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GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2018 acoustic for the two flute works, and what’s tolerable in Emmanuel Pahud’s eloquent Syrinx leads to congestion in the sonata. Still, the playing throughout this disc is so sensitive and stylish that you might well choose to overlook that. Richard Bratby (12/17) Dvořák String Quintet No 3, ‘American’, Op 97 B180a. Piano Quintet No 2, Op 81 B155b Pavel Haas Quartet with aPavel Nikl va b Boris Giltburg pf Supraphon F SU4195-2 (75’ • DDD) S A C K S J O N A S : P H O T O G R A P H Y Just a month after the Takács and Laurence Power impressed with their Dvo∑ák Op 97 Quintet comes this one from the Pavel Haas Quartet, who are joined by Pavel Nikl, the quartet’s founder viola player. It is the happiest of reunions and their sense of shared purpose is evident from the very start. Their recorded acoustic – the Dvo∑ák Hall of Prague’s Rudolfinum – is notably more reverberant than that for the Takács (the Wyastone Estate concert hall in Monmouth), which means that in climaxes they sound fulsome indeed. Not only is the acoustic more generous but so is the Pavel Haas’s tendency to bend and shape this music to their own ends. But because they are so inside the tradition, this is to the good. From the off, they make the music their own, the very opening phrase, presented first by viola 2 and later cello, given a pungent folkiness. My wish for the Takács to be a degree lusher-toned at climaxes is amply fulfilled here, while the way the PHQ subside into the warmest of chords at the first movement’s close is truly felicitous. The Takács/Power are particularly compelling in the Allegro vivo second movement, more so than the milder-mannered Raphael; by comparison, the Pavel Haas are, like the Škampa, more earthy – the music dances, but to quite different effect, while the climaxas are almost terrifying in their impact. The variation-form slow movement is every bit as intense and imaginatively coloured as the Takács, while the finale finds a similar level of joy, though, with the ample Supraphon acoustic, the climaxes sound as if they’re made by an army of string players – sample the passage from 6’40” to the end: I loved it, but some may find it a bit too much. For the Second Piano Quintet, the Pavel Haas are joined by Boris Giltburg. I heard them live in the company of another prodigious young Russian-born talent – Denis Kozhukhin – and was mightily taken with the results. Giltburg is likewise completely at one with the quartet, who set off full of sighing pathos. The Elias with Jonathan Biss take a more flowing tempo but both score high in emotional impact – the new recording for its freedom and responsiveness, the Elias/Biss from an impetuosity and enthusiastic application of portamento. In both, the sense of storytelling is very persuasive. That acoustic strikes you again at the start of the Dumka second movement, the solo piano haloed as it introduces the wistful minor-key theme. The Elias/Biss line-up are very fine here, reducing their sound down to a whisper but also cherishing the tops of phrases, especially in the violin lines. There’s contrast between major and minor, fast and slow, but it never feels disjointed – as it can easily do – in either of these outstanding readings. To my ears, the Pavel Haas/ Giltburg just have the edge in the bucolic Furiant that follows, the interplay between the five musicians at once unerring and sounding completely unstudied. Both groups offer a thrilling reading of the finale, the Elias more delicate, the PHQ more generous-toned. Another triumphant addition to the Pavel Haas’s already Award-laden discography. Harriet Smith (11/17) ‘American’ Quintet – selected comparisons: Raphael Ens (8/89R) (HYPE) CDH55405 Škampa Qt, Chorzelski (8/17) (CHAM) CHRCD110 Takács Qt, Power (10/17) (HYPE) CDA68142 Piano Quintet – selected comparison: Elias Qt, Biss (12/12) (ONYX) ONYX4092 ‘Grandissima Gravita’ Pisendel Sonata in C minor Tartini Sonata, Op 2 No 5 Veracini Sonatas, Op 2 – No 5; No 12, ‘Sonata accademiche’ Vivaldi Sonata, Op 2 No 2 RV31. Suonata a solo fatto per il Maestro Pisendel, RV6 – Adagio Rachel Podger vn Alison McGillivray vc Daniele Caminiti lute/gtr Marcin Świątkiewicz hpd Channel Classics F Í CCSSA39217 (69’ • DDD/DSD) It’s not often worth devoting many words of a CD review to the contents of the CD’s booklet. However, what the Baroque violinist and musicologist Mark Seow has come up with for Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque’s ‘Grandissima Gravita’ is nothing short of genius: a theatre script, the action of which sees the four violinist- composer stars of the album – Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini, Francesco Maria Veracini and Johann Georg Pisendel – reclining tipsily on divans in heaven (yes, really) for their annual winefuelled reunion. Seow’s imagined pile of alcohol-fogged reminiscences covers all bases, from their admiration for Corelli’s famous Op 5 collection and its historicalmusical significance to their backgrounds and the interlinking of their own careers; a reminder, for instance, that Tartini discovered the violin while hiding in a monastery to which he had fled after his controversial secret marriage was discovered, and then how he left the monastery for Venice and heard Veracini’s tone and smooth bowing, which inspired him to dedicate his own career to bow technique. Also included are attitudes towards their contemporaries such as JS Bach, scandalous gossip (the scurrilous story of how a practical joke from Pisendel was the reason behind Veracini’s limp for instance, which the heavenly Veracini refutes as the gossip of enemies), and even how the mid-18th-century European obsession with alchemy found musical embodiment in the fugue, plus in musical devices such as the one that begins the album’s programme-opener: Vivaldi’s Sonata for violin and continuo in A major from Op 2, where the music ‘spirals and blossoms out of a single chord’. The performances themselves are as stunning as the notes are imaginative, all four musicians both completely under the music’s skin and under each other’s, and playing as a smoothly dovetailed unit. Podger herself is exquisite; fluid, lilting and multi-shaded, with gorgeous filigree ornamentations. Her fellow Brecon Baroque members are equally faultless as sympathetic chamber partners, helped by engineering (from St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead) that balances them slightly behind, while equally drawing our ears towards qualities such as McGillivray’s sensitive cello duetting, the plucked colour of Caminiti’s lute and guitar, and S ´ wia˛tkiewicz’s nimbly delicate harpsichord support. There’s a sweet little encore too, in the form of Vivaldi’s Adagio in E flat. This links back to the C minor Sonata by Pisendel, for whom Vivaldi wrote this piece: Seow’s heavenly Pisendel tells Vivaldi that he couldn’t have written the sonata’s third movement Affetuoso ‘without your generous sound world in mind’. Programmed and presented with flair, and faultlessly performed, this is a listening experience of unbridled pleasure. An exceptional album. Charlotte Gardner (12/17) 6 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2018 Click on album covers to buy from gramophone.co.uk
page 7
Choral GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2018 CPE Bach . JC Bach . JS Bach CPE Bach Magnificat, Wq215 H772 JC Bach Magnificat, E22 JS Bach Magnificat, BWV243 Joélle Harvey sop Olivia Vermeulen mez Iestyn Davies counterten Thomas Walker ten Thomas Bauer bar Arcangelo / Jonathan Cohen Hyperion F CDA68157 (77’ • DDD • T/t) Three Magnificats, by the three most famous members of the Bach family, make for a delectable triptych from a 40-year span, with each strikingly promoting their distinctive musical priorities. If Johann Sebastian’s first Leipzig Christmas in 1723 impelled him to display all his highBaroque wares in a canticle of mesmerising variety, then both his cosmopolitan sons accept the subsequent challenge with alacrity in their colourful settings – with the more substantial CPE score now beginning to enter the canon. For their father’s perennial masterpiece, Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo snap into their festive sparklers with grand authority and lithe ebullience, sweeping effortlessly from verse to verse with considerable purpose. There’s something attractively straightforward about ‘Quia fecit’ with the characterful Thomas Bauer agreeably supported by Cohen’s present harpsichord, not least because it has a delicious effect on the languid curves of Iestyn Davies’s and Thomas Walker’s ‘Et misericordia’, which follows. One is struck throughout by the exceptional balance of the voices and instruments yet without forgoing Cohen’s animated and imaginative way with text. Indeed, when one reaches the ‘Gloria Patri’ at the close, the music seems to have evolved imperceptibly in a generous seam of exquisitely judged verses. Arcangelo’s voyage into the sons’ Magnificats is no less well paced