Search
Special Offers
Awards
Online Payment
Visit us
Presto News - 13th February 2012Schoenberg and Berg |
 Pelléas et Mélisande, the Symbolist tale of forbidden love by the Belgian playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck, has inspired music from several composers. Most famous is of course Debussy’s opera, but both Fauré and Sibelius wrote incidental music for productions of the play, and in 1902 the 28-year old Arnold Schoenberg began to compose, at the suggestion of Richard Strauss, a large-scale orchestral tone poem based on the subject. The resulting piece inhabits the same sound world as Gurre-Lieder and the first Chamber Symphony, and was certainly not well-received at its première, with one critic commenting that it “is not just filled with discords … but constitutes in itself a discord lasting fifty minutes …. What else might be concealed behind this cacophony is difficult to guess”.  Pierre Boulez The problem with the piece, hinted at in that critic’s final sentence, is that it is incredibly tricky to balance properly. With its often dense orchestration, it is very easy for inner detail to get lost amongst the texture, and it takes a conductor with an expert ear to prevent the outbursts from the monster brass section (including eight horns, and five trombones of varying sizes!) from swamping the rest of the orchestra. With this in mind, I don’t think one could ask for a more ideal conductor than Pierre Boulez, directing the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in this new live disc. Boulez’s recordings have always impressed me with their clarity, and this one is no exception. While just occasionally I still felt that the brass overwhelmed the climaxes ever so slightly, this is certainly the most successful performance I’ve yet heard on disc, and is a very fine account of this piece indeed. Works such as this clearly owe a great debt in terms of their harmonic language to late Wagner, and so it is fitting that Boulez has coupled it with the Prelude to Act One from Tristan und Isolde, another tragic tale of doomed lovers. As in the Schoenberg, the tempo is on the whole fairly brisk, but there is no lack of intensity, and it makes for an attractive opening to the disc.  Isabelle Faust If that leaves you hungry for more music from the so-called Second Viennese School, then you’ll be pleased to hear about a new recording of Alban Berg’s violin concerto from Isabelle Faust (with Orchestra Mozart conducted by Claudio Abbado). Berg had accepted a commission to write a violin concerto just before he was to learn of the death of Alma Mahler’s eighteen-year-old daughter from polio, an event that affected him deeply. He poured all of his emotions into the composition of this piece, resulting in a devastatingly affecting concerto which he dedicated “to the memory of an angel”. It is these elements of tragedy and loss that Faust brings out most effectively in her recording; aside from an extraordinary tone and perfect intonation, you can feel the intent and conviction behind every single note she plays. As with Boulez, Abbado is a master of orchestral balance; from pianissimo double bass solos to the expertly-voiced clarinet choir that intones the Bach chorale introduced by Berg towards the end of the piece, you can hear all of the tiny details and colours in the score. The orchestral playing is top-notch throughout, including a suitably rasping bass clarinet, warm and tender strings, and a mighty fine pedal C from the tuba about seven minutes into the first movement! Coupled with the Berg is the violin concerto by Beethoven, which Faust has recorded before with the Prague Philharmonia under Jirí Belohlávek. That earlier recording was first choice for this piece on BBC Radio 3’s Building a Library back in April 2011, and this new one is equally fine. One could possibly argue that Abbado and his players offer an even more refined and stylish accompaniment than their previous counterparts, but there’s really very little in it. Incidentally, for those interested in such matters, Faust does not play the usual Kreisler cadenza, but instead uses her own free adaptation of the one that Beethoven wrote when he himself arranged the piece as a piano concerto. So, even if you don’t consider Schoenberg and Berg to be your usual listening material, I very much hope that you will give both of these excellent discs a try, as they are well worth exploring. Sound samples for both are available to give you a taste. Enjoy!
|
Share
|
 Schoenberg: Pelleas und MelisandeGustav Mahler Jugendorchester, Pierre Boulez |
 Beethoven & Berg: Violin ConcertosIsabelle Faust (violin), Orchestra Mozart, Claudio Abbado |
James Longstaffe - james@prestoclassical.co.uk |
Listen - sound samples available for this itemNew Releases13th February 2012 |
This is just the pick of the recent releases. The New Releases and Future Releases pages are always available for browsing all the new and forthcoming releases. |
 Shostakovich: Piano ConcertosAlexander Melnikov (piano), Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Teodor CurrentzisShostakovich’s music is often ‘two-faced’, sometimes sublimated in ecstasy and joie de vivre, sometimes plunged into emptiness and suffused with a death wish. Accompanied by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Teodor Currentzis, Alexander Melnikov captures this feeling admirably in the Concertos Opp.35 and 102, and perhaps still more poignantly – “with disarming sincerity and fearless directness”, to quote his booklet note – alongside Isabelle Faust in the Sonata Op.134. |
 Tune thy Musicke to Thy HartStile Antico & FretworkStile Antico (joined by Fretwork) explore long-neglected repertory: the wealth of Tudor and Jacobean sacred music written for domestic devotion, rather than for church worship. Culled from collections intended for use in private homes, these pieces by Tomkins, Campion, Byrd, Tallis, Dowland, Gibbons and others offer a unique insight into the turbulent religious climate of the time and the thriving musical culture at its heart.
