Four interesting concertos, with two stand-outs

20th Century Harpischord Concertos, by Walter Leigh, Ned Rorem, Viktor Kalabis & Michael Nyman

Ned Rorem wrote his Concertino da Camera in 1946, but the score was lost, and it had to wait until 1993 for its world premiére performance, at the University of Minnesota. Luckily this marvellous work has made its way to this CD: its first commercial recording. Much, much better late than never! It's a kind of an echo of an echo: very much reminiscent of Camille Saint-Saens' fabulous Septet for piano, trumpet and strings, written in 1880, it's also a direct descendant of the Baroque harpsichord concertos of Bach and his sons, and many other composers, via the neo-classical works of Frank Martin, De Falla, and others. Harpsichordist Jory Vinikour sparkles in the solo part, which is intricate and evocative. Rorem includes some folkloric touches in the finale, and even adds a bit of American flair to a work that has a largely Gallic sound. Walter Leigh's work, written in 1934, is also called a Concertino, as it's rather slight, but this is a classic English pastoral piece that's both charming and unexpectedly virtuosic. Trevor Pinnock recorded this work in 2007, but I prefer Vinikour's performance for its verve and swing.

Victor Kalabis's 1975 Concerto for Harpsichord is an almost laser-focussed serious work. There are a few good humoured passages, but no real humour, and nothing to break the intense mood that spreads throughout all three movements. Michael Nyman's 1995 Concerto for Amplified Harpsichord was also less congenial to my taste than I had expected. It flirts with pastiche at times, and though there are lovely bits, it doesn't seem to hold together as a coherent work of art; not, at least, in the same way the Rorem and Leigh works did. Still, those works - especially the Rorem - make this a special album, and one that you shouldn't miss out on.

Another brilliant musical document from post-war Berlin

Quartetto Italiano: The Complete RIAS Recordings

The Quartetto Italiano was the first of the new post-war groups that inaugurated a new golden age of String Quartets: the Quartetto Italiano was formed in 1945, the Juilliard String Quartet and LaSalle Quartet in 1946, and the Janáček and Amadeus quartets in 1947. Audite here brings us three CDs worth of fabulous recordings for RIAS ("Radio in the American Sector" of Berlin). The RIAS studios were excellent, and their engineers highly accomplished, so we have (as with the Amadeus Quartet album I reviewed late last year) an excellent idea of how these musicians sounded, in this case between 1951 to 1963. The group's repertoire is interesting, especially considering the period: Donizetti, Malipiero and Cherubini provide an Italian antipasto, if I may be permitted a metaphor (pun!) in questionable taste (taste!). Their 1959 Ravel interpretation is searching, and sometimes fierce; maybe even more so than their late recordings of core repertoire. This is a standout performance, though it's perhaps less than Gallic. The early String Quartet no. 8 by Schubert, from 1963, has the characteristic QI sound of their studio recordings of the Viennese masters: it's taut and tight and intense, eschewing sentimentality and emphasizing structure over story-telling. The first of the Haydn String Quartets op. 77 is the earliest recording here, from 1951. It's sunnier and more fun (to listen to, and I expect, to play) than the more disciplined Haydn the Quartetto Italiano developed later in their recording career. These recordings are at a higher level in both sonics and interpretation than your average historic releases, and the excellent documentation and the fact that a number of the works have never been released, make this a must-listen for chamber music fans.

This album will be released on May 3, 2019.

Woke Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau: Les Indes galantes

Gyorgy Vashegyi's Budapest-based Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra has become my favourite Original Instruments group. They were so good in Mondonville's Grands Motets and Isbé, also from Glossa; more recently they've moved on to the great genius of the French baroque, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and his Naïs.

"I like people", said Voltaire, speaking about Jean-Philippe Rameau, "who know when to drop the sublime in order to banter." In moving from tragedie to "the naïve graces of ballet",  Rameau had taken on the impressively advanced - anti-clerical and anti-imperialist - politics of his librettist Louis Fuzelier. As happens so often, satire can hide revolutionary ideas. This is actually very nearly a "progressive" agenda, even by today's standards (don't get me started on the 2020 Democratic primary), but for someone who made a (good) living flattering the monarchy, it's an interesting side-line.

