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RECORDINGs Of THE YEaR his upper lip as he speaks of the broken ring entwined around the lovers’ names. The incisive edge on Rose’s ample tone is splendidly heard in the desperate, fist-shaking bravado of ‘Mut’ and ‘Der stürmische Morgen’. Elsewhere, too, Rose’s wanderer seems to mock the absurdity of his own predicament, as at the final ‘Wein’ (‘weep’) of ‘Letzte Hoffnung’, where other singers, including Fischer-Dieskau, in his various recordings, and Matthias Goerne, with Graham Johnson (Hyperion, 1/98) and Alfred Brendel (Decca, 9/04), find a lamenting quality of tone. At the close of ‘Das Wirtshaus’, where the exhausted wanderer fails to find the consolation of death, he strikes a note of almost heroic defiance. Even the final ‘Der Leiermann’ is forthright rather than haunted, ending with a vehement challenge to himself and the hurdy-gurdy man. Like Hans Hotter, Rose leaves one with a sense of a vast burden of suffering determinedly endured against appalling odds, of Lear’s ‘Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all.’ If both singer and pianist tend to underplay Schubert’s frequent accents (say, in the frantic, stumbling ‘Rückblick’), Gary Matthewman counters the dangers of downward transposition by ensuring that Schubert’s transparent, precisely imagined textures remain clear. Bass-lines are always firmly, eloquently etched, crucial when Schubert often thinks in terms of a dialogue between voice and keyboard bass, as in ‘Erstarrung’ and the contrapuntally conceived ‘Der Wegweiser’. While there are more moving Winterreise recordings, not least from Goerne and Fischer-Dieskau, Rose’s deeply felt, impressively sung performance seems to catch, more than most, something of the poet Müller’s mordant, mocking irony which Schubert chose to soften and deflect when he set the verses. april Gramophone Choices Brahms� c schumann Violin Works lisa Batiashvili vn alice sara ott pf staatskapelle dresden / christian thielemann DG 479 0086Gh ‘Even before Batiashvili makes her entrance, we can sense this will be an outstanding performance.’ ‘EnGLiSh VioLin DUoS’ Violin Works retorica nMC Artists Series nMCD182 ‘Harriet Mackenzie and Philippa Mo project the music’s often intricate contrapuntal interweaving with faultless technique and unfailing insight.’ pÄrt te Deum gordan nikolitch vn netherlands chamber choir and orchestra / risto Joost Globe GLo5252 ‘One of Pärt’s most remarkable achievements and the Dutch performers have risen to the occasion.’ ViValdi Bassoon Concertos, Vol 3 sergio azzolini bn l’aura soave cremona naïve oP30539 ‘There is the usual crop of achingly beautiful slow movements, some conjuring a summer night on the Grand Canal, others earlymorning mist creeping across the lagoon.’ delius ‘American Masterworks’ soloists; aarhus cathedral choir; aarhus symphony choir and orchestra / Bo holten Danacord DACoCD732 ‘Johan Reuter is the excellent soloist in Sea Drift, sustaining the narration well, telling of the solitary sea bird that has lost its mate.’ ‘in this moonlit night’ Lieder by tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, taneyev dmitri hvorostovsky bar ivari ilja pf ondine oDE1216-2 ‘He brings to his interpretations a new richness and darkness of timbre, beautifully polished as it always was.’ Pre-session preparation: ‘heroic’ bass Matthew Rose 14 GRAMOPHONE RECoRDinGS of thE YEAR 2013 mendelssohn String Quartets ebène quartet Virgin Classics 464546-2 ‘This disc abounds in the kind of lively engagement with the music that we’ve come to expect from Quatuor Ebène, caught up-close and personal by the microphone.’ parrY ‘from a City Window’ ailish tynan sop susan Bickley mez William dazeley bar iain Burnside pf Delphian DCD34117 ‘Full of subtle vocal nuance, excellent diction and discerning accompaniment, the performances are exquisite.’ Britten the Rape of Lucretia soloists; aldeburgh Festival ensemble / oliver Knussen Virgin Classics 602672-2 ‘Ian Bostridge is on top form, engagingly conversational and managing to invest Ronald Duncan’s contorted libretto with poetic feeling.’ gramophone.co.uk
