Classical CDs
graham.rickson
Sollazzo Ensemble: Parle Qui Veut - Moralising songs of the Middle Ages (Linn)Here, Anne Stone’s fascinating sleeve essay does get a bit Dan Brown at times: there's mention of a mysterious song collection called the Squarcialupi Codex, and talk of a diminutive 14th century composer lacking many fingers and toes. The said songbook contains a lament sung by the personification of Music, “weeping… to see pleasant minds abandon sweet and perfect qualities for frottole”. In essence, the voice of a grumpy oldster complaining that today's youngsters spend their time listening to crap instead of the Read more ...
graham.rickson
Chaconne - Sofya Gulyak (piano) (Champs Hill Records)Traditionally, a chaconne is an instrumental piece in triple time with a continually repeating bass line. Sofya Gulyak, winner of the 2009 Leeds Piano Competition, gives us seven. Best known is Busoni’s extraordinary Chaconne in D minor, a bold reinvention of a famous Bach number for solo violin. Gulyak is terrific, her performance combining craggy grandeur and warm intimacy. The final major chord has rarely sounded so well-earned. An early Chaconne in G major by Handel is a friendlier affair, Gulyak making the work shine. The rapid Read more ...
graham.rickson
Herbert Howells: Music for Clavichord Julian Perkins (Prima Facie)Herbert Howells was at a low ebb in the 1920s. His energies were sapped by ongoing health issues and resultant medical treatment. A severe creative crisis followed the disastrous first performance of his Piano Concerto No. 2 in 1925. Help arrived in the form of Howells’ friendship with the photographer Herbert Lambert, who sidelined as a maker of clavichords. This quirksome instrument delighted him. Inspired by collections of Tudor keyboard music, he began to assemble Lambert’s Clavichord: 12 short pieces, each one dedicated to Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: Symphony No. 2, Tragic Overture, Academic Festival Overture Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen/Paavo Järvi (RCA)Paavo Järvi and the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie’s scintillating Beethoven cycle hasn't received the acclaim it deserves in the UK. Seek it out forthwith, and you'll feel compelled to invest in this first installment of their Brahms cycle. The orchestral sound is still pretty rich, the strings numbering over 30. Wind details emerge without effort, with principal flautist Bettina Wild a stand-out. Flexible tempi allow Järvi to really engage with Brahms's long opening Read more ...
graham.rickson
Erik Chisholm: Violin Concerto, Dance Suite for orchestra and piano, From the True Edge of the Great World Matthew Driver (violin), Danny Driver (piano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra/Martyn Brabbins (Hyperion)Erik Chisholm’s improbable career took him from Glasgow to Cape Town, passing through India en route. John Purser’s sleeve note describes Chisholm's craggy idiom as encompassing Asian and Highland influences. It's a heady mixture, as uncompromising as you'd expect from a composer-pianist who worked with Bartók and Hindemith, and who gallantly tried to convert Glaswegian audiences to Read more ...
graham.rickson
Nimrod Borenstein: Violin Concerto, The Big Bang and Creation of the Universe, If You Will It, It Is No Dream Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra/Vladimir Ashkenazy, with Irmina Trynkos (violin) (Chandos)Proof of modern music’s dizzying variety is found on this beguiling disc. And as much as I could sit for hours wallowing in Morton Feldman's collected works for solo piano, I'm far from immune to accessible contemporary music with personality. Nimrod Borenstein writes in this disc's booklet of his longing for listeners to recognise his distinct compositional voice. Without being Read more ...
graham.rickson
Beethoven: Symphony No 9 Park Avenue Chamber Symphony/David Bernard (Recursive Classics)My favourite recent Beethoven cycle is a largely unnoticed one from Copenhagen. This disc of No 9 is another outsider. It’s performed by a semi-professional New York chamber orchestra and has ghastly sleeve art. The recording is a little over-resonant, but I can live with that. As a performance, it’s a winner: dramatic, witty, eloquent and boasting some startling choral work in the last movement. Things start promisingly, the string tremolandi at the symphony’s outset clearly articulated, the brass and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Keyboard Concertos, Italian Concerto Sonya Bach (piano), English Chamber Orchestra/John Mills and Stephanie Gonley (leaders) (Rubicon)There's no shortage of decent recordings of Bach concertos played on piano. I’d probably rescue my Murray Perahia discs from a burning house and Glenn Gould’s vintage accounts still cast a spell. This new set from South Korean pianist Sonya Bach more than holds its own. These are such fantastic little pieces: three-movement concertos which don't exceed the 20-minute mark. This is probably why they’re programmed relatively rarely, though András Schiff Read more ...
graham.rickson
Guy Johnston: Tecchler’s Cello - From Cambridge to Rome (King’s College Cambridge)Acquiring a second-hand instrument always leads one to wonder what sort of a life it led before. Did said instrument enjoy a flourishing professional career, or was it abandoned in an attic for decades? Cherished by a master or mistreated by a bumbling amateur? Guy Johnston’s enjoyable anthology celebrates his recent acquisition of a 300-year-old cello made by one David Tecchler. He was a Bavarian-born craftsman who pitched up in Rome towards the end of the 17th century, one of his workshops being situated Read more ...
graham.rickson
Sibelius: Piano Music Leif Ove Andsnes (Sony)Yes, Sibelius did write piano music, though not a lot of it gets heard. A recent BIS collection featured original pieces and transcriptions played on the composer's own piano, and Glenn Gould recorded a small selection in the 1970s. So Leif Ove Andsnes’s glorious disc fills a useful gap, but it's not just for completists. Sibelius himself famously complained that the piano “doesn't sing”, and Andrew Mellor's perceptive booklet essay describes the piano output as a chronically neglected secret. Andsnes's collection spans Sibelius’s career, opening Read more ...
graham.rickson
Antheil: A Jazz Symphony, Piano Concerto No. 1, Capital of the Word, Archipelago “Rhumba” Frank Dupree (piano), Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz/Karl-Heinz Steffens (Capriccio)George Antheil’s worst move was probably calling his 1945 autobiography Bad Boy of Music. If he'd genuinely been that naughty, he'd have become a household name instead of fading into obscurity. A recent Chandos disc of Antheil symphonies underwhelmed me, but this raucous anthology makes a much more persuasive case for Antheil's talents. Try the invigorating Jazz Symphony from 1925. Performed here in its Read more ...
graham.rickson
John Cage: Two4 Aisha Orazbayeva (violin), Naomi Sato (shō) (SN Variations)The shō is a Japanese wind instrument long associated with traditional court music. Looking like a bundle of sticks, its 17 pipes each plays a distinct pitch. Its sound is something else, the shō’s clusters of notes emerging and fading into silence along with the player’s breath. John Cage’s 1991 piece Two4 can be played by solo violin with piano or shō, their short-lived chords set against the violin’s ability to sustain individual notes for over a minute. Shō and violin blend well together in terms of sound; Read more ...