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2013 HIGHLIGHTS HIGHLY PRAISED TITLES FROM NAXOS MOHAMMED FAIROUZ NATIVE INFORMANT Featured on NPR’s Deceptive Cadence. Guest Blogger Mohammed Fairouz wrote “Creating American Symphonies To Tell ‘Distinctly American’ Stories.” 8559744 • 636943974421 8559749 • 636943974926 MICHAEL DAUGHERTY MOUNT RUSHMORE “The music is fun, frenzied and should be terrific to hear live judging from this energized recording by the Pacific Symphony and conductor Carl St. Clair.” – Tom Huizenga, NPR JOHN KNOWLES PAINE SYMPHONY NO.1 • ASYOU LIKE IT OVERTURE • THETEMPEST Up to now, there have been no persuasive recordings, but ‘s forthcoming Naxos album with her Ulster Orchestra should change that. – Joseph Horowitz, NPR 8573188 • 747313318872 8559747 • 636943974728 SHOSTAKOVICH SYMPHONY NO. 4 “Perhaps the best of Petrenko’s much-praised Shostakovich cycle and a strong contender for best in catalogue” – Gramophone November 2013 Recording of the Month A V A I L A B L E A T :
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SOUNDS OF AMERICA G O L D I D D A V G A R Y : P H O T O G R A P H Y Conjurer: Dame Evelyn Glennie records John Corigliano’s concerto with the Albany Symphony and conductor David Alan Miller sounds from the artillery at her hands and feet, and the Albany Symphony are superb collaborators. The trajectory of Vocalise (1999) from acoustic to electronic worlds is but one aspect of its glowing personality. Corigliano keeps the soloist – here the radiant and fearless soprano Hila Plitmann – soaring on phrases of mesmerising shape and character. The voice rides above and within an orchestral soundscape of shimmering hues until electronics (by Mark Baechle) take the soloist into other-worldly terrain suffused with echoes. Donald Rosenberg Foote  ‘Complete Piano Music’ Kirsten Johnson pf  Delos S c DE3442 (3h 40’ • DDD) For most of the time, Arthur Foote was a serious composer, organist and educator, many of whose conservative, generically Romantic orchestral works based on European models were played by the Boston Symphony. However, unlike the formal public music he wrote, much of his piano music was written for pedagogical use or with Boston’s busy ‘salon’ scene in mind. Foote has a worthy champion in Kirsten Johnson, whose lovely sound and exquisite phrasing allow her to quickly locate the lyrical heart of a melody and invest it with pure streams of colour; Johnson makes a particularly persuasive case for the Five Bagatelles, Op 34, including a hypnotic, Chopin-influenced ‘Without haste, without rest’, a radiant ‘Idyl’ and a concluding ‘Valse peu dansante’, a total charmer. Johnson is similarly at her best in the 17-minute Five Poems after Omar Khayyam, Op 41, in the space of which she lets herself be seduced by rolling waves of chords alternating with light Brahmsian lyricism, occasionally leavened by some gentle, deep emotion at the music’s heart, and even touched briefly by an epigrammatic wit worthy of Satie. Johnson’s reading of the second poem, ‘They say the Lion and the Lizard…’, evokes an intriguing South Seas harmonic landscape; the end of the last poem, ‘Yon rising Moon…’, descends irresistibly into pure shimmering Wagner. Lindsay Koob’s detailed booklet-notes make an enthusiastic case for getting to know Foote and his piano music. The beautiful, slightly resonant recordings of Johnson on a Steinway ‘D’ were made at the Nimbus studios at Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, UK. Laurence Vittes Musto  Piano Concertos – No 1a; No 2b. Five Concert Rags – Regrets; In Stride John Musto pf  b Greely Philharmonic Orchestra / Glen Cortese;  a Odense Symphony Orchestra / Scott Yoo  Bridge F BRIDGE9399 (68’ • DDD) John Musto’s two piano concertos are works of enormous imagination, freshness and feeling that require a soloist who combines sensitivity with almost ferocious virtuosity. As this new disc reveals, the composer had the ideal pianist in mind when writing the concertos – himself. The two pieces are different in numerous ways, though they share Musto’s acute ear for a range of styles, including ragtime and jazz. The Piano Concerto No 1, whose gestation unfolded from 1998 to 2005, was initially inspired by Musto’s friends who died from HIV/Aids. Its dramatic personality is established in the opening movement, with dark ruminations between orchestra and piano. Hints of ragtime dot the landscape of the second movement, while the finale is a burst of perpetual motion rubbing shoulders with remembrances from the opener. www.gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE JANUARY 2014 III

