Skip to main content
Read page text
page 12
AWARDS SHORTLIST on paper, deserves taking seriously on the strength of this revival. I cannot promise conversion, but sceptics are invited to give it a fair hearing. Peter Quantrill Stanford Requiem, Op 63 Carolyn Sampson sop Marta FontanalsSimmons mez James Way ten Ross Ramgobin bar University of Birmingham Voices; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins Hyperion (CDA68418 • 74’ • T/t) While much of Stanford’s large-scale music suffered increasing neglect after his death in 1924, his Requiem, commissioned for the Birmingham Festival in 1897, enjoyed a modest degree of attention during the rest of the 20th century. Boult performed it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1944 and Boris Ord at Cambridge in 1952 during the centenary of Stanford’s birth. During the 1970s it attracted the attention of Raymond Leppard, who believed (perhaps somewhat conjecturally) that the Benedictus influenced the nature of Elgar’s ‘Enigma’ theme, though this speculative connection (which found its way into an article in The Times on August 20, 1977) was backed up by the fact that Elgar heard Stanford play through his work at Birchwood in 1897 before its first public performance. Since then the work has received a fair number of hearings, both here (I also heard a fine performance of the work by the York Musical Society under Philip Moore some years ago) and abroad. Dedicated to the memory of Lord Leighton, a close friend, the Requiem emanated from Stanford’s instincts for dramatic music. By 1897 he had completed five operas, the last of which, Shamus O’Brien (1896), had enjoyed immense success in London, on tours around the UK, on Broadway, in Chicago and in Sydney; and previous choral works such as The Three Holy Children (1885), The Revenge (1886), Eden (1891) and The Voyage of Maeldune (1892) had also shown a conspicuous predisposition for the theatrical. With the precedents of Requiems by Verdi (who knew Stanford’s score and admired it) and Dvo∑ák (also commissioned by Birmingham in 1891), not to mention Alfred Bruneau’s Requiem (now much neglected), which The Bach Choir performed in 1895, Stanford was well placed to conceive the large-scale 1212 GRAMOPHONE GRAMOPHONE 2024 symphonic structure of his work and it was this aspect that caught the audience’s imagination when it was first performed. The ambience of the operatic nature of the Requiem is further enhanced by the presence of four prominent soloists (Stanford was later to emulate this model in the Te Deum, Op 66, the Stabat mater, Op 96, and the Mass Via Victrix, Op 173) who, as ‘characters’ in the drama, all perform on this recording with a sense of authority and commitment. Indeed, the soloists are spoilt for choice when it comes to the rich solo material – the sizeable tripartite structure of the Introit, Kyrie and Gradual, the gripping multimovement sequence of the Dies irae (which puts Dvo∑ák’s in the shade), the euphonious Benedictus and, for me, the most moving of all, the Agnus Dei, in which the closing ‘Lux aeterna’ is one of the composer’s greatest creations (I often have a lump in my throat at this point when the tenor enters). Brabbins, who truly understands the language of this music, judges the tempos and balance of the ensemble with instinctive sensitivity; his handling of the chorus – the University of Birmingham Voices – is outstanding, and he genuinely brings out the luminosity of Stanford’s lustrous orchestration, which is splendidly executed by the CBSO, especially in the lovely solos of the Dies irae, the arresting climax of the ‘Lacrimosa’, the swirling Rhinegold-like figurations of the Sanctus and the solemn funeral cortege of the Agnus (perhaps a depiction of Leighton’s funeral and interment at St Paul’s Cathedral). The chorus sing throughout with a youthful clarity, beauty of tone and lovely intonation. However, if I had to pick out moments of particular deftness, they would be the simple but captivating homophony of the Introit and Agnus, the arresting opening of the ‘Domine Jesu Christe’ and the agility of the inventive fugue in the Offertorium (‘Quam olim Abrahae’), the gossamer textures of the Sanctus (which is like Undine emerging from the lake) and the grandeur of the choral responses to the soloists in the ‘Lux aeterna’. In 1997 the Requiem was issued by Marco Polo in a recording with the RTÉ Philharmonic Choir and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland under Colman Pearce. This was a most welcome recording at the time, but there is much more to learn about Stanford’s choral masterpiece from the more cohesive architecture, sound and élan of this vibrant new issue from Hyperion. For anyone interested in British choral music of the period, it is a must! Jeremy Dibble Tippett A Child of Our Time Pumeza Matshikiza sop Dame Sarah Connolly mez Joshua Stewart ten Ashley Riches bassbar BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra / Sir Andrew Davis Chandos (CHSA5341 Í • 64’ • T) This is the first new recording of Tippett’s wartime masterpiece since Colin Davis’s LSO Live version of 2007 and it arrives to mark the 80th anniversary of the 1944 premiere. Sir Andrew is one of Tippett’s most ardent champions and was sometimes mischievously referred to by the composer as ‘t’other Davis’. His interpretation of this work is well known and so expectations aroused by its eventual commitment to disc were considerable. Its greatest glory is perhaps the powerfully galvanised singing of the well-focused BBC Symphony Chorus – a broad spectrum of visceral expression across a huge dynamic range with every word clearly audible. And of the soloists, both Sarah Connolly and Ashley Riches are superbly eloquent and moving. Less satisfactory here is soprano Pumeza Matshikiza, whose clouded tone has an unsteady vibrato at the top of the range. Tenor Joshua Stewart is better but his often penetrating sound is not ideal for repeated listening. The orchestral playing is impeccable but ironically feels almost too carefully studied at times. What also seems missing is the feeling of musical continuity and cumulative emotional build-up in performance. I wanted to be moved by this recording but can’t, in all honesty, say that I was. Among other howlers, the booklet note gifts to the famously childless TS Eliot a six-year-old son, when this was in fact the autistic child of Eliot’s Faber colleague Frank Morley: Tippett loved recalling that the otherwise uncommunicative Oliver enjoyed performing impromptu handstands in the Wigmore Hall foyers during concert intervals. In my Gramophone Collection (7/14) I put Previn’s now hard-to-get version at the top and also recommended Colin Davis’s LSO disc. This new arrival sadly doesn’t alter that judgement. Geraint Lewis Selected comparisons: RPO, Previn RPO CDRPO8005 (1/87, 8/97) LSO, C Davis LSO Live LSO0670, LSO0766 (9/08) gramophone.co.uk
