Category Archives: CD

From the house of Master Bohm

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John O’Donnell (harpsichord)

MELBA  301143 TPT: 79’48”

 

Liszt Wagner Paraphrases

Asher Fisch (piano)

MELBA  301141 TPT: 67’07”

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

How much we take photocopying machines for granted nowadays. But I’m old enough to  recall vividly as a child in the 1940s (when photocopiers were in their infancy and certainly not standard equipment in business offices),  painstakingly copying out piano pieces note for note from my teacher’s music books out of print or unavailable due to wartime restrictions. And if, say, in an insurance office, copies of  letters were needed, they had to be typed by an employee in the typing pool, a time- consuming occupation.

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What has this, you’ll be wondering, to do with the music of Georg Bohm and the generous and welcome selection from his harpsichord output on a recent MELBA release? It seems that what little we have of Bohm’s music is largely, though not entirely, due to the efforts of the then-15-year-old Johann Sebastian Bach who  studied with Bohm at the time and, crucially, and painstakingly, made copies of some of his teacher’s compositions which he handed round to members of the larger Bach family. Without these, Bohm might, at best, have been little more than a footnote to music history.

 

And what a splendid performance we have courtesy of John O’Donnell, a musician whose playing has the unmistakable stamp of authority. Much of the performance on disc is informed by a quite captivating joie de vivre – and the extraordinary skilled presentation, with notes clothed in golden tone and informed by an authoritative confidence, makes this CD quite exceptional. Bravo!

 

This compilation is yet another instance of the imaginative resourcefulness that is a hallmark of the Melba label. As I have mentioned before a number of times – but it certainly warrants reiteration – there is much more to a Melba CD than the disc itself. Invariably, there are fascinating liner notes and a finely designed CD container. This is particularly so here.

 

Melba’s preparedness, music-wise, to embrace the novel, the forgotten and the challenging makes this label – small in relation to the international big names – a giant insofar as courage and enterprise are concerned. At every level, this product is a joy. The playing has the stamp of authority; it glows with golden tone and the stamp of authority. Highly recommended for anyone interested in baroque harpsichord playing at an august level.

 

Wagner was a man of many parts: embezzler, anti-Semite, anarchist, serial adulterer and a person of incorrigible vanity. He was also a genius. His cause has not been helped by being Hitler’s favourite composer. The vile leader of the Third Reich also possessed a number of Wagner’s original opera scores which he cherished.

 

Asher Fisch needs little introduction although his primary claim to fame is as conductor rather than pianist. He has also been at the forefront of events in presiding over the Wagner Ring cycle in Adelaide, the recordings of which deservedly garnered high praise internationally.

 

In the late nineteenth century, without radio or recordings, the chances of encountering ‘live’ performances of a Wagner opera were very few and limited to those in cities boasting an opera company. But, through the great skill of Liszt (among others), keyboard paraphrases of scenes and/or arias became very popular at recitals and soirees.

 

In recent months, a tsunami of CDs devoted to Wagner’s operas has almost overwhelmed the music scene. A few are disappointing and will sink without trace, some will keep afloat – and a significant few are riding the crest of the wave.

 

Fisch’s recording of Liszt/Wagner paraphrases certainly belongs to the last mentioned category. It’s fascinating fare Asher Fisch Liszt Wagner Paraphrases cover HIGH RESpresented with high musical intelligence and beautifully recorded. I especially admired the skill brought to bear on the Spinning Chorus from The Flying Dutchman, the whirring figurations beautifully managed – and the Pilgrims’ Chorus from Tannhauser is no less meaningful. Its broadly paced measures and, where required, introspective moments as well as climactic episodes are the acme of refined taste. So, too, is Entry of the Guests; I’ve returned to Asch’s account of it a number of times – it’s a consummately fine offering.

 

Wagner wrote almost nothing for piano solo but here are three rarities, miniatures written as gifts for friends. They amount to very little. They are rather introspective little pieces with a faded charm which, without the magic of Wagner’s name attached to them, would long ago have disappeared into music history’s wastepaper basket.

