Tallis and the deepest enchantment

Tallis: Mass 'Puer natus est nobis'; Responsories & Motets

The cover of this beautiful new album of choral music from Oxford shows a detail of William Segar's painting of Queen Elizabeth, from 1585, in Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, UK. This is "The Ermine Portrait", with its exquisite combination of jewels and lace, the deep blue of the cloth, the over-the-top ruffs, the hilt of the sword and our cute furry friend.

The surface of the painting is gorgeous in its details, while the painting as a whole is a representation of the majesty and style of the great monarch. We can see it as an analogue of the music of Thomas Tallis, who wrote some of the most gorgeous and majestic choral music of all time. As Hugo von Hofmannsthal said in his Book of Friends, “Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.”

Robert Quinney and the Choir of New College Oxford's new album from Linn contains the splendid Mass 'Puer natus est nobis', plus a generous selection of Tallis's Responsories & Motets.

I'm so impressed with the music on this disc: the singing of the men and boys of the venerable Choir of New College Oxford (established in 1379!) is other-worldly. It was recorded at the church of St John the Evangelist in Oxford, a perfect acoustic for this music. Robert Quinney's liner notes are illuminating; it's always a delight to find someone with great scholarly expertise matched with equally great musicianship. I highly recommend this album!

This music affected me so much that I was reminded of another quote from Hugo von Hofmannsthal:

"Where is your self to be found? Always in the deepest enchantment you have met with."

Music worth the pain

Apollo & Marsyas

In Book IV of his Metamorphoses, Ovid tells us the story of the satyr Marsyas, who entered a musical contest against the god Apollo, and lost:

"When whoever it was had finished relating the ruin of the men of Lycia, another storyteller remembered the satyr, Marsyas, whom Apollo, Latona’s son, had defeated, playing on the flute, that Tritonian Minerva invented. He had exacted punishment. Marsyas cried ‘Why do you peel me out of myself? ‘Aah! I repent’, he screamed in agony. ‘Aah! Music is not worth this pain!’ As he screams, the skin is flayed from the surface of his body, no part is untouched. Blood flows everywhere, the exposed sinews are visible, and the trembling veins quiver, without skin to hide them: you can number the internal organs, and the fibres of the lungs, clearly visible in his chest. The woodland gods, and the fauns of the countryside, wept, and his brother satyrs, Olympus his friend and pupil, still dear to him then, and the nymphs, and all who pastured their fleecy sheep and horned cattle on those mountains. The fertile soil was drenched, and the drenched earth caught the falling tears, and absorbed them into its deep veins. It formed a stream then, and sent it into the clear air. From there it ran within sloping banks, quickly, to the sea, the clearest river of Phrygia, taking Marsyas’s name." (trans. A. S. Kline)

The original instruments ensemble Marsyas Baroque have taken the name of the poor victim of this gruesome story: "This myth has never let go of us," they say in the liner booklet; they see the clear river named after the unfortunate satyr as a metaphor for the bounty of music, continuing to this day.

Marsyas Baroque is:

• Paula Pinn – Recorder, Baroque Bassoon
• María Carrasco Gil – Baroque Violin
• Konstanze Waidosch – Baroque Cello, Violoncello piccolo, Viola da Gamba
• Sara Johnson Huidobro – Cembalo, Organ

The group has assembled the story as Ovid told it, with excerpts from the text (read in German by Timur Işık), illustrated musically by baroque chamber music, excerpts from operas and cantatas with a Marsyas and Apollo theme, and arrangements of choral music. The music moves the story along: the Chaconne comique from Telemann's Die Satyrn in Arkadien (The Satyrs in Arcadia) depicts Marsyas's jaunty competition piece. Apollo answers with his lyre, in Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer’s stately Toccata Uranie. At this point we suspect things are about to go wrong, and perhaps Marsyas does as well. For though the competition continues, the mood starts to get seriously scary, as we hear in Telemann’s aria Die Glut des Zorns, das Feuer der Rache (The Glow of Anger, the Fire of Vengeance). Poor Marsyas!

For the flaying alive of Marsyas we leave the baroque period for Alessandra Bellino’s commissioned composition, Marsýas, which uses all the fiendish devices of the avant garde idiom of contemporary music to show his awful suffering. This is an outstanding example of program music. 

But at the end, we return to earlier music: an arrangement for chamber ensemble of Carlo Gesualdo’s Moro, lasso, al mio duolo (I die, alas, in my sorrow). This is heartbreaking music, and it's followed by laments for the dead satyr, lovely pieces by Marin Marais and Antonín Reichenauer. Finally, in an acknowledgement of "the clearest river of Phrygia, flowing to the sea", we have the healing and hopeful power of music, in an exquisite chamber arrangement of J. S. Bach’s chorale setting Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (Adorn Yourself, O Dear Soul).

The cover photo of Marsyas Baroque is by Sophia Hegewald.

The official trailer for this album, due to be released on November 6, 2026:

A Mass shot through with fire

Bach: Mass in B Minor

In this new version of Bach's great B Minor Mass, Jeannette Sorrell's Apollo Fire utilises twenty-four instrumentalists and twenty-two choristers, including the five soloists. But rather than sounding thin, this recording is shot through with light and energy, indeed, with the eponymous fire. I have three much beefier B Minor Masses in my LP collection: Peter Schreier's 1982 recording on Eurodisc, Herbert Karajan's 1974 set on DGG, and a well-loved 1962 version with Ifor Jones conducting the Bach Festival Orchestra and the Bach Choir of Bethlehem (that's Bethlehem, Pa., my old stomping ground).

"Bach provides us", writes John Eliot Gardiner in his indispensable book Music In The Castle of Heaven, "with the most monumental music we have heard so far to convey the majesty of God, and he does so with a kind of Byzantine or Venetian splendour." Monumental needn't mean heavy or earthbound; the great sculptures of Michelangelo or Bernini, hewn as they are out of tonnes of marble, can seem weightless. In his long chapter on the B Minor Mass, Gardiner provides a rationale for the Historically Informed Performance of the work:

"An ensemble of period instruments played by expert virtuosi - a whole orchestra, no less, accompanying equally accomplished solo singers stepping out from a choir - carries with it a colossal element of excitement and zing. The performance then becomes a communal rite, one built on complicity and trust; a willingness to adjust and blend on the part of all the participants must be present for it to succeed and for the shared vision to be realised."

