Category Archives: CD

Harold in Italy (Berlioz)

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Tabea Zimmermann (viola)
Ballet Music from The Trojans
London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)

LSO0040
TPT: 52:18

reviewed by Neville Cohn

The viola, that treacherous, ungainly instrument, guards its secrets jealously. Tabea Zimmermann, though, is privy to them all. In her hands, the viola, so intractable for many trying to master it, is, in the best sense, tamed; it does her bidding to often wondrous effect – and with intonation so consistent that it is an object lesson in how to play this awkward instrument precisely in tune.

Harold in Italy, a masterpiece by any standard, is one of the great tests for the violist and Zimmermann is very much to the fore, providing the most satisfying account of the work I have heard since experiencing the artistry of Nabuko Imai a good many years ago.

I  can hardly imagine a more inspiring backing for the soloist than that provided by the LSO under the direction of Davis who is steeped in the Berlioz tradition and brings decades of commitment to this reading.

This is no product of the recording studio with skilled editors to splice out lapses to provide an artificial perfection. No. This is yet another recording in the LSO Live series – and wonderfully immediate it is, too. I cannot imagine anyone failing to fall under the spell of a performance that would surely convert even the most curmudgeonly listener.

Throughout, Davis secures responses of the utmost intensity in ways that reach out to the listener. Here one wonders, as ever, at the epic scale of the ideas enshrined in Harold in Italy; it is Berlioz at his most magically original.

In the opening measures of the work, lower strings and bassoons produce dark, low-register tone that sets the mood perfectly for the first utterance of the solo viola; there is about the latter a rawness of emotion that rivets the ear in some of the most startlingly communicative playing imaginable. Certainly, the solo viola line has a pulsing, almost human quality that irresistibly evokes images of this Byronic creation.

Harold en Italie

Harold en Italie

 

As Zimmermann works her way through the score, she sounds so perfectly attuned to the requirements of the music that in her hands, the viola seems less a construction of wood, gut and varnish than an extension of her musical persona. It is an extraordinary feat of musicianship.

The playing of the LSO is a compendium of musical marvels. In ensemble with Zimmermann, the presentation of the first movement is a near-perfect assessment of the romantic melancholy of the writing. And the woodwind choir is marvellously effective in the third movement, producing playing that ranges from moments of tenderness to episodes that come across as the quintessence of the dance. Laurels to the cor anglais player. Woodwinds, as a choir, are much to the fore, too, in the finale; their virtuosity is breathtaking.

There is more splendour in the filler: ballet music from The Trojans. Phrasing is beyond reproach in Pas des Alemees – and bracing rhythmic figurations in Danse des Esclaves make for frankly thrilling listening.

This recording was made before an audience at the Barbican, London.

Highly recommended.

Copyright Neville Cohn 2004

Pictures at an Exhibition Night on Bare Mountain

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Boris Godunov – Symphonic Synthesis;

Entr’acte to Khovanshchina (Act IV):

Mussorgsky transcribed Stokowski

The Cleveland Orchestra
Oliver Knussen (conductor)

DG 475 646-2
TPT: 1:05:31

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

For much of his career, Leopold Stokowski was second in fame only to Arturo Toscanini. Born plain Leo Stokes in England, a name change, an infallible gift for self-promotion and a genuine musical gift ensured that Stokowski was seldom out of the public eye.

While his flamboyant arrangements for large orchestra of numbers of Bach’s organ works often teetered on the brink of vulgarity, many of his other orchestrations are most effective. And one of the best of these is his re-working of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

For years, Ravel’s version has been the orchestration of choice in concert programs worldwide. Its justified popularity, though, has largely overshadowed Stokowski’s version. More’s the pity because Stokowski’s orchestration makes for utterly compelling listening. By any stretch of the imagination, this re-writing of Mussorgsky’s masterpiece for the piano is a tour de force. I listened with astonishment to Oliver Knussen’s direction of the Cleveland Orchestra.

