Classical CDs: Elephants, bells and warm blankets

Michael Tilson Thomas: The Complete Columbia, Sony and RCA Recordings (Sony)

Big box sets continue to arrive. This one’s a whopper: 80 discs celebrating Michael Tilson Thomas’s 80^th birthday. Artistic qualities aside, the production values here are superb, Sony’s 200-page hardback book accompanying individual discs replete with original sleeve art and spines that display each CD’s contents. This is a minor detail but a significant one, making it easy to find the performance you’re looking for. As with the recent Paavo Järvi set, it’s nice to see a celebration of a conductor who’s very much alive, though a recent brain cancer diagnosis has slowed Tilson Thomas down. His beautifully written introductory essay is essential reading, particularly a lucid take on the difference between live performance and studio recording. The latter is a process aimed at creating “the illusion of perfection”, the studio setup “meant to make the music sound good, not to you necessarily, but to the microphones.” That these recordings, taped between 1973 and 2005, sound so consistently good hints at Tilson Thomas’s incredible ear as well as his cordial relationships with his various producers, George Martin and Paul Myers among those given a namecheck.

Technically the earliest performance included here is tacked onto CD 80, a sparky 1969 account of Stravinsky’s Petrushka with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Seiji Ozawa, with the 24-year old Tilson Thomas a pin-sharp piano soloist in music by a composer he already knew and had collaborated with. Four years later came a couple of curios: Stanley Silverman’s Elephant Steps, which sounds exactly as you’d expect ‘a fearful radio show’ written in 1968 to sound. Tilson Thomas is credited as ‘director and archangel’, the cast list including, er, elephants. Apocalypse is a meeting between the London Symphony Orchestra and John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra. Fusion albums don’t come much more fusiony than this, and George Martin was on production duties. Normal service resumes with an exciting, brilliantly recorded 1974 take of Orff’s Carmina Burana taped in Cleveland, superbly sung.

Tilson Thomas’s first Gershwin LP is one that’s still imprinted in my memory, a version of the jazz band Rhapsody in Blue with a Gershwin piano roll as soloist. It’s a blast, despite the extreme speeds, coupled with a very decent American in Paris. A set of six Gershwin overtures with the Buffalo Philharmonic is another treat; I’d forgotten just how good Strike Up the Band is, and the playing is excellent. The overtures album acts as the sunny flipside to a pioneering double LP of Carl Ruggles’ complete output recorded concurrently. It’s difficult to describe Ruggles’ music without using words like ‘stark’ and ‘uncompromising’ but Tilson is a brilliant guide, the Buffalo musicians rising to the challenge. Sun Treader and Evocations pack a huge punch. The set closes with Ruggle’s final work Exaltation (composed in 1958), a disconcertingly tuneful hymn dedicated to his late wife, conductor and trumpeter Gerard Schwarz leading the brass ensemble. Other 1970s analogue recordings include Dvořák's rare cantata The American Flag plus some superb Respighi and Prokofiev with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. There's a decent if unspectacular Beethoven cycle with the English Chamber Orchestra; I’m old enough to have done O Level Music at secondary school; this Pastoral Symphony was the LP we had as our reference, and it was good to hear it again.

Tilson Thomas worked with the Philharmonia and London Symphony regularly in the 1970s and succeeded Claudio Abbado as the latter’s Principal Conductor in 1988, remaining in post until 1995. His LSO discography contains some wonderful things, my favourites being cogent accounts of Mahler 3 (Janet Baker’s only encounter with the work – she’s superb) and Mahler 7, the latter showcasing the orchestra’s stellar brass section. There are some real surprises here, including a blazing version of Janacek’s Glagolitic Mass and Debussy’s rarely-performed Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, in Tilson Thomas’s words "a real standout recording… perhaps my proudest achievement”. It’s superbly cast, with Leslie Caron as narrator. And I love the two LSO Stravinsky albums, the second of which (Stravinsky in America) is a real stunner: a scintillating anthology of works composed in exile. Tilson Thomas’s Agon is a reference version, and we also get the Scènes de ballet and the late Variations: Aldous Huxley in memoriam. RCA’s sleeve art remains one of my favourite ever classical album covers.

