BBC Music Magazine Choices,
BBC Music Magazine - April 2023 Choices
Top honours this month go to the final instalment of Phantasm's Well-Tempered Consort series on Linn, with reviewer Ingrid Pearson declaring that the 'intensely moving and highly intimate music-making reduced me to tears on my first hearing'; the programme includes arrangements of the Chorale Preludes 'Wir glauben all an einen Gott' and 'Christe, aller Welt Trost', two pieces from the Inventions & Sinfonias, and of course excerpts from both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier (all made by the viol consort's founder Laurence Dreyfus).
Category choices include John Wilson and Sinfonia of London's 'magnificent' recording of music for strings by Vaughan Williams, Howells, Delius & Elgar, Arabella Steinbacher's 'treasurable' accounts of Bach's violin concertos with Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, and the world premiere recording of Chevalier de Saint-Georges's 1780 opera L’amant Anonyme (with soprano Nicole Cabell on 'superb' form as the wealthy widow Léontine).
Recording of the Month
'This is a truly outstanding album, which rewards the listener with profound aural pleasure. Through the intimacy of the viol consort these keyboard works are clothed in a new timbral mantle, equally sumptuous and revelatory.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Orchestral Choice
'The sound, engineered by Ralph Couzens, is magnificent...While fully relishing the at times dreamy polyphony of Vaughan Williams’s textures, Wilson’s Fantasia has sharp, impassioned edges too, and a telling poignancy in leader John Mills’s solos.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Concerto Choice
Bach & Pärt: Works for Violin & Chamber Orchestra
Arabella Steinbacher (violin), Christoph Koncz (violin), Peter von Wienhardt (piano), Stuttgarter Kammerorchester
'Steinbacher weaves in and out of Bach’s contrapuntal textures, occasionally reducing her tone to a radiant pianissimo to allow the orchestral lines through...[In Fratres] she demonstrates the same hypnotic voicing of cantabile lines that makes her Bach so treasurable.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Opera Choice
Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges: L’amant Anonyme
Nicole Cabell (Léontine), Geoffrey Agpalo (Valcour), David Govertsen (Ophémon), Erica Schuller (Jeannette), Michael St. Peter (Colin), Nathalie Colas (Dorothée); Haymarket Opera Company, Craig Trompeter
'It is a prime exemplar of French galant opera, complete with prominent ballet interludes and music that ’s inventive, spirited and frequently touching...this [recording] presents a strong cast and an incisive period instrument ensemble with finely judged pacing from Craig Trompeter...Cabell is superb as Léontine.'
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Choral & Song Choice
Handel: Solomon
Christopher Lowrey (Solomon), Matthew Newlin (Zadok), Ana Maria Labin (Queen of Sheba/First Harlot), Gwendolyne Blondeel (Second Harlot), Andreas Wolf (A Levite); Millenium Orchestra, Chœur de Chambre de Namur, Leonardo García Alarcón
'The band thrills to Alarcón’s gestures, delivering crisp rhythms, furious tempos – the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba is not to be missed – and languorous lines...But the chorus is the star of this show. Handel reserved his most ingenious writing in Solomon for his world-class choristers, and the Namur chamber choir is their match.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chamber Choice
'This thrilling new release of the Transylvanian composer’s music for string quartet embraces three contrasting periods of his output...These players, who have specialised in modern music since forming their ensemble at the Paris Conservatoire 27 years ago, are formidable throughout.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Instrumental Choice
'This is a great overall interpretation of one (or two, if you prefer) of the monuments of the piano repertoire, where Lugansky, like the composer, knows perfectly how to achieve each and every effect, and doesn’t flinch from a ruthlessly clear recording.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
World Choice
'If ever there was a reason to cherish an archive recording, this one – made in 1966 by musicians born in the 1920s – is it. The royal music of the Khmer kingdom goes back a thousand years, since when its for tunes have fluctuated wildly, reaching their nadir with Pol Pot’s massacre of almost all its exponents; these tracks are a vital link.'
Available Format: CD
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
