Lebrecht Weekly - my/maSCENA

Lebrecht Weekly – Ustvolskaya, Silvestrov & Kancheli: Works for Piano & Orchestra

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By Norman Lebrecht on 2 September 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

The late Soviet system created damaging monopolies in the arts as much as they did in state industry. The big brands – Shostakovich, Khachaturian – flourished at the expense of all others. A young composer who wanted to get ahead would offer clever imitations. Others found a voice and kept it largely to themselves. The three composers in this intriguing album each tackled the hegemony from a different aspect. Galina Ustvolskaya, the student closest to Shostakovich (he wanted to marry her), retreated into a form of religious meditation that was all the more unusual for its occasional bursts of fury.…

Lebrecht Weekly – Elgar Remastered (Somm)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 26 August 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral

My instant reaction to this 4-CD box was that it’s strictly for audio buffs and English music devotees, whose lives will be infinitely enriched by rummaging through the disused takes of Sir Edward Elgar’s recordings of his own works between 1919 and his death in 1934. My second response, on reading Lani Spahr’s nerdish essay on the masters in Elgar’s private library is that only the golden-ears, acoustic-era brigade would get much out of this. How wrong I was. Before I describe the contents of the box, it’s important to know that Elgar dried up as a composer after the…

Lebrecht Weekly – Martinu: Ariane (Supraphon)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 19 August 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Opera, Orchestral

I am beginning to wonder if posterity will ever place Bohuslav Martinů where he justly belongs, as the last in a quartet of Czech geniuses, after Smetana, Dvořák, and Janáček. With each passing year, Martinů (1890–1959) seems to recede further into the mists, his 16 operas unstaged, his six symphonies unperformed. Czechs find him too cosmopolitan – he lived most of his life in France and the US – while others are daunted by his mountainous output. There are more than 400 recorded works by Martinů, all of high proficiency. When the innocent ear catches Martinů for the first time, it recognises a …

Lebrecht Weekly – Schubert Lieder: Der Wanderer (Delphian)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 12 August 2016 Art Song, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic

It’s always a good sign when a pianist is named as the editorial force behind a lieder recital, giving the enterprise both objective distance and intellectual rigour. Graham Johnson’s Schubert cycle on Hyperion is a benchmark of this rule, each singer chosen to reflect the character of the group of songs performed. Now the vastly knowledgeable Iain Burnside has begun a similar odyssey on the exquisite Scottish label, Delphian. I must have somehow missed the first volume with soprano Ailish Tynan, but the second is a cracker. The Welsh baritone Roderick Williams, winner of this year’s Royal Philharmonic Society award,…

Lebrecht Weekly – Bruno Walter: Violin Sonata / Piano Quintet (Naxos)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 5 August 2016 Chamber Music, Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly

The most successful and elusive of Gustav Mahler’s inner circle, Bruno Walter was ranked among the foremost conductors of his time, esteemed equally by the jealous and mutually hostile Toscanini and Furtwängler and showered with offers when he arrived in the US as a Hitler refugee in 1939. Mahler had taken Walter on as his assistant in Hamburg when he was barely out of school at 18, guided his career path to Vienna and entrusted him with the first performances of Das Lied von der Erde and the ninth symphony. Walter, for his part, kept an objective distance from his…

Lebrecht Weekly – Jean Sibelius: Symphonies 3, 6 and 7 (BIS)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 29 July 2016 Lebrecht Weekly, Orchestral, Romantic

This is one the world has been waiting for. The Minnesota Orchestra’s partnership with the Finnish conductor Osmo Vänskä is a treasure of our times, especially when they play music of the frozen north. Minnesota is sufficiently remote from the rest of musical America to maintain its own sound and Vänskä, ever the iconoclast, has his own particular way of refreshing familiar scores. The start of their Sibelius cycle hit the decks with a whoosh five years ago. Then, disaster. A hardline board, allied to an inept English manager, got into a wage dispute with the orchestra and locked them…

Lebrecht Weekly – F. X. Mozart/Clementi: Piano Concertos (Hyperion)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 22 July 2016 Classical, Lebrecht Weekly, Piano

Mozart had a little boy, born four months before he died. Salieri recommended that the kid, Franx Xaver, should stick with the family trade and become a travelling pianist and composer. Trading on the Mozart name, F. X. made a living in places like Lemberg (Lviv), Salzburg and Karlsbad (Karlo Vivary). He died of stomach cancer in 1844, at the age of 53, never having married or settled down, living in awe of the father he never knew. The music he wrote is so little known that the sight of his name on a record sleeve makes you want to…

Lebrecht Weekly – Polish Violin Concertos (Naxos)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 15 July 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Violin

There used to be a truth, universally acknowledged across the record industry, that you could put out unfamiliar music with a famous artist or popular music with an unheralded performer but never attempt what Donald Rumsfeld might have called the unknown unknowns. That fundamental truth was well and truly overturned by the rise of Naxos, which built its fortune on a catholic blend of neglected artists and untapped catalogue, often with salutary results. The present release is a case in point. None of these four concertos is much performed, even in Poland where there might be a streak of national…

Lebrecht Weekly – Felix Mendelssohn: Songs without words (BIS)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 8 July 2016 Lebrecht Weekly, Piano, Romantic

As a general rule, I would rather eat porridge that has been left to stand overnight than listen to music of the romantic era being played on what is supposed to be a period instrument and is actually a modern replica, made the year before last. In this case, a reproduction of an 1830 Paris Pleyel that was manufactured by Paul McNulty in 2010. I mean, why….? Then again, ask any composer if he or she wanted their music to be played on the best possible soundboard or on a washboard and you’ll get an answer far more conclusive than…

Lebrecht Weekly – Glazunov, Khachaturian: Violin Concertos (Avanti)

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By Norman Lebrecht on 1 July 2016 Contemporary, Lebrecht Weekly, Romantic, Violin

The archetype Russian violin concerto – Tchaikovsky’s – looms so large over the musical landscape that all others seem no more than sidebars. Two concertos (each) by Prokofiev and Shostakovich are rooted in political circumstances, inseparable from their history. Miaskovsky’s concerto never took off, despite the advocacy of David Oistrakh, Weinberg’s is emerging too slowly to be counted and the rest barely make up a respectable quorum. Apart from the present pair. Alexander Glazunov wrote his concerto in 1905 for the violin professor Leopold Auer, a formidable authority who once refused to premiere Tchaikosky’s concerto unless he made extensive changes.…

Browsing: Lebrecht Weekly

Lebrecht Weekly – Ustvolskaya, Silvestrov & Kancheli: Works for Piano & Orchestra

Lebrecht Weekly – Elgar Remastered (Somm)

Lebrecht Weekly – Martinu: Ariane (Supraphon)

Lebrecht Weekly – Schubert Lieder: Der Wanderer (Delphian)

Lebrecht Weekly – Bruno Walter: Violin Sonata / Piano Quintet (Naxos)

Lebrecht Weekly – Jean Sibelius: Symphonies 3, 6 and 7 (BIS)

Lebrecht Weekly – F. X. Mozart/Clementi: Piano Concertos (Hyperion)

Lebrecht Weekly – Polish Violin Concertos (Naxos)

Lebrecht Weekly – Felix Mendelssohn: Songs without words (BIS)

Lebrecht Weekly – Glazunov, Khachaturian: Violin Concertos (Avanti)

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