Where has this superb instrumentation been since Stokowski placed it on paper in 1939? It is far too fine to fall again into oblivion. Hats off to Knussen for unearthing the score and placing it on disc. He is very much the man for the job, giving point and meaning to every nuance of Stokowski’s often dazzling re-working. Don’t listen to it late at night, though. A combination of a first rate transcription, Knussen’s baton wizardry and an often incandescent orchestra in top form are bound to fire the imagination and put paid to a night’s tranquil sleep.
Listen to it in the morning instead. It’s as vitalising as a bottle of Vitamin B tablets.

I was particularly struck by Stokowski’s orchestration of the opening Promenade and its numerous other appearances as the work unfolds. Initially, it has a stately, expansive quality; on its returns it comes across variously as a dignified amble (expressed in such hushed terms as to border on the inaudible) or played so slowly as to teeter on the edge of inertia. It’s a very different experience to that of Ravel’s transcription – and for those encountering Stokowski’s version for the first time, it may well make for startling listening.

Knussen takes his forces through Bydlo, for instance, at a pace far brisker than usually encountered; as an impression of a lumbering ox cart, it doesn’t really convince. But this is the only reservation in an otherwise utterly absorbing, magnificently coloured alternative view of one the most well-loved masterworks in the canon.

Those exposed to – and offended by – the crassness of some of Stokowski’s re-workings of Bach organ works may need some encouraging to listen to his versions of some of Mussorgsky’s works.

Take the plunge; it will almost certainly be a rewarding experience, not least an account of Night on Bare Mountain where conductor and orchestra seem positively to relish coming to grips with Stokowski’s quite inspired instrumentation; whining strings and the sheer intensity of a presentation that borders on the satanic, inflame the imagination.

The same level of brilliance is apparent in Stokowski’s so-called Symphonic Synthesis of extracts from Boris Godunov with the barbaric splendour of some of Mussorgsky’s themes providing listening that rivets the ear. Much the same can be said of the brief entr’acte to Khovanshchina (Act IV).

Throughout, Knussen is a passionate advocate for both Mussorgsky and Stokowski to whose originality and brilliance he pays unfailingly articulate homage.


Copyright Neville Cohn 2004

Upon a Time A mediaeval fable for recorder, pipe and tabor

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Genevieve Lacey (recorder)
Poul Hoxbro (pipe and tabor)

ABC Classics Antipodes 476 155-9
TPT: 0:44:51

reviewed by Neville Cohn

This is a delightful compilation, a collection of musical miniatures, pieces drawn from mediaeval manuscripts kept at the British Library, the Vatican, Oxford’s Corpus Christi College and other libraries in Florence and Wiesbaden.
Apart from two pieces attributed to Hildegard von Bingen, all the music is anonymous.
A liner note points out that the printed folk tale (about a shepherd and his young son who are bewitched by mysterious forces) is not related to the music other than in the sense of dating back to a similar epoch. The music, moreover, does not follow the narrative sequence.
An attractively packaged CD is illustrated with Elizabeth O’Donnell’s haunting black-and-white photographs taken in Botswana, Italy and Australia.
All the arrangements of these ancient pieces are by Lacey and Hoxbro who present them with a finesse and an understated charm that make for delightful listening. The playing is uniformly excellent. The opening Estampie and Tre fontane are in the best sense danceable, the latter enshrining a melody that haunts the mind. Von Bingen’s Hodie, an unadorned, single line, is beautifully stated.
The engineers have done wonders; the recording (made in the Eugene Goossens Hall at the ABC’s Ultimo Centre) is first rate. But with a total duration of just under 45 minutes, this is a compilation that is tantalisingly brief and might to advantage have included rather more musical material.
Copyright Neville Cohn 2004


101 Movie Themes and Songs

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DECCA 9816782 (7-CD)
TPT: 7:53:53

 reviewed by Neville Cohn

With SBS’s Movie Show having come to an end in its 18th year (after modest beginnings), the popular, long-running program hosted by David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz is re-locating to ABC’s Channel 2. So this lavish, 7-CD set of 101 themes and songs from the movies becomes at one and the same time, the show hosts’ farewell to SBS (and one can only speculate on the ruefulness of SBS managers as their hugely popular cinema commentators vacate their Channel 28 chairs) and marvellous publicity for their move to ABC TV.

