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GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2021 concertos any time soon). This is a beautifully phrased account with a rhythmic precision and cleanness of sound that is second to none. The articulation is vital in what is one of the swiftest versions currently available, outpacing even James Ehnes’s brilliant account on Chandos. What commends Zimmermann’s performance above his rivals is his focus on the Bartók not as a daunting obstacle, requiring virtuosity for its own sake, but solely as magnificent music. His playing is less ferocious than Franziska Pietsch (who mightily impressed Rob Cowan two years ago), preferring a subtler, lighter approach – even more than Vilde Frang – which is entirely winning. Suffused with light, this is the most humane account of this work that I have encountered. Guy Rickards (January 2021) Bartók Solo Violin Sonata – selected comparisons: Frang (5/11) (EMI/WARN) 947639-2 Ehnes (1/13) (CHAN) CHAN10752 Pietsch (12/18) (AUDI) AUDITE97 758 Martin≤ Violin Concertos – selected comparisons: Matou≈ek, Czech PO, Hogwood (A/08) (HYPE) CDA67674 Irnberger, Janá∂ek PO, Förster (2/19) (GRAM) 99178 Poulenc Piano Concertoa. Concert champêtrea. Oboe Sonatab. Trio for Piano, Oboe and Bassoonc Mark Bebbington pf bcJohn Roberts ob c Jonathan Davies bn a Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Jan Latham-Koenig Resonus F RES10256 (73’ • DDD) The incomparable Mark Bebbington, to whom British music owes more than a tip of the hat, turns his attention to the French with a superb new CD of Francis Poulenc. Jan Latham-Koenig and the Royal Philharmonic are collaborators in two of the master’s five concertante pieces, and oboist John Roberts and bassoonist Jonathan Davies join Bebbington in striking performances of two chamber works. Bebbington, Latham-Koenig and the RPO players are so focused on pointing up every expressive moment of these richly allusive concertos, the first and last Poulenc would write, that both emerge as strikingly vivid, despite their myriad subtleties. Amid the Piano Concerto’s pellucid textures, no occasion for dramatic tension is neglected. In the first movement, for instance, Bebbington skilfully shapes and colours the portentous solo chord progressions that elicit varied responses from the orchestra in such a way that you’re kept on the edge of your seat, eager to know what direction the musical discourse will take next. The wistfully tender Andante con moto makes its way with irresistible poise and directness. The Rondeau finale, alternating between tongue-in-cheek wit and ebullient high spirits, is all the more beguiling for its understatement. Nigel Simeone’s elegant booklet notes indulge in some special pleading for the Concert champêtre – commissioned and premiered by the harpsichordist Wanda Landowska – by carefully documenting Poulenc’s own performances on piano. But if we’re to hear much of this intriguing piece in future, it will likely be on the piano, the steel-frame instruments that Pleyel created for Landowska’s revival of the harpsichord having become historical anomalies. In any case, Latham-Koenig and Bebbington bring keen sensitivities for sonority and balance to a performance that is a model of clarity and precision. Bebbington’s wholehearted embrace of the piece and his relish for Poulenc’s stylishness combine to make the score’s occasional archaising seem perfectly natural. Expert ensemble on a more intimate level rounds out this superbly conceived programme. Roberts, Davies and Bebbington vividly capture the ferment and insouciance of inter-war Paris in the 1926 Trio, a work encouraged by Stravinsky and dedicated to Falla. But it is Roberts and Bebbington’s deeply felt reading of the Oboe Sonata, composed during the last summer of Poulenc’s life and dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev, that provides the capstone to a recording rich in sensual gratification and intellectual nourishment. Patrick Rucker (June 2020) Shostakovich Violin Concertos – No 1, Op 77; No 2, Op 129 Alina Ibragimova vn State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia ‘Evgeny Svetlanov’ / Vladimir Jurowski Hyperion F CDA68313 (71’ • DDD) If there’s one factor above all that sets these performances apart it’s the osmosis between soloist and