Four Sea Interludes (Benjamin Britten)

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Li-Wei Qin (cello)/ Zhang Yi (conductor)

ABC Classics 481 1243

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Li-Wei Qin’s account of Elgar’s Cello Concerto is breathtakingly fine. I cannot too highly praise his all-encompassing vision of this great work. I rather imagine that had Elgar himself been able to listen to this performance, he’d surely have been moved by its profound insights. Certainly, both soloist and the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Zhang Yi earn lavish, thoroughly deserved, laurels. And the sound engineers, too, come up trumps. It is a triumph all-round.

It is Li-Wei Qin’s ability to reveal, in the most subtle way, the concerto’s evolving moods that brings the stamp of distinction to this reading.

For a performance of such consistent excellence, there is little the critic has to do other than to salute musicality of very high order. It is rather like being taken across familiar, much loved terrain by a master guide able to reveal a musical landscape of which one had not been earlier aware. It is a fascinating, deeply probing reading. I hope this CD reaches many listeners.

Whether listening to the gently rocking motif of the opening movement, a profound intensity of feeling in the slow movement or, with first rate support from the LPO, a finale that thrills the ear, it’s clear that orchestra, cellist and conductor are in top form.

Li-Wei Qin was born in Shanghai and came to Australia as a teenager. After winning the ABC Young Performer of the Year Competition, he went on to advanced studies with Ralph Kirshbaum at Manchester’s Royal Northern College of Music. In 2008, he was soloist with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the Beijing Olympics. He plays a superb 1780 Guadagnini cello. On the evidence of this recording, he is entirely worthy of it.

In William Walton’s Cello Concerto, Li-Wei produces a stream of seductively beautiful, warmly mellow sound. It’s magical music making. Listening to this performance calls to mind Mrs Gaskell’s famous comment that she wished Anthony Trollope’s Framley Parsonage would go on forever. The other-worldly beauty of the playing cannot be too highly praised. Whether introspective or boldly assertive, the concerto sounds as if it might have been purpose-written for the soloist.

In Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from his opera Peter Grimes, the then-young Britten revealed to an astonished world just how inventive a young composer touched by God can be.

Each of the Interludes is a mini-masterpiece of striking originality, sound pictures that draw the listener into the composer’s idiosyncratic sound and mood world. And Zhang Yi and the LPO sound in their element as they breathe life and meaning into the score.

In Dawn, the bleakly austere, attention-gripping measures with their simulated bird calls are beautifully handled. And in Sunday Morning, in-form horns provide a sonic background for darting string motifs. Splendid brass responses and fine flute playing give nocturnal point and meaning to Moonlight. And the LPO does wonders in suggesting a dark, dramatically turbulent Storm.

Jangoo Chapkhana Trio

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Jangoo Chapkhana is as versatile as he is gifted. As organist, he has given recitals internationally. At the piano, he is a musician of distinction in both classical and jazz styles. His skill as choral conductor derives not least from studies in St Petersburg, Russia.

Here, in ensemble with Murray Wilkins (double bass) and Dennis Vrcic (drums), we can listen to styles both serious and light. This was recorded ‘live’ at Callaway Auditorium – and this brings an added frisson to the listening experience.

I rather think that J.S.Bach himself would have been chuffed at the JCT’s take on his Prelude in E minor from the ‘48’ which comes across as laidback, cool in the best sense with discreet backing from bass and drums, the music by degrees straying away from the original to more rhythmically diverse use of the notes which also of course underscores yet again the extraordinary adaptability of Bach’s ideas to all manner of treatments.

Something Special is delightfully laidback with a pleasingly buoyant sense of momentum.

In Here’s that Rainy Day, there’s splendid agility on double bass and on-from contributions from drums.

Thriving from a Rift is given stylistically impressive treatment which draws the listener ineluctably into Charlie Parker’s unique sound and mood world: great stuff, irresistibly rhythmical, compulsively listenable.

There’s a bittersweet quality in Feed the Birds with splendid clarity of piano tone.

Bernstein’s Cool is just that, Broadway-tinted music that calls West Side Story to mind. And the lazy, laidback mood of Nuages is conveyed to a nicety.

