Instrumental
INSTRUMENTAL CHOICE
Magical Debussy from Steven Osborne
David Nice is riveted by the pianist’s selection of early and late compositions
Debussy
Suite bergamasque; Images oubliées; Deux arabesques; Pièce pour l’oeuvre du ‘Vêtement du blessé’ etc
Steven Osborne (piano)
Hyperion CDA68390 71:04 mins
Any recital recording that programmes only shortish pieces runs a risk, and even more so when they’re all by the same composer. I shouldn’t have worried with Steven Osborne in command. Not only are there plenty of lively dances on here to counter the cliché of the ‘wispy’ Debussy, but the contrasts between tracks and the clarity at any dynamic level – and of course Osborne can play with magical refinement – are wondrous. I’m indebted to the pianist for a revelation: among the pieces I didn’t know are the three Images oubliées (so-named to distinguish them from the later and more familiar two sets of Images piano pieces). One of the most beautiful dedications I’ve ever read, which I wish I could quote in full – it’s to 17-year-old Yvonne Lerolle and mentions ‘“conversations” between the Piano and Oneself’ (the descriptions in the score, not all given here, are a pleasure to read, too). Composed in 1894, the first two feel like delicate tendrils from the forest of Pelléas et Mélisande, which Debussy had already begun.
The inclusion of Images oubliées is a revelation
In fact there are really middle-period pieces here as well as early, with a handful of late miniatures forming a mysterious coda. Only in the Valse romantique and the Ballade slave does the level drop slightly, but Osborne rivets ones attention. Rêverie is probably the first piece you’ll recognise, but it comes from another world and sounds utterly different; ‘Clair de lune’ works best surrounded by light-filled neoclassical companions in the Suite bergamasque. Total delight, whether you listen to it in one or more sittings.
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
JS Bach
6 Solo Cello Suites (arr. Serino)
Giuliano Carmignola (violin)
Arcana A533 138:43 mins (2 discs)
When Rachel Podger’s inspirational Channel Classics recording of Bach’s cello suites appeared back in July 2019, there were those for whom the cello’s soundworld and physical proclivities were so deeply ingrained that the necessary adjustments to pitch and fleet-fingered agility proved almost insurmountable. The following year, Johnny Gandelsman (In a Circle) went even further, playing with such a spring in his tail that any association with the music’s origins all but vapourised.
Employing the same key transpositions as Podger (the final suite stays rooted firmly in D), Marco Serino’s 2015 transcription presents two solutions to the scordatura (adjusted tuning) of the Fifth Suite – Giuliano Carmignola elects to go with lowering the top (E) string by a tone. Right from the timeless arpeggiations that characterise the G/D major suite’s opening Prelude, Carmignola asserts his own special interpretative proclivities: the magical musical intakes of breath during and at the ends of phrases, the endlessly flexible handling of dynamics, and a temporal elasticity that refuses to settle into any form of generic patterning. If more traditional accounts of these priceless scores tend to smooth over the music’s dancing origins, and those of a more authentic hue home in on their en pointe gesturing, Carmignola creates the impression of living through each phrase as though it is part of an over-arching choreographic narrative. In the timeless phrases of the C/G minor suite’s Sarabande, one can almost sense him moving gently to the music with exquisite poise, while in the Gigue finale of the D major suite, he seems on occasion to stamp his feet and clap, so evocative is his semantic gesturing. Julian Haylock
PERFORMANCE ★★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Debussy
Piano Duets – Petite Suite; Première Arabesque; Six épigraphes antiques; La mer; Ballade slave etc
Louis Lortie, Hélène Mercier (piano)
Chandos CHAN 20228 81:24 mins
Piano duets were central to music-making in Debussy’s time. They were the only way to encounter much repertoire and this generously filled new disc from Hélène Mercier and Louis Lortie gives some sense of the genre’s range of uses within Debussy’s repertoire. The two substantive works written specifically for piano duet, the Petite Suite and Six épigraphes antiques, face stiff competition, not least from Steven Osborne and Paul Lewis’s outstanding recent album of French duets (Hyperion). While they have their own charms, Mercier and Lortie fall some way short. Fussiness upsets the easy-going insouciance of the Petite Suite, the genial boat trip of ‘En bateau’ encountering decidedly choppy waters. It is an impression compounded by the piano often sounding veiled and a touch podgy.