Gardiner recorded the Mass twice, first for Archiv in 1985, and, complete with his second thoughts, in 2016 on SDG, from a private concert performance at LSO St Luke’s in London. It's the second recording that this new Apollo's Fire release reminds me of. This is a profound and spiritual performance, with wonderful solo and choral singing, and stylish, exciting instrumental playing.

Jeannette Sorrell conducts a performance of the B minor Mass at St. James Cathedral, Chicago, April 11, 2025

Jeannette Sorrell, in a fine essay in the liner booklet, ends with this message:

"Bach leads us to overflowing joy – with blazing trumpets and thrilling choral virtuosity. We hope this recording brings you light, hope... and peace."

The album cover shows a detail from John William Brown's "Musical Angels, Te Deum", the East Window of the Parish Church of Saint Mary and All Saints, Plymstock, UK, c. 1888.

 

Think of England

Haydn: Symphonies 76, 77 & 78; J. C. Bach: Symphony in G minor

I've been following Giovanni Antonini's Haydn 2032 series for a long time; this is the fifth disc I've reviewed, out of the twenty that have been released so far. I love everything about this series: Antonini's superb scholarship, his use of two crackerjack ensembles - Il Giardino Armonico and the larger Kammerorchester Basel, the introduction of works by other composers to provide context, the illuminating documentation, and, finally, the inclusion of pictures by a different Magnum photographer for each release.

Haydn's home in the second part of his career, after he left Esterhazy, was London. The theme of this disc is "For English Gentlemen", and it's a perfect vehicle for the photography of the late, great photographer Martin Parr, who died last December. Included is this wonderful shot from Ascot, from Parr's series Think of England, 1999. One of my favourites!

While the three Haydn symphonies included here - no. 76 in E♭ major, no. 77 in B♭ major and no. 78 in C minor, all from 1782 - come before the composer's move to England, they were written for the English. Haydn was aware of English taste through his familiarity with the works of composers of London residents like Johann Christian Bach. He says in a letter that he wrote the symphonies "for the English gentlemen, ... easy and not too concertante". But these are not pot-boilers, and nor are they without interest for the erudite connoisseur. Antonini and his Basel musicians judge this balance between light and serious fare perfectly; these are sparkling, highly enjoyable performances. 

Johann Christian Bach, Johann Sebastian's youngest son, spent so much time in London that he was known as "the English Bach". His G minor Symphony, op. 6 no. 6, dates from 1769, and while one can see similarities with the three later symphonies, especially #78 in C minor, this is generally more tempestuous and theatrical than the more placid, more assured Haydn works.

So another triumph on the road to Joseph Haydn's 300th birthday: March 31, 2032!
 

Considered, mature Schoenberg

Schoenberg: Piano Works

Schoenberg's works for piano conveniently fit on a single disc. It begins with the Brahms-inspired op. 11, three pieces from 1909. The Six Little Pieces op. 19 of 1911 are brief, enigmatic works, short but hardly slight. The sixth piece includes the bells from the funeral of Gustav Mahler, who had died in May of 1911.

Mahler on his death-bed murmured "Who'll take care of Schoenberg now?"

Gustav Mahler supported Arnold Schoenberg in non-material & financial ways. In his will he provided a stipend for him. Schoenberg kept this 1911 photograph of Mahler’s grave until his own death in 1951.

The Five Pieces, op. 23 and the Suite for Piano, op. 25, were written at a pivotal point in the composer's career. They are some of the first works in which Schoenberg put into practice his revolutionary 12 tone system. The first of the op. 23 pieces was dedicated to Debussy, while the op. 25 suite invokes the spirit of Bach.

The programme ends with the two Op. 33 Klavierstücke, dating from 1929 and 1931. Looking back again to Brahms, these two pieces are also forward-looking. And for Schoenberg, the future would not be Nazi-run Germany, but the United States.

Pierre-Laurent Aimard has impeccable avant garde credentials; he was the principal pianist for Pierre Boulez's Ensemble intercontemporain for 18 years. But his repertoire is also firmly grounded in earlier German music: his Well-Tempered Clavier and Art of the Fugue recordings are outstanding, and his Schubert is wonderful. The 69-year-old pianist has put off recording the Schoenberg piano works, and this recording represents the considered, mature view of a very fine musician who knows the composer and his world backwards and forwards. Very highly recommended!

The album cover photo is by Richard Dumas.

Outstanding violin music from Vienna

Aurora Germanica: music by Biber, Capricornus, Schmelzer, Krieger, Vilsmayr, Westhoff

I've spent a lifetime as a classical music lover on the lookout for the next obscure composer who's about to make it big. It happens occasionally: Florence Price is starting to get attention, which is very much deserved. Before that there was CPE Bach, Clara Schumann, Heinrich Biber, Carlo Gesualdo. The early Baroque is a good place to look, and this new disc on the Chateau de Versailles label has a number of composers that are new to me. One of them, the Bohemian Samuel Capricornus (1628-1675), has struck my fancy. 

Now Capricornus has his own Wikipedia page, with more than a few recordings listed, so this is on me for not recognizing his value before. On the evidence of the sonata from the second book of his Prothimia Suavissima played here, Capricornus is an imaginative composer who indeed could become as well known as his contemporary Heinrich Biber (1644-1704). Works by Capricornus can be found on albums by Chatham Baroque, Agave Baroque and the baroque string ensemble ACRONYM. There's even a group named Capricornus Ensemble Stuttgart. Pay attention, Dean!

Biber is the best-known name in the group on Aurora Germanica, a fine collection of music by composers closely connected with the court at Vienna. He was one of the composers who imported from Italy a new way of using the violin as a solo instrument. Virtuosity is an important part of the innovations of the German violin composers, but just as important are the expressive capabilities of the instrument, which in Biber's case can go beyond the purely musical, becoming transcendently spiritual.

