ENCORE MY GOOD SIR

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Lin Jiang (horn)

Benjamin Martin (piano)

TPT: 59’35”

Melba MR 301116

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Encore

Encore

Robert Schumann: Adagio and Allegro, opus 70:  Peter Maxwell Davies: Sea Eagle:

Gunter Schuller: Nocturne: Esa-Pekka Salonen: Horn Music: Francis Poulenc: Elegie: Marin Marais arr Brain: le Basque: Paul Hindemith: Sonata for alto horn and piano: J.S.Bach arr Hoss: Gigue from Suite No 3 for cello: Otto Ketting: Intrada: Thaddeus Huang: Encore, My Good Sir

 

Lin Jiang, Shanghai-born but resident in Australia since the age of 5, is a young man with a golden horn. And this fascinating compilation, much of it well off the beaten track, is musical treasure trove for those seeking horn rarities. There’s standard fare such as Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro and Poulenc’s Elegie which he wrote in memory of Dennis Brain.

 

Ketting’s Intrada does not so much attract the attention as seize it in a vice-like grip with its flawless fanfares and pure, warm tone.

 

Peter Maxwell Davies’ Sea Eagle, for unaccompanied horn, makes for fascinating listening, its first movement conjuring up images of a young eagle about to make its first solo flight, suggested by what might be thought of as a series of false starts which give way to a swooping motif. Sumptuous tone informs the Lento movement – and in the brief presto finale, Jiang gives us a joyful, even impudent utterance. Trills are near-perfectly spun here. In Schuller’s Nocturne, Jiang’s pure horn sound is complemented by Benjamin Martin’s gently lulling accompaniment at the keyboard.

 

There’s not a dull moment in Salonen’s Horn Music in which both musicians are kept very much on their toes. In turn lyrical and virtuosic, this is an important addition to the repertoire; it deserves to be widely heard. Marais’ Le Basque is a folksy delight.

 

The second movement of Hindemith’s Sonata reveals the composer in insouciant, impish mood, surely a refutation of the silly slander, often advanced, that he is a  chronic autumnal drear. Poulenc, on the other had, is too frequently, and wrongly, dismissed as little more than a lightweight with a sense of humour. Listen to his Elegie with its uncharacteristic dissonances and heavy-toned, funereal quality. This is Poulenc in serious vein – and both musicians are spot-on in their revelation of the music’s dark mood. Jiang and Martin do Schumann’s Adagio and Allegro proud; it’s a joy to hear, not least for the impeccable synchronisation of horn and piano. Martin’s contributions at the keyboard are unfailingly musicianly.

 

Thaddeus Huang’s Encore, My Good Sir is an eminently listenable, rather lightweight encore-type piece and very effective at that level.

 

This CD is highly recommended.


The Musicians’ Table

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Ensemble Battistin

ABC Classics 476 6996

TPT: 49’49”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

The Musicians Table

The Musicians Table

Suite for flute, violin and continuo: Pierre-Danican Philidor  9’13”

Sonata for cello and cello continuo: Joseph Bodin Boismortier  12’35” 

Sonata for two violins in A minor: Louis Gabriel Guillemain  8’02”

Sonata No 2 for flute, violin and continuo: Jean Fery Rebel  8’13”

Trio Sonata in D Boismortier opus 50 No 6:  11’31”

 

There is no other place in Australia quite like New Norcia: a quaint monastic town north of Perth, Western Australia. Founded by Spanish Benedictine monks in the 1840s primarily as a religious and education mission to local Aborigines, it is now known as well for its fine olive oil and bakery.

 

With its first rate acoustics, the Chapel of St. Ildephonsus is an ideal venue for recordings. And this compilation is yet another in a series devoted to music of the French baroque, recorded by musicians steeped – and expert – in the tradition of period performance practice. This, though, is not for a moment to suggest that the performances are drably academic or tedious. On the contrary, recorded under the benevolent gaze of emeritus David Tunley, that pre-eminent authority on the French baroque, the performers wear their scholarship lightly; there is nothing remotely dry about these performances.