There’s loads more Gershwin, Tilson Thomas directing and playing my favourite version of the underrated Second Rhapsody. The musicals Of Thee I Sing and Let’Em Eat Cake (lyrics by Ira Gershwin) are fun to hear, all the more enjoyable if you can find the libretti online. We get an impressive Ives symphony cycle split between the Chicago Symphony and Concertgebouw orchestras, and an unsung but exciting version of the Brahms/Schoenberg Piano Quartet with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

The most recent recordings were made with the San Francisco Symphony, Tilson Thomas becoming its chief Conductor in 1995. Theirs is one of the best single-disc Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet selections you’ll find, the blend of drama and lyricism nicely sustained. A pair of Copland discs celebrate the composer’s modernist and populist tendencies: Garrick Ohlsson is terrific in the rarely programmed Piano Concerto, and there’s also the seldom-encountered uncut edition of Appalachian Spring for full orchestra. Listen out for the orchestra whooping in the final pages of Rodeo.

There’s loads more, including excellent performances of works by Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Puccini, Villa-Lobos, Bartok, and Berlioz. A wonderful release, in other words; the contents sufficient to satisfy anyone’s classical needs for years. It’s also very well-packaged in a sturdy, aesthetically appealing box, and the documentation is superb. Sony’s remasterings sound consistently splendid: you NEED this set.

Colin Davis: The Concertgebouw Legacy (Decca Eloquence)

Colin Davis made his debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra way back in 1966, aged 39. Niek Nelissen’s interesting booklet essay accompanying this set suggests that the orchestra’s management team viewed Davis as a radical innovator, his early concerts including Stravinsky’s Mass and Tippett’s abrasive Concerto for Orchestra. The players liked him, one violinist who played in Davis’s first concerts recalling that “he rehearsed efficiently, didn’t talk too much… his clear beat showed what he wanted.” Regular appearances followed, with such success that Davis was later offered the post of Principal Guest Conductor, a position which he declined. The recordings in this box (20 LPs in total) were made for Philips between 1974 and 1984, beginning with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto (Arthur Grumiaux as soloist) and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique.

Artistic qualities aside, these discs hold up well as examples of just how good analogue engineering was in the 1970s. Plus there’s the Concertgebouw’s still very distinctive sound (those woodwinds!) and the warm acoustic; you wish he’d recorded more Berlioz in Amsterdam. It’s good to see the Symphonie Fantastique’s original artwork reproduced too – I can vividly remember the Goya painting catching my eye as a young teen browsing in a record library. The performance is exciting and brilliantly played, including the cornet solo later added by Berlioz to the second movement waltz and some wonderfully squeaky C clarinets in the finale. Listen out for some distinctly spooky bells and nicely unrefined lower brass blasting out the Dies Irae.

Davis’s Dvořák was another known quantity, and these versions of Symphonies 7-9 hold up very well. Tempi feel instinctively right and there’s some sensational woodwind playing. No. 7 broods, Davis adding the inauthentic but irresistible swooping horn descant in the work’s closing bars, and this No. 8 is a keeper – sample the Amsterdam strings in the “Allegretto grazioso” and the exuberant adrenalin rush in the coda, Davis unafraid to let his hair down. Lovely stuff, and there are also excellent accounts of the Cello and Violin Concerto, Heinrich Schiff and Salvatore Accardo the soloists. Davis relished the sessions, telling an interview in 1977 that “the hall is amazing and produces just the right kind of juicy sound for recording… the sort of energy that the orchestra can provide when it has a mind to it is tremendous”. These discs provide ample proof.

Nelissen recalls that Davis conducted a range of Stravinsky works with the Concertgebouw, including relative rarities like Agon and Perséphone. Record industry economics being what they were, he only recorded the three early ballets. Davis’s Amsterdam Rite of Spring was one of the first ones I heard, and I still enjoy it. This isn’t the fastest, punchiest reading on disc but its earthy pungency is winning. The analogue Philips engineering glows, a real boon in Davis’s complete Firebird. Stravinsky’s crepuscular intro was always too veiled on my second-hand vinyl copy; here, you hear everything. It’s fabulous, as is a vivid, neatly characterised version of the 1947 Petrushka. Alas, a Mussorgsky disc containing Night on Bald Mountain and Ravel’s transcription of Pictures at an Exhibition is serviceable and well-played but undistinctive.