Biber is joined here by one of his pupils, Johann Joseph Vilsmayr, whose Artificiosus Concentus pro Camera for solo violin points the way to J.S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin. This is a work that deserves to be played much more often, perhaps in a Bach concert to demonstrate how first steps can evolve into works of genius.

Otherwise we have music by Johann Paul von Westhoff, Johann Philipp Krieger and the much better-known Johann Heinrich Schmelzer. All of these works are played beautifully on a lovely sounding violin made by Christian Liebel in 1758 by Louise Ayrton. She has fine support from her continuo group: Salomé Gasselin, alto de viole; Lucie Chabard, harpsichord & organ; Sergio Bucheli, archlute & guitar; and Gauthier Broutin, cello. A highly recommended release!

The photo of Louise Ayrton on the album cover is by Hubert Caldaguès.

Here is the Samuel Capricornus sonata; isn't this wonderful? And lest you think of him as a One Hit Wonder, there's also a very fine Ciaconna from his Partiturbuch Ludwig. I love me a Chaconne! Enjoy!

Music of passion, passionately played

Sturm Und Drang 4: music by Benda, Mozart, Kraus, Traetta & Haydn

Let's start with that awesome painting on the cover: it's Fire on the Tiber, painted by Claude Joseph Vernet, in the collection of MUŻA, the National Community Art Museum of Malta. Lots of storm and stress going on here!

I love music that's often categorized as Sturm und Drang: the minor key orchestral and chamber works and fraught opera arias of Haydn, Mozart and their colleagues working in the Galant International Style of the 1760s and 70s. But is it a true contemporary movement of composers and their patrons, or rather a modern marketing strategy of concert promoters and record companies? Robert O. Gjerdingen is skeptical; this is from his book Music in the Galant Style (Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 439):

"Frequently invoked terms like Sturm und Drang ('storm and stress') or 'the learned style'... may partly reflect the modern tendency to attribute acts of personal artistic expression to what in many cases were merely musical behaviors typical of the church or theater making an appearance in music for the chamber."

As so often happens in musical discourse, category discussions often become tedious and circular, so I'll stop being tedious and circular, but I will push back against Gjerdingen's "merely musical behavior". There's no reason to think that "personal artistic expression" didn't take place in the 18th century. It was just hidden by the social structures of the ancien regime. Haydn and Mozart, we know from the full documentation of their lives, were artistically on the same plane as the great intellectuals of the Enlightenment: Schiller, Goethe, Thomas Jefferson. Judging by the music they left, Kraus or Benda must have been more than mere craftsmen using the galant schemata as if it were a saw or a plane.

Ian Page makes the best case for Sturm und Drang as a proper musical movement by including two outstanding minor key symphonies (indeed, two of the greatest symphonies of the century): Joseph Martin Kraus's C minor Symphony and Joseph Haydn's Symphony no. 45, "Farewell". Just as important, though, are the three operatic arias/scenes Page has included here, especially the fantastically dramatic scene from Georg Benda's Medea. After all, Sturm und Drang as a term originally came from German drama, specifically Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's play of the same name.

I have no German, but I was blown away by Alexandra Lowe as Medea. "Peitscht ihn her! Peitscht ihn her!" ("Whip him here!"), she cries, having Jason whipped and brought to her to complete her revenge. Again, the storm of Medea's anger is clear, and the whips bring the stress.

The passion in the scores of these composers requires passionate playing, and we have that here in spades. The Mozartists is a tight band; they're bold, stylish and exciting. Ian Page has curated a wonderful programme for us; wrapping the dramatic core of Sturm und Drang opera with the C minor and F sharp minor masterworks gives us the essence of the movement in an hour of music.

Staring at the future of the past

Almeida Prado: Piano Trios; Cello Sonata, Balada

The Music of Brazil series from Naxos has been so important for the dissemination of the wonderful world of Brazilian classical music throughout the world. Here's another first class album, from one of the country's greatest composers since Heitor Villa-Lobos, played by three excellent instrumentalists.

Though José Antônio de Almeida Prado began his composing career in a Villa-Lobosian nationalist mode under the tutelage of Camargo Guarnieri, he soon latched on to the more progressive musical events in Europe. He studied with Gilberto Mendes, who had just returned to Brazil from Darmstadt, and was strongly influenced by the Polish composers Witold Lutosławski and Krzysztof Penderecki. In 1969 Almeida Prado moved to Europe, studying at Darmstadt under György Ligeti and Lukas Foss, and then in Paris as a pupil of Villa-Lobos's close friend Olivier Messiaen. At the same time, he worked with every modernist's favourite Parisian teacher, Nadia Boulanger.

It was while he was working with Boulanger during the summer of 1970 at the Château de Fontainebleau that Almeida Prado wrote his Trio de Fontainebleau, a wonderful work for piano, violin & cello. Almeida Prado would have known Villa-Lobos's Third Piano Trio, written in 1918, and one of the stars of Brazil's modernist coming out party, the Semana de Arte Moderna of 1922. Both Villa's and Almeida Prado's trios can trace their lineage to Maurice Ravel's landmark Piano Trio of 1914, with its rich textures and colouristic effects. By the way, the cover of the album shows a watercolour painting entitled "Nadia Boulanger", by Almeida Prado himself!

Almeida Prado's second piano trio, the Trio Marítimo, was written in 1983, and dedicated to the memory of the great Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa. Each section of the work illustrates a poem from Pessoa's cycle Mensagem (Message), a conversation with Luís de Camões’ epic poem Os Lusíadas, which celebrated the voyages of discovery by Portuguese sailors (including, of course, Brazil).

1. The Fields

First / The Castles

Europe is lying propped upon her elbows:
From East to West she lies, staring
Out, reminiscent, – Greek eyes from the shelter
Of romantic hair.

Behind her back the left elbow is cast;
The right has the angle place.
That one says Italy in its repose;
This one says England where, gathered apart,
It holds the hand up to support the face.

