Category Archives: CD

CHINASONG

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Shanghai QuartetDELOS DE 3308
TPT 1:08:56

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

This is a fascinating and delightful excursion into the folk and popular music of China. For many, such as myself, with little contact with the indigenous music of the most populous nation on earth, this collection is revelatory, not least in the sense of it being a closed book to. just about every listener in the West. As the Shanghai Quartet’s 2nd violin Yi-Wen Jiang,(who arranged most of the pieces on this CD for the medium of string quartet) points out, he undertook the task in the belief that through his arrangements of this treasure trove of music, the SQ could share their folk heritage internationally. One senses that these often beautiful melodies would have brought comfort to Yi-Wen during the difficult and terrible days of the Cultural Revolution.

Yi-Wen states emphatically that, in his arrangements, he was not endeavouring to simply imitate the traditional Chinese instruments used to perform this music in China but to bring the harmonies and structure closer to styles which would be meaningful to the ears of non-Chinese. On the evidence of this collection,, he has certainly succeeded in doing this. In fact, I cannot imagine a western listener failing to respond in a positive sense to these charming miniatures.

To its international audience, the Shanghai Quartet is almost exclusively thought of in relation to their interpretations of masterworks of the genre. But the SQ musicians are not by a long chalk hidebound traditionalists. They frequently leaven their compilations of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms with music by composers at the cutting-edge. Now, these folksy and pop items bring a new dimension to their programs.

There are 21 tracks. I especially liked the extrovert energy of Double Dance and, in Dali Girl, a folk song from Yunnan, the pure sound of a high-pitched violin melody to the accompaniment of cheeping, twittering birdsong simulations. Reflection of the Moon in the Er-Quan Spring is another exquisite vignette, originally written for the erhu,, an ancient two-stringd instrument. Unsurprisngly, this quiet, bittersweet miniature is considered the Chinese equivalent of Barber’s famous Adagio. And Caprice (track 8 ) has all the energy and extroversion one associates with,, say, Aaron Copland’s Hoe Down.

And a set of Sichuan folk songs are made memorable by flute obbligati provided by the gifted Eugenia Zukerman.

Neville Cohn

 

Solomon (piano)

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Solomon (piano)

Halle Orchestra conducted by

Hamilton Harty *

Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikowsky*

Naxos 8.110680
TPT: 1:14:34

reviewed by Neville Cohn

More, perhaps, than any other of the 20th century’s great pianists, it was Solomon who brought an irrefutable musical logic to just about everything he played. It set him apart in a unique and unchallenged category of excellence. A keyboard technique honed to perfection,, an ability to coax a myriad tonal shadings from the piano as well as paying the closest attention to detail without ever losing sight of the grand design of whatever he happened to be playing, made Solomon’s illness-induced, early departure from the concert platform a personal tragedy and an immense loss to the international concertgoing public. But until a stroke cruelly halted his career (perhaps brought on, if only partially, by a very heavy smoking habit), Solomon gave listening pleasure to many – and his recorded legacy, although small, remains a monument to his rare gifts.Although the standard of sound recording at the time was primitive compared to current expertise, Solomon’s performance with the Halle Orchestra conducted by Hamilton Harty of Tchaikowsky’s Piano Concerto No 1 (recorded in November 1929 and February 1930) demonstrates an impeccable grasp of the work. Shining through are the immaculate technique, tempi choices that sound entirely appropriate – and a breathtakingly fine clarity of exposition as he expounds Tchaikowsky’s musical argument. (Solomon was to record the work again years later for HMV’s plum label.)One listens with a sense of wonder to Solomon’s account of Liszt’s Au bord d’une source, its diabolical difficulties resolved with astonishing ease, the playing informed by fingerwork of stunning delicacy. It makes for euphoria-inducing listening. Much the same could be said of La leggierezza. And in his justly famous account of the Hungarian Rhapsody No 15 (Rakoczy March) – as in almost everything he essayed – one is left with the impression that heart and mind were in perfect accord. Whether in poundings of demonic intensity or in very rapid fingerwork, this is a reading that seizes the attention and holds it in a vice-like grip. There is not the slightest hint of strain. Recorded quality in tracks 8 to 12 leaves something to be desired. There is some occasional distortion of sound here. And in the Fantasie in F minor, Solomon, most uncharacteristically, sounds fleetingly under strain. This is one of a bracket of Chopin works, including the Etude in F from opus 25, in which arpeggionated figures are marvellously controlled, like strings of perfectly matched beads. And the Polonaise in A flat, opus 53 is informed by a rugged power. Magnificent!This CD contains all the recordings that Solomon, who rose from humble beginnings as a cockney kid from London’s East End to international prominence, made for Columbia.

 

Neville Cohn


MRAVINSKY SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No 8

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SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No 8, opus 65
MOZART: Symphony No 33 in B flat K319
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra
EVGENY MRAVINSKY (conductor)BBC Legends BBCCL 4002-2
TPT: 1:20:29

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

The symphonies of Shostakovich are now so integral a part of the international orchestral repertoire that it comes as something of a surprise to be reminded that his Eighth Symphony, completed in 1943 and premiered in Moscow in November of that year with Evgeny Mravinsky conducting, was only heard for the first time ‘live’ in the UK in September 1960 when Mravinsky himself (the dedicatee of the work) and the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra gave a series of concerts at London’s Royal Festival Hall. This is one of a considerable number of significant events broadcast ‘live’ by the BBC, the recordings stored in its massive archives and now made available on compact discs for a new generation of listeners. This musical treasure trove includes Stokowski conducting Falla, Monteux directing Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, Enescu presiding over Bach’s Mass in B minor with Kathleen Ferrier one of the stellar vocal soloists. Many more recent BBC releases of archive material feature Benjamin Britten as conductor.