page 13
Concerto Bacewicz Piano Concertoa. Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestrab. Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion. Overture ab Peter Jablonski, bElisabeth Brauss pfs Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Nicholas Collon Ondine (ODE1427-2 • 62’) Graz˙yna Bacewicz: all those harsh consonants, suggestive of jagged edges and perhaps a certain defiant wilfulness – qualities shared by her music. The connection is fanciful, but no more so than the one the composer herself drew between having been a premature baby and the ‘engine’ of her mature personality (one of a number of fascinating insights from Anastasia Belina’s first-rate booklet notes). Bacewicz’s music certainly thrives on its high metabolic rate, its impatience, even, for which this brilliantly executed new album makes no apology. The relatively early Overture, composed in Nazioccupied Poland, already highlights this temperamental default, and not only because Nicholas Collon and his orchestra take it at such a cracking pace. The Piano Concerto of 1949 elevates convulsive contrast almost to a principle, with big neo-Romantic gestures (shades of the Rachmaninov of the Paganini Rhapsody) cheek-by-jowl with luminous Martin≤-like sequences, Polish folk-song paraphrases (semi-compulsory under the post-war Stalinist socialist realist aegis), and a percussive drive that suggests, to me, above all Honegger. Switch on to this restless mindset and it’s not hard to relish Peter Jablonski’s dashing account; resist it, however, and the suspicion of shortwindedness persists. Seventeen years on, the Concerto for two pianos is a shade or two more atonal: more forbidding in the slow movement, more abrasive in the finale, as though consciously taking into account something of the moderated avant-gardism of Bacewicz’s Polish contemporaries (which would be hardly surprising, given that she was co-founder of the Warsaw Autumn Festival). Bartók is the evident jumpingoff point, as he is even more overtly in the Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion. Here at least, though, the music seems a little more concerned with continuity. A couple of Sibelian evocations suggest the depths Bacewicz might have been able to plumb had she been able to curb her instincts for nervily hopping from one idea to the next. At the very least this music deserves recognition for its effortless disregard of the neoclassical/modernist/humanist divide. Jablonski is a seasoned Bacewicz crusader, with a fine solo album of her music to his name (3/22). Elisabeth Brauss, Nicholas Collon and the Finnish RSO match him for energy and aplomb. Altogether this is a disc as thought-provoking as it is engaging. David Fanning Bartók Three Piano Concertos Pierre-Laurent Aimard pf San Francisco Symphony Orchestra / Esa-Pekka Salonen Pentatone (PTC5187 029 • 79’) Recorded live at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, June 16-19, 2022, and February 17-19, 2023 In Pentatone’s accompanying notes Pierre-Laurent Aimard explains that he has ‘spent a lot of time with Hungarians and their country. It was not only a privilege but also a choice to work in depth with great Hungarian masters such as György Kurtág, Simon Albert [sic] and Peter Eötvös. And nothing could have brought me closer to such linguistically singular music than learning the Hungarian language.’ Having rendered the second of those icons the Hungarian way with the family name first, Aimard goes on to describe the ‘intensity’ of Bartók’s concertos as ‘incandescent’. Not always the quality that springs to mind here and listeners in thrall to Hungarian music-making may expect a little more paprika in the mix. Only there’s more than one kind of paprika and these are performances of unmistakable distinction from experienced practitioners. Aimard played in Pierre Boulez’s recording of the Concerto for two pianos, percussion and orchestra (DG, A/08), while Esa- gramophone.co.uk Pekka Salonen previously conducted the three standard piano concertos for Yefim Bronfman (Sony, 5/96). Clean textures and effortless fluency might have been expected from the present line-up but not a subtler magic, the stylistic contrast they make between scores to reflect their place in the composer’s timeline. The deft precision of the First Concerto parts company with conventionally clangorous readings, the performers unafraid to reveal a debt to Stravinsky. As throughout, the microphones scrutinise from fairly close quarters. Fortunately the orchestra’s super-articulate contribution can take it. The belligerent thrust of the Second Concerto is not softened even when the music is permitted to show its more witty and elegant face. The middle movement turns nightmarish and the finale is forcefully driven, at least until the closing bars. Here the a tempo marking prompts a slightly underwhelming denouement: Zoltán Kocsis and Iván Fischer (Philips, 1/88) favour an unmarked sprint. The Third Concerto gets perhaps the most unexpected makeover. Where András Schiff, again with Fischer’s Budapest Festival Orchestra (Teldec, 3/97), is wistful and Kocsis powerfully direct, implicitly ‘modern’, Aimard and Salonen find a different register, not so much nostalgic as easefully neoclassical. The unhurried opening movement is refreshed by some magically transparent voicing from the pianist. The second also sounds rejuvenated, from the initial suggestion of a viol consort through the acutely vivid nature-painting at its heart to the provisional serenity at its close. And you can actually hear the softer tam-tam stroke six bars from the end. The finale, which might be said to lack barnstorming bravura, compensates with contrapuntal clarity and rare lightness of touch. Captured live with applause expunged, these fascinating rethinks arrive with full supporting documentation. A left-field Awards contender that some will find genuinely haunting, others a mite underseasoned. David Gutman Brahms . Dvořák . Viotti Brahms Double Concerto, Op 102a Dvořák Silent Woods, Op 68 No 5b Viotti Violin Concerto No 22c GRAMOPHONE GRAMOPHONE 2024 1313