or astutely textured. As we move into Johann Christian’s third setting (thought to be for Milan Cathedral in 1760), the new idiom becomes decidedly operatic, riven with self-conscious conceits and reeking of galant suavity. But it goes down very nicely in around 10 minutes, especially the expectant choral interpolations in ‘Fecit potentiam’ and even the slightly perfunctory doffing of the cap to dad with a decent enough fugue to end. Carl Philipp Emanuel’s Magnificat is a substantial homage to his father’s setting (there are some obvious quotes), especially in the successful combining of so many contrasting elements. If CPE is rather less succinct than Johann Sebastian, there’s no denying that there are some brilliant and affecting set pieces, especially when carried by Joélle Harvey’s uniformly dramatic and engaging singing – not to mention the supreme final double fugue when the choir and orchestra all but take off. It’s 40 years since King’s College Choir Cambridge under Philip Ledger recorded the work in what seemed a rather muddy and elusive idiom. Not here, where Cohen and Arcangelo bring us an illuminated Bachian constellation of three canticles colliding in captivating relief. Jonathan Freeman‑Attwood Gounod ‘Cantatas and Sacred Music’ Marie Stuart et Rizzioa. Fernandb. La Vendettac. Messe vocale pour la fête de l’Annonciationd. Christus factus este. Hymne sacréef. Messe de Saint-Louis-des-Françaisg a Gabrielle Philiponet, cChantal Santon-Jeffery, bef Judith Van Wanroij sops fgCaroline Meng mez fg Artavazd Sargsyan, aSébastien Droy, bc Yu Shao tens fAlexandre Duhamel bar b Nicolas Courjal bass fFrançois Saint-Yves org dfg Flemish Radio Choir; abcefg Brussels Philharmonic / Hervé Niquet Ediciones Singulares F b ES1030 (129’ • DDD • T/t) ‘My sole aim’, Gounod wrote of his Conservatoire days in his Mémoires d’un artiste, ‘was the Grand Prix de Rome, which I was determined to win, at all costs.’ He did, in fact, carry off the coveted prize on his third attempt in 1839, and the latest volume in Palazzetto Bru Zane’s Prix de Rome series, issued to mark his bicentenary, examines both the route he took to achieve it and the immediate impact on his work of the two years scholarship at the Villa Medici that it afforded. Success did indeed come, it would seem, at the cost of reining in his enthusiasm and originality. The first disc presents us with his second-round dramatic cantatas, written to prescribed texts. Gounod won with Fernand, an Orientalist three-hander set during the siege of Granada, in which a Spanish nobleman risks both life and honour to reunite Zelmire, the Muslim girl he adores, with Alamir, her lover in the enemy ranks. Elegant and attractively orchestrated, it is by no means negligible, but seems cautious, harmonically and melodically, when placed beside its more adventurous predecessors. Marie Stuart et Rizzio (1837) is very much a young hothead’s work – a real roller coaster of a piece, emotionally confrontative and characterised by an almost Berliozian recklessness of harmony and expression. La Vendetta (1838), set on Corsica and depicting a mother swearing her son to avenge his murdered father, is more introverted: the tension and oppressive mood are unwaveringly sustained, though the Meyerbeerian closing duet is a bit stiff. Gounod initially found Rome disappointing: ‘Provincial, ordinary, colourless and dirty almost everywhere’, he wrote. But his encounter with the city’s church music, Palestrina in particular, fired his imagination. The second disc surveys his sacred works composed in Rome itself and in Vienna, where be briefly lived after his studies were complete. His Mass for Rome’s French church, Saint-Louis-desFrançais, strongly prefigures the St Cecilia Mass of 1855, in which Gounod reused some of its material. The real revelation here, though, is the unaccompanied Messe vocale of 1843, which shows how much he learned from Palestrina without becoming imitative. Each section is preceded by a chorale setting of a versicle associated with the Virgin Mary, which then becomes a cantus firmus in the movement proper. The polyphony is exquisite, and the overall effect is one of timelessness rather than archaism. It is a most beautiful work. As with the previous volumes, Hervé Niquet conducts the Brussels Philharmonic and Flemish Radio Choir in performances that are for the most part exemplary. There are minor cavils over some of the soloists: gramophone.co.uk Click on album covers to buy from GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2018 7