conductor. There’s a musical and intellectual friction going on here and it has to do with the balance between head and heart. If you listen to Maxim Vengerov and Mstislav Rostropovich in the First Concerto (Teldec, 2/95) – the more ‘public’ of the two – the heart rules, passion prevails, and the outcome is more overtly ‘romantic’ than anything you’ll hear from Ibragimova and Jurowski. First off, Ibragimova’s playing has an unvarnished truth about it. It’s the kind of playing that looks you unblinkingly in the eye and tells it like it is. She’s not afraid to ‘invade your space’ or apply pressure to the sound until its rawness is almost unbearable. But equally she (and Jurowski and his marvellous orchestra) catches the emotional remoteness at the dark heart of the first movement and especially in the moments before the chill of celesta opens up another magic casement to the composer’s inner world and the soloist ascends to create a kind of halo of sound above the deep tolling of the tam-tam. From soloist and conductor, the bonedry Scherzo is the dance equivalent of a rictus grin – gritty, pugnacious and then some. Strings could snap under this kind of trenchancy. And then there’s that extraordinary Passacaglia which attempts to lend foundation and even a degree of nobility to perhaps the most emotive ‘aria’ Shostakovich ever penned. Ibragimova calls to mind Katerina’s suicidal oration in the closing scene of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk – and any feelings that have been held in check are then vented in the cadenza. Deliberate and remorseless at first, the intensity goes off the scale as its delirium builds. The Second Concerto is a much more personal (indeed individual) statement and one in which the words ‘in confidence’ are repeatedly called to mind. Its three cadenzas are essentially conversations with self and even the relationship with the orchestra is different, with the soloist seeming to ‘commune’ with it collectively and individually. Her dialogue with the bassoon – Shostakovich’s instrument of choice for solitude – has the feeling of being ‘overheard’ and that’s as much to Ibragimova and Jurowski’s credit as the composer’s. Street songs – like the nagging little ditty used in The Execution of Stepan Razin – add a layer of irony and cynicism to the mix (as in you don’t always know what the composer is really saying), but there’s one moment in this piece that I covet and it comes at the end of the slow movement when the solo horn brings an air of hopefulness into the equation. It’s Shostakovich as Schubert and it’s indelible. Edward Seckerson (July 2020) 18 GRAMOPHONE 18 GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2021 gramophone.co.uk
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Contemporary GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2021 Award sponsored by Andriessen The Only One Nora Fischer sop Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra / Esa-Pekka Salonen Nonesuch M 7559 79173-3 (21’ • DDD • T) Recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, May 2-5, 2019 A powerful creative force around which so many younger composers gravitated, his recognisable style admired for its ability to shape and twist time and space like no other, Louis Andriessen has decided to finally call time on an extraordinary artistic journey. The sad news was announced at the end of last year by Andriessen’s wife, violinist Monica Germino, that the composer is now living with dementia. Somewhere along the line, time has become memory in Andriessen’s music. Autobiographical clues hid inside the musical narratives and subplots of later works such as Mysteriën (‘Mysteries’) and Theatre of the World. Now all the puzzle’s pieces have been laid out on the table for us all to see. In the Introduction, no sooner have two sets of agitated oscillating patterns in piano, marimba and winds got going (in trademark Andriessen fashion) than competing high strings hover above, stating a Brahmsian lullaby-like melody. The music shudders to a halt after barely a minute and a half, confused, as if unsure where to go. The mezzo-soprano’s lone first entry – performed with vivid characterisation here by Nora Fischer – restores temporary order but the text, replete with surreal, streamof-consciousness thoughts and impressions by Flemish poet