Top Ten Discs for 2019

Welcome to my fifth Top Ten Discs post for Music for Several Instruments.
Here are the lists from last year, 2017, 2016, and the one from 2015.

Grief and consolation and branding

The Alinde Quartett perform Mendelssohn's final quartet, a dark portrait of raw grief over the death of his sister Fanny. To change things up, they looked for "a light-hearted contrast", and came up with some lovely, clear and bright Fantasies that Purcell wrote originally for a consort of viols. Hence the title of the album: "Lichtwechsel" = "Change of Light". This is by no means light as in cheerful or happy-go-lucky, but more the civilized Enlightenment that is best expressed in music from Purcell to Haydn.

Into the abyss

The Allan Pettersson Dream Team, Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra, with violinist Ulf Wallin in a completely convincing performance of the controversial 2nd Violin Concerto. The unfinished 17th Symphony, the last music Pettersson wrote before his death, is as moving here as the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem or the unfinished final music of Bach's Art of the Fugue.

Woke Rameau

"I like people," said Voltaire, speaking about Jean-Philippe Rameau, "who know when to drop the sublime in order to banter." Gyorgy Vashegyi's Budapest-based Purcell Choir and Orfeo Orchestra continue their superb string of recordings for Glossa with this superb release, with its tone perfectly calibrated. Great choral and solo singing, led by soprano Chantal Santon-Jeffery, contributes to a boisterous experience.

The International Style in 18th Century Music

Simon Murphy's latest theme album with the New Dutch Academy 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 such clever presentation, but it's about more than glitz and glamour; these are very fine performances of music by Abel, Reichardt, Zelter, Mozart, Storace and Paisiello.

Another winner from the Emerald City

Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony and the Prelude to Rued Langgaard's Antichrist are both full of completely, ravishingly, beautiful music, and both are ravishingly played by the Seattle Symphony under Thomas Dausgaard. This is music that plays to the strengths of the Seattle Symphony: rich and powerful brass, sumptuous strings, lithe and subtle woodwinds, everything ready for Dausgaard to put together into a rich orchestral tapestry.

Handel's Transcendent Realism

Handel's oratorio is one of a number written in the 18th century based on Barthold Heinrich Brockes's controversial, even lurid, libretto. This performance by the Academy of Ancient Music, under Richard Egarr, is intensely emotional and darkly coloured by pain and suffering. Watch for this release to show up in lots of Best Of 2019 lists and awards. It's my top album this year.

Beethoven for the Big Year

Igor Levit's complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas are full-blown masterpieces of the art of performance and recording. This is a stunning set from Sony, setting us up in the best way possible for the big celebrations - for Beethoven's 250th Birthday - next year.

A spiritual performance without sentimentality

Following an outstanding recording of the Missa Solemnis, Masaaki Suzuki gives us a transcendent Beethoven Ninth Symphony, with spirited playing and singing from the Bach Collegium Japan and a quartet of very fine singers.

São Paulo's Villa-Lobos recording revolution

A very welcome disc in Naxos's new series The Music of Brazil takes on the first of Villa-Lobos's commissioned concertos from the last decade of his life, along with some important chamber works. Manuel Barrueco is superb in the Guitar Concerto, and José Staneck is very fine in the Harmonica Concerto. I was especially impressed, though, with two chamber works: the Sexteto Mistico from Villa's modernist period, and the late Quinteto Instrumental, a lovely exercise in nostalgie for the Paris of Villa's earlier years.

Fresh chansons from another world

The chansons of Johannes Ockeghem, written in the second half of the 15th century, sound so fresh and new in this marvellous release from Scott Metcalfe and Blue Heron that the intervening centuries feel like some sort of illusion. This recording is part of Blue Heron's project Ockeghem@600, a multi-year project to perform the complete works of this great composer. It will be complete in 2021, around the time of the 600th anniversary of Ockeghem's birth.