The set (running in excess of seven hours) covers movie music for the 80-year period 1933 to 2002. Why, one wonders, did the set not include movie music from the first-ever talkie with Al Jolson singing Mammy in The Jazz Singer (1927)? And it’s surely an oversight to have completely ignored films of the silent era because movies of the day were hardly ever entirely silent.

True, motion pictures of that era had no sound tracks as we understand them now but, more often than not, special music was composed for each movie and made available in arrangements that ranged from large orchestras (which played in the great movie palaces of the time) to ensembles of two or three (or even a lone piano) for screenings in small cinemas or church halls in towns and villages that had no dedicated cinema premises.

Paradoxically, the finest movie music isn’t represented in this collection because being so inextricably associated with the overall cinema experience, so perfectly complementing the visual aspect and establishing mood that, away from the movie it’s written for, it cannot survive in its own right. Like a fish out of water, such music, taken out of its cinematic context, is instantly in trouble and in very real danger of dying.

But there is a good deal of fine music purpose-written for the movies that does have a healthy and enduring existence away from the cinema, and there’s much of this in the collection.

Another very significant body of music on movie soundtracks consists of already-established music from the classics that assumes another life, sometimes very vigorous, and reaching sometimes millions of cinemagoers who might otherwise have remained ignorant of the existence of such music. One of the most famous examples is that of the slow movement of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2 played, on screen, by famed Australian pianist Eileen Joyce in Brief Encounter (1946).

Then there are those many individual themes, purpose-written for a particular movie that are so instantly communicative that they haunt the mind forever: Lawrence of Arabia, The Wizard of Oz and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Moon River).

Less frequently encountered are those scores, specifically written for movies, that are so musically substantial that they not only go on to an independent existence but find a place in the standard repertoire, such as Benjamin Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra which is repeatedly performed around the world although the movie for which it was composed (in a series underwritten by Britain’s General Post Office!) has sunk into oblivion.

The compilers of 101 Themes must have invested an extraordinary amount of time to rummage through the archives to obtain some of the most meaningful recordings to make up this 7-CD set. It’s a wonderfully varied compendium with something to please even the most fussy listener with track one devoted to music for the original King Kong (1933) with its extravagant flourishes and striding motif that’s just the ticket for evoking images of this most savage of all movie gorillas.

Take your pick from the remaining 100 tracks – the eerie tread of Franz Waxman’s music for Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Irving Berlin’s unforgettable Top Hat, White Tie and Tails from the 1935 movie Top Hat, the touching love music for An Affair to Remember(1957), the sheer barbaric splendour of Miklos Rozsa’s score for Ben Hur (1959) – and Jean-Yves Thibaudet playing Chopin’s posthumous Nocturne in C sharp minor for Polanski’s 2002 movie The Pianist.

There’s also a bonus track of Stratton and Pomeranz in discussion.

All the films from which tracks were drawn from this set are listed in the book 101 Movies You Must See Before You Die (ABC Books).

Copyright 2004 Neville Cohn


Imogen Cooper & friends

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Imogen Cooper (piano); Alfred Brendel (piano); Raphel Oleg (violin); Sonia Wieder-Atherton (cello); Australian Chamber Orchestra, Richard Tognetti (director); Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Sir Neville Marriner (conductor)
Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Rachmaninov

Philips 476 209-5 (3-CD)
TPT: 3:54:03

   reviewed by Neville Cohn 

In the minds of many music enthusiasts, pianist Imogen Cooper is inextricably and exclusively associated with the music of Mozart and Schubert. So this compilation is welcome in that it features Cooper playing, not only Mozart and Schubert, but also works by Beethoven, Robert and Clara Schumann, Brahms, Wolf and Rachmaninov, most of it in association with other musicians.

Perhaps the most satisfying offering overall is an account of Rachmaninov’s Sonata for cello and piano, page after page presented with an understanding of style and sensitivity to tone and mood that are utterly persuasive. The near-flawless quality of the presentation is all the more remarkable when one takes into consideration that for much of the recording, Cooper was in such pain (from a trapped spinal nerve, eventually diagnosed by an MRI scan) that she had frequently to bite her lip to prevent her crying out. And inbetween takes, it was necessary for her to lie prone on the floor as this gave some relief from severe discomfort.

