Daily Archives: 25 May, 2023

CDs May 2023

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SCRIABIN RECITAL
YOOJUNG KIM, piano
BRIDGE 9578 69’04

 A lovely release of fine performances of this often intense but deeply satisfying music which deserves to be so much better known. Much of the music is on the grand scale but there are also more intimate movements including the first of the Deux poems, Op 32. Alongside further Poemes and Morceaus are Sonatas 2, 3 & 4. The CD is bookended by the adventurous Fantaisie in B minor and Vers la flamme.

WILLIAM BLAND – PIANO SONATAS VOL 2
KEVIN GORMAN, piano
BRIDGE 9580 71’00

Wiliam Bland draws on a variety of influences including classical, romantic and more popular styles, demonstrated here with the Nouveau Rag. Two piano sonatas (9 & 10) make up the bulk of this CD of Kevi Gorman’s excellent performances, all of which is very absorbing.

JOHN CORIGLIANO – COMPLETE SOLO PIANO MUSIC
PHILIP EDWARD FISHER, piano
ALBANY SYMPHONY, DAVID ALAN MILLER, conductor
NAXOS 8.559930 1’’21’04

Another very welcome release in the American Classics strand, here is music from another composer I did not know. Despite the title, this CD of fine performances of wonderful music begins with Corigliano’s Concerto for piano and orchestra. Three extended works follow – Fantasia on an Ostinato, Etude Fantasy (including a Left Hand movement) and the brilliantly titled, Winging It!. This last piece displays some lovely contrasts between movements, as does the inclusion of the short, reflective Prelude for Paul, the newest work here (2021).

SCRIABIN – VISIONARY & POET
DANIELA ROMA, piano
DYNAMIC CDS7984 64’10

There seems to be a current resurgence of interest in the music of Scriabin, now being recognised as a musician ahead of his time. Open to all sorts of influences and with virtuosic talent and seemingly limitless imagination his music transports the listener to other realms. His spiritual influences and convictions are poured into this music. It certainly deserves to be more widely performed and experienced. Preludes, Etudes and Impromptus sit here alongside the Allegro de Concert and the CD opens with the wide-ranging Fantasy Op 28 in B minor.

LIGETI – ETUDES & CAPRICCIOS
HAN CHEN, piano
NAXOS 8.574397 62’27

Another visionary composer is showcased here with sensitive and meticulous performances by Han Chen. Three books of Etudes, spanning just over 15 years, make up the bulk of this recording with two short Capriccios in amongst them. Much of this is music that is rarely heard. Some of the Etudes remind me of the studies for player piano by Nancarrow, here, of course, not reproduced by a mechanism but played by a virtuoso!

MESSIAEN – VINGTS REGARDS SUR L’ENFANT-JESUS
KRISTOFFER HYLDIG, piano
OUR Recordings 6.220677-78 (2CDs) 61’29 & 76’42

A beautifully presented edition of fine performances of this substantial deeply spiritual work.

LOUISE FARRENC – SYMPHONIES 1-3; OVERTURES IN E minor & Eb
INSULA ORCHESTRA, LAURENCE EQUILBEY, conductor
ERATO 5054197522109 (2CDs) 113’30

The music of this 19th Century composer continues to be uncovered and more widely known as we continue to improve our recognition of the substantial body of work by women composers which has been ignored for so long. It is good to have Louise Farrenc’s 3 Symphonies collected together, together with the two Overtures, in these recent excellent recordings.

NIKOS SKALKOTTAS – VIOLIN CONCERTO; CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN, VIOLA & WIND ORCHESTRA
GEORGE ZACHARIAS, violin
ALEXANDER KOUSTAS, viola
LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA, MARTYN BRABBINS, conductor
BIS 2554 57’57

During his short life the Greek composer, who had studied with Schonberg, wrote some arresting music. These two works, dating from the late 1930s are good examples of his inventive and characterful writing. The second work here particularly shows evidence of some lighter jazz-infused influences, fused with the prevailing more angular constructions of the then current art music trends. A lovely production.