Fortunately, the broader vistas of La mer fare much better, heard here not in Debussy’s own duet arrangement, but the more intricate two-piano transcription made by his close colleague André Caplet. Mercier and Lortie nuance each detail while maintaining an eye on the sweeping seascapes.
Of the five shorter works, three are transcriptions of solo works, namely the Ballade slave, La fille aux cheveux de lin and Premier arabesque. They are interesting only in confirming the adage of too many cooks spoiling the broth, the additional pair of hands hampering Debussy’s solo writing. The Marche écossaise and Andante cantabile are genuine duets, though the latter is, puzzlingly, played on two pianos. Nonetheless, it is a charming performance amidst an otherwise mixed bag. Christopher Dingle
PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Kaija Saariaho
Works for Cello – Petals; Spins and Spells; Près; Sept Papillons; Neiges
Joanna Gutowska (cello)
Dux DUX 1686 62:37 mins
Based in London, cellist Joanna Gutowska recently completed doctoral studies in Krakow on ‘new qualities of sound and expression’ in Saariaho’s cello works. In this enterprising solo album she translates the insights gained onto the instrument itself, tracing the composer’s thinking over a critical 12 years, 1988-2000.
Two of the five works here incorporate electronics, while a third – Neiges (1998) – is scored for eight (or 12) cellos, with Gutowska multitracking each part. What may be lost in the coming together of different performers is made up for in single-minded intensity, as the abstracted snow of the title falls, freezes, drips and crunches through an array of textures, now dense, now diaphanous. It’s an approach echoed in different ways across the album, whose range of colour is huge. In Petals (1988) and Près (1992), the electronics unmoor the cello in a multitude of ways while enhancing its visceral physicality – and it’s the localised tension between these poles that Gutowska most effectively captures throughout.
The scordatura of Spins and Spells (1996) adds a different resonance still. But it’s the acoustic, concert-tuned Sept Papillons (2000) that prove most potent in all their fluttering, abrasive nuance; miniature in form yet vast in expressive power. Steph Power
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★
Telemann
12 Fantasias for Solo Violin
Alina Ibragimova (violin)
Hyperion CDA68384 63:45 mins
Telemann’s 12 Fantasie per il violino senza basso date from 1735. They belong to a variety of compositions which the composer engraved, printed and issued under his own supervision during the 1730s. While approaching neither the complexity nor the sustained thought and development of Bach’s unaccompanied violin music, Telemann’s Fantasias lack neither technical interest nor melodic allure. Multiple stopping is frequently called for and the harmonies, real and implied, make the term Fantasia apt. Each piece is variously cast in three or four short movements.
Alina Ibragimova enters an arena in which several violinists have preceded her, among them Arthur Grumiaux, Maya Homburger, Andrew Manze and Rachel Podger. Modest in dimension though these pieces are, each musician discovers a field providing scope for individual expression. Ibragimova favours brisk tempos, in this respect corresponding more closely with Grumiaux than, for example Podger whose tempos are more spacious and, on occasion, allow for a more multi-dimensional expressive palette. Where Ibragimova is often at her most appealing is when addressing dance metres. Here her lightly articulated bowing and her softly spoken melodic declamation make for considerable appeal. These virtues are especially prominent in the second half dozen of the Fantasias, where the dance assumes prominence over the contrapuntal dominance of the first. Elsewhere Ibragimova demonstrates a playful agility in enlivening the kaleidoscope of Telemann’s canvas. One of the most colourful of the Fantasias is the Sixth, where a strikingly chromatic Presto is followed by a lyrical ‘Siciliana’, one of only two instances among the 12 of a named dance. Nicholas Anderson
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
In London Town
Works by Judith Bingham, Elgar, Ireland, Tallis, Walton et al
Benjamin Sheen (organ)
CRD CRD3541 77:44 mins
Benjamin Sheen takes the title of his recording from Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture, the centrepiece of his programme and a work played here (in an arrangement by the organist’s father) with musicianly flair. Both the music and this performance exploit all the possibilities of the magnificent Dobson organ at St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue in New York, completed as recently as 2018. But the subtitle, ‘British Organ Music’, stretches things a little since several of the works are arrangements of music not intended for organ, and it seems politically unaware: does a 2022 release really need to open with Walton’s March for A History of the English-Speaking Peoples – the composer at his most superficially flashy – and end with Elgar’s Imperial March?
