Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly – A Renée Fleming record that can’t end soon enough

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By Norman Lebrecht on 3 February 2017 Art Song, CD and Book Reviews, Lebrecht Weekly, Popular Music

I hope this is not Renée Fleming’s final record. The American soprano, in her late 50s, is closing her stage career with the voice unblemished and the memories fond. It would be a pity if her legacy on Decca was to be concluded by this album, which plays to all her weaknesses. Samuel Barber’s lyric rhapsody Knoxville: Summer of 2015 requires a rich soprano voice and a capacity to articulate James Agee’s achingly nostalgic English text. Ms Fleming has the first quality. Pronouncing the words has never been her forte. The best ears will strain here to catch more than…

Lebrecht Weekly – Leonard Bernstein: Symphonies 1 and 2 (Naxos)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 27 January 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

Bernstein’s three symphonies have not enjoyed much exposure on record. Aside from the Sony and DG releases conducted by the composer, my database calls up only three other versions – Leonard Slatkin at the BBC, James Judd in New Zealand and an LA Phil DG download conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. While the composer’s edition must be considered in some sense definitive, his take on the two works has failed to ignite the public imagination. What catches my ear about Marin Alsop’s new recording with the Baltimore Symphony is how strikingly it diverges from her master’s voice. In the Jeremiah symphony,…

Lebrecht Weekly – Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies (ECM)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 20 January 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Chamber Music, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

When I first started writing about Weinberg quarter of a century ago, there was no consistent western spelling of his surname (mostly printed Vainberg) and his first name was given as Moisei (pronounced Moshe), consistent with Soviet policy of identifying racial minorities. As for the music, it was unknown beyond the Soviet bloc, where it was more familiar to musicians in private performances than it was to public audiences. Today, thanks largely to proselytism by Gidon Kremer and his friends, Weinberg is no longer obscure but a musical giant, waiting to be discovered. The musician closest to Shostakovich – each…

Lebrecht Weekly – Boris Giltburg Plays Shostakovich

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By Norman Lebrecht on 13 January 2017 CD and Book Reviews, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

What is remarkable about both piano concertos is that neither was intended for virtuoso performers. Shostakovich wrote the first in 1933 for himself to play with the Leningrad Philharmonic and the second in 1957 as a birthday present for his son Maxim, who was intent on a conducting career. The lack of flash effects in the score intensifies the directness and sincerity of both works. Listen with eyes closed and you can imagine the state-harassed composer playing the first concerto in some remote corner of the Soviet empire, sharing the limelight with the local trumpet player and Kazak strings. Shostakovich’s…

Lebrecht Weekly – Pietro Mascagni: Guglielmo Ratcliff (RTE Lyric)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 6 January 2017 Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Romantic

Whenever I watch any opera by Mascagni and Leoncavallo other than ‘Cav’ and ‘Pag’ I have no trouble understanding why the two composers went down in history as one-hit wonders. True, there are those who make claims for Leoncavallo’s La Boheme (Mahler deemed it vastly inferior to Puccini’s) and others are thrilled by Mascagni’s sex-slave Iris, but neither work has struck me as more than a barrel-scraping of the short-lived 1890s verismo craze, deservedly occupying the fringes of musical memory. All the more reason, then, to eat a few of my words on this first encounter with Guglielmo Ratcliff, a…

Lebrecht Weekly – Last Album of 2016

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By Norman Lebrecht on 30 December 2016 Art Song, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

Pictures of America: Natalie Dessay (Sony Classical) News of a Natalie Dessay release always stirs me to a fevered expectation. The French soprano, now retired from the opera stage, has an extraordinary ability to find character between the lines of a song, even one that is overly familiar or resistant to shades of interpretation. Why, she once won me over to choose a Debussy set as my album of the year… So my curiosity was well and truly piqued when Ms Dessay announced an album of American songs based on her reaction to well-known American paintings by Edward Hopper. What…

Lebrecht Weekly – J. S. Bach: The complete keyboard works (Erato)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 16 December 2016 Baroque and Early, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

Amid the seasonal rock fall of weird-shaped box sets and unopenable recorded turkeys, one project stands out as indispensable in both musical and moral dimensions. In 1965, a little-known harpsichordist began recording the Bach keyboard works for a niche French label. By the time she finished ten years later, Zuzana Ruzickova and Erato had received every French record award, wresting harpsichord Bach away from deadhand American academics back to a middle-European vivacity. Ruzickova, resisting celebrity, Communism and the temptations of the music world, taught the next three generations of leading harpsichordists from her home in Prague. A survivor of four…

Lebrecht Weekly – The alternative record of the year

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By Norman Lebrecht on 9 December 2016 Classical Music, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic, Violin

Most critics pick their album of the year from the ones they reviewed over the past 52 weeks. I’ve decided to choose from the ones I haven’t, the ones that for one reason or other failed to make the weekly cut. So much good stuff out there. Try Peter Donohoe’s new set of the Scriabin sonatas (Somm ****), the early ones especially showing where Rachmaninov might have gone if he had followed fantasy to the end of the flight. And Boris Giltburg’s account of the Rachmaninov’s Etudes-tableaux (Naxos ****) has not strayed far from my player all year long. I…

Lebrecht Weekly – Henselt: Piano works (Edition Peters)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 2 December 2016 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

If there was an award for surprise of the year, this unpretentious release would win both the jury and the public vote. Adolph von Henselt, born 1814, was written off by music history as an also-ran, one of those stern faces in the back row of romantic group portraits, somewhere behind Chopin and Liszt. Unable to make his name or much of a living in Germany, Henselt went off to teach in St Petersburg, where the Tsar added a ‘von’ to his name. His influence on Russian pianism is considerable – he taught Zverev, Rachmaninov’s teacher – and he still…

Lebrecht Weekly – András Schiff: Encores after Beethoven (ECM)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 25 November 2016 Classical, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

In a reflective programme note, the ex-Hungarian pianist Sir András Schiff remembers being rebuked as a young Vienna debutant for playing “a prematurely given encore.” The caution, he says, was “golden advice.” The encore, if given, must be timed and attuned to how audience has responded to the concert. It should be neither hasty nor frivolous, not too soon and not too much. This album gathers together the encores that Schiff gave over the course of a Zurich cycle of the 32 Beethoven sonatas in 2004–5. The seriousness level is set high and there are no obvious crowd-pleasers. This is…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Lebrecht Weekly – A Renée Fleming record that can’t end soon enough

Lebrecht Weekly – Leonard Bernstein: Symphonies 1 and 2 (Naxos)

Lebrecht Weekly – Mieczyslaw Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies (ECM)

Lebrecht Weekly – Boris Giltburg Plays Shostakovich

Lebrecht Weekly – Pietro Mascagni: Guglielmo Ratcliff (RTE Lyric)

Lebrecht Weekly – Last Album of 2016

Lebrecht Weekly – J. S. Bach: The complete keyboard works (Erato)

Lebrecht Weekly – The alternative record of the year

Lebrecht Weekly – Henselt: Piano works (Edition Peters)

Lebrecht Weekly – András Schiff: Encores after Beethoven (ECM)

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