CD and Book Reviews - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly | Admirable Recording of Mahler Pioneers

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By Norman Lebrecht on 3 January 2025 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

The death of composer Alexander Goehr last August reminded obituarists of the vital contributions his refugee father Walter Goehr had made to insular British culture. Walter worked as a house conductor for EMI and for one of the BBC’s weaker orchestras. He is remembered chiefly for giving the 1953 UK premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalia Symphony, but he also introduced a gamut of novelties from Monteverdi to Mahler, Schoenberg and Stravinsky to Britten and Tippett. The first shock on hearing Das Klagende Lied and the fourth symphony is how intuitively he grasped Mahler’s unpredictable pauses and rhythmic shifts. He makes…

Photo: Busoni. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital File Number: cph 3c26592)

Lebrecht Weekly | Busoni’s Centenary: Recordings of Piano Works and Doctor Faust

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By Norman Lebrecht on 27 December 2024 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly

What’s the point in having a centenary if it doesn’t restore a reputation? A hundred years have passed since the German-Italian Busoni died in Berlin and, while we’ve heard his massive piano concerto in concerthalls during 1924, nothing much else has happened to change the general perception that Busoni was a formidable pianist with great ideas that did not necessarily translate into music of lasting value. Two albums of piano works reinforce that image. The German pianist Wolf Harden has reached volume 13 in his Naxos trawl of the complete works. While awed by his persistence and dedication, I find…

Marmen Quartet, Photo: Marco Borggreve

Lebrecht Weekly | Marmen Quartet Excels in Ligeti & Bartok String Quartets

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By Norman Lebrecht on 13 December 2024 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Lebrecht Weekly

It’s 30 years since I heard Gyorgy Ligeti explain why he was allowing his first string quartet to be performed after four decades lying in a drawer. The quartet, composed in 1954, was too close to its sources. “It’s Bartok’s seventh,’ said Ligeti, ‘But I’ve now realised that’s not such a bad thing.” Titled Metamorphoses nocturnes, the quartet has buzzing insects, whispering grasses and many things that go bump in the night. In amidst the feral noises there are wistful lines of melody and a macabre sense of humour, blacker by far than Bartok’s Bluebeard. Every now and then, a…

CD Review | Migrant Voices, Itamar Erez and Hamin Honari

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By Hassan Laghcha on 14 November 2024 CD and Book Reviews

Migrant Voices Itamar Erez, guitar, requinto, bandola; Hamin Honari, drum, daf, tombak, cymbals Independent, 2024 Given the current crisis in the Middle East, Migrant Voices by the duo Itamar Erez, a Canadian guitarist of Israeli origin, and Hamin Honari, a Canadian percussionist of Iranian origin, shows that art can transcend warring doctrinal divides. Their album offers two actors for peace a platform in these tragic times. With the exception of the title track, the album is made up of free improvisations. And that is precisely where its great merit lies. Erez (guitar, requinto and bandola) and Honari (frame drum, daf,…

CD Review | Etienne Dupuis in Massenet’s Hérodiade

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By Pascal Blanchet on 14 November 2024 CD and Book Reviews

Massenet : Hérodiade Nicole Car, soprano; Clémentine Margaine, mezzo-soprano; Etienne Dupuis, baritone; Matthew Polenzani, tenor; Orchestra and Chorus of Deutsche Oper Berlin; Enrique Mazzola, conductor Naxos, 2024 In 1881, more than 20 years before Richard Strauss, Jules Massenet wrote an opera starring the biblical heroine Salomé, but the work was named after her mother, Hérodiade. At the time, Massenet was still considered a young composer, having achieved good success with Le roi de Lahore (1877), but his first big success, Manon (1884), was still to come. Commentators criticized the libretto of Hérodiade for being too disparate and cluttered, mixing up…

CD Review | Flórez: Zarzuela

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By Pascal Blanchet on 13 November 2024 CD and Book Reviews