|
 Schubert: SchwanengesangChristopher Maltman (baritone) & Graham Johnson (piano)Concluding a highly acclaimed series of Schubert song cycles, Wigmore Hall Live now release the much-anticipated Schwanengesang. Recorded live on the Wigmore stage by Christopher Maltman and Graham Johnson in April 2010, the song cycle was collated after Schubert’s death by the publisher Haslinger and, through the works of three poets, depicts a despairing man tormented by his lost love. |
 Buxtehude: Seven Trio Sonatas, Op. 2, BuxWV 259-265The Purcell QuartetBy the end of his life, the fame of Dietrich Buxtehude as an organist was so great that in 1706 the young J.S. Bach took four weeks’ leave from his employment at Arnstadt and travelled on foot over 200 miles to Lübeck to hear him perform in concert. Ironically, the meteoric rise of the career of Bach himself as a composer meant that, until very recently, Buxtehude was primarily known simply as a forerunner to the great man, when in fact he was a major composer in his own right.
|
 Korngold: String Sextet & Piano QuintetDoric String QuartetKorngold composed his Sextet for Strings between 1914 and 1916, at the same time as his opera Violanta, and for this reason perhaps it takes on some of the theatrical elements of that work. The highly successful premiere of the Quintet for Two Violins, Viola, Cello, and Piano took place in Hamburg in 1923 with the composer at the keyboard. The work is in three elaborate and complex movements, with a piano part of considerable difficulty, and string writing on a virtuosic scale.
|
 Denis Matsuev plays LisztDenis Matsuev (piano), Russian National Orchestra, Mikhail PletnevDenis Matsuev’s triumphant victory at the eleventh International Tchaikovsky Competition has given him celebrity status on the international concert platform. He has appeared at prestigious concert halls like the Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Musikhalle in Hamburg, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory and the Great Hall of the St Petersburg Philharmonia, to name but a few. |
 Evening SongsJulian Lloyd Webber (cello), Jiaxin Cheng (cello) & John Lenehan (piano)Frederick Delius’s beautiful songs show his extraordinary gift for melody. John Ireland admired Delius enormously and his songs are inspired by a wide variety of literature, including his hugely popular setting of John Masefield’s Sea Fever. Renowned cellist Julian Lloyd Webber celebrates both composers’ remarkable melodic gifts in these sensitive arrangements, and pianist John Lenehan has received great acclaim for his Naxos recordings of Ireland’s complete piano music.
|
 Xuefei Yang plays Bach ConcertosXuefei Yang (guitar), Elias String QuartetThe Beijing-born guitarist Xuefei Yang has recorded her first album of baroque music, an all-Bach programme anchored by three concertos newly arranged for guitar and string quartet. Bach Concertos is an exciting, innovative album in which she has transcribed for the guitar some of Bach’s familiar violin concertos and other works, hoping to establish these new arrangements as noteworthy repertoire for the guitar and to expand the concerto repertoire for that instrument.
|
Watch - Video trailers available for this item
Download - download options available for this item BBC Radio 3 CD ReviewSaturday 11th February 2012 |
Building a Library - Verdi: Otello (Othello) |
 First ChoicePlácido Domingo (Otello), Sherrill Milnes (Jago), Renata Scotto (Desdemona), Frank Little (Cassio), Paul Crook (Rodrigo), Paul Plishka (Lodovico), Malcolm King (Montano), Jean Kraft (Emilia), Malcolm King (Araldo), National Philharmonic Orchestra, James Levine |
 DVD RecommendationAleksandrs Antonenko (Otello), Marina Poplavskaya (Desdemona), Carlos Àlvarez (Iago), Barbara Di Castri (Emilia), Stephen Costello (Cassio) Wiener Philharmoniker, Riccardo Muti (conductor) & Stephen Langridge (stage director) |
 Blu-ray RecommendationAleksandrs Antonenko (Otello), Marina Poplavskaya (Desdemona), Carlos Àlvarez (Iago), Barbara Di Castri (Emilia), Stephen Costello (Cassio) Wiener Philharmoniker, Riccardo Muti (conductor) & Stephen Langridge (stage director) |
Disc of the Week |
 Jonathan Harvey: Bird Concerto with PianosongHidéki Nagano (piano), London Sinfonietta, David Atherton |
Your details will be used only in accordance with our Privacy Policy. |
Copyright © 2002-13 Presto Classical Limited, all rights reserved.