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RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR September > LISTEN TO OUR BERNSTEIN PODCAST Beatrice Rana has   the razzle-dazzle in spades, of course, but   it is the mercurial throwaway manner   that really excites Edward Seckerson is bowled over by Antonio Pappano’s dramatic accounts of Bernstein’s three symphonies with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Bernstein Symphonies – No 1, ‘Jeremiah’a; No 2, ‘The Age of Anxiety’b; No 3, ‘Kaddish’c. Prelude, Fugue and Riffs c Nadine Sierra sop aMarie-Nicole Lemieux mez c Dame Josephine Barstow spkr dAlessandro Carbonare cl bBeatrice Rana pf Orchestra and cChorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Sir Antonio Pappano Warner Classics M b 9029 56615-8 (113’ • DDD) Leonard Bernstein was the Honorary President of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia from 1983 until his death in 1990. Temperamentally they were exceedingly well suited. Their ethos, their extrovert nature, to say nothing of their innately operatic manner, made them a good fit. And there’s something of Bernstein’s dynamism and eclectic, allembracing nature in the person of Antonio Pappano whose penchant for, and love of, jazz for starters ticks one of the many boxes that this music demands. So here we have it: the three ages of Lenny the symphonist, fittingly signed off with that short, sharp, wacky jam session Prelude, Fugue and Riffs. Let me say straight away that these performances come at us with a theatricality that puts them firmly ‘on stage’ where they belong. All three pieces are essentially about the process we all go through to ‘find ourselves’, except that in Bernstein’s case the question of belief and faith was to haunt him, trouble him, from first to last. How to reconcile being Jewish with his essentially agnostic nature. That The Age of Anxiety is flanked by the soulsearching of the Jeremiah and Kaddish Symphonies is nothing if not ironical. One should give credit for the fact that Symphony No 1, Jeremiah – his very first orchestral work – sprang so fully formed from his imagination. For sure it is mightily filmic, a piece whose movement titles ‘Prophecy’, ‘Profanation’ and ‘Lamentation’ portend and indeed deliver biblical gestures; but the piece is big-hearted, too, and paradoxically there is an almost guilty jubilance in the central ‘Profanation’ movement – a destructive hedonism in which Bernstein’s composerly prowess advances in leaps and bounds, powering forwards on the back of driving rhythms and self-evidently American syncopation. We are pre‑dating and predicting here the prairie-pounding Scherzo of Copland’s Third Symphony and the Santa Cecilia players fully relish the heat of it (flaring trumpet fanfares and all) only to slink back I E L L O into the singing melody of the Trio section which hardly needs saying could only have been penned by Bernstein. Then there is resonance in the closing lamentation for the fallen city of Jerusalem (the political overtones will never have eluded Lenny) with Pappano’s solo casting (inspired throughout this set) hitting precisely the PHO T O G R A P H Y I A N N & I O M U S A C C H : 20 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018 Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from gramophone.co.uk
page 21
September Editor’s Choices SHOSTAKOVICH Symphonies Nos 4 & 11 Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons DG ‘The excellence continues,’ writes Edward Seckerson of this next instalment in Nelsons’s Shostakovich cycle: and so it does, dramatically, powerfully so. FIRSOVA ‘Fantasy’ Alissa Firsova pf Tippett Quartet et al Vivat Beautifully crafted works – all of which reveal an innate understanding of different instrumental voices – reflect a creative mind from which we look forward to hearing more. RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR JS BACH Suites for lute Thomas Dunford archlute Alpha Performances rich in elegance and personality are wrapped in an acoustic of calming warmth, all of which makes for a wonderful journey through these Bach arrangements. HAYDN Piano Sonatas, Vol 7 Jean-Efflam Bavouzet pf Chandos What more to say that hasn’t been said about Volumes 1-6 of this hugely enjoyable Haydn sonata series? Playing of grace and playfulness, all bursting with affection for this music – a superb series continues. LISZT Scherzo und March. Ballades. Légends Leonardo Pierdomenico pf Piano Classics A truly impressive debut from this Italian pianist: well-chosen works, to which he brings compelling colour and mood, as well as – of course – thrilling virtuosity. RACHMANINOV Études-tableaux Steven Osborne pf Hyperion This remarkable pianist talked Gramophone readers though the score last month, whetting our appetite for a performance of deeply reflective individuality: he doesn’t disappoint. BUXTEHUDE ‘Abendmusiken’ Vox Luminis / Lionel Meunier Alpha Another wonderful recording from our 2012 Recording of the Year winners, the blend, beauty of line and sense of atmosphere and drama making for a riveting listen. ‘COME TO ME IN MY DREAMS’ ‘120 years of song from the Royal College of Music’ Dame Sarah Connolly mez / Joseph Middleton pf Chandos As communicative as always, Connolly celebrates, in this programme, song composers associated with the RCM. HALÉVY La reine de Chypre Sols; Flemist Radio Choir; Paris Chamber Orchestra / Hervé Niquet Ediciones Singulares A less familiar opera – but what delightful advocacy it gets here! Characterful singing from a superb cast, all shaped perfectly by Niquet. right declamatory tone with Marie-Nicole Lemieux’s ripely theatrical delivery. The Second Symphony, The Age of Anxiety after WH Auden’s tremendous prose poem, is I think Bernstein’s finest concert work – still hugely underrated in some quarters. This searching dark night of the soul, evolving as it does from that lonely two-part clarinet counterpoint at the outset (the musical equivalent of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks and one of Bernstein’s most inspired ideas), uses an interlocking variation technique to great effect, each new idea emerging from the last notes of the previous one to create not just a sense of evolution but of new beginnings, too. Again, Pappano’s choice of the audacious young Italian pianist Beatrice Rana – a rising star if ever there was one – is right on the money. She has the razzle-dazzle in spades, of course, but it is the mercurial throwaway manner (cool, and then some, the jazzy ‘Masque’ at the heart of the piece brilliantly on point) that really excites. That and her ability suddenly to look inwards and to thoughtfully reflect on what is past and what is to come. She and Pappano communicate great kinship in the piece and that inexorable build to the cathartic peroration has impressive inevitability. One of those eternally hopeful Bernstein sunsets or sunrises, depending on your viewpoint. Symphony No 3, Kaddish, is still the most problematic of the three symphonies for me, one in which the music seems almost incidental to Bernstein’s spoken text. That text – highly emotive as it is – has always struck me as more therapeutic for him than it has ever been for the listener. What we have here is essentially a melodrama, a public venting of his troubled relationship with God, the Father. But Pappano has played an absolute blinder in casting Josephine Barstow in the Speaker’s role. She is tremendous and far and away the most exciting, the most affecting, the most gramophone.co.uk Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from probing narrator of any on disc. One can all too easily forget that she was an English scholar and an actress before she was a singer. She is blistering in her voicing of Bernstein’s angry confrontations with his ‘Tin God’ while the music for its part wrestles with its thorniness, finding respite in the central lullaby and the glorious ‘rainbow’ theme which Bernstein, one feels, knows all too well is the manifestation of his true self. But it is Barstow that makes the piece work as never before in my view and it is Pappano who should take credit for knowing all too well that she would. Lenny’s Benny Goodman inspired-jam session Prelude, Fugue and Riffs is the most pertinent of postscripts to this terrific set. Alessandro Carbonare emerges from the orchestra to lead his feisty combo through the seven action-packed minutes where classical sleight of hand meets jazz improv. Hard to believe it’s written down. But then that was the general idea. GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018 21