Despite this, the recording is a joy from start to finish, the clarity and refinement with which both the piano and cello parts are essayed quite revelatory. And a complete avoidance of honeyed sentimentality on the one hand and tasteless lapses into vulgarity on the other helps make this recording by Cooper and cellist Sonia Wieder-Atherton an interpretation to savour. I particularly liked the scherzo which comes across like a dance for phantoms – and the romantic ardour which informs the playing in the finale is everything one could have wished it to be.

In a solo capacity, Cooper is magical in two Brahms Intermezzi, Opus 116 No 2, a little miracle of tenderness and glowing tone – and Opus 116 No 6 is no less satisfying. More often than not, and in lesser hands, the latter can sound turgid and dense-textured. Here, for once, its lyrical ideas are presented with rare clarity, its essence captured like a butterfly in the gentlest of hands. Has Cooper recorded more of these miniatures? If not, she should.

Cooper is frankly magnificent in Schubert’s Sonata No 21 in B flat, D 960. In the first movement, she is a master guide taking us on a journey across one of the composer’s most sombre landscapes. Listen, too, to the poignancy of Cooper’s account of the slow movement and how masterfully she is able to maintain a sense of onward momentum at very slow speed. It’s a remarkable feat of musicianship. And the carefree high spirits that are the essence of the Scherzo make for listening of a most satisfying sort. In evoking the unclouded happiness of the finale, Cooper takes up an interpretative standpoint at the emotional epicentre of the music.

There’s more delight in Schubert’s Trio in B flat, D898, the first movement splendidly full-blooded and the following Andante fastidiously mined for every ingot of melodic and harmonic beauty. Here, it is as if Cooper, Raphael Oleg (violin) and Wieder-Atherton (cello) are drawing on a shared musical consciousness. And the jaunty, folksy nature of the scherzo is a perfect foil to the blitheness that the ensemble brings to the opening measures of the finale.

Cooper joins her great mentor Alfred Brendel in Mozart’s Concerto for two pianos, K365. Time has not dulled this famous recording, made in 1977. It’s a joy from start to finish. The finale is given magnificent treatment, the nobility and grandeur of the writing incomparably presented. If ever a recording warranted re-issue, it’s this. So, too, the Concerto for three pianos, K242, here in a version for two pianos. The outer movements are a delight, the intricacies of the finale having all the precision of a fine Swiss watch but not for a moment sounding mechanical or impersonal. The slow movements of both this concerto and K365 are beyond conventional criticism. There’s also a very much more recent Mozart recording; it dates from November 2000, a ‘live’ performance of K595 given by Cooper and the Australian Chamber Orchestra.

The soloist’s poised and elegant treatment of the first movement of K595 is admirable. I very much admired, too, the simplicity with which she presents the Larghetto; blessedly free of artifice, it’s a performance to cherish. So, too, the finale, its blithe, lilting qualities beautifully established.

Cooper is no less persuasive as a lieder accompanist. Her partnership with baritone Wolfgang Holzmair yields some of the compilation’s finest listening. Their performance of Wolf’s Seemanns Abschied has about it a sense of urgency that grips the attention – and the serenity with which Schumann’s Die Lotusblume unfolds sounds intuitively right. And the charm and very real melodic delights of a bracket of Clara Schumann’s
Songs may well be revelatory for those coming to these songs for the first time.

Cyrus Meher-Homji, whose brainchild this 3-CD set is, works tirelessly to retrieve memorable recordings which, for one or other reason, have been dropped from the catalogues. This set of CDs is an instance, especially in relation to some extraordinarily searching lieder interpretations which, thanks to this re-issue, are available to listeners who might not have been aware of their existence. And for those who might have experienced Imogen Cooper’s artistry exclusively in relation to solo work, this set will bring home just how versatile this remarkable musician is.

Highly recommended.

Copyright 2004 Neville Cohn