 Mahler Firsts on record, stretching all the way back to Dmitri Mitropolous’s towering Minnesota performance for Columbia in April 1940. And that’s no small distinction in a much-repeated piece. Where Yannick differs from all others is in atmospherics. The opening four and a half minutes of ambient sound, where the ear searches for a clue to what’s going…

Lebrecht Weekly – Rudi Stephan, Albéric Magnard (accentus)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 29 February 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

These two composers are joined by tragic deaths on opposite sides of the First World War. Stephan, a Munich avant-gardist, was the only soldier in his German unit to die in a September 1915 battle with Russian troops for the Galician town of Stryi. Magnard, a French traditionalist, was either shot or burned to death defending his home from German troops in September 1914. Only 28 at the time of his death, Stephan was little known outside German new music circles and not well liked within them. A young man of strong opinions and no tolerance for sycophancy, he…

Lebrecht Weekly – Ivry Gitlis (SWR/Naxos Deutschland)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 22 February 2016 Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

Great violinists come in two forms: stars and legends. Think about it. Jascha Heifetz was a star, Nathan Milstein a legend. One was a household name, the other inspired a kind of spiritual reverence among musicians of all stripes, not just violinists. Fritz Kreisler was a star, Jacques Thibaud a legend. The late Yehudi Menuhin was a star, as was Isaac Stern. Ivry Gitlis, their close contemporary, lives on – and he’s a legend. A child prodigy from the port town of Haifa, Ivry came to London before the Second World War to study with Carl Flesch. Turned down by…

Lebrecht Weekly – Yevgeny Sudbin: Medtner/Rachmaninov (BIS)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 15 February 2016 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

Most concert pianists are like modern tennis players. They know that only two or three men and women are ever going to win the major tournaments, which leaves all the rest working harder each day in vain pursuit of an inhuman perfection and an inexhaustible hope. The Russian-born Yevgeny Sudbin is a circuit pianist who, living in London and teaching at the Royal Academy, has yet to break top ten rankings. He’s a tremendous player of exceptional flair who has made recording for the past decade on an esoteric Swedish label, covering mostly Russian music. The reception has been enthusiastic,…

Lebrecht Weekly – Bartók: 44 Duos (Decca)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 8 February 2016 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

It has been an age since I looked to my shelves for a work by a major composer and found that, after 40 years of building a library, I don’t have it. Nor, so far as I recall, have I ever heard it, either in concert or on radio (though a few recordings do exist). The 44 duos were written by Béla Bartók in 1931 on commission from a German violinist, Erich Doflein, who wanted to use them as teaching aids in his studio. Easy money, you’d think. But Bartók, being Bartók, couldn’t write a dull phrase. The four books…

Lebrecht Weekly – Wihan Quartet: Dvořák/Janáček (Nimbus Alliance)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 1 February 2016 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

It must be something in the plum juice that produces, generation after generation, a cluster of distinctive string quartets from the country constituted as the Czech Republic. There is nothing like a Czech string quartet. It’s a generic school of ensemble playing that aligns all the right accents to a witty, virile expressiveness and an almost effortless panache. Count the present contenders on the world stage: the Panocha, the Pavel Haas, the Pražák, the Stamic, the Vlach, the Wihan, and the daddy of them all, the Talich. There are presently seven or eight Czech quartets of the highest quality out…

Lebrecht Weekly – Manhattan Intermezzo (Naxos)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 25 January 2016 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly

Editor’s Note: La Scena Musicale is pleased to welcome back contributor Norman Lebrecht for his weekly CD reviews, which will be posted online on Mondays and appear in the print edition. Read Norman’s regular CD reviews and columns under the Lebrecht Weekly tag. What you really need to start 2016 – what you never imagined you’d ever need – is a piano concerto by Neil Sedaka. Absolutely no irony here. Anyone who can write a novel or concerto start to finish without falling on his/her plot deserves all the credit going and a fair ride from reviewers. Sedaka, 75, made his…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Lebrecht Weekly – FolksLied: Beethoven, Britten, Haydn (BR Klassik)

Lebrecht Weekly – Debussy, Elgar &c: violin sonatas (Onyx)

Lebrecht Weekly – British Clarinet Concertos 2 (Chandos)

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: 1st Symphony (BR Klassik)

Lebrecht Weekly – Rudi Stephan, Albéric Magnard (accentus)

Lebrecht Weekly – Ivry Gitlis (SWR/Naxos Deutschland)

Lebrecht Weekly – Yevgeny Sudbin: Medtner/Rachmaninov (BIS)

Lebrecht Weekly – Bartók: 44 Duos (Decca)

Lebrecht Weekly – Wihan Quartet: Dvořák/Janáček (Nimbus Alliance)

Lebrecht Weekly – Manhattan Intermezzo (Naxos)

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