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GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2018

acoustic for the two flute works, and what’s tolerable in Emmanuel Pahud’s eloquent Syrinx leads to congestion in the sonata. Still, the playing throughout this disc is so sensitive and stylish that you might well choose to overlook that. Richard Bratby (12/17)

Dvořák String Quintet No 3, ‘American’, Op 97 B180a. Piano Quintet No 2, Op 81 B155b Pavel Haas Quartet with aPavel Nikl va b Boris Giltburg pf Supraphon F SU4195-2 (75’ • DDD)

S A C K S

J O N A S

:

P H O T O G R A P H Y

Just a month after the Takács and Laurence Power impressed with their Dvo∑ák Op 97

Quintet comes this one from the Pavel Haas Quartet, who are joined by Pavel Nikl, the quartet’s founder viola player. It is the happiest of reunions and their sense of shared purpose is evident from the very start. Their recorded acoustic – the Dvo∑ák Hall of Prague’s Rudolfinum – is notably more reverberant than that for the Takács (the Wyastone Estate concert hall in Monmouth), which means that in climaxes they sound fulsome indeed. Not only is the acoustic more generous but so is the Pavel Haas’s tendency to bend and shape this music to their own ends. But because they are so inside the tradition, this is to the good.

From the off, they make the music their own, the very opening phrase, presented first by viola 2 and later cello, given a pungent folkiness. My wish for the Takács to be a degree lusher-toned at climaxes is amply fulfilled here, while the way the PHQ subside into the warmest of chords at the first movement’s close is truly felicitous. The Takács/Power are particularly compelling in the Allegro vivo second movement, more so than the milder-mannered Raphael; by comparison, the Pavel Haas are, like the Škampa, more earthy – the music dances, but to quite different effect, while the climaxas are almost terrifying in their impact. The variation-form slow movement is every bit as intense and imaginatively coloured as the Takács, while the finale finds a similar level of joy, though, with the ample Supraphon acoustic, the climaxes sound as if they’re made by an army of string players – sample the passage from 6’40” to the end: I loved it, but some may find it a bit too much.

For the Second Piano Quintet, the Pavel Haas are joined by Boris Giltburg.

I heard them live in the company of another prodigious young Russian-born talent – Denis Kozhukhin – and was mightily taken with the results. Giltburg is likewise completely at one with the quartet, who set off full of sighing pathos. The Elias with Jonathan Biss take a more flowing tempo but both score high in emotional impact – the new recording for its freedom and responsiveness, the Elias/Biss from an impetuosity and enthusiastic application of portamento. In both, the sense of storytelling is very persuasive. That acoustic strikes you again at the start of the Dumka second movement, the solo piano haloed as it introduces the wistful minor-key theme. The Elias/Biss line-up are very fine here, reducing their sound down to a whisper but also cherishing the tops of phrases, especially in the violin lines. There’s contrast between major and minor, fast and slow, but it never feels disjointed – as it can easily do – in either of these outstanding readings. To my ears, the Pavel Haas/ Giltburg just have the edge in the bucolic Furiant that follows, the interplay between the five musicians at once unerring and sounding completely unstudied. Both groups offer a thrilling reading of the finale, the Elias more delicate, the PHQ more generous-toned. Another triumphant addition to the Pavel Haas’s already Award-laden discography. Harriet Smith (11/17) ‘American’ Quintet – selected comparisons: Raphael Ens (8/89R) (HYPE) CDH55405 Škampa Qt, Chorzelski (8/17) (CHAM) CHRCD110 Takács Qt, Power (10/17) (HYPE) CDA68142 Piano Quintet – selected comparison: Elias Qt, Biss (12/12) (ONYX) ONYX4092