Page Text

View plaintext

Concerto

Bacewicz Piano Concertoa. Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestrab. Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion. Overture ab Peter Jablonski, bElisabeth Brauss pfs Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra / Nicholas Collon Ondine (ODE1427-2 • 62’)

Graz˙yna Bacewicz: all those harsh consonants, suggestive of jagged edges and perhaps a certain defiant wilfulness – qualities shared by her music. The connection is fanciful, but no more so than the one the composer herself drew between having been a premature baby and the ‘engine’ of her mature personality (one of a number of fascinating insights from Anastasia Belina’s first-rate booklet notes).

Bacewicz’s music certainly thrives on its high metabolic rate, its impatience, even, for which this brilliantly executed new album makes no apology. The relatively early Overture, composed in Nazioccupied Poland, already highlights this temperamental default, and not only because Nicholas Collon and his orchestra take it at such a cracking pace. The Piano Concerto of 1949 elevates convulsive contrast almost to a principle, with big neo-Romantic gestures (shades of the Rachmaninov of the Paganini Rhapsody) cheek-by-jowl with luminous Martin≤-like sequences, Polish folk-song paraphrases (semi-compulsory under the post-war Stalinist socialist realist aegis), and a percussive drive that suggests, to me, above all Honegger. Switch on to this restless mindset and it’s not hard to relish Peter Jablonski’s dashing account; resist it, however, and the suspicion of shortwindedness persists.