Flórez: Zarzuela Composers: José Serrano, Ruperto Chapí, Federico Moreno Torroba, Amadeo Vives, Pablo Luna, Géronimo Giménez, Agustín Pérez Soriano, Pablo Sorozábal, Rafael Calleja & Tomás Barrera, Reveriano Soutullo & Juan Vert; tenor: Juan Diego Flórez; Sinfonía por el Perú Youth Orchestra and Choir; Guillermo García Calvo, conductor Florez Records, 2024 The zarzuela, that typically Spanish operatic genre, alternates singing and spoken dialogue, treating less dramatic subjects than one usually finds in Western European opera. It is roughly the equivalent of German Singspiel or French opéra comique, but these comparisons perhaps do not do justice to works that are more complex…

CD Review | Reynaldo Hahn Mélodies, Bruno Laplante

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By Hassan Laghcha on 12 November 2024 CD and Book Reviews

Reynaldo Hahn Mélodies: Chansons grises, Études latinesBruno Laplante, baritone; Janine Lachance, Rena Sharon, Marc Durand, pianoNouveau Théâtre Musical, 2024 “Si mes vers avaient des ailes” (Victor Hugo), “L’heure exquise” (Paul Verlaine) and “L’énamourée” (Théodore de Banville). These are standouts among the 30 or so songs reissued on this album by French-Canadian recitalist Bruno Laplante. In this first volume of his Livre d’or de la mélodie française, the baritone performs songs by Venezuelan-born French composer Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) set to some of French literature’s most iconic texts. Elegance and precision. These are the two key words that come to mind when…

CD Review | Brahms Cello Sonatas, Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan

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By Justin Bernard on 12 November 2024 CD and Book Reviews

Brahms Cello Sonatas Alisa Weilerstein, cello; Inon Barnatan, piano Pentatone, 2024 Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan return with an album devoted to Brahms: three famous sonatas, one of which is an arrangement of the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1 in G major. “This project is a celebration of our shared artistic vision and the mutual respect that has developed over many years of playing together,“ says the cellist in the liner notes. To play Brahms, you need an understanding and a balance between each of the parts that only a long collaboration can provide. In the Sonata No.…

CD Review | The Mata Hari Songbook, Patricia O’Callaghan

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By John Gilks on 8 November 2024 CD and Book Reviews

Burge/Walker —The Mata Hari Songbook Patricia O’Callaghan, soprano; John Burge, piano Centrediscs, 2024 The Mata Hari Songbook, with music by John Burge and lyrics by Craig Walker, began life as a two-act stage show One Last Night with Mata Hari that played in Kingston, Ont., in 2017. The CD features 10 of the songs from the show, bookended by piano pieces from Burge’s Mata Hari Suite. Burge is at the piano with Toronto’s multi-genre chanteuse Patricia O’Callaghan as Mata Hari. Mata Hari, on the evening before her execution, relates her life story. She recounts her journey from being mistress to…

CD Review | Rachel Fenlon, Winterreise

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By Gianmarco Segato on 8 November 2024 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Vocal

Schubert: Winterreise Rachel Fenlon, soprano & piano Orchid Classics, 2024 Franz Schubert’s devastatingly confessional song cycle, Winterreise (1828) charts the journey of a spurned narrator through 24 songs set to poems by Wilhelm Müller. It is a pinnacle of Romanticism and foundational to the German Lied (Song) tradition. Although more associated with male singers, it was recorded by German mezzo-soprano Elena Gerhardt as early as 1928 and, in more recent times, by mezzos Christa Ludwig, Brigitte Fassbaender and contralto Nathalie Stutzmann. What makes Canadian soprano Rachel Fenlon’s new traversal unique is that she acts as her own accompanist, the first…

Browsing: CD and Book Reviews

Lebrecht Weekly | Admirable Recording of Mahler Pioneers

Lebrecht Weekly | Busoni’s Centenary: Recordings of Piano Works and Doctor Faust

Lebrecht Weekly | Marmen Quartet Excels in Ligeti & Bartok String Quartets

CD Review | Migrant Voices, Itamar Erez and Hamin Honari

CD Review | Etienne Dupuis in Massenet’s Hérodiade

CD Review | Flórez: Zarzuela

CD Review | Reynaldo Hahn Mélodies, Bruno Laplante

CD Review | Brahms Cello Sonatas, Alisa Weilerstein and Inon Barnatan

CD Review | The Mata Hari Songbook, Patricia O’Callaghan

CD Review | Rachel Fenlon, Winterreise

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