‘Grandissima Gravita’ Pisendel Sonata in C minor Tartini Sonata, Op 2 No 5 Veracini Sonatas, Op 2 – No 5; No 12, ‘Sonata accademiche’ Vivaldi Sonata, Op 2 No 2 RV31. Suonata a solo fatto per il Maestro Pisendel, RV6 – Adagio Rachel Podger vn Alison McGillivray vc Daniele Caminiti lute/gtr Marcin Świątkiewicz hpd Channel Classics F Í CCSSA39217 (69’ • DDD/DSD)

It’s not often worth devoting many words of a CD review to the contents of the CD’s booklet. However, what the Baroque violinist and musicologist Mark Seow has come up with for Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque’s ‘Grandissima Gravita’ is nothing short of genius: a theatre script, the action of which sees the four violinist-

composer stars of the album – Antonio Vivaldi, Giuseppe Tartini, Francesco Maria Veracini and Johann Georg Pisendel – reclining tipsily on divans in heaven (yes, really) for their annual winefuelled reunion. Seow’s imagined pile of alcohol-fogged reminiscences covers all bases, from their admiration for Corelli’s famous Op 5 collection and its historicalmusical significance to their backgrounds and the interlinking of their own careers; a reminder, for instance, that Tartini discovered the violin while hiding in a monastery to which he had fled after his controversial secret marriage was discovered, and then how he left the monastery for Venice and heard Veracini’s tone and smooth bowing, which inspired him to dedicate his own career to bow technique. Also included are attitudes towards their contemporaries such as JS Bach, scandalous gossip (the scurrilous story of how a practical joke from Pisendel was the reason behind Veracini’s limp for instance, which the heavenly Veracini refutes as the gossip of enemies), and even how the mid-18th-century European obsession with alchemy found musical embodiment in the fugue, plus in musical devices such as the one that begins the album’s programme-opener: Vivaldi’s Sonata for violin and continuo in A major from Op 2, where the music ‘spirals and blossoms out of a single chord’.

The performances themselves are as stunning as the notes are imaginative, all four musicians both completely under the music’s skin and under each other’s, and playing as a smoothly dovetailed unit. Podger herself is exquisite; fluid, lilting and multi-shaded, with gorgeous filigree ornamentations. Her fellow Brecon Baroque members are equally faultless as sympathetic chamber partners, helped by engineering (from St Jude-on-the-Hill, Hampstead) that balances them slightly behind, while equally drawing our ears towards qualities such as McGillivray’s sensitive cello duetting, the plucked colour of Caminiti’s lute and guitar, and S ´ wia˛tkiewicz’s nimbly delicate harpsichord support.

There’s a sweet little encore too, in the form of Vivaldi’s Adagio in E flat. This links back to the C minor Sonata by Pisendel, for whom Vivaldi wrote this piece: Seow’s heavenly Pisendel tells Vivaldi that he couldn’t have written the sonata’s third movement Affetuoso ‘without your generous sound world in mind’.

Programmed and presented with flair, and faultlessly performed, this is a listening experience of unbridled pleasure. An exceptional album. Charlotte Gardner (12/17)

6 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2018

Click on album covers to buy from gramophone.co.uk

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