Seventeen years on, the Concerto for two pianos is a shade or two more atonal: more forbidding in the slow movement, more abrasive in the finale, as though consciously taking into account something of the moderated avant-gardism of Bacewicz’s Polish contemporaries (which would be hardly surprising, given that she was co-founder of the Warsaw Autumn Festival). Bartók is the evident jumpingoff point, as he is even more overtly in the Music for Strings, Trumpets and Percussion.

Here at least, though, the music seems a little more concerned with continuity. A couple of Sibelian evocations suggest the depths Bacewicz might have been able to plumb had she been able to curb her instincts for nervily hopping from one idea to the next.

At the very least this music deserves recognition for its effortless disregard of the neoclassical/modernist/humanist divide. Jablonski is a seasoned Bacewicz crusader, with a fine solo album of her music to his name (3/22). Elisabeth Brauss, Nicholas Collon and the Finnish RSO match him for energy and aplomb. Altogether this is a disc as thought-provoking as it is engaging. David Fanning

Bartók Three Piano Concertos Pierre-Laurent Aimard pf San Francisco Symphony Orchestra / Esa-Pekka Salonen Pentatone (PTC5187 029 • 79’) Recorded live at Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco, June 16-19, 2022, and February 17-19, 2023

In Pentatone’s accompanying notes Pierre-Laurent Aimard explains that he has ‘spent a lot of time with Hungarians and their country. It was not only a privilege but also a choice to work in depth with great Hungarian masters such as György Kurtág, Simon Albert [sic] and Peter Eötvös. And nothing could have brought me closer to such linguistically singular music than learning the Hungarian language.’ Having rendered the second of those icons the Hungarian way with the family name first, Aimard goes on to describe the ‘intensity’ of Bartók’s concertos as ‘incandescent’. Not always the quality that springs to mind here and listeners in thrall to Hungarian music-making may expect a little more paprika in the mix. Only there’s more than one kind of paprika and these are performances of unmistakable distinction from experienced practitioners. Aimard played in Pierre Boulez’s recording of the Concerto for two pianos, percussion and orchestra (DG, A/08), while Esa-

gramophone.co.uk

Pekka Salonen previously conducted the three standard piano concertos for Yefim Bronfman (Sony, 5/96).

Clean textures and effortless fluency might have been expected from the present line-up but not a subtler magic, the stylistic contrast they make between scores to reflect their place in the composer’s timeline. The deft precision of the First Concerto parts company with conventionally clangorous readings, the performers unafraid to reveal a debt to Stravinsky. As throughout, the microphones scrutinise from fairly close quarters. Fortunately the orchestra’s super-articulate contribution can take it. The belligerent thrust of the Second Concerto is not softened even when the music is permitted to show its more witty and elegant face. The middle movement turns nightmarish and the finale is forcefully driven, at least until the closing bars. Here the a tempo marking prompts a slightly underwhelming denouement: Zoltán Kocsis and Iván Fischer (Philips, 1/88) favour an unmarked sprint.

The Third Concerto gets perhaps the most unexpected makeover. Where András Schiff, again with Fischer’s Budapest Festival Orchestra (Teldec, 3/97), is wistful and Kocsis powerfully direct, implicitly ‘modern’, Aimard and Salonen find a different register, not so much nostalgic as easefully neoclassical. The unhurried opening movement is refreshed by some magically transparent voicing from the pianist. The second also sounds rejuvenated, from the initial suggestion of a viol consort through the acutely vivid nature-painting at its heart to the provisional serenity at its close. And you can actually hear the softer tam-tam stroke six bars from the end. The finale, which might be said to lack barnstorming bravura, compensates with contrapuntal clarity and rare lightness of touch.

Captured live with applause expunged, these fascinating rethinks arrive with full supporting documentation. A left-field Awards contender that some will find genuinely haunting, others a mite underseasoned. David Gutman

Brahms . Dvořák . Viotti Brahms Double Concerto, Op 102a Dvořák Silent Woods, Op 68 No 5b Viotti Violin Concerto No 22c

GRAMOPHONE GRAMOPHONE 2024 1313

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content