I’ve saved the best till last. Nine of the 18 CDs are devoted to Haydn: the complete London symphonies, most of the Paris set and a handful of others. Concertgebouw violinist Kian Pin Hiu recalls Davis’s way with the composer: “with him, everything stayed light and clear… his facial expression helped you sense what he wanted”. Recording sessions were often held in the evening, the players “inspired again by his enthusiasm… there wasn’t an endless amount of cutting and pasting”. There’s a spontaneity and warmth to these readings that’s intoxicating. Contemporary Haydn recordings tend to use period instruments and chamber forces; listening to Davis’s big-boned approach is akin to time travel. Quirky details still leap out, the irregular phrase lengths and quirky harmonies cushioned by warm blankets of string tone. Haydn doesn’t often sound this seductive. I’ll confess to finding the bassoon fart in No. 93 a tad underplayed, but the Concertgebouw winds are generally in magnificent form. Listen to the oboe solo in Symphony No. 87’s third movement trio and you’ll purr with delight. Decca Eloquence have added Davis’s 1960 English Chamber Orchestra recording of Symphony No. 84 to plug a gap, a decent performance but noticeably drier sounding than the Amsterdam performances. Concertgebouw management again thought about offering Davis a permanent post with the orchestra in the early 1980s, but this wasn’t to be, Davis not conducting the Concertgebouw between 1986 and 1998. There’s a tantalising ‘what if?’ feel about this set, and one wonders if radio recordings of Davis’s live performances are stashed away in a vault somewhere. Presentation and packaging here are first rate, with detailed recording info provided and some good photos of the conductor in action. A winner.

Machaut: A Lover’s Death The Orlando Consort (Hyperion)

Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) was perhaps the first rock star composer – and partly because, in a very rock star way, he worked hard creating his own legend during his lifetime. He made sure his music survived by dedicating his last few years to making sure copies of his “greatest hits” were dispersed around Europe, in “collectors’ editions” that demonstrated his dazzling technical facility. This album by the Orlando Consort features four singers – countertenor Matthew Venner, tenors Mark Dobell and Angus Smith, and baritone Donald Greig – but they never all sing together. There are pieces for one, two or three voices, in different permutations, which demonstrate Machaut’s skills as a polyphonist and also as a straightforward melodist. It is beautifully and eloquently sung – there is nowhere to hide with this few voices – and a good starting point for the music of Machaut. And for all that it sounds strange to our ears, it is less removed from today’s music than the writing of Machaut’s contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer is from today’s English.

The motets are three-voice pieces, which combine three texts simultaneously, in a virtuosic counterpoint that builds on a fragment of Gregorian chant. They are spread throughout the programme, from the opening number, “Hareu, hareu!” which depicts the fire in a lover’s heart with urgency to the stately procession of the finale “Martyrum gemma latria”. While the motets were designed for connoisseurs’ ears, the two voice pieces – virelais, rondeaus and ballades – are perhaps easier to grasp. They are mostly courtly love songs to Machaut’s own texts. In “Je ne cuit pas”, Venner’s countertenor praises Love with elaborate bouncy rhythms. “Dous viaire gracious” is more tender and tentative, Mark Dobell now on the top line, his line alternately twisting round Angus Smith’s, then coming together on the same note.

But for me, the best bits about this album are the solo voice songs, which are pure melody and utterly gorgeous. “Diex, Biauté, Douceur, Nature” is given with complete simplicity by Matthew Venner, while in “Douce dame jolie” Donald Greig is more steadfast and detached, and Mark Dobell in “Liement me deport” sings in the guise of a lover putting a brave face on his heartsickness. These solo numbers in particular speak across the centuries, but the pacing and sequencing of the album is great, making what should be a bit intimidating – an entire disc of just four voices – into a real treat. Bernard Hughes

Sun Moon Stars Rain Phoenix Chorale/Christopher Gabbitas (Signum)