As in the previous project, Vashegyi and his talented musicians work with the Centre de Musique Baroque in Versailles. Academic precision never gets in the way of the obvious fun of the project, though. Once again we're treated to great choral and solo singing, again led by soprano Chantal Santon-Jeffery. In a review of another recording of Les Indes galantes, I talk about "the great, dumb fun" of this project, and this is something that would be easy enough to lose. But there's no worry of that here; we get the full deal, and it's fun to go along for the ride.

This album will be released on May 3, 2019.

A thought-provoking & satisfying first album

Can Çakmur: piano music by Beethoven/Liszt, Haydn, Schubert, Say, Sasaki, Bartok

After the artificial rigours of the international piano competition world, Can Çakmur (who won in Glasgow in 2017, and in Hamamatsu in 2018) now has a chance to build an interesting, exciting programme for his first recording. His opener is an inspired choice: Franz Liszt's arrangement of Beethoven's song Adelaïde, an arresting piece that alternates between sentiment and all-out flash. Of course we want virtuosity in this situation, and it's here in spades, but in the long-term we're on the look-out for musical intelligence, style and staying power. On the evidence of this album we should be listening to the Ankara-born pianist for a very long time.

Çakmur plays Schubert's E-flat major Sonata D. 568, from 1817 when he was only 20, with wit and delicacy. He doesn't add any anachronistic darkness to the slow movement - the bulk of the composer's agonies are years ahead at this point - but lets the simple sad post-adolescent clouds drift through in their quiet way. The more sophisticated and brilliant F minor Variations by Haydn seem at first deceptively slight, but they are the centrepiece of the album; this is a profound work that Çakmur gives a suitable gravitas and quiet dignity. Fazil Say's Black Earth adapts a folk song by Turkish minstrel Aşık Veysel, complete with the sound of the lute-like instrument the bağlama, approximated by pressing on the piano strings while playing notes on the keyboard. This is an arresting piece that combines piano technique and folklore in an appealing way. Çakmur stays in the world of imitative folk music with Bartok's percussive Out of Doors, and brings his first album to a moving conclusion with Fuyuhiko Sasaki's Sacrifice. This is a complex work with references to Christian theology, to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, to Bach's St. Matthew Passion, and to Andrei Tarkovsky's final film, The Sacrifice, from 1986. What a thought-provoking and satisfying first album!

Boisterous cheer and haunted longing

Francis Poulenc: Chamber music with piano

"What's nice with Poulenc," Erik Satie once said, "is that he makes up his own folklore." Everything about the composer was original: he was largely self-taught, but he had enough confidence in his own talent that his music went its own way. Not worrying too much about musical fashions, he often ended up leading the way himself. He was exposed from his teenage years to the musical revolution of Stravinsky's early ballets, and to the intellectual excitement of the surrealists, but Poulenc's music retained its own earthy, forceful personality, and never lost its way in glibness or sentimentality.

Here's Boris Lipnitzki's famous picture of Les Six with Jean Cocteau, from, I'm assuming, some time in the 1930s: Milhaud, Cocteau, Honegger, Tailleferre, Poulenc & Durey. Cocteau's drawing of the missing Auric rounds out the six. Poulenc's music fits nicely in this avant garde group, but he's as much a leader as a any of his composing colleagues.

This splendid collection of chamber music with piano is organized chronologically, but there's no real story arc of development or decline here; just Poulenc's prodigious, regular eruption of brightness and melancholy, of boisterous cheer and haunted longing. Pianist Paul Rivinius provides a solid lead at the keyboard, keeping his talented wind partners on task, but providing enough swing to keep thing alive and pulsing. This is a marvellous programme of Gallic charm and ingenuity that rewards close listening.