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SOUNDS OF AMERICA

G O L D

I D

D A V

G A R Y

:

P H O T O G R A P H Y

Conjurer: Dame Evelyn Glennie records John Corigliano’s concerto with the Albany Symphony and conductor David Alan Miller sounds from the artillery at her hands and feet, and the Albany Symphony are superb collaborators.

The trajectory of Vocalise (1999) from acoustic to electronic worlds is but one aspect of its glowing personality. Corigliano keeps the soloist – here the radiant and fearless soprano Hila Plitmann – soaring on phrases of mesmerising shape and character. The voice rides above and within an orchestral soundscape of shimmering hues until electronics (by Mark Baechle) take the soloist into other-worldly terrain suffused with echoes. Donald Rosenberg

Foote  ‘Complete Piano Music’ Kirsten Johnson pf  Delos S c DE3442 (3h 40’ • DDD)

For most of the time, Arthur Foote was a serious composer, organist and educator, many of whose conservative, generically Romantic orchestral works based on European models were played by the Boston Symphony. However, unlike the formal public music he wrote, much of his piano music was written for pedagogical use or with Boston’s busy ‘salon’ scene in mind.

Foote has a worthy champion in Kirsten Johnson, whose lovely sound and exquisite phrasing allow her to quickly locate the lyrical heart of a melody and invest it with pure streams of colour; Johnson makes a particularly persuasive case for the Five Bagatelles, Op 34, including a hypnotic, Chopin-influenced ‘Without haste, without rest’, a radiant ‘Idyl’ and a concluding ‘Valse peu dansante’, a total charmer.

Johnson is similarly at her best in the 17-minute Five Poems after Omar Khayyam, Op 41, in the space of which she lets herself be seduced by rolling waves of chords alternating with light Brahmsian lyricism, occasionally leavened by some gentle, deep emotion at the music’s heart, and even touched briefly by an epigrammatic wit worthy of Satie. Johnson’s reading of the second poem, ‘They say the Lion and the Lizard…’, evokes an intriguing South Seas harmonic landscape; the end of the last poem, ‘Yon rising Moon…’, descends irresistibly into pure shimmering Wagner.

Lindsay Koob’s detailed booklet-notes make an enthusiastic case for getting to know Foote and his piano music. The beautiful, slightly resonant recordings of Johnson on a Steinway ‘D’ were made at the Nimbus studios at Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, UK. Laurence Vittes

Musto  Piano Concertos – No 1a; No 2b. Five Concert Rags – Regrets; In Stride John Musto pf  b Greely Philharmonic Orchestra / Glen Cortese;  a Odense Symphony Orchestra / Scott Yoo  Bridge F BRIDGE9399 (68’ • DDD)

John Musto’s two piano concertos are works of enormous imagination, freshness and feeling that require a soloist who combines sensitivity with almost ferocious virtuosity. As this new disc reveals, the composer had the ideal pianist in mind when writing the concertos – himself.

The two pieces are different in numerous ways, though they share Musto’s acute ear for a range of styles, including ragtime and jazz. The Piano Concerto No 1, whose gestation unfolded from 1998 to 2005, was initially inspired by Musto’s friends who died from HIV/Aids. Its dramatic personality is established in the opening movement, with dark ruminations between orchestra and piano. Hints of ragtime dot the landscape of the second movement, while the finale is a burst of perpetual motion rubbing shoulders with remembrances from the opener.

www.gramophone.co.uk

GRAMOPHONE JANUARY 2014 III

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