 

This recording is a cornucopia of musical delights, not least Boismortier’s Sonata for cello and cello continuo. Recorded sound quality is first rate with the most agreeable tonal bloom, an impression enhanced by phrasing of undeviating finesse. Moods are impressively evoked; the grave pace of the Sarabande could hardly have been  bettered and the Giga is most sensitively presented. An account of Guillemain’s Sonata for two violins makes for no less agreeable listening; it is a model of stylistic integrity, as are all the items of this CD. They come across as fresh as the morning, readings to return to again and again.

 

How fortunate we are in Western Australia to have in our midst musicians of such high order who routinely scale Olympus. Indeed, recordings such as these will remind listeners everywhere that, although Western Australia is very far away from the main routes of the international concert circuit, there are high-calibre musicians among us who are better than most and second to few. And that is abundantly evident in this fifth volume of recordings in the Perfection of Music series.


Noel Mewton-Wood (piano) and various orchestras

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The Virtuoso

ABC Classics 476 3390

TPT: 77’18”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Noel Mewton-Wood

Noel Mewton-Wood

Piano Concerto No 1: Romanza (Chopin); Traumerei (Schumann); Piano Concerto in A minor: allegro affettuoso (Schumann); Petrarch Sonnet No 104;  Piano Concerto No1: andante semplice (Tchaikowsky); Piano Sonata No 1 in C: rondo presto; Piano Concerto No 4: rondo vivace (Beethoven); Piano Concerto: allegro con brio (Bliss); The Heart’s Assurance (Tippett) with Peter Pears (tenor)

 

This is an important recording which ought to be listened to by anyone with a serious interest in the piano repertoire.

 

Noel Mewton-Wood’s career was like a blazing comet which, having soared across the heavens, vanished –suddenly and without warning – from the firmament. Mewton-Wood’s suicide – over a lovers’ tiff – when in his early thirties, robbed the world of one of the most articulate and profound pianists ever to place music on record. These nine tracks are a catalogue of keyboard marvels that makes Mewton-Wood’s exit from the scene at so tragically early an age even more poignant.

 

As a child, at the dawn of the LP era, the writer was given a gift of a second-hand recording featuring Melbourne-born Mewton-Wood as soloist in Tchaikowsky’s Piano Concerto No 2 in G. To this day, the sense of wonder and delight experienced on hearing this prodigious offering is as clearly recalled as if yesterday. I still treasure that now-ancient LP with its pops and crackles a legacy of being played  times without number.

 

None of this performance features on this recently released CD which brims with other good things, not least wonderfully insightful readings of single movements from concertos by Chopin, Schumann, Beethoven, Tchaikowsky (No 1) and Arthur Bliss. With their frankly stunning insights by a musician of seemingly unlimited potential, this cornucopia of near-peerless offering is a reminder of what a loss the world sustained on Mewton-Wood’s premature death in England. In the Schumann movement, the playing is in turn imperious, tender and virile, every aspect of the music presented with unassailable aesthetic logic.

 

There’s an astonishing track devoted to the finale from Weber’s Sonata No 1 in C. I listened in astonishment to the sort of breathtaking virtuosity one more usually associates with Horowitz in his prime. It’s a feat of prestidigitation that needs to be heard to be believed. The music, qualitatively wafer-thin, has little inherent worth but the dazzling skill with which it is played makes it, for the duration of the piece, seem infinitely more important than it really is –and it is only a wizard of the keyboard that could cast such a spell.

 

Again and again, as one listens to these tracks, there is the sad realisation of a blazing flame of genius extinguished prematurely. Liszt’s Petrarch Sonnet No 104 provides a stunning listening experience.

 

Liner notes by Cyrus Meher-Homji make for fascinating reading.

 

Hopefully, more of Mewton-Wood’s glittering piano legacy will be made available on CD not only as a reminder to those who have already experienced the magic of this extraordinary musician but to reach out to those who have not yet come upon this glittering musical treasure trove.

 

In the Chopin track, the musical argument is expounded with a cogency and lucidity that are breathtaking, insights that are beyond criticism in the conventional sense. Recorded sound is excellent. And Mewton-Wood manages, too, to make Bliss’ long-winded and often-vulgar concerto far more approachable than it, in fact, is.

 

All the works on this CD are mentioned in Sonia Orchard’s novel The Virtuoso.


