Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Nikolai Kapustin: Piano Concerto No. 4, Concerto for Violin & Piano & Chamber Symphony

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By Norman Lebrecht on 27 August 2021 Lebrecht Weekly

Nikolai Kapustin had to die before the world took note of his music. A love of jazz left him scratching a living in Moscow as house pianist for the radio orchestra, playing everyone else’s music but his own. His Toccata for piano and big band, written in 1964, declared his creatve intentions. The commissars were not impressed. Though Kapustin obtained a few performances and publications, it was only in the 21st century that a western edition took an interest. When he died a year ago, he left 161 works in print, including six piano concertos and 20 sonatas. To modern…

Erno von Dohnanyi: My auntie (Capriccio)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 20 August 2021 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Newswire

The founder of the Dohnanyi dynasty achieved early success, political controversy and posthumous oblivion. His son, Hans, was an anti-Nazi resistant, hanged on Hitler’s orders in 1945. His grandson, Christoph, became an international conductor. Dohnanyi himself was investigated after the War for having held a Budapest post under the Horthy regime and settling to Vienna in November 1944. No concrete evidence of collaboration was ever presented. He migrated to the US in 1949, teaching for a decade until his death at the University of Florida at Tallahassee. It is hard to take entirely seriously who wrote a comic opera about…

Alice Sara Ott; Echoes of Life (Deutsche Grammophon)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 13 August 2021 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

The German-Japanese pianist, a trophy artist on Deutsche Grammophon, is facing the onset of multiple sclerosis with courage, positivism and ingenuity. On her tenth album she seeks to give the preludes of Frederic Chopin a contemporary twist by interleaving them with some of her favourite modern composers. Her daring approach changes the colouring of some of the Chopin so that certain preludes sound like shards of Philip Glass that got left on the mixing desk – not that Glass is present in the mix. The composers she chooses are compellingly more eclectic. There is the Italian Francesco Tristano, who reimagines…

Simon Trpčeski

The Lebrecht Weekly: Shostakovich – Piano concertos 1&2; piano trio 2 (Linn)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 6 August 2021 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

One of the perils of the Covid period is the forgetfulness . We no longer remember the physical thrill of hearing a favourite work and recordings sometimes fail to deliver that visceral satisfaction. Here’s an exception. Shostakovich wrote his first concerto for himself to play and the second for his son, Maxim. The degree of difficulty is relative; neither was a virtuoso pianist. The writing is rich in orchestral texture and, in the first work, amounts could almost be a trumpet concerto. The second piano trio, written in wartime, is a lament for the sufferings of Jewish citizens under Hitler and…

The Lebrecht Weekly: Wilhelm Furtwängler – 1st symphony (CPO)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 30 July 2021 Lebrecht Weekly

In the spring of 1943, with millions being murdered across the continent of Europe, Germany’s wealthiest conductor summoned the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to rehearse a symphony he had written in B minor, his first. Furtwängler had been writing it, on and off, since 1908 and had lately added a fourth movement for which he had high hopes. These aspirations were dashed on first play-through. ‘Am very depressed,’ he told his wife. Of all things to get depressed about at this darkest moment in modern history, a symphony seems relatively trivial, but such was the size of the maestro’s ego that…

Randall Goosby: Roots (Decca)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 23 July 2021 Lebrecht Weekly

Summertime is an ideal moment to break a new artist, a time when big names are out of town and the flow of label releases dries up. Randall Goosby, 25, is Decca’s new poster-boy violinist. With an African-American father and Korean mother, he has been groomed for a stage career by Itzhak Perlman and the Juilliard fame school. He has major-league management in London and New York and a pleasant way of engaging with media. What could possibly go wrong? On first impression – this is his debut album – Goosby has all the technique anyone could need and an off-the-shoulder phrasing…

Nico Muhly

The Lebrecht Weekly: First Light – Muhly and Glass (Pentatone)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 16 July 2021 Lebrecht Weekly

In a decade when no-one is writing new symphonies – depressed, no doubt, by Covid performance constraints – we are having to make do with new violin concertos commissioned by the likes of Patricia Kopatchinskaya and Pekka Kuusisto. The Finnish virtuoso turned for his premiere to Nico Muhly, a New York composer who used to assist Philip Glass, and has augmented this album with works by his minimalist master. Fearing this might sound samey and predictable, I found myself in for a pleasant surprise; more than one, in fact. Muhly’s concerto, titled Shrink, has repetitive tropes but they are mitigated…

Heitor Villa-Lobos

The Lebrecht Weekly: Heitor Villa-Lobos – Violin sonatas (Naxos)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 9 July 2021 Lebrecht Weekly

Covid has narrowed our outlook so severely that we are hardly aware of the world abroad. Brazil has suffered 19 million cases with more than half a million deaths, isolating the country as never before among the community of nations. Villa-Lobos, Its national composer, feted worldwide from the 1930s to the 1950s, has long since faded. His music always sounds fresh when I return to it after an absence, glistening with the swaying hips of a summer’s night on the Copacabana. The three Villa-Lobos violin sonatas, styled for an international audience are steamed with traces of Brahms, Debussy and Saint-Saens,…

Nino Rota

The Lebrecht Weekly: Nino Rota – Chamber music (Alpha)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 2 July 2021 Lebrecht Weekly

In the summer of 1943, and for reasons still unclear, Milan’s best young composer moved to the undeveloped south of Italy and stayed there for the rest of his life. Nino Rota, at 32, was content to be a teacher in Bari, later director of its Conservatorio. Had he not needed to earn a little extra money on the side in Rome’s dolce vita film industry, he might never have been heard of again. Rota’s symbiotic partnership with the director Federico Fellini, starting with The White Sheik in 1952, catapulted him to world fame and redefined the art of composing for film.…

Eblana String Trio

The Lebrecht Weekly: The King’s Alchemist (Willowhayne Records)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 25 June 2021 Lebrecht Weekly

If you are ever asked at Heathrow Airport to prove your residency by naming a work of English music, this album will do nicely. Leaving the arresting title track to last, this string trio recital contains a breathtaking account of the Prelude and fugue by Gerald Finzi (1901-56), a pre-War lament for his deceased teacher. A London Jew who composed like a country vicar, Finzi is hard to pin down but this is one of his truest moments and most perfect inspirations. Hugh Wood (b. 1932) can sound like an absentminded professor but his opus 61, titled Ithaka, has a…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Nikolai Kapustin: Piano Concerto No. 4, Concerto for Violin & Piano & Chamber Symphony

Erno von Dohnanyi: My auntie (Capriccio)

Alice Sara Ott; Echoes of Life (Deutsche Grammophon)

The Lebrecht Weekly: Shostakovich – Piano concertos 1&2; piano trio 2 (Linn)

The Lebrecht Weekly: Wilhelm Furtwängler – 1st symphony (CPO)

Randall Goosby: Roots (Decca)

The Lebrecht Weekly: First Light – Muhly and Glass (Pentatone)

The Lebrecht Weekly: Heitor Villa-Lobos – Violin sonatas (Naxos)

The Lebrecht Weekly: Nino Rota – Chamber music (Alpha)

The Lebrecht Weekly: The King’s Alchemist (Willowhayne Records)

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