She stares, her gaze doom-heavy, sphingical,
Out at the West, the future of the past.

The face with which she stares is Portugal.

(trans. Jonathan Griffin)

Almeida Prado's Cello Sonata was commissioned in 2003 by Sonia Rubinsky & Antonio Meneses, two of Brazil's greatest instrumentalists. It's played here, beautifully, by Rubinsky and Rafael Cesario. In this work Almeida Prado acknowledges his debt to Johannes Brahms, evident in its dense musical textures and formal architecture. The Balada for cello & piano which opens the recording is from 1985. The composer notes that it forms "a chromatic spiral where the accumulation of resonances creates a mystical aura," which connects it to much of Almeida Prado's oeuvre, especially his towering master work, the Cartas celestes for piano.

Three neoclassical symphonies

Simone Menezes: Music by Prokofiev, Villa-Lobos & Poulenc

The up-and-coming Brazilian conductor Simone Menezes has matched three symphonic works in an album about neoclassicism, one of the most interesting and important components of the modernist revolution in the music of the first half of twentieth century. As a musical lens neoclassicism offered a new way to look at the past, sharpening and bringing into focus at times, distorting at others. But more important is what it illuminates about the modern world and the composers that lived in it.

The revolution of the new, modern music of Stravinsky, Debussy & Ravel was just as frightening as the fractured visual arts ushered in by Picasso & Braque. It's no wonder that in 1917 both Sergei Prokofiev and Heitor Villa-Lobos should throw a lifeline back to 18th century Vienna to help keep their bearings as they wrote their music of the future. Prokofiev's model was Haydn's symphonies, while Villa-Lobos looked to Mozart's operatic music. The former created a masterwork in his "Classical" Symphony, while Villa's First Sinfonietta, "In Memory of Mozart" has made much less of a stir in the century since. It's a nice little piece, a clever piece, which shows how quickly the Brazilian composer could pick up an entirely new musical vocabulary thousands of miles away from its Parisian epicentre. Villa-Lobos spent years playing the cello in the pit of the Rio de Janeiro opera house, and his Sinfonietta is a deconstruction of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and the Magic Flute. But Villa had a different European forebear; his true personal voice didn't emerge until he came to terms with the music of Bach.

Simone Menezes has been pondering the similarities between the Classical Symphony and the Sinfonietta #1 for quite a while. Here's a video from back in 2018 where she explains how similar the two works are, though one was written in Rio, the other in St. Petersburg/Petrograd:

The Sinfonietta of Francis Poulenc, meanwhile, was written thirty years later, in 1947. A decade younger than Villa-Lobos & Prokofiev, Poulenc was actually more closely aligned with the musical avant garde, writing modernist works beginning in the late 1910s. As the post-WWII era began, his own neoclassical symphony adds a second layer of looking back: to the 18th century Viennese masters, but also to the younger Poulenc himself, writing such works as the Concert champêtre for harpsichord & orchestra in 1928. His Sinfonietta is suffused with nostalgia, but unsentimental in nature. Earlier I called neoclassicism a lens; in this work Poulenc is using it as a kaleidoscope. Scenes shift, and the ostensibly trivial work becomes a sophisticated compendium of earlier times. As Simone Menezes says in her excellent liner note essay, "... the work transcends its apparent lightness, approaching a symphonic dimension not through development, but through accumulation and contrast."

This recording is greater than the sum of its three parts; each symphonic work is enhanced by its relationship with the others, and the place of each in musical history makes listening as instructive as it is enjoyable.

The cover design is by Jimena Estíbaliz.

Instrumental music from Meredith Monk

 Meredith Monk - Realms

This valuable album includes Meredith Monk's only string quartet, Stringsongs, a work written in 2004; Backlight, written in 1999 & revised in 2015 for a small ensemble of piano, winds and strings; and the title piece, Realms for six voices & a small group of instruments, from 2012. In the conversation Monk has with Phillip Granell in the liner notes,  she talks about how these three pieces are related: "... all the pieces are sonic landscapes, each a different one. Each piece explores new colours and textures." Together they make a substantial, challenging and appealing hour of music.

An almost completely instrumental album is a first for Monk, who has always worked primarily with the human voice. For the "Phantom Strings" movement of Stringsongs, "I actually wrote it by laying tracks with my voice. I even sang the cello part!" It's perhaps for this reason that the work doesn't have the String Quartet Common Denominator sound, with Joseph Haydn still lurking in the background of so many works in that form. As well, we should note that the string players - violinists Phillip Granell & Chihiro Ono, violist Richard Jones and cellist Sergio Serra - provide the rich and full sound of a superb madrigal ensemble, recorded in a churchlike acoustic.

Backlight, scored for five woodwinds, piano, violin and cello, was conceived by Meredith Monk to evoke nighttime in New York City. It's a noir piece that's built on a modernist chamber music sound rather than the romantic Hollywood orchestral scores of the great film noir composers Miklós Rózsa, David Raksin and Bernard Herrmann. The cinematic nature of the work is especially evident in the third & final movement, where the city awakes. It reminded me of a comment Debussy made about Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben: "He definitely thinks in colored images. Ein Heldenleben is a book of images, cinematography even." Backlight is the noir version of this.

Realm Variations brings back the human voice, but as Monk notes, "In Realm Variations, while there are voices, I think of them as instruments and the instruments as voices." This is an important work, from one of the most important musical voices of this century.

The cover image is by Kyungwon Yi.

Futurism without tears

Francesco Balilla Pratella & Marco Anzoletti - Music for Viola & Piano

In February 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his Manifesto of Futurism. Futurist ideas flourished in poetry and the visual arts, but they were also taken up early by the Italian composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. Pratella wrote his own Manifesto of Futurist Musicians in 1910, with more polemic work to follow.

Martinelli had said that "Art, in fact, can be nothing but violence, cruelty, and injustice", but there's little evidence of those futurist traits in Pratella's Viola Sonata, written in 1917. This work seems to toe the standard modernist line; if anything, it's romantic and often pretty. A lovely work, in fact, but hardly violent or cruel. Other works by Pratella seem to veer more towards the savage side, but it seems that the true music of futurism would have to wait for Luigi Russolo and his acoustic noise generators, which he called intonarumori.

