Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly – Hans Werner Henze: Kammermusik 1958, Neue Volkslieder (Tudor)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 25 August 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Modern composers, when they die, go into limbo for about a decade before their reputation settles. It has been five years since Henze left us and I miss bumping into his music, on the radio, at festivals, anywhere. It has all gone rather quiet. Which may account for my excessive pleasure at encountering these otherworldly pieces, rich in references to a forgotten age and its leisurely pace. The Kammermusik, for tenor, guitar and eight instruments, is dedicated to Benjamin Britten in thanks for introducing Henze to the guitarist Julian Bream. But although Henze quotes a Britten phrase and dabbles wistfully…

Lebrecht Weekly – Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus (Hyperion)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 18 August 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

The US composer Bunita Marcus worked for seven years with Morton Feldman and subsequently accused him, after his death, of sexual abuse. Feldman wrote this piece as an act of homage to Marcus. It begins with what appears to be a visit by an extremely unhurried piano tuner and proceeds by its own logic into a sound world where time and motion lose all meaning. It lasts for 72 minutes and 38 seconds and unless it has succeeded in transcending such mundane measurements the experience will probably feel like eternity. The pianist Marc-André Hamelin reports that “the first time I…

Lebrecht Weekly – Joyce El-Khoury, Michael Spyres (Opera Rara)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 11 August 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Romantic

Now here’s a surprise. A new release from Opera Rara usually consists of some bel canto work that has languished forgotten in a vault since its premiere 160 years ago, and usually for good reason (as becomes apparent when you’re halfway through the unreviewable second disc). This package, though, is different: a pair of debut releases by two fast-rising singers, soprano and tenor, mingling well-known arias with the fairly obscure. El-Khoury, a Lebanese-Canadian, sticks mostly to well-trodden tracks, albeit with interesting variations. The Berlioz setting of a Freischütz piece is new to me, as is anything from Hérold’s Le Pré aux clercs, which turns out…

Lebrecht Weekly – Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (DG)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 4 August 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Choral, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

The first thing you need to know about Daniel Barenboim’s live performance with the Staatskapelle Berlin is that it is the best-sounding Gerontius on record. No British string section has ever played the work with such sweet serenity. No British winds ever breathed with such deep assurance. Strange as it may seem, the Berlin musicians and chorus singers feel this most English of works in their fingers and bones. There is something akin to love in their playing. This is not to disparage past recordings, all by English forces, notably the Halle’s with John Barbirolli and two-thirds of a dream…

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: 5th symphony (Bis/BR Klassik)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 28 July 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

If you go out and buy the Minnesota Orchestra’s Bis recording of Mahler’s fifth symphony, rest assured that you need never buy another. It’s resoundingly well played in every department, devoid of the bravado that impairs some American performances, and discreetly shaped by the music director Osmo Vänskä, who finds organic solutions for some of the more abrupt shifts in the score. Vänskä’s approach is coolly objective. He plays what is in the score and allows the listener to find his or her own level of emotional engagement. The Adagietto, at twelve and a half minutes, is slower than is…

Lebrecht Weekly – Walton: Violin concerto, Hindemith variations (Hyperion)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 21 July 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

Any new recording of the Walton concerto will always be measured against Jascha Heifetz, who commissioned the work in 1935, edited the solo part and gave the first performances, throwing down a challenge to all others to do it better, or different. Ida Haendel and Yehudi Menuhin were able to soften the granitic contours but few others have suggested that there is more to the piece than the mighty Heifetz mined out of it. Now along comes Anthony Marwood and turns our ears around. From first utterance, he finds an expansive, Elgarian colour to the piece, a breadth of phrase…

Lebrecht Weekly – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Julia Varady: Romantic duets (Hänssler Profil)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 14 July 2017 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

I spent a morning with the great baritone in his Berlin home a couple of years before he died. Fischer-Dieskau was in morose mood. His wife Julia was out teaching, he told me twice, seeming to resent her absence. ‘I did too much,’ he confessed, regretting his dominance in Lieder, a field in which he covered not just German song but English, Russian and French. Still, sometimes too much is not enough. The present release is a 1989 duet recital he gave with his wife and the pianist Robert Höll at the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, expecting that it would be…

Lebrecht Weekly – Shostakovich, Martinu: Second cello concertos (Bis)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 7 July 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral, Strings

The second concerto for cello by Dmitri Shostakovich is the least ingratiating of the six he wrote, two for each major instrument. Opening with a gloomy, growling monologue, the solo part is matched in misery by the orchestra. The concerto was written in 1966 and first performed by Mstislav Rostropovich at a Moscow concert to mark the composer’s 60th birthday. Knowing that public pessimism was an offence in the Soviet Union, Shostakovich held nothing back. The four-minute middle movement is friskier, though no less morbid than the opening Largo. Only in the finale does the composer express some relief and gratitude…

Lebrecht Weekly – Ben-Haim: Concerto Grosso 1, Symphony No. 2 (NDR)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 30 June 2017 CD and Book Reviews, La Scena Online, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

In May 1933, the composer Paul Frankenburger left Munich for Tel-Aviv, where he Hebraised his surname and became teacher of the first generation of Israeli-born composers. An austere man, steeped in German Bildung, Ben-Haim grew excited by the microtonal singing of Jews from Arab lands and accompanied the Yemenite performer Bracha Zefira at the piano on extensive concert tours. His orchestral music, however, remained strictly tonal. The Concerto Grosso, premiered by the Palestine Symphony Orchestra under Issay Dobrowen, takes its neo-classical form from Stravinsky and Strauss and its expansive slow movement from Mahler and Brahms. That said, Ben-Haim is…

Lebrecht Weekly – Richard Strauss: Through Life and Love (Orchid)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 23 June 2017 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

Of the two UK finalists in BBC Cardiff Singer of the World last weekend, many felt the English soprano Louise Alder stood a better chance than the Scottish mezzo Catriona Morison. Alder commanded the stage with unfeigned confidence, a breeziness that shines through this, her well-timed debut recording. The repertoire is bold, as well. Songs by Richard Strauss are not for wallflowers. Everything has to be just-so, shimmering on the surface and hinting at Freudian urges below. Alder, who made an opera debut as Glyndebourne’s stand-in Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier in 2014, sounds undaunted by anything Strauss can throw at…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Lebrecht Weekly – Hans Werner Henze: Kammermusik 1958, Neue Volkslieder (Tudor)

Lebrecht Weekly – Morton Feldman: For Bunita Marcus (Hyperion)

Lebrecht Weekly – Joyce El-Khoury, Michael Spyres (Opera Rara)

Lebrecht Weekly – Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (DG)

Lebrecht Weekly – Mahler: 5th symphony (Bis/BR Klassik)

Lebrecht Weekly – Walton: Violin concerto, Hindemith variations (Hyperion)

Lebrecht Weekly – Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Julia Varady: Romantic duets (Hänssler Profil)

Lebrecht Weekly – Shostakovich, Martinu: Second cello concertos (Bis)

Lebrecht Weekly – Ben-Haim: Concerto Grosso 1, Symphony No. 2 (NDR)

Lebrecht Weekly – Richard Strauss: Through Life and Love (Orchid)

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