To get back to Mravinsky, that gaunt, chain-smoking figure who, at the time of the Eighth’s premiere and for some years afterwards, was a close friend of the composer (their relationship deteriorated over time): how keenly attuned he is to the requirements of the score. Low-register, sombre tones are like a call to attention – not to some frivolous entertainment but one of the weightiest and most profound utterances to come out of what Russia called The Great Patriotic War.

What co-ordination and intensity of expression Mravinsky secures from the Leningrad strings – and what tremendous tension the playing develops, with timpani crashes like harbingers of doom, and relentless, dissonantly screaming brass mounting an all-out frontal assault on the ears, suggestive -a s Shostakovich was so expert at doing – of brutal power.

Listen to the merrily peeping piccolo in the second movement allegretto – and how it gives way to insistent drummings and urgently blaring brass. And in the third movement, Mravinsky unerringly homes in on the emotional epicentre of the music with its woodwind cries and implacable thuds on the side-drum, evoking what one commentator suggests denotes the mindless drive of war. I particularly admired the skill with which the conductor gives point and meaning to some of Shostakovich’s most poignantly introspective musical ideas in the largo. And a finely stated flute line helps to transform – as Robert Dearling so perceptively writes – despair to a mood of guarded optimism. And in the finale, a movingly expressive flute line is like an oasis of sanity in the madness of war in 1943 Russia.

Throughout, the musicians of the Leningrad Philharmonic play as if the work was written specially for them which, in a significant sense, it was. Many of those performers, or those near to them, might well have been touched by the WWII siege of Leningrad by the nazis – and this lends an extra frisson to the listening experience.

A minuet that sounds a shade stolid and effortful does little to raise an account of Mozart’s Symphony in B flat, K319 above the routine.


BRITTEN the PERFORMER

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MOZART: Piano Concerto in E flat, K 482; Adagio and Fugue in C minor, K 546; Sinfonia Concertante in E flat, K364
Sviatoslav Richter (piano)
Norbert Brainin (violin) Pieter Schidlof (viola)
English Chamber Orchestra BENJAMIN BRITTEN (conductor)

BBCB 8010-2
TPT: 01:15:12

 

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Mozart playing at a very much higher level is available on a BBC CD with, for much of the time, a transcendentally fine reading of the Sinfonia Concertante K364 with, as soloists, Norbert Brainin (violin) and Peter Schidlof (viola) (both members of the legendary Amadeus Quartet). There is a quite wonderful confluence of musical gifts in this performance, given at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1967. Schidlof’s warm-toned, immaculately pitched line – it sings with a voice that almost mesmerisies the listener – and Brainin’s intensely musical response to the score (notwithstanding an occasional, fleeting weakening of concentration) make this a recording to remember. The sunny, optimistic mood of the finale is unambiguously evoked. Throughout, the English Chamber Orchestra, as if drawing inspiration from its conductor Benjamin Britten and the two stellar soloists, are almost beyond reproach. The introduction to the work is particularly well paced; the horns bringh a most effective air of pomp to the proceedings. And in the Adagio and Fugue in C minor K546, the ECO achieves the nth degree in solemnity in the former – and steers a rivettingly dramatic course through the Fugue.

If the Piano Concerto in E flat, K482 is less rewarding listening, it is not in any way due to Richter’s solo playing, which is masterly. Rather, it is because the piano sounds too distant; it needs significantly greater presence to do the performance justice. But although less than satisfactory in this sense, there is still much to admire in the recording, not least the limpid, easeful playing of the ECO strings and Richter’s account of Benjamin Britten’s astonishingly original cadenzas written specially for the soloist.


Reflections in the Water ELOQUENCE – AROMATHERAPY series

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Handel, Debussy, Johann Strauss II, Ravel, Vivaldi, Smetana, Chopin, Schubert, Tchaikowsky, Delius
various instrumentalists and orchestras

DECCA 466 705-2
TPT 1:14: 33

reviewed by Neville Cohn 

If you’ve come home stressed after a day in the salt mines, this compilation might well work wonders. Put your feet up, place slices of cold cucumber over your eyes, take the phone off the hook and lose yourself in some of the most soothing music ever written. Each of the fourteen tracks has some association with water in various states. Feel the tension in your neck muscles lessen as you listen to Jorge Bolet in Liszt’s arrangement for piano of Schubert’s lied Auf dem Wasser zu singen. Unhurried, glowing-toned, haunting, it’s beyond conventional criticism. So, too, is Pascal Roge. He is magical in Debussy’s Reflections in the Water with its rippling, filigree-delicate arabesques. And in the most famous of all works inspired by microscopic molecules consisting each of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen – Handel’s Water Music – Sir Neville Marriner and his Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields lavish care on three extracts from the suite. The Hornpipe is particularly pleasing; it bristles with pomp. Also included are The Blue Danube, an excerpt from Swan Lake, Ravel’s Jeux d’eau, Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude and Delius’ Aquarelle No 2. Drawn from recordings made between 1968 and 1981, sound quality is uniformly fine – in this sense, the recordings have worn well – apart from some slight distortion in string tone in the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra’s account of Smetana’s Ma Vlast.