This album, performed by violist Federica Cardinali & pianist Lisa Redorici, also includes the 7 Compositions for Viola & Piano by the Italian composer Marco Anzoletti (1867-1929). These undated character pieces are short passages with varying moods: march-like, passionate, pastoral, mock heroic, antique, rustic and satiric. The final piece, the "Serenata Maligna", is a wonderful scary trifle that features the viola pizzicato; it fits the upcoming season well. I listened to it again & again, and thought it would be perfect in Wes Anderson's next movie. It makes for a wonderful encore for this slightly puzzling but hugely entertaining recital.

The cover features a painting by the Italian abstract painter Osvaldo Licini.

This album will be released on November 6, 2026.

 

Baroque music from Leicester

Robert Valentine: 12 Sonatas for Recorder and Basso Continuo

When you think of music from Leicester, does the post-punk group The Apollinaires come to mind?

Or perhaps you immediately think Baroque: Robert Valentine was born around 1674 in Leicester, moved to Rome, & died in 1747. He was one of the most prolific composers of music for the recorder in his time (his contemporaries include Henry Purcell in England, and the Italians Antonio Caldara, Francesco Durante & Alessandro Scarlatti). Valentine's twelve sonatas for recorder & basso continuo, op. 11, were published in Rome in the first half of the 18th century, as part of Antonio Parensi's Sinfonie dei varij autori. This new album from First Hand Records (FHR) includes all twelve of the op. 11 sonatas, on two discs.

The first page of one of Valentine's F major sonatas for recorder & continuo, from Sinfonie dei varij autori.

The ensemble on this album - Heidi Fardell on recorder, Lynda Sayce on lute & guitar, Poppy Walshaw on cello & Robin Bigwood on harpsichord - are able advocates for this music. Valentine does his part to keep things interesting, with different dance rhythms and contrasting musical textures. The musicians attack these pieces with energy and style. Some of the most interesting passages come from the continuo group, a tribute both to Valentine's composition and the ensemble work of the four musicians. Certainly listening to two discs worth of recorder sonatas at once might be fatiguing, but remember, musical ergonomics is important. Take a break, and enjoy this infectious music in moderation.

The album cover photo is by Emma Spellman. By the way, this album will be released Real Soon Now, on October 16, 2026.

And here it is:

Determined music from a high powered trio

 Michel Petrucciani Trio - Jazz Club Montmartre, 1988

The great Danish jazz label Storyville has released a wonderful album recorded at Copenhagen’s Jazzhus Montmartre on July 3rd, 1988, 37 years ago to the day, assuming I get this review done in time! 

The French pianist Michel Petrucciani is joined by bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Roy Haynes. The music this high-powered Trio performed is a mix of standards - "My Funny Valentine", "In a Sentimental Mood", "Autumn Leaves", "Someday My Prince Will Come" - and songs written by Petrucciani, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. There's plenty of energy here, communicated to the enthusiastic, but not intrusive, crowd. I've often commented on how ardent and seemingly knowledgeable Danish jazz audiences were back in the day; Copenhagen is clearly a great jazz town!

The sheer technique of the three players is what stands out, but each of them also seems to be listening to the other two. These are highly musical performances, for all the virtuosity.

In his article on Michel Petrucciani in the New Republic, "Keys to the Kingdom", David Haju quotes Michael Zwerin, who tells this wonderful story:

We were sitting there wondering what to play. It was kind of hot. And Michel said, ‘Anybody know “Giant Steps”?’ Neither Louis [Petrucciani] nor I wanted to admit we didn’t really know it. So there was this great silence. And Michel said, ‘Well, I do!’ And he pounded into a solo version of it at a very fast clip, and it was really amazing. That to me is Michel--’Well, I do!’ Man, a confidence you wouldn’t believe.

As it happens, Petrucciani, Peacock and Haynes play Coltrane's "Giant Steps" on this album, and it really is impressive. A "fast clip" is here in this performance, and the three masters gallop through this hugely influential composition, but there's no hesitation or stops and starts (as there apparently were for an underprepared Tommy Flanagan in Coltrane's original recording); all three are completely confident in this music. Speed is not the defining characteristic of this album, though. It's true that the Trio speeds up Joseph Kosma's ballad "Les feuilles mortes", aka "Autumn Leaves," but Petrucciani, like his hero Bill Evans, keeps the sadness and introspection in the foreground.

Michel Petrucciani's life story itself is so sad and so inspiring. He was born with osteogenesis imperfecta, the “glass bones” disease, and lived his entire 36 years in terrible pain. And yet he had a remarkable career as a jazz pianist, with a very large recording legacy. As Haju says, "He was as fragile as his art was robust, his life as tenuous as his music is durable." The design on the cover of this disc, by Finn Nygaard, shows the pianist, under three feet, and weighing around 50 pounds. In a wonderful conceit, Nygaard shows the pianist rising above the piano, as he rose above his terrible suffering to create wonderful sounds with remarkable colleagues.

I've just come across some photographs that were taken at a Jazzhus Montmartre concert in July 1993, by the great Danish jazz photographer Jan Persson. So great to see Petrucciani in action!

Thoughful orchestral music from a true original

 

Charles Koechlin: Symphony no. 1

Charles Koechlin's First Symphony began in 1916 as a String Quartet - his Second - and was reconfigured for full orchestra by the composer in 1927. He adds orchestral colour in such a tasteful way; nothing garish, but subtle touches here and there, especially from the brass, opening things up from chamber music to a full romantic symphony orchestra experience. This is a modernist sound that also hearkens back to French music before Debussy and Ravel: one of his teachers at the Paris Conservatoire was Jules Massenet, and his fellow students included George Enescu and Florent Schmitt. Later he studied with Gabriel Fauré, along with Maurice Ravel, and it's Fauré who had the greatest influence on him. There isn't a lot of drama or incident in the symphony, but rather a thoughtful development of attractive themes. As with so much French music of the period, one can also hear the echoes of Richard Wagner, but strained through a French, and specifically Parisian, sensibility. This is music that deserves more attention, and it has a wonderful advocate in conductor Ariane Matiakh and the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen.