The Three-Cornered Hat – Spanish Fantasies

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Slava Grigoryan (guitar)

Southern Cross Soloists

ABC Classics 476 6887

TPT: 70’ 50”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

Three-Cornered Hat

Three-Cornered Hat

 

Chiquitita la novia (Obradors); 5 Tonadillas (Granados); The Three-Cornered

Hat (Falla); Two Romances ( Luis de Milan); Castilian Lyrics (Rodrigo); Verlaine Songs (Brophy); Chamber Concerto (Shaun Rigney)

 

It is the instrumentalists who score highest in this attractive compilation. Guitarist Slava Grigoryan is in top form, not least in an accompanying role in a bracket of Tonadillas by Granados. Of course, the original score calls for piano accompaniment to the vocal line. But although the guitar lacks the tonal power of a piano, the accompaniments are played with a stylistic understanding and fragile beauty that go a long way to compensate for the guitar’s lower decibel levels.

 

In a suite drawn from Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, it is again the instrumentalists who take the lion’s share of the honours in a performance that is an absolute delight with clarinet and horn particularly on form, the latter exceptionally so in the Farruca. From first note to last, there is the most delightful engagement with the music. The CD is worth having for this alone. Paul Dean’s arrangement of the Falla original is masterly in that it preserves the essence of the original to a quite remarkable degree..

 

Gerard Brophy’s Verlaine Songs make for most appealing listening, too. Soprano Margaret Schindler does wonders with the spoken text in Your Voice, Deep and Low, informing each note with a most compelling, darkly bodeful quality. Grigoryan is well to the fore, too, with profoundly expressive playing in The White Moon, each note registering on the consciousness. And a heart-easing lift to the phrase underscores the dreamy, languorous, Andalucian-style interior mood of  It’s True. I rather think that Falla would have loved it. Peter Luff, whose horn playing is like a golden thread through this compilation, wonderfully enhances in A Great Black Slumber that brings Brophy’s work to a close.


Sydney Opera House Opening Ceremony

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Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Birgit Nilsson (soprano)

Sir Charles Mackerras (conductor)

ABC Classics 476 6440 plus bonus DVD of highlights

TPT: 74’00”

reviewed by Neville Cohn

 

Mackerras Opera House

Mackerras Opera House

Wagner: Overture: The Mastersingers of  Nuremberg; Tannhauser: Elizabeth’s Greeting; Tristan und Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod; Gotterdammerung: Siegfried’s Rhine Journey; Siegfried’s Funeral Music; Brunnhilde’s Immolation

 

Here’s a souvenir for those who collect Opera House memorabilia: a recording of the opening concert in what was rapidly to become an international arts icon. I dare say that the cultural cringe was alive and well at the time in that the soloist for the occasion was a singer from abroad. This is not to suggest that Birgit Nilsson was unequal to the occasion. Quite to the contrary, with her formidable voice blasting an effortless way through the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at full bore, there would have been few who would question her musical credentials. .

 

It triggers a childhood memory of listening to a radio broadcast of the Johannesburg Festival overture premiered in that city in 1956 to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the gold-rich city. At the time, there were more than a few South African composers who would have been up to the challenge but – no! – it HAD to be someone important from beyond the borders of South Africa. So, at a gala concert to open a South African festival, the audience included just about every South African composer but the commissioned work was by British composer William Walton.

 

Perhaps the same thinking informed the decision to feature a Swedish diva with, I dare say, the cultural cringers convinced, as in South Africa of the 1950s,  that ”if she’s imported, she’s bound to be better”. How, I wonder would Joan Sutherland have fared in Nilsson’s place? It’s a pretty safe bet, I believe, that she would have brought the house down bearing in mind that by 1973 she was at the height of her powers.

 

None of this should be considered a vote of no confidence in the Swedish soprano’s abilities. She is at her superb best in Wagner’s Liebestod, effortlessly riding the crest of the accompanying orchestral wave. And in Elizabeth’s Dich, teure Halle from Tannhauser, she is at the top of her formidable form as  Wagnerian diva par excellence.

 

Siegfried’s Rhine Journey makes for mostly impressive listening with Mackerras  coaxing a uniform tonal sheen from the strings to which the brass and woodwind choirs respond with commendable  unanimity of attack. Much the same could be said of Siegfried’s Funeral Music with lower strings at their eloquent best. In fairness, though, this SSO performance should not be taken as indicative of the orchestra’s present form which, in an overall sense, is most significantly more polished than in the 1970s.

 

A bonus, black & white DVD of these events makes for a fascinating souvenir.