The original organ pieces make a bitty impression, with the likes of Percy Whitlock and Herbert Howells brought up to date by Judith Bingham. All are very well played by Sheen, who worked at the New York church under the late John Scott, memorialised here by Andrew Carter in his moving Lacrimae. In another fitting memorial, though recorded before Simon Preston’s death, the selection also includes his Alleluyas, a clever riff on Messiaen and good to hear revived – alleluia to that! John Allison
PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
A Percussionist’s Songbook
Works by Graham Fitkin, Dario Marianelli, John Metcalfe, Gabriel Prokofiev, Dobrinka Tabakova et al
Joby Burgess (percussion)
Signum Classics SIGCD722 49:42 mins
Combining a multi-genre passion for contemporary western music with explorations of ancient global traditions, Joby Burgess has done much to foster the art of percussion. For this highly personal solo album, he’s drawn on his 1980s youth, when the ‘narrative … hook… [and] emotion’ of pop song drove it as ‘perfect short form music’ to the fore of his eclectic loves.
The ‘songs without words’ duly commissioned honour those roots while being stylistically wide-ranging, showcasing seven composers with whom Burgess has formed close relationships. Each has been inspired by some kind of text, and many use electronics with creative flair. John Metcalfe’s Love Without Hope riffs on Graves’s gentle yearning with lopsided postminimal patterns, while Dario Marianelli takes the Unequal into socio-political realms, alternating wrong-note layers with chopped up recordings of philosopher Michael Sandel. More topical still, Graham Fitkin’s Species addresses population growth with UN statistics chillingly delivered via vocoder alongside boppy rhythms turned queasily threatening. In its light, the lush Sahara of ages past melodically summoned by Dobrinka Tabakova’s Desert Swimmers seems distant indeed.
Saudi folk tale meets funky electronica in Yazz Ahmed’s wonderfully witty Throw Your Pumpkin (& Pick Me Up), while echoes of communal singing combine evocatively with glassy West African gongs and more in Tunde Jegede’s The Ancestors Are Within. From another, glitchy ominous future in Dr Calvin Remembers – Gabriel Prokofiev’s brilliant take on Asimov – Burgess’s own Come Sweet Death and Take Me Home return us to more comforting personal memories and childhood. Steph Power
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
The Salzburg Recital
Berg: Piano Sonata, Op. 1; Chopin: Impromptus; Scherzos Nos 1 & 2 etc; Gershwin: Preludes; Khrennikov: Five Pieces for Piano, Op. 2 etc; plus works by Debussy, Kissin and Mendelssohn
Evgeny Kissin (piano)
DG 486 2990 94:47 mins (2 discs)
Evgeny Kissin boldly steps out of his comfort zone in the first half of his Salzburg Festival recital by featuring an unexpected sequence of early-20th-century works. Opening his programme with Alban Berg’s emotionally intense Piano Sonata, Kissin delivers a powerfully controlled interpretation that places the greatest emphasis on structural cohesion and textural clarity, but at the same time tends to minimise the dramatic contrasts in mood and tempo indicated in the score. He follows this with strongly characterised performances of some surprisingly modernist early piano pieces by the Russian Tikhon Khrennikov. Khrennikov’s obvious indebtedness to Prokofiev and Shostakovich in these works is deeply ironic considering his 1948 speech as General Secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers, when he publicly denounced both men. Then comes Gershwin’s exhilarating Three Preludes, the first and third of which are dispatched with phenomenal technical control if insufficient sense of swing and joie de vivre.