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RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR

September

> LISTEN TO OUR BERNSTEIN PODCAST

Beatrice Rana has   the razzle-dazzle in spades, of course, but   it is the mercurial throwaway manner   that really excites

Edward Seckerson is bowled over by Antonio Pappano’s dramatic accounts of Bernstein’s three symphonies with the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia

Bernstein Symphonies – No 1, ‘Jeremiah’a; No 2, ‘The Age of Anxiety’b; No 3, ‘Kaddish’c. Prelude, Fugue and Riffs c Nadine Sierra sop aMarie-Nicole Lemieux mez c Dame Josephine Barstow spkr dAlessandro Carbonare cl bBeatrice Rana pf Orchestra and cChorus of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia / Sir Antonio Pappano Warner Classics M b 9029 56615-8 (113’ • DDD) Leonard Bernstein was the Honorary President of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia from 1983 until his death in 1990. Temperamentally they were exceedingly well suited. Their ethos, their extrovert nature, to say nothing of their innately operatic manner, made them a good fit. And there’s something of Bernstein’s dynamism and eclectic, allembracing nature in the person of Antonio Pappano whose penchant for, and love of, jazz for starters ticks one of the many boxes that this music demands. So here we have it: the three ages of Lenny the symphonist, fittingly signed off with that short, sharp, wacky jam session Prelude, Fugue and Riffs.

Let me say straight away that these performances come at us with a theatricality that puts them firmly ‘on stage’ where they belong. All three pieces are essentially about the process we all go through to ‘find ourselves’, except that in Bernstein’s case the question of belief and faith was to haunt him, trouble him, from first to last. How to reconcile being Jewish with his essentially agnostic nature. That The Age of Anxiety is flanked by the soulsearching of the Jeremiah and Kaddish Symphonies is nothing if not ironical.

One should give credit for the fact that Symphony No 1, Jeremiah – his very first orchestral work – sprang so fully formed from his imagination. For sure it is mightily filmic, a piece whose movement titles ‘Prophecy’, ‘Profanation’ and ‘Lamentation’ portend and indeed deliver biblical gestures; but the piece is big-hearted, too, and paradoxically there is an almost guilty jubilance in the central ‘Profanation’ movement – a destructive hedonism in which Bernstein’s composerly prowess advances in leaps and bounds, powering forwards on the back of driving rhythms and self-evidently American syncopation. We are pre‑dating and predicting here the prairie-pounding Scherzo of Copland’s Third Symphony and the Santa Cecilia players fully relish the heat of it (flaring trumpet fanfares and all) only to slink back

I E L L O

into the singing melody of the Trio section which hardly needs saying could only have been penned by Bernstein. Then there is resonance in the closing lamentation for the fallen city of Jerusalem (the political overtones will never have eluded Lenny) with Pappano’s solo casting (inspired throughout this set) hitting precisely the PHO T O G R A P H Y

I A N N

&

I O

M U S A C C H

:

20 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2018

Click on a CD cover to buy/stream from gramophone.co.uk

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