page 15
May RECORDINGs Of THE YEaR ‘In the early F major Concerto, Marc-André Hamelin weaves an enchanting spell, approaching an almost Mozartian pathos’ David Threasher delights in a new recording of Haydn’s concertos haydn Keyboard Concertos – hobXViii/3; hobXViii/4; hobXViii/11 marc-andré hamelin pf les Violons du roy / Bernard labadie hyperion F CDA67925 (62’ • DDD) Hard to believe it’s as long ago as spring 2000 that Leif Ove Andsnes released his benchmark disc of these works. That recording superseded the previous front-runner by Emanuel Ax and the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra (still nevertheless a worthwhile proposition); it won a Gramophone Award later that year and has barely been challenged since for supremacy in this repertoire. Now, though, here comes Marc-André Hamelin with a recording that does just that. These are the three indubitably authentic keyboard concertos of Joseph Haydn: No 3 in F, the earliest, possibly even dating from before Haydn’s employment with the Esterházy family; No 4 in G, audibly a later, harmonically richer work and one which was performed by the blind pianist Maria Theresia von Paradis (also the recipient of Mozart’s K456) in Paris in 1784; and No 11 in D, the best-known and most advanced of the three, composed some time between 1779 and 1783. Comparison is often made (not in Haydn’s favour) with the piano concertos of Mozart; and while it’s true that they don’t display the melodic generosity or orchestral richness of Mozart’s miraculous string of Vienna piano concertos of the 1780s, Haydn could not have heard those works before writing even the latest of his three, the D major. That’s not to say, however, that Haydn’s keyboard concertos are primitive or suffer from paucity of imagination, either thematically or orchestrally. Enjoy these works on their own terms and they’re every bit as rewarding in their own way as, say, Mozart’s K414 (1782). Andsnes’s Award-winning disc was notable, among many other fine attributes, for the crystalline clarity of his fingerwork, especially in all those stretches of almost minimalistic patterning and the runs and scalic passages that are such a feature of this music. Naturally Hamelin is no slouch either – hardly surprising, given that the sort of virtuosity called for here is no more difficult than rolling over in bed for players of this exalted calibre. Listen, though, to the way Hamelin almost ‘falls into’ the runs towards the end of the first movement of the G major Concerto (No 4), then picks up on them for his (own) cadenza. In fact, the cadenzas are among the special joys of this new disc. Hamelin’s reference points range, I’d say, from Bach up to Beethoven or thereabouts in the two earlier concertos – with perhaps a light dusting of Saint-Saëns in the F major’s slow movement – while Andsnes’s cadenzas (also his own) are in every case shorter and perhaps a touch less individual. (In every movement but one – see below – Hamelin’s tempi are near enough on a par with Andsnes’s, so it is largely through the cadenzas alone that he adds a little over eight minutes to Andsnes’s playing time across the disc.) In the D major Concerto, however, both pianists opt for earlier cadenzas: in Andsnes’s case, a pair composed by Haydn (although the primary source for Haydn’s cadenzas is considered less than trustworthy); in Hamelin’s case, two by Wanda Landowska, which range wider stylistically – perhaps as far as Debussy or Ravel. Richard Wigmore’s notes give no details about these Landowska cadenzas: presumably they were composed for the piano gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE RECoRDinGS of thE YEAR 2013 15