This album will be released on May 17, 2019

The International Style in 18th Century Music

Jet Set!: works by Abel, Reichardt, Zelter, Mozart, Storace and Paisiello

From 14th century Gothic cathedrals to early 20th century skyscrapers, there have been International Styles in the arts, as the nobility and then multi-national corporations vied for the best artists, architects and composers from around the world, who influenced each other and created new styles through cross-fertilization. Simon Murphy's latest theme album tells the story of 18th century musicians as if they were from the mid-20th century Golden Age of Travel: "classical glitterati" going to the musical capitals of Europe to show off their wares.



This is stylish programme design and very clever marketing, but it would mean nothing without top-class musical values, and we have that here in spades. First of all, the music itself, full of rarities, and even a number of recording premieres, is of very high quality. Sure, the aria from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro does stand out a bit, but the symphonies, concertos and arias here are always interesting and occasionally quite brilliant. And Murphy manages the transitions from the 18th century to the 21st, with various stops in the 20th century along the way, with verve, panache, and finely modulated levels of style. A simply wonderful time!

Listening to giants

Elgar from America, volume 1: Enigma Variations, Cello Concerto, Falstaff

New York has a long tradition of providing a warm welcome to foreign composers, and Edward Elgar was no exception. He made a big splash in his visits early in the century, and his American reputation was at a high point in the 1940s, when these three recordings were made by top conductors with the top New York musicians.

Yes, Toscanini takes the Enigma Variations at quite a clip, and you occasionally want to hail the orchestra as it speeds by. The Nimrod Variation, at less than three minutes, is unsentimental but it never comes across as the least bit unfeeling, and the conductor brings it to a satisfyingly heroic - and heartbreaking - finish. The Nimrod norm seems to be over four minutes, though the composer himself broke the 3 minute barrier in one of his own recordings, (he introduces his own kind of pathos though swoopy strings). It's fun to listen to a dozen different Nimrods in a row: I'd recommend it for a cold, overcast day like the Toronto one I'm writing this review in. Overall, I'm impressed with Toscanini's dramatic, occasionally even operatic, take on this great work, and his players are outstanding. The playing is as polished as a studio recording, and the fact that it's recorded over the air from a live broadcast shows the very high level of preparation, and the skill of both musicians and conductor.

The stakes don't seem as high in the next recording included here: John Barbirolli, the New York Philharmonic and Gregor Piatigorsky provide a relaxed Cello Concerto that I wouldn't rate at the very highest level, though it's still very fine. It does have considerable value as documentation; this great cellist never got around to recording this great concerto in the studio. I wish the sound here were as good as the Toscanini recording.



The final work on the album is a commercial release premiere: Artur Rodzinksi conducts the New York Philharmonic in a very good Falstaff. Alas the sound is even dimmer than the the Cello Concerto, though of course we all make allowances for these historic recordings, and the feeling of actually being there in this time of musical giants makes up for so much. Speaking of being there, I didn't imagine myself sitting in evening dress at Carnegie Hall, but instead comfortably in an armchair in my housecoat and slippers, listening on an RCA Tombstone Console Radio.

This album will be released on May 17, 2019.

Civilized musical conversations for the time traveler

Heinrich Anton Hoffmann: Three String Quartets, op. 3

Heinrich Hoffmann was an almost exact contemporary of Beethoven's, and his opus 3 String Quartets were published only a few years before Beethoven's ground-breaking opus 18 set. But these beautifully balanced examples of civilized musical conversation are more like (in style and pretty darn close to quality) Haydn, and especially Mozart, than the more abrupt young composer from Bonn. Everything about this project from the original instruments ensemble Alte Musik Köln is well-researched, thoughtful and sophisticated. One can easily imagine oneself listening to the great virtuoso musicians of the day, playing in the drawing rooms of aristocrats, temporary respites from the social change and danger of the Napoleonic wars in Germany at the time. Time travel really does work in the musical realm, and we can experience the same enlightenment and peace that this music still provides in our own troubled times.

This disc will be released on May 17, 2019.