Delphine Lecompte, also refuses to settle. Lost, the music either takes comfort in the ghosts of musical memories past (ranging from mariachi music and self-quotation to statements of the ‘Dies irae’) or gets trapped in obsessive two-chord grooves. As Timo Andres writes in his excellent booklet notes, this is Andriessen ‘stripped down to his essence, all the component parts of his language laid bare’. The song-cycle feels ‘jarringly personal, as though Andriessen is subjecting his music to Freudian analysis’. Almost like life itself, it’s all over before you’ve had time to pause and reflect. Andriessen’s music has never been as ‘straight to the point’ as this. His appetite for architectonic, cathedral-like structures (De tijd, Hadewijch), has shrunk to husk-like proportions. Andriessen’s final work, May, premiered in December 2020 (and written in memory of Baroque conductor and recorder virtuoso Frans Brüggen), was a cathartic emptying-out of musical memories. The Only One seems overburdened by them. Complex yet direct, it nevertheless serves as a fitting, if sad, farewell to a composer equally deserving of that description. Pwyll ap Siôn (April 2021) Finnissy Pious Anthems & Voluntaries The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge / Andrew Nethsingha with Sarah O’Flynn fl Cecily Ward vn Glen Dempsey, James Anderson-Besant org Signum F (two discs for the price of one) SIGCD624 (84’ • DDD • T/t) This project originates in a residency of several years the composer undertook at St John’s College, Cambridge. At its heart are four choral works that reimagine specific pieces in the college’s repertory, ranging from Taverner to Bach, each of which is twinned with an instrumental (usually organ) commentary. As a cycle it’s so admirably balanced that one can take the whole thing in at a sitting. The Bachian cantata at the centre (in which organ and choir join forces with a flute and violin) is flanked by the substantial a cappella anthems and their no less substantial organ ‘doubles’. The relation to the source material, revisited with each piece, is fascinating in itself. The cantata sticks most closely to its model but the twists and turns of its local handling keep one guessing. In what feels like a deliberately provocative gesture, the beginning of the commentary preceding it (on Wie schön leuchtet die Morgenstern) flirts with naivety, which is playfully and subtly defused. Elsewhere, the range of stylistic references is vast, ranging from a kind of (happily) deconstructed Duruflé to Donatoni, via a ‘textural parody’ of Taverner’s Dum transisset at the very start. It means that while there’s ‘something for everyone’, there’s something likely to irritate everyone as well. I suspect that’s how Finnissy likes it. It’s great, in the first place, for an institution of this type to have approached a composer whose demands were always likely to challenge it. The Choir of St John’s College rise to those challenges gamely, their advocacy naturally essential to the success of the project. And it is a success. The Taverner parody and its organ double seem to me especially fine, both as compositions and performances. The soloists in the Bach cantata acquit themselves admirably too, though the bass’s unwavering introduction of vibrato after each attack gets a touch distracting. The ending of the organ double on Plebs angelica – the cycle’s final gesture – consummate the chordal material that runs through everything that has preceded: a thrilling conclusion. Fabrice Fitch (September 2020) Lim Extinction Events and Dawn Chorusa. Axis mundib. Songs Found in Dreamc a Sophie Schafleitner vn bLorelei Dowling bn ac Klangforum Wien / cStefan Asbury, a Peter Rundel Kairos F 0015020KAI (63’ • DDD) Based at the University of Huddersfield, the Australian composer Liza Lim is one of a growing number of contemporary composers who, like Jennifer Walshe and Chaya Czernowin, uses her music to address ecological issues and the Anthropocene. This portrait disc is a primer on Lim’s music. At 40 minutes, Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus is the centrepiece. Lim draws connections between enormous gyres of plastic rubbish swirling in the ocean and the debris of history around us (as in the classical tradition, quoting gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2021 1919