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RECORDINGs Of THE YEaR

his upper lip as he speaks of the broken ring entwined around the lovers’ names.

The incisive edge on Rose’s ample tone is splendidly heard in the desperate, fist-shaking bravado of ‘Mut’ and ‘Der stürmische Morgen’. Elsewhere, too, Rose’s wanderer seems to mock the absurdity of his own predicament, as at the final ‘Wein’ (‘weep’) of ‘Letzte Hoffnung’, where other singers, including Fischer-Dieskau, in his various recordings, and Matthias Goerne, with Graham Johnson (Hyperion, 1/98) and Alfred Brendel (Decca, 9/04), find a lamenting quality of tone. At the close of ‘Das Wirtshaus’, where the exhausted wanderer fails to find the consolation of death, he strikes a note of almost heroic defiance. Even the final ‘Der Leiermann’ is forthright rather than haunted, ending with a vehement challenge to himself and the hurdy-gurdy man. Like Hans Hotter, Rose leaves one with a sense of a vast burden of suffering determinedly endured against appalling odds, of Lear’s ‘Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all.’

If both singer and pianist tend to underplay Schubert’s frequent accents (say, in the frantic, stumbling ‘Rückblick’), Gary Matthewman counters the dangers of downward transposition by ensuring that Schubert’s transparent, precisely imagined textures remain clear. Bass-lines are always firmly, eloquently etched, crucial when Schubert often thinks in terms of a dialogue between voice and keyboard bass, as in ‘Erstarrung’ and the contrapuntally conceived ‘Der Wegweiser’. While there are more moving Winterreise recordings, not least from Goerne and Fischer-Dieskau, Rose’s deeply felt, impressively sung performance seems to catch, more than most, something of the poet Müller’s mordant, mocking irony which Schubert chose to soften and deflect when he set the verses.

april Gramophone Choices

Brahms� c schumann Violin Works lisa Batiashvili vn alice sara ott pf staatskapelle dresden / christian thielemann DG 479 0086Gh ‘Even before Batiashvili makes her entrance, we can sense this will be an outstanding performance.’

‘EnGLiSh VioLin DUoS’ Violin Works retorica nMC Artists Series nMCD182 ‘Harriet Mackenzie and Philippa Mo project the music’s often intricate contrapuntal interweaving with faultless technique and unfailing insight.’

pÄrt te Deum gordan nikolitch vn netherlands chamber choir and orchestra / risto Joost Globe GLo5252 ‘One of Pärt’s most remarkable achievements and the Dutch performers have risen to the occasion.’

ViValdi Bassoon Concertos, Vol 3 sergio azzolini bn l’aura soave cremona naïve oP30539 ‘There is the usual crop of achingly beautiful slow movements, some conjuring a summer night on the Grand Canal, others earlymorning mist creeping across the lagoon.’

delius ‘American Masterworks’ soloists; aarhus cathedral choir; aarhus symphony choir and orchestra / Bo holten Danacord DACoCD732 ‘Johan Reuter is the excellent soloist in Sea Drift, sustaining the narration well, telling of the solitary sea bird that has lost its mate.’

‘in this moonlit night’ Lieder by tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, taneyev dmitri hvorostovsky bar ivari ilja pf ondine oDE1216-2 ‘He brings to his interpretations a new richness and darkness of timbre, beautifully polished as it always was.’

Pre-session preparation: ‘heroic’ bass Matthew Rose

14 GRAMOPHONE RECoRDinGS of thE YEAR 2013

mendelssohn String Quartets ebène quartet Virgin Classics 464546-2 ‘This disc abounds in the kind of lively engagement with the music that we’ve come to expect from Quatuor Ebène, caught up-close and personal by the microphone.’

parrY ‘from a City Window’ ailish tynan sop susan Bickley mez William dazeley bar iain Burnside pf Delphian DCD34117 ‘Full of subtle vocal nuance, excellent diction and discerning accompaniment, the performances are exquisite.’

Britten the Rape of Lucretia soloists; aldeburgh Festival ensemble / oliver Knussen Virgin Classics 602672-2 ‘Ian Bostridge is on top form, engagingly conversational and managing to invest Ronald Duncan’s contorted libretto with poetic feeling.’

gramophone.co.uk

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