With its generous selection of works by Chopin, the second half of Kissin’s recital finds the pianist on much more familiar ground. The performances of the B major Nocturne and the Three Improvisations are spellbinding, as is the prodigious dexterity of fingerwork in the two Scherzos (the latter presented as an unusually generous encore) and the marshalling of consecutive octaves in the A flat major Polonaise. My only caveat here is a tendency for some of the more full-blooded textures to sound a bit aggressive, a fault perhaps of DG’s rather bright recording. On the other hand, audience noise is kept to a minimum until the wildly enthusiastic bursts of applause that follow Kissin’s many encores. Erik Levi
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
Tristan
Henze: Tristan*; plus works by Liszt, Mahler and Wagner
Igor Levit (piano); *Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/ Franz Welser-Möst
Sony Classical 19439943482 99:59 mins (2 discs)
The cover presents a hazy scene in sepia monochrome with Igor Levit standing behind a piano, his shadow in view, light dancing through the smoke. This is a recording haunted by half-lights and the deep dark of the night, of the shadow self and uncontrollable emotions. It brings together music grappling with one of the most inf luential operas ever written, Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, and the dissonant chord that destabilised music history. If I had to pick one word to describe this recording, it would be ‘intense’.
The major work is Henze’s Tristan, a concerto-like collection of six preludes for piano, electronic tapes and orchestra that responds to Wagner over a century later. Where Wagner is ‘incandescent and exclusive’, said Henze, his music is ‘cool, as if it were early morning, and the questioning and longing are expressed with muted voice’. Levit offers exactly those qualities in this excellent account with the Leipzig Gewandhaus and conductor Franz Welser-Möst, making sense of its post-modern recollections of Brahms, Chopin, Renaissance polyphony and birds, its scream ‘of the whole suffering world’.
Hearing the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde, arranged by Zoltán Kocsis, afterwards is a strangely unmoving experience, despite the intelligence of Levit’s performance. It seems even a pianist of his calibre can find it hard to replicate the febrile quality of a whole orchestra, of quivering strings, at a percussive, solo piano. The same problem scuppers the Adagio to Mahler’s Symphony No. 10, another work haunted by death and love, but leaving little emotional trace. At least there’s Liszt. An unsentimental, unshowy and rather lovely Liebestraum No. 3 opens proceedings; a cathartic Harmonies du soir concludes them. Rebecca Franks
PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★
From the archives
Andrew McGregor revisits Musica Antiqua Köln’s still startlingly fresh recordings under Reinhard Goebel
‘I was a troublemaker’ says Reinhard Goebel, when asked what made the sparks fly in rehearsals with Musica Antiqua Köln, the period instrument ensemble the 21-year-old violinist founded in 1973. It’s that sense of pushing the envelope, refusing to accept the bland or routine that always invigorated their recordings. So much of this set of Musica Antiqua Köln: Complete Recordings (Archiv 486 2063; 75 CDs) is still startlingly fresh. The box begins with JS Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos in exhilarating performances, the last movement of Brandenburg 3 taking off with breathtaking vigour. You could never take their Bach for granted, as anyone who heard their pioneering Art of Fugue will know. Even in the 1990s they were bringing forgotten repertoire to life; I remember the impact of Dresden concertos by Heinichen, and Telemann’s wind concertos before he was more fashionable.
MAK’s musicians constantly changed, which kept things fresh, and I’d forgotten how many recordings they made with excellent singers: Bach cantatas with Christine Schäfer, Dorothea Röschmann and Christoph Genz, and laments by the wider Bach family with Magdalena Kožená. Other favourites are the double harpsichord concertos by Bach’s sons in vivacious accounts from Andreas Staier and Robert Hill, and Goebel and Manfred Kraemer in Biber’s violin music, plus his spectacular Salzburg Mass with McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort. MAK’s last recording was Telemann quartets in 2004; Goebel disbanded them two years later, and a physical condition forced him to switch hands, teaching himself to play violin ‘the wrong way round’, which tells you a lot about his tenacity. He gave up playing, but as Goebel celebrates his 70th birthday this year, he’s still ruffling feathers… ‘I see the future of Baroque orchestral music in the hands of modern ensembles – the fetish of the “original instrument” has had its day…for it isn’t the instrument that makes the music, but the head!’
Andrew McGregor is the presenter of Radio 3’s Record Review, broadcast each Saturday morning from 9am until 11.45am
You can access thousands of reviews from our extensive archive on the BBC Music Magazine website at www.classical-music.com