New Australian tangos with guitar

TPT: 57’04”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

I listened with fascination to this all-Australian, all-tango compact disc which brims with good things.

What gives a number of these pieces an extra allure is this: unlike archetypal South American-type tangos – La Cumparsita, say, or Jealousy – which almost invariably evoke images of a sombrero-wearing, Rudolph Valentino-type male with brilliantined hair dancing with shawled and sultry partners in some tobacco smoke-filled, inner-city tavern, many of the tangos recorded here call to mind dancing in a very much more wholesome, light-filled venue – in the open air, say. Lithe rhythms and transparent textures are much in evidence here.

Another joy of this compilation is the near-total absence of those squeaks, clanks and creaks that so frequently and maddeningly bedevil guitar recordings.

Eight composers are represented here.

I particularly like Ruth Roshan’s Low Tide, a duet for guitar and mandolin, the charm-laden, delicate latter played by the composer with Tanya Costantino on guitar.

Mark Viggiani’s finely conceived Cabaret Closed is given point and meaning by Krzystof Piotrowicz whose own Tango dla Sergei Orekhov and Tango dla Sergei Rudnev are an intriguing blend of Slavic melancholy and Spanish hauteur. They both sound tailor-made for dancing.

Rohan Jayasinghe’s haunting Hungarian Tango, originally written as a piano solo, is given a fine reading, dripping with nostalgia, by Alan Banks whose own genial, laidback Tango Improvisation 1 introduces this compilation.

Catherine Cahill’s gently stated clarinet line blends beautifully with Stephanie Jones’ guitar in Philip Bracanin’s Se baila como eres I and II, oscillating between moments which are irresistibly toe-tapping and sweet melancholy.

Mardae Selepak is both composer and performer. His Tango para Segovia has a gentle, haunting quality. In between composing and performing, Selepak does invaluable work raising funds to build an orphanage in Uganda.

All credit to the sound engineer whose skill enables the listener to experience these performances in a most satisfying way.

Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra cond. Valery Gergiev

Polovtsian Dances (Borodin)

London Opera Chorus

Philharmonia Orchestra cond. Vladimir Ashkenazy

ELOQUENCE CD 480 8946

TPT: 78’28”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Even if he’d had no connection at all to music, Alexander Borodin would still be remembered as a remarkable high achiever. He was a medical man who became a professor of chemistry – he did important chemical research into aldehydes – and he was co-founder of the first medical school for women in Russia, sadly an initiative scuppered later by Tsar Alexander III.

Borodin’s wife Ekaterina, like her husband, an asthmatic, was also a hypochondriac and an insomniac given to wandering around the house in the small hours doing housework which often, thoughtlessly, interrupted her husband’s desperately needed sleep. Over time, this had a serious effect on his health. Incredibly, too many pages of Borodin’s music manuscripts were used by Ekaterina to line poo-boxes for the household’s cats, strays which the composer found wandering about in neighbouring streets.

It’s a minor miracle that Borodin produced any music at all under these circumstances. The Borodin household was always crowded, not only with cats but relatives and friends who were always welcome to stay as long as they pleased.

Under conditions such as these, with Borodin snatching morsels of time between his medical and academic work to focus briefly on composition, it’s hardly surprising that his Symphony No 1 took five years to complete. In fact, it is surprising that he wrote anything at all under these conditions.

Borodin worked on his Symphony No 2 for seven years. In Gergiev’s hands, the savage grandeur of its opening movement is riveting – and there’s a frankly thrilling response from the Rotterdam Philharmonic. The scherzo is a pulsing, extrovert delight with much precise pizzicato. The finale, too, is beautifully presented, its joviality, boldness and solemnity evoked to the nth degree.

The sound engineers have come up trumps, too. Tone quality is sumptuous.

Borodin’s symphonies deserve to be heard far more frequently, especially the first.

Hopefully, many will come to appreciate these masterly creations through this first rate recording.

Unlike the symphonies, Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances from his opera Prince Igor are long established favourites – and Vladimir Ashkenazy presides over the London Opera Chorus and the Philharmonia Orchestra to excellent advantage, bringing an engaging freshness to familiar notes. The LOC is in particularly fine form.

This is the first time that this performance of Polovtsian Dances, dating from 1983, is available on compact disc.