The Phoenix Chorale’s second album for Signum takes as its theme celestial bodies (sun, moon and stars), their meteorological impacts (rain), and the cultural resonances these things have had for poets and composers. The title is a quote from a lovely ee Cummings poem, although somewhat oddly there is no setting of that text on the album (there are some out there). What there is is an enjoyable and varied collection of 18 tracks, ranging from about 2 minutes to the longest, Dale Trumbore’s 9 minute Little you, looking up. This album centrepiece, commissioned by the Phoenix Chorale, uses Trumbore’s own text, capturing a child’s awe looking up at the stars. There is a gentle but powerful reverence in the singing, with conductor Christopher Gabbitas showing his characteristic ability to have his choir sing slowly but without becoming static, and the scoring for choir is subtle and skilful.

The composers are predominantly American, and included names who familiar to me – Trumbore, Eric Whitacre, John Rutter – and some not, including composers I am glad to be introduced to. These include Frank Ticheli, whose three-part Poems of Sara Teasdale, “Constellation” covers a lot of emotional ground, from warm chordal writing in the outer movements, to an energetic middle movement, in which the choir sing fleetly and precise diction. That athleticism is also heard in William Yanesh’s The Astronomer, which sets Walt Whitman’s unruly rhythms with a fitting lopsidedness and unabashed good humour.

Laura Mvula’s Sing to the Moon, was originally arranged chorally for the BBC Singers to sing at the Last Night of the Proms in 2019, receiving instant acclaim. It has been a calling card of the Phoenix Chorale for a while, and is an obvious choice for this project. They give it a bit more forward momentum than some performances, with a soaring descant in the final verse. There is also a real dynamism and clarity of choral texture in Eric Whitacre’s With a Lily in your Hand, more direct-and-to-the-point than some Whitacre. The finale, Water Night, is in his trademark vein of rich, shimmering, clustery harmony. It’s Whitacre doing what he loves to do, and is ardently sung. But more to my taste – particularly for coming out of left field – is Arthur Sullivan’s The Sun whose rays are all ablaze, its Bob Chilcott arrangement re-worked for choir by Gabbitas, and nodding to his erstwhile membership of the King’s Singers. It’s a real tune, charmingly sung, and typical of this imaginatively programmed and meticulously sung album. Bernard Hughes

Lieder: Songs by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn Fatma Said (soprano) with Joseph Middleton (piano), Malcolm Martineau (piano), Arod String Quartet, Sabine Meyer (clarinet) et al (Warner Classics)

Egyptian-born soprano Fatma Said has explained that with Lieder she wanted to make an album “with friends who share similar artistic values.” So, rather than a standard album of German song with a single pianist, we have the opposite, a disc in which the singer is collaborative, working with no fewer than three pianists, plus a string quartet, a harpist, and even the Berlin vocal group MGV Walhalla zum Seidlwirt.

There is a strong sense that her own choices and instincts have prevailed here. Her singing duo with Huw Montague Rendall, recorded a few months after the other sessions is extremely effective. Fatma Said says she is in the early stages of exploring a Lied partnership with the Berlin Philharmonic’s Belgian harpist Anneleen Lenaerts, and that sounds promising too. Said showed in a performance of Schubert’s “Viola” at Wigmore Hall – which I reviewed – quite how a longer form can suit her, and the bravura “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen”, written for the Anna Milder-Hauptmann, Beethoven’s Leonore and the starriest soprano of her day, comes off very well.

Once I had heard the whole recital, I reflected more on her portrayal of the tears and loneliness in Schubert’s “Ständchen” and on the ‘weiches Herz’ (soft heart) she brings to Mendelssohn/Goethe’s “Die Liebende schreibt”, and there is clearly role-playing going on: these performances are a knowing enactment of vulnerability. In a song like Mendelssohn’s “Hexenlied”, as she explains in the liner note, she has consciously gone for letting the words count rather than making it too ‘singer-ish’. Fatma Said is starry and glamorous, but also authentic, adaptable, immensely hard-working and gloriously musical. “Lieder” shows the virtue of her being able to make her own choices and to make a reality of the album’s strapline, “My Soul with Friends”. Sebastian Scotney

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