In the eight years between 1935 and 1943, Koechlin produced his 4-volume Traité de l'Orchestration (available to download at IMSLP here). Surely he made good use of his experience in adapting his String Quartet for full orchestra in the creation of this major project. Besides this work and his own compositions, Koechlin is known for his biography of Fauré (the first), and his significant work as a teacher. Among his pupils were Germaine Tailleferre, Roger Désormière, Francis Poulenc and Cole Porter.

There are two additional works on this album: the Symphonic Poem Au Loin, op. 20, from 1900; and 3 Mélodies, op. 17, written in the period 1895-1900. The latter are orchestrated by Robert Orledge, and sung beautifully here by soprano Patricia Petibon. Au Loin, as its name suggests, has a far away feeling, a high Romantic piece sounding more of the 19th century than the 20th. Both this and the songs owe a lot to Fauré, and I'm sure the teacher was proud of his student's work.

Charles Koechlin is such an appealing character: a fine composer embedded in the French conservatory tradition who charted his own course in his compositions. He was a passionate cinemaniac, writing his Second Symphony, "The Seven Stars" (also recorded by Ariane Matiakh) as an homage to the great Hollywood idols of the time. I love this portrait of the composer from 1948, two years before his death at 83. A wonderful playoff beard! A highly recommended recording.

Koechlin by Boris Lipnitzki, 1948

Vital reinventions of early music

Electric Fields: Music by Hildegarde von Bingen, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Bryce Dessner & David Chalmin

The Audio CD and streaming versions of this Alpha disc are now available. I'm reviewing the 180 gram double-LP version of this release, which is due to be released on June 6, 2025.

Photo by Umberto Nicoletti

Electric Fields is a project of this good-looking crew: soprano Barbara Hannigan, composer and electronics performer David Chalmin, and the duo-pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque. It's based on the music and texts of the remarkable medieval polymath Hildegarde von Bingen, as well as music by two women composers of the early Baroque: Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini. This music becomes the raw material for improvisations of the team, as well as original compositions by Chalmin and Bryce Dessner.

These are more than mere pastiches; they're serious 21st century reinterpretations of early music. Though there's an immersive feel to all the music here, especially with the warm sound of vinyl, this project is not built in the studio, but rather through live performances. That gives a vital pulse to the music, with even a hint of swing in the improvised pieces. Of course Barbara Hannigan is thoroughly familiar with Historically Informed Practice when it comes to the music of Strozzi and Caccini, so we're on solid ground when it comes to reinterpretation in a new idiom.

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia Harmonie Celestium Revelationum", published in modern facsimile by Alamire

You have to be of a certain age to look at this score of Hildegarde von Bingen and think immediately of IBM punch cards, but that was my first response. Hildegarde wrote this music some 850 years ago, so there's an element of translation involved in any performance. With the lack of any performance tradition in the intervening centuries, Hildegarde is a strong candidate for a true reinvention in modern times. Besides her skills as a musician, she had an interest in scientific analysis and even cryptography. There are two pieces on this album - by Bryce Dessner and David Chalmin - that use Hildegarde's "Lingua ignota", her invented language. The intellectual curiosity of this one-of-a-kind 12th century woman lives on in these two tracks, but one can also say that something of her spirit has also survived.

It's Heitor Villa-Lobos's modern reinvention of Bach in the mid-20th century that I kept coming back to when I listened to this music. Villa's Bachianas Brasileiras reinvents Bach's music in the light of Brazil's popular music traditions, of the Amerindians of the Amazon and the urban choros musicians of Rio de Janeiro. Like the Bachianas, Electric Fields is a vital hybrid of old and new, erudite and popular.

It's all grist for the mill:

• The Labeque sisters' recordings of Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin, Philip Glass, Moondog and many others;
• Bryce Dessner's contemporary classical compositions and collaborations with people like Sufjan Stevens and Nico Muhly, as well as his experience in the rock group The National; 
• Barbara Hannigan's operatic singing, especially in the Baroque repertoire, and her move to become an important conductor, with wonderful recordings of Nono, Messiaen, Berg, Ligeti and others;
• David Chalmin's production work in jazz and classical music, his electronic composition and live electronic performance, as well as his collaborations with the Labeque sisters.

There seem to be no barriers for these wonderful musicians. They've produced an album that will reward multiple listens and close study, but which is also just there in its particular groove, inspiring wonder.

21st century sounds with echoes from the past

 Erkki-Sven Tüür: Symphony no. 10, "Aeris"; Phantasma; De Profundis

Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;

Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive

    to my cry for mercy.
- Psalm 130, A song of ascents

This new CD, due to be released on May 23, 2025, contains a major new symphony by the great Estonian composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, his Tenth, subtitled "Aeris" and written in 2023. As well, there are two additional substantial works for orchestra, Phantasma, from 2018, and De Profundis, from 2013.

This music is by no means avant-garde; it's mainly in the modernist idiom of the mid-20th century, atonal but as accessible as the best orchestral film music. Indeed, its expressive, highly diversified sounds have the richness of John Williams or Howard Shore's best scores, or even those of Bernard Herrmann. This is music written for virtuoso orchestral players, and Olari Elts gets impressive performances from the Estonian National Orchestra. 

Tüür's 10th Symphony is written as a one-movement Symphony Concertante, with solo parts for four horns, played beautifully here by German Hornsound. This adds texture the Symphony, and the horn sounds provide echoes of the musical past - Mozart, Schumann, Von Weber, Wagner, Richard Strauss - to its 21st century soundscape.

The remaining two orchestral works provide some dramatic contrast to the mainly static Symphony. Phantasma is a brooding piece that makes use of micro-interval clusters. It was written as an homage to Ludwig van Beethoven, and is based on a theme from his Coriolanus Overture.

Tüür based De Profundis on Psalm 130; it's a kind of musical prayer which, like the Psalm, begins in the depths and ascends to a place of redemption.

