Gramophone Choices,
Gramophone Editor's Choices - March 2015
A 1688 opera by a cosmopolitan diplomat/composer/spy - given compelling advocacy here in a live performance from the Boston Early Music Festival in 2011 - tops this month's Choices, with the fruits of another Festival (a collection of Martha Argerich's two-piano performances from Lugano) taking the laurels for Re-Issue of the Month. Andris Nelsons's Strauss triptych with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra scoop the DVD and Blu-ray top spot, with Editor's Choices ranging from Machaut (The Orlando Consort's Dart of Love) to Pärt (The Tallis Scholars' Tintinnabuli).
Recording of the Month
'Jaroussky sounds in his elements when Anfione ensconces himself in his Palace of Harmony...Gauvin captures not only Niobe's haughty pride and capricious cruelty but also her sensuality, folly and gullibility...The performance is never forced but always emotive...An exemplary testament of superb musicianship from all participants...this is a landmark event in Steffani's much-deserved rehabilitation.'
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Editor's Choices
'Their combined sound is highly refined and honed, resulting in a tautness of approach that gives Mendelssohn's A minor Quartet real potency and drive. Even in the most driven passages, textures always have a sparkling clarity...the Tetzlaff reveal [the Berg's] extraordinary beauties. They are alive to every nuance, every emotional change of this highly charged music.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'Brahms called Muhlfeld 'a master of his beautiful instrument', an epithet that could be extended to Collins who, with McHale, offers joyous performances of these lyrical but unsurprisingly cogent works...This is a most desirable issue, with a recording that balances the two instruments perfectly.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'Trio Chausson's interpretation...abounds in harmonic pointing and expressive detail, the brighter lights of the exposition running into a sombre development with a dark-hued fugato...Never trivial, de Larochelambert weights both individual notes and chords with care, his colleagues matching his rhythmic patterns...An outstanding disc.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'What enviable poise and expressive beauty to launch the central Andante...Hewitt holds her own to such an extent that she makes you forget all about odious comparisons and listen instead to one of the great milestones in all music...This is possibly the very finest of Angela Hewitt's many recordings.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'This is a positive dream team, who not only capture the music's individual spirit but also clearly enjoy doing so...The second disc is the centrepiece of the set with its excpetionally well-defined and balanced interpretations of [Mozart and Beethoven]...the set as a whole is a compelling compendium of creative variety unified by matchless musicianship.'
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'Melnikov's role parallels that of Glenn Gould but his accounts are less wayward than the Canadian's, his soloists generally stronger...this is a magnificent disc, with leading or contending versions of all the works in terrific, beautifully balanced Harmonia Mundi sound. Let's hope Melnikov & Co return record some more.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'Berg's Piano Sonata, Op. 1 is given a full-blooded, lucid reading, both its texture and performance having much in common with Webern's Sonata Movement from three years earlier...The real discovery of the disc is Enescu's rarely heard Suite No. 2 in D...Worth the price of this classily produced and superbly executed disc alone.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Much of the time the musical and textual argument puts the spotlight on the consort's younger members, the countertenor Matthew Venner and the higher tenor Mark Dobel...Their agility and Venner's clear, well-modulated timbre and admirably control of phrasing play no small part in the Orlandos' rejuvenation.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'The Tallis Scholars are, on paper, the best group imaginable to record his music...the purity of [their] sound provides the perfect scaffolding for the pieces on this disc...And in their performance...The Tallis Scholars have presented their chosen repertoire in the way they have always done best - as a sound world of profound beauty.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Re-issue of the Month
'It is...rather more than a convenient repertoire compendium because, taken overall, there are few finer versions anywhere of each title...the Luagno recordings have the advantage of the lively, rounded acoustic of the Stelio Molo auditorium and the undoubted benefit of having an audience present...All in all, a Rachmaninov-fest to savour.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC
DVD/Blu-ray Choice
'[Macbeth] receives a fine, predictably classy performance...with Nelsons underlining the granitic power of its narrative effectively...Nelsons's interpretation [of Also sprach] is in many respects close to his Birmingham account...There's definitely the same welcome flexibility and lack of grandstanding...Nelson's podium manner is relaxed and warm, characteristics that seep through into the playing.'
Available Format: DVD Video
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