Alisa Weilerstein (cello): Staatskapelle Berlin: Daniel Barenboim

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Cello Concertos: Sir Edward Elgar & Elliott Carter; Kol Nidrei (Bruch)

DECCA 478 2735: TPT: 62’23”

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Behzod Abduraimov (piano)

Liszt; Saint Saens; Prokofiev

DECCA 478 3301: TPT: 72’45”

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ALLELUIA

Julia Lezhneva (soprano)

Il Giardino Armonico: Giovanni Antonini

Vivaldi; Handel; Porpora;Mozart

DECCA 478 5242: TPT: 60’48”

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Unlike, say, Mozart, Schubert and Chopin who died tragically young, Verdi was firing on all pistons into his eighties when he wrote Falstaff  – and Sibelius muddled drunkenly on into his nineties without having written anything of substance for years. But very few composers indeed have kept going well over the century mark as well as composing at a significant level. The remarkable Elliott Carter is a case in point. The US musician remained creative almost until his recent death at the age of 103. In, fact, between his 90th and 100th birthdays, he maintained a creative pace that many a composer decades younger would have had difficulty emulating, let alone exceeding.

 

In passing: imagine what Mozart might have produced if he’d lived another month – another week, for that matter: another symphony, perhaps, or a piano concerto. The same might be said of Schubert and Chopin. The tragic brevity of their lives on earth constitutes a massive loss to the world.

 

The long-lived Carter wrote his Cello Concerto when in his nineties. It’s played here by Alisa Weilerstein with the Staatskapelle Berlin conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

PACKSHOT Alisa Weilerstein - ELGAR & CARTER Cello Concertos

Like so much that Carter wrote, his concerto positively brims with intriguing ideas. There’s not a dull moment in his ever-changing sonic landscape and Weilerstein and Barenboim do it proud, seeming positively to relish coming to grips with its abundance of resourceful and engaging detail. It positively brims with novelty; it really warrants a good few listenings to respond to its multitude of musical thoughts.

 

I dare say that for many, the chief attraction of this recording would be Elgar’s Cello Concerto. That it is conducted by Barenboim adds a poignant dimension to the performance as the famous recording of the work with his cellist wife Jacqueline du Pre has assumed almost mythical status in the wake of the latter’s tragically lingering illness – MS – and death at far too young an age.

 

Weilerstein is a worthy soloist. The cello’s opening statement throbs with passion, the solo line gripping the attention from first note to last as the work’s evolving emotional landscape draws the listener ineluctably into Elgar’s unique and unforgettable sound and mood world. Throughout, Barenboim secures splendid responses from the Berlin Staatskapelle which provides a first rate accompaniment for the cello line.  There’s much that gives pleasure, too, in Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, his fantasia on the melody traditionally sung on the eve of the Jewish Day of Atonement. It’s a faultless offering at every level, its more introverted moments coming across with aching poignancy.

 

Another young musician reaching out for – and touching – the stars is Behzod Abraimov in a debut recording that ought to win him many admirers. He is sometimes compared to the legendary Horowitz – and his account of Saint Saens’ Danse Macabre is presented with the sizzling virtuosity and the sort of stylistic flair and diamond-bright tone that were so significant a factor in Horowitz’s playing. Here, Abraimov draws the listener effortlessly into the music’s eerie, phantasmagoric world .Cvr-0289478330

There’s much that gives pleasure, too, in Prokofiev’s massive Sonata No 6 with its bracing attack and follow-through and unerring sense of the composer’s idiosyncratic style. It has a confidence and brio that augur well for a stellar career.

 

A reading of Liszt’s Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude is less uniformly persuasive with the pianist taking up an interpretative position some little distance from the emotional epicentre of the music. The music’s mood of serene introspection was not always persuasively evoked. But there is compensation aplenty in Abduraimov’s reading of Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No 1 which comes across with blazing intensity that calls to mind the astonishing virtuosity which can be heard in Julius Katchen’s celebrated DECCA  LP recording from the early 1960s. Abduraimov’s staying power is impressive with much of the playing the epitome of  intensity and drive.