More outstanding orchestral music from Iceland

Concurrence: Music by Icelandic composers

Five years ago we moved from the Prairies to Canada's Banana Belt: Southern Vancouver Island. That means horrific cold weather and tornados are a thing of the past, but we don't live a worry-free life by any means. No one here can (or at least should) ignore the very good chance of a devastating earthquake happening at any time. Indeed, Victoria is right in the sweet spot for the coming Big One. So Páll Ragnar Pálsson’s Quake scared the bejesus out of me. It's performed here, by Daniel Bjarnason and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, with such urgent presence that even someone on more solid ground is apt to feel at least uncomfortable. All four of these fairly long pieces present the primeval forces that made, and continue to re-make, this amazing island in the North Atlantic. Besides its outstanding physical beauty, Iceland is well known for an astounding range of world-class artists of all sorts, in the performing, literary and visual arts. The painter Gudrun Kristjansdottir is a good example; her 1999 painting "Red Hillside" is featured on the cover of this new 2-disc release, the second in Sono Luminus's ISO Project of Icelandic orchestral music.

The only composer I know of the four on this album is Anna Thorvaldsdóttir. Her Metacosmos was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 2018, and was also featured in last summer's Proms. This new recording is another step on the way to its becoming a 21st Century orchestral classic. María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir's Oceans is a natural extension of Thorvaldsdóttir's schema into the vast seas. Finally, Haukur Tómasson's Piano Concerto No. 2 fits well with the other three works. The piano part has more of an obligato role than a virtuosic one, and the music textures have so much interest, which it shares with the rest of the entire hour-plus in this fascinating release.

Beethoven from The Original Odd Couple

Beethoven: Complete Works for Cello and Piano

Pierre Fournier is, for me, the Beethoven cellist. I first heard this music - two early sonatas, two late, and one in between, with three delightful sets of variations - on Deutsche Grammophon LPs with Fournier and Wilhelm Kempff, from the mid-1960s. But I didn't know this earlier Fournier set, also from DGG, recorded in 1959 with one of my favourite pianists, Friedrich Gulda. The elegant Fournier, who in his mid-50s was at his peak, forms a true musical bond with an unlikely partner, the brash 29-year-old piano iconoclast from Vienna. In these recordings Gulda actually plays it rather straight, by his standards. Indeed, a Gramophone reviewer says in a 1993 review, "... it is Kempff who sounds as if he might have one foot in the jazz camp." But though Gulda doesn't act out in this high-profile gig, it certainly doesn't mean there are any deficiencies in his Beethoven playing. Just the opposite: he and Fournier make a great team, with Fournier's lovely tone and Gulda's perfectly judged contribution, not too bold, not too reticent, and definitely not too eccentric.

It's only been a few years since I've developed a real taste for historic re-issues. I really appreciate the work that Urania has done in bringing great music like this back into general circulation. They may not provide the highest level of documentation, in the style of Somm Recordings, but their re-mastering is solid, and, most importantly for me, their repertoire and artist choices are often first-rate. This release is especially recommended.

A note on the Urania cover: the Milan-based artist Gianmario Masala re-mixes his landscape photographs to add a patina of history and mystery. This is well-chosen to match the drama of Beethoven and the performance by Fournier & Gulda.

Christmas with Henry & Elizabeth

A Tudor Christmas: music by Gibbons, Byrd, Weelkes, Holborne, Ravenscroft, Tallis, Tye, Dowland, Taverner

My own Christmas traditions tend to have three main sources: mid-20th century nostalgia from my own childhood (think Charlie Brown and Vince Guaraldi); Victoriana (everything Dickens); and earlier English traditions, many of which went back to pagan time, but which peaked during the reigns of Henry VIII (reputed composer of Greensleeves) and Elizabeth I. This album from the Trinity Boys Choir and the viol consort L'Armonia brings such a fabulous mix of sixteenth century music from the Tudor and early Stuart times. The superb eight boys' voices are enhanced by the contributions of Katharine Fuge & David Swinson, and the viol consort provides a nice variety of musical textures. These performances are based on current Historically Informed Practices, but the scholarship is worn lightly, and musical values come to the fore. Fans of Wolf Hall and The Tudors will enjoy this music, but also fans of Christmas!