PAUL CHESNOKOV – SACRED CHORAL MUSIC
ST JOHN’S VOICES & SOLOISTS
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY CHAMBER CHOIR, GRAHAM WALKER, conductor
NAXOS 8.574496 65’42

This welcome CD of new recordings made in Cambridge of music by this prolific composer of  Russian Romantic liturgical music includes one of two of the composer’s settings of the All-Night Vigil (Op 44). Included with other shorter works is a version of the Cherubic Hymn ( Op 7 No 1).

SP

Die Walküre. Regents Opera, Freemasons Hall, 21, 23, 27 May 2023.

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Regents Opera

When Keel Watson’s Wotan sang of “der Gottheit nichtigen Glanz” (“the empty splendour of the Gods”) at Freemason’s Hall on Sunday it seemed like a wry comment on the venue. With every surface overlaid with marble, gold leaf or mosaic, the Grand Temple outdoes even the most lavish opera house and seems to compete with Valhalla itself. Did Regents Opera have this in mind when choosing it as the location for their shoestring Ring cycle, now on its second instalment with Die Walküre?

Director Caroline Staunton’s programme note concentrated on the personal aspects of the story, the consequences for the characters of decisions already made and the tensions between their own needs and desires and the world’s demands. Her production worked best when it concentrated on those relationships rather than abstruse visual symbolism. The art-gallery conceit of last November’s Rheingold re-appeared in the final act, which, seeking to evoke the Nazi campaign against “degenerate art”, presented us with a rather bohemian set of Valkyries rescuing paintings (not particularly degenerate ones) rather than fallen heroes. The paintings were later smashed by a masked female figure credited in the programme as “Wotan’s Will”, who proceeded to wrap the condemned Brünnhilde in masking tape marked “Entartet”. They finally provided fuel for the magic fire with which Wotan encircles his daughter, recalling the burning of 5,000 artworks in Berlin in March 1939. It may all make sense by the time we get to Götterdämmerung, but for the moment it seemed shoe-horned in to the narrative.

As the wanderer Siegmund, Brian Smith Walters presented a convincingly weatherbeaten figure, toughened as well as beaten down by suffering. But his diction was muddy and there seemed little passion between him and his sister-bride Sieglinde, limpidly sung as she was by Justine Viani. Gerrit Paul Groen‘s Hunding introduced a swaggering figure of menace and mostly implied violence, despite an incongruous brown check suit. The arrival of Catharine Woodward‘s Brünnhilde, a day early for World Goth Day in black leather and eyeliner, raised the dramatic and musical temperature for Act II. Launching her initial war-cries with athletic precision, she brought vulnerability as well as volume to the role, and the father-daughter relationship with Keel Watson’s Wotan was affectingly realised. Watson was in every respect a worthy war-father for such a daughter, by imposing, fearsome and finally broken. The trinity of gods was completed by Ingeborg Novrup Børch as Fricka, an authoritative and powerful presence in her pivotal scene with Watson.

Some musical compromise is inevitable when Wagner is performed in the round with only 22 instrumentalists, and I couldn’t help missing the extra firepower of the full Wagnerian orchestra during the “Ride of the Valkyries”. But the band under Ben Woodward played superbly, sounding more bedded-in than they did in Rheingold, and Woodward’s arrangement showed astonishing ingenuity in reproducing Wagner’s orchestral colours on a smaller scale. As before, there was judicious use of Paul Plummer at the Freemason’s Willis organ, adding sonority to bass lines and providing an unearthly background for Brünnhilde’s message to Siegmund. With the postponement of ENO’s Siegfried Regents’ is now the only Ring in town – Wagnerites should not hesitate to join this Rhine journey.

At Freemasons Hall, London, Saturday 27th May, 5:30 pm https://regentsopera.com/

William Hale