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Contemporary

GRAMOPHONE AWARDS SHORTLIST 2021

Award sponsored by

Andriessen The Only One Nora Fischer sop Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra / Esa-Pekka Salonen Nonesuch M 7559 79173-3 (21’ • DDD • T) Recorded live at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, May 2-5, 2019

A powerful creative force around which so many younger composers gravitated,

his recognisable style admired for its ability to shape and twist time and space like no other, Louis Andriessen has decided to finally call time on an extraordinary artistic journey. The sad news was announced at the end of last year by Andriessen’s wife, violinist Monica Germino, that the composer is now living with dementia.

Somewhere along the line, time has become memory in Andriessen’s music. Autobiographical clues hid inside the musical narratives and subplots of later works such as Mysteriën (‘Mysteries’) and Theatre of the World. Now all the puzzle’s pieces have been laid out on the table for us all to see.

In the Introduction, no sooner have two sets of agitated oscillating patterns in piano, marimba and winds got going (in trademark Andriessen fashion) than competing high strings hover above, stating a Brahmsian lullaby-like melody. The music shudders to a halt after barely a minute and a half, confused, as if unsure where to go.

The mezzo-soprano’s lone first entry – performed with vivid characterisation here by Nora Fischer – restores temporary order but the text, replete with surreal, streamof-consciousness thoughts and impressions by Flemish poet Delphine Lecompte, also refuses to settle. Lost, the music either takes comfort in the ghosts of musical memories past (ranging from mariachi music and self-quotation to statements of the ‘Dies irae’) or gets trapped in obsessive two-chord grooves. As Timo Andres writes in his excellent booklet notes, this is Andriessen ‘stripped down to his essence, all the component parts of his language laid bare’. The song-cycle feels

‘jarringly personal, as though Andriessen is subjecting his music to Freudian analysis’.

Almost like life itself, it’s all over before you’ve had time to pause and reflect. Andriessen’s music has never been as ‘straight to the point’ as this. His appetite for architectonic, cathedral-like structures (De tijd, Hadewijch), has shrunk to husk-like proportions. Andriessen’s final work, May, premiered in December 2020 (and written in memory of Baroque conductor and recorder virtuoso Frans Brüggen), was a cathartic emptying-out of musical memories. The Only One seems overburdened by them. Complex yet direct, it nevertheless serves as a fitting, if sad, farewell to a composer equally deserving of that description. Pwyll ap Siôn (April 2021)

Finnissy Pious Anthems & Voluntaries The Choir of St John’s College, Cambridge / Andrew Nethsingha with Sarah O’Flynn fl Cecily Ward vn Glen Dempsey, James Anderson-Besant org Signum F (two discs for the price of one) SIGCD624 (84’ • DDD • T/t)

This project originates in a residency of several years the composer undertook at St John’s College, Cambridge. At its heart are four choral works that reimagine specific pieces in the college’s repertory, ranging from Taverner to Bach, each of which is twinned with an instrumental (usually organ) commentary. As a cycle it’s so admirably balanced that one can take the whole thing in at a sitting. The Bachian cantata at the centre (in which organ and choir join forces with a flute and violin) is flanked by the substantial a cappella anthems and their no less substantial organ ‘doubles’.

The relation to the source material, revisited with each piece, is fascinating in itself. The cantata sticks most closely to its model but the twists and turns of its local handling keep one guessing. In what feels like a deliberately provocative gesture, the beginning of the commentary preceding it (on Wie schön leuchtet die Morgenstern) flirts with naivety, which is playfully and subtly defused. Elsewhere, the range of stylistic references is vast, ranging from a kind of (happily) deconstructed Duruflé to Donatoni, via a ‘textural parody’ of Taverner’s Dum transisset at the very start. It means that while there’s ‘something for everyone’, there’s something likely to irritate everyone as well. I suspect that’s how Finnissy likes it.

It’s great, in the first place, for an institution of this type to have approached a composer whose demands were always likely to challenge it. The Choir of St John’s College rise to those challenges gamely, their advocacy naturally essential to the success of the project. And it is a success. The Taverner parody and its organ double seem to me especially fine, both as compositions and performances. The soloists in the Bach cantata acquit themselves admirably too, though the bass’s unwavering introduction of vibrato after each attack gets a touch distracting. The ending of the organ double on Plebs angelica – the cycle’s final gesture – consummate the chordal material that runs through everything that has preceded: a thrilling conclusion. Fabrice Fitch (September 2020)

Lim Extinction Events and Dawn Chorusa. Axis mundib. Songs Found in Dreamc a Sophie Schafleitner vn bLorelei Dowling bn ac Klangforum Wien / cStefan Asbury, a Peter Rundel Kairos F 0015020KAI (63’ • DDD)

Based at the University of Huddersfield, the Australian composer

Liza Lim is one of a growing number of contemporary composers who, like Jennifer Walshe and Chaya Czernowin, uses her music to address ecological issues and the Anthropocene. This portrait disc is a primer on Lim’s music.

At 40 minutes, Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus is the centrepiece. Lim draws connections between enormous gyres of plastic rubbish swirling in the ocean and the debris of history around us (as in the classical tradition, quoting gramophone.co.uk

GRAMOPHONE GRAMOPHONE SHORTLIST 2021 1919

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