 

A debut  DECCA recording by soprano Julia Lezhneva falls into that rare category in which the singing seems not so much a learned, studied skill but rather an act of such naturalness, such spontaneity, apparently free of the slightest strain, so entirely in tune (no pun intended) with the genre, so altogether satisfying as to be beyond criticism in the conventional sense. Of course, for playing to leave an impression of such freedom and freshness can, paradoxically, only be the fruit of the most concentrated self-discipline. This is music making at the most august level. Bravissimo!Cvr-0289478524

Requiem KV626; Ave Verum Corpus KV618; Sancta Maria, mater Dei KV273; Exultate, Jubilate KV165 (Mozart)

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Cantillation

 

 

Orchestra of the Antipodes

 

 

Anthony Walker, conductor

 

 

ABC Classics CD 476 4064

TPT: 68’35”

 

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Oceans of ink have been spilled – and will so continue – about which hand completed which section of Mozart’s Requiem. If these endless speculations  – and musings about which illness he might have been suffering from as he wrote this, that or the other episode – bring satisfaction to those who utter them, then good luck to this endless pageant of nitpickers.

 

For those whose prime satisfaction comes from listening to the work, here is yet another in a very long list of recordings of the Requiem.

 

Piety informs just about every moment of this performance which has about it an inner quietness that is often very moving. Gratifyingly, there’s not a hint here of that over-the-top approach favoured by some.

 

Cantillation is at its supple best in the Kyrie which is presented with gratifying clarity at speed. And there is splendid attack and follow-through., too, in the Dies Irae. I particularly liked the  quietly uttered, deeply felt measures of the Recordare sung, beautifully, by the vocal quartet of Sara Macliver (soprano), Sally-Anne Russell (mezzo soprano), Paul McMahon (tenor) and Teddy Tahu Rhodes (bass baritone). And buoyant momentum makes for gratifying listening in Domine Jesu Christe.

 

It is only in the Introitus that one senses a need for a more calmly fluent unfolding of some of the most profoundly poignant music in the repertoire.

 

 Soprano Sara Macliver is at her virtuosic best in the much-loved Exultate, Jubilate.

Mendelssohn: The Five Symphonies

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Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra

Sebastian Lang-Lessing (conductor)

 

 

ABC Classics 476 4623 (3CDs + DVD)

 

 

TPT: 128’ 52”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Last year, when the world was awash with performances of the music of Mendelssohn to mark the bicentenary of the composer’s birth in 1809, many regular concertgoers who thought they had a good overview of his music, found themselves on an often gratifying journey of discovery. This applied particularly to his chamber music, the complete string quartets, say, which for many might well have proved revelatory.  

 

As far as the symphonies are concerned, most concertgoers would readily be able to identify the works dubbed Scottish and Italian. They are frequently performed and with good reason. And mini-polls I’ve conducted in the foyers of this or that concert venue around the city reveal clearly that, frequently, even the keenest of music followers have only the vaguest ideas about the existence of Mendelssohn’s other symphonic utterances apart from the ubiquitous Third and Fourth.

 

Bear in mind, too, that by the time Mendelssohn got round to composing what we know now as his Symphony No 1, he had been at work in the genre for much of his adolescence, producing a stream of so-called string symphonies. Many of these are astonishingly original without a hint that they’d been written by a teenager.

 

This 3-CD + DVD set will, I believe, bring many new adherents to the flag, not least for providing an opportunity to hear works that only very rarely appear on concert programmes these days.

 

Listen to Sebastian Lang-Lessing’s direction of the Tasmania Symphony Orchestra in Mendelssohn’s Symphony No 1. How splendidly this fine ensemble evokes the ebullience of the first movement. It’s a performance which brims with energy, again and again carrying the listener forward on the crest of a finely stated orchestral wave. Lang-Lessing and the TSO are no less persuasive in the second movement; its gentle, lyrical calm makes it a near-perfect foil for the energetic bustle that precedes it.