This album will be released on December 13, 2019

Fresh chansons from another world

Johannes Ockeghem: Complete Songs, Volume 1

The chansons of Johannes Ockeghem, written in the second half of the 15th century, sound so fresh and new in this marvellous release from Scott Metcalfe and Blue Heron that the intervening centuries feel like some sort of illusion. Belying the music's "nowness", the detailed liner notes by Ockeghem scholar Sean Gallagher demonstrates the problems common to most 500+ year old music, with complexities of attribution and dating. Indeed, we're lucky that some of this music has survived at all; seven of the songs exist in only one manuscript. And Scott Metcalfe shows how difficult and problematic it is to bridge the gap between the remaining manuscripts and viable performances today. He presents evidence about the pronunciation of 15th century French, about whether certain musical parts should be vocal or instrumental, and about who should sing the high parts, a woman, a girl, a boy, or an adult man singing falsetto. Metcalfe is open about the remaining questions - "We remain unsure about all the possibilities open to singers of such parts" - but the results sound to me so outstandingly beautiful that surely he's made the correct decisions in the majority of cases. I know that I'll continue to look to Blue Heron for the most impressive music of the period.

This recording is part of Blue Heron's project Ockeghem@600, a multi-year project to perform the complete works of this great composer. It will be complete in 2021, around the time of the 600th anniversary of Ockeghem's birth.

Clever, dynamic, charming symphonies

Leopold Kozeluch: Symphonies, vol. 3

I keep expecting the Leopold Kozeluch Symphonies series from Marek Stilec on Naxos to run out of steam, but with each new release I'm surprised by how clever, dynamic and absolutely charming the works of this Bohemian composer are. Born between Haydn and Mozart, Kozeluch's works share many of both composers' strengths: strong forward propulsion, clear structures and rich harmonies, but also surprising detours, touches of wit and whimsy, and a strong sense of musical story-telling. "Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading!" says Laurence Sterne, "Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page." I believe the same thing can be said for music, and Kozeluch's B-flat Major Symphony, "Irrésolu" is a perfect example. Like Haydn's Symphony no. 60, "Il distrato", this work includes extra-musical content, but as a characteristic symphony rather than a programmatic one.  Again like Haydn, Kozeluch has no need for extra-anything; his abstract orchestral music is so dynamic and vital on its own. But a connection to literature and the stage never hurts, and adds further charm to this already charming music. Kozeluch's music, while in the orbit of the two great Austrian composers, has its own character, which once again is so pleasingly brought forward by Stilec and the Czech Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Pardubice. The fourth and final release in this project, which comes in 2020, will, I hope, finally help raise Leopold Kozeluch's reputation to something approaching his true worth.

Once again we have a fine cover photo from a great palace of the Austrian Empire: the Upper Belvedere Palace in Vienna (photo credit: Ixuskmitl). Inside these buildings artists like Leopold Kozeluch were subtly undermining the old order with modish art that hid modern, sometimes even revolutionary, ideas.

This album will be released on December 13, 2019

Reuse, Recycle, Reduce

Antonio Vivaldi: The Paris Concertos

The well known aphorism, that Vivaldi didn't write 500 (or 450, or 600) concertos, but one concerto 500 times, has been nicely debunked by Linda Shaver-Gleason, at her blog Not Another Music History Cliché. I'm pleased with this, because I'm a diehard Vivaldi fan. What impresses me about Vivaldi, especially as I learn more about his operas and sacred music, as well as his concertos and chamber music, is its incredible variety. Yes, there is a special Vivaldi sound, but I don't consider this self-plagiarizing, but more like an accent, or a way of expressing himself. It made me think of Jimmy Stewart's trademark hesitations. "You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it."



But here's a time when Vivaldi actually was recycling his music. Sad to say, the Red Priest from time to time involved himself in some rather shady business dealings, which is something he had in common with such great composers as Handel, Haydn and Beethoven. He promised brand new concertos to a German music lover, but delivered instead a mix of new and slightly used music. The very detailed essay written by Maestro Sardelli doesn't say whether Vivaldi's deception was ever found out. More likely, the buyer was too busy enjoying this hugely enjoyable music. And speaking of recycling, you'll need to look closely at copyright dates in the fine print to see that this Tactus release is actually a re-issue of a recording that Modo Antiquo made in 1999, previously issued on Tactus in 2000. That's not a real problem in this case, luckily, since these are marvellous performances, which still sound very fresh. I highly recommend that you pluck this album from the blue box and put it on your CD or MP3 player.