ECM is doing a major service to music lovers with their series of recordings of the Estonian composer's work. I look forward to future releases.

I was surprised and pleased to learn more about Erkki-Sven Tüür's musical beginnings. In 1983, at the age of 20, he headed up the Estonian prog-rock group In Spe. This is in the pastoral style of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull and Gentle Giant. It's an impressive debut, and an interesting path that he began that's led him to become one of the finest contemporary classical composers.

A worthwhile Shostakovich grab-bag

Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony, String Quartets, Piano Music

This new 4-CD set coming on June 6, 2025 consists of recordings made by Capriccio and BR Klassik in the period 2004-06. There's a lot of music here - about four hours altogether - and it's definitely a worthwhile purchase, at a bargain price.

Here are the complete contents of the set:

The first CD includes some works from this 2004 CD from Capriccio, namely Rudolph Barshai's version of the 8th String Quartet for String Orchestra, the Prelude and Scherzo, op. 11, and Alfred Schnittke's Prelude in Memory of Dimitri Shostakovich. These are all marvellous works, and good performances. The Schnittke piece is especially moving, and a valuable addendum to such a large compendium of Shostakovich's music.

As well, the first disc includes Lena Auerbach's arrangement of the Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, op. 143, from a 2006 CD. These are poignant poems sung by soprano Zoryana Kushpler, with comments from a string quartet, here the Petersen String Quartet of Berlin, sometimes pithy, sometimes full of compassion.

Here's the original Capriccio BR Klassik album cover for the Piano Quintet and two String Quartets on CD 2, from 2005:

There's a lot of music to review here, and I've only listened all the way through once. But I like what I've heard so far. Of course, with the String Quartets, the bar is set very high, by groups like the Borodin Quartet, the Fitzwilliam Quartet, the Brodsky Quartet, and my favourite, the Pacifica Quartet. The Petersen Quartet don't give us the total experience that these intense readings provide, but these are more than passable interpretations. Their relaxed approach is perhaps better matched to Shostakovich's fraught 4th Quartet than to the spring-like First, which flags at times rather than flowing freely.

The Piano Quintet is most probably the greatest work in this set, with the most daunting recording competition. There are 70 recordings on Apple Classical; my favourites are Sviatoslav Richter with the Borodin Quartet, Marc-André Hamelin with the Takács Quartet, and Martha Argerich with Maisky, Margulis, Capuçon & Chen. Ewa Kupiec and the Petersen Quartet provide a fine performance here, though perhaps not in the same league as these.

CDs 3 and 4 are filled with music for one and two pianos, played by Margarete Babinsky and Holger Busch, originally released on this 2-CD set from 2006:

I love Shostakovich's music for solo piano, most especially his great set of Preludes and Fugues, op. 87, from 1950/51. His 24 Preludes, op. 34, recorded here by Margarete Babinsky, are from 1932, and are as indebted to Chopin as his Preludes & Fugues are to Bach. The composer's shifting moods and his use of mock heroism, sarcasm and parody give the performer lots of room for interpretation, and I generally like Babinsky's choices here. Of course she doesn't bring the same authenticity to Shostakovich's piano music that Tatiana Nikolayeva does, but there is no single right way to play this music. And Babinsky has considerable technique, though her 36-second version of the Fifth Prelude doesn't go quite as hard or as fast as some I've heard. Andrey Gugnin's 2019 recording on Hyperion probably wins that particular competition, though I don't condone drag races on piano keyboards. (19 seconds, but who's counting?)

I was likewise impressed with both of Babinsky's versions of the two Piano Sonatas, the 1st from 1926-27, and the 2nd from 1943.  The First provides a portrayal of the October Revolution of 1917 unfiltered by the Soviet Realism of Shostakovich's October Symphony, his no. 2. It's powerful music, capably communicated by Babinsky. The Second is also impressive, especially the remarkable theme and variations of the third movement, which the pianist builds with Hitchcockian suspense.

Shostakovich wrote his Concertino for Two Pianos for his teenage son Maxim to play with a fellow student, and there's a very pleasant family feeling to the piece. Margarete Babinsky and Holger Busch don't make too big a meal of this work; there's lots of drama here, but I don't think the stakes are especially high. A fun piece!

So this has been a pretty rapid tour of a big chunk of the much, much bigger chunk of music Shostakovich wrote in almost every genre, over a working life of five decades. Though none of these performances is in the top rank, they're all better than average, and some considerably better. Thanks to Capriccio and BR Klassik for this compilation!

A serial beginning; a neo-romantic future

Guerra-Peixe: Symphonies no. 1 and 2; Nonet

Here's a welcome release in the "Music of Brazil" series from Naxos, a must for everyone interested in the classical music of that great country. It's their version of Mostly Mozart: Not Just Villa-Lobos. A few years ago I reviewed an earlier disc in the series that included music by César Guerra-Peixe, performed by the same forces on this album: The Goiás Philharmonic Orchestra under Neil Thomson, though this time we have two choirs added: the Goiânia Symphony Choir and the Goiás Youth Symphony Choir.

Guerra-Peixe was born, and died, about 30 years after Heitor Villa-Lobos; his music represents a major shift in the classical music of Brazil. After World War II, serialism came to the country in the person of Hans-Joachim Koellreutter, a pupil of Paul Hindemith. Guerra-Peixe and a number of his colleagues formed the forward-looking Música Viva group under Koellreutter's guidance.

By the 1940s Villa-Lobos, once the firebrand revolutionary who established new music in his home country - he was the only composer represented in the Semana de Arte Moderna in São Paulo in 1922 - now represented the musical establishment. Villa had moved away from modernism towards an idiom heavily inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach, tinged with folkloric content, a merger of African, European and Indigenous folk musics. Villa was firmly opposed to serialism, and never even dabbled in it, unlike modernist colleagues like Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland.