 

In the Minuetto, Mendelssohn’s usually sure touch is less apparent; it is overly bucolic music and the Trio excessively solemn and serious. But the finale is inspired as is its performance, not least for excellent clarinet playing and precise pizzicato which add  significantly to the engaging bustle of the music.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 


 




The Scottish Symphony is in a class of its own. How intriguing that a German could identify so profoundly with Scotland based on the briefest of visits to that part of the world. (Consider, too, the quite magically atmospheric Fingal’s Cave Overture. When will some musical Scot turn out a couple of masterpieces after some brief encounter with Germany? Don’t hold your breath!)

 

 


Lang-Lessing makes magic of the first movement. Clarinet playing in the Vivace non troppo is beyond reproach in a movement that is as Scottish as a tartan kilt and sporran.



A shrewd commentator once described the finale as “a wild dance of rude Highlanders who stamp furiously into a smug coda………”. And who would gainsay that view on the basis of this splendidly bracing account?

 


Almost invariably, when Mendelssohn visited England, there’d be an invitation to Buckingham Palace. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were great admirers of the famed composer – and Victoria would, shyly, sing some of the lieder by “dear Dr Mendelssohn” with the composer accompanying at the piano. And when the composer asked if he might dedicate his Scottish Symphony to her, she agreed at once. Victoria would often attend public performances of Mendelssohn’s music which invariably ensured full houses.


 

Inspiration informs just about every moment of this account of the Italian Symphony with Lang-Lessing and the TSO coming through with honour not only intact but enhanced. There’s not a dull moment here. The quick movements crackle with energy, the opening allegro vivace splendidly precise at top speed as is the ever-engaging Saltarello. Intriguingly, this exquisite movement, which sounds as if it might have been conceived in a single, sustained burst of highest inspiration, never quite satisfied the composer who seriously considered revising it. Happily, he didn’t; it comes as close to perfection as anything he ever wrote.

 

But not even the skill and commitment of the players can persuade this listener that the first movement of the Reformation Symphony is other than ponderously dull and the allegro vivace that follows amiable but unremarkable. Mendelssohn’s inspiration was no less in short supply in the pompous, lacklustre finale. But that certainly does not lessen the importance of including it – and the dreary and overlong Lobgesang – in this important recording enterprise.

 

It says a great deal for the skill and commitment of both conductor and orchestra that, for the duration of Lobgeasang and the Reformation symphony, these works sound far better than they in fact are.

Geoffrey Lancaster (fortepiano)

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Sonatas Nos 32 in G minor, 31 in A flat and 33 in C minor

TPT: 66’22”

Tall Poppies TPT: 66’22”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

To listen to Geoffrey Lancaster playing Haydn on the fortepiano is to be drawn ineluctably into the sound and mood world of the composer. And that was very much the case at a series of recitals that Lancaster gave in Perth recently.

 

 Before listening to the first of a projected series of compact disc recordings devoted to Haydn’s complete keyboard sonatas, I wondered to what extent that sense of spontaneity that made his live recitals so extraordinarily satisfying would be captured on disc. Would the freshness and vitality transfer successfully to recordings?

 

Any concerns I might have had on this point evaporated within moments. There is a wonderful sense of spontaneity here – and it is abundantly in evidence. Indeed, the playing on this CD is so ‘alive’ that listening to it provides that additional frisson one associates primarily with  experiencing a profound musical interpretation in the flesh, as it were.

 

Over the years, I have lost count of the times I’ve heard Lancaster in recital. Hopefully, this recording and those to follow will allow listeners living far from the main routes of the international concert circuit to experience the magic of Lancaster’s interpretative insights.

 

Just as in his recent recitals in Perth, each of the sonatas here is prefaced by a short prelude which, Lancaster explained to the audience, was the common practice in recital in Haydn’s day.

 

Lancaster provides his own prelude to the Sonata No 32 in G minor but the other two sonatas – Sonata No 31 and Sonata No33 – are prefaced by preludes composed by Muzio Clementi.

 

As a whole, this recording is pure delight. Make a point of adding it to your CD collection; it will enrich your music life.