There are two works on this disc that represent Guerra-Peixe's serial period: the First Symphony, from 1945-46, and the Nonet, from 1945. The Symphony is a fine example of a serial work, severe and spiky; but still, this is quite accessible music. The Nonet is written for flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello and piano. Guerra-Peixe must have known Villa's Nonetto, written during his peak modernist phase in 1923, but the two works have little in common. That's partly a question of scope: Villa's interpretation of the number "9" was stretched to include a complete mixed choir (for up to 12 separate voices!), a large battery of percussion instruments, and the doubling of the flute with a piccolo, and the alto saxophone with a baritone sax. And the contrast in style is also clear: Guerra-Peixe's work is austere and inward-looking, but Villa's is, in a word sprawling. Villa's Nonetto is a great work, perhaps his greatest; Guerra-Peixe's Nonet is remarkable, a masterpiece, perhaps, but it seems like it was time for the young composer to move on.

Considering the controversy of Música Viva's reaction against Villa-Lobos in the 40s and 50s, it's a surprise that in the late 50s Guerra-Peixe should have made the same move that Villa made in the late 1930s, from modernism (Villa) or serialism (Guerra-Peixe) to nationalism through popular and folkloric music. It's perhaps no coincidence that Villa-Lobos died in 1959, and Guerra-Peixe's new tonal style came to fruition in his Symphony no. 2, "Brasilia".

The Brasilia Symphony is an out-and-out romantic work, fiercely nationalistic, and quite beautiful. The choral passages are stirring. With its modern new capital, Brazil was moving ahead, and it had a new generation of musicians leading the way: Santoro, Guarnieri, Mendes, Guerra-Peixe, as well as another Koellreuter pupil: Tom Jobim.

The wonderful cover art is Sol nascente, by Pablo Borges.

This album will be released on May 15, 2025.
 

My music growing fainter

Salieri: Piano Concertos

"Mozart’s corpus of piano concertos remains one of the most perfect achievements in all of Western music, on a par with Bach’s cantatas. That’s the miracle of this music." 
     - Andreas Staier

"Goodness is nothing in the furnace of art."
     - Peter Shaffer, Amadeus 

Peter Shaffer's play Amadeus, made into a wonderful film by Miloš Forman in 1984, has given us a very particular, and not at all accurate, picture of Mozart's rival, Antonio Salieri. It's a tribute to Shaffer and Forman, and most especially F. Murray Abraham, who played Salieri in the film, that this portrayal is the first thing I thought of when I came across this new disc of Salieri Piano Concertos. Chances are you did as well.

F. Murray Abraham as Salieri. Photo by Phil Bray, 1984

What this means is that even before we listen to this record for the first time, we've lined up Mozart's Piano Concertos on one side - pieces that everyone, most especially including Abraham/Shaffer's Salieri, agrees are miraculous works of art. On the other side is the unfortunate Salieri, the second-rater who came up against Mozart, who he feels is God's Beloved. 

"He killed Mozart and kept me alive to torture! 32 years of torture! 32 years of slowly watching myself become extinct. My music growing fainter, all the fainter till no one plays it at all, and his..."  

Back to the real world: The two Salieri piano concertos recorded here were written in 1773, when he was only 23. They're both confident, melodious and written in the latest galant style. The composer must have been proud of both of them; think of the smug performance of F. Murray Abraham early in the film. He had every right to be smug: he was at the top of his game, soon to be the maestro di cappella of the Imperial Court. 

One thing that's clear from listening to these two piano concertos, and those of composers like Joseph Haydn and Bach's sons, is that the 18th century galant piano concerto is a marvellous creation, providing operatic drama, tunefulness and opportunities to wow the musical cognoscenti of the time. They're just fun to listen to, and from the evidence of this recording, to play as well.

These are fine performances: conductor Giulio Arnolfi keeps things moving briskly, and gets stylish playing from the excellent musicians of the Accademia d'Archi Arrigoni. Pianist Constantino Catena provides elegant, assured, singing tones from his piano. He and Arnolfi are in synch, and together give us a pretty fair picture of Salieri at his best. By the way, both conductor and pianist get their chance to shine alone: in the Sinfonia in D Major "La Veneziana", a short work that shows how much at home Salieri was in the opera world. And for solo piano, a Sonata in C Major that sounds an awful lot like Scarlatti or Haydn, which is high praise. Wonderful stuff!

Both the C major and B-flat Major Piano Concertos have many felicities: some up front and obvious, especially both slow movements, which are lyrical without being overly sentimental. Though there aren't any really memorable themes in either opening movement, these are well-constructed, dramatically successful musical journeys, largely skirting the banal.

When I first heard the Menuetto of the B-flat Major Concerto I thought it was clunky, but in fact Salieri is doing this deliberately; he immediately provides relief with witty passagework for the solo piano. And he keeps us on our toes throughout, with mock-heroic themes, operatic pauses and flourishes, along with more elaborate passagework. In this movement the composer is closest to C.P.E. Bach or Haydn, the composer as magician.

So in the year 1773 things are looking pretty good for Salieri on the piano concerto front. And then, in December, disaster strikes. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who's only just turned 17 (he's six years younger than Salieri), writes his first real piano concerto, in D major, K. 175. No contest. Game over. No más!

Okay, so Salieri wrote some perfectly fine piano concertos, but he was blindingly eclipsed by a teenager on his first try. He still had much more fame and acclaim in his life than Wolfie, who died a largely unappreciated pauper. In his Book of Friends, Hugo von Hofmannsthal tells this story:

When someone mentioned to Kapellmeister Schwanenberg, a friend of Salieri’s, the rumor that Mozart had been poisoned by the Italian, Schwanenberg replied: “Non ha fatto nulla, per meritar tal onore. [He did nothing to merit such an honor.]”

I come away from this fine new recording, and the research I've put into this review, with a new appreciation for Salieri the composer. He isn't the mediocrity that I've lazily assumed him to be. And yet, somehow, the next time I see a new recording by Salieri (and it won't be for a while, I expect), I'll be right back where I started, with F. Murray Abraham's powerful performance overwriting everything we've learned about the unfortunate Salieri.

Ransom Stoddard: You’re not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?
Maxwell Scott: No, sir. This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
     - from John Ford's 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence