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Presto News - 11th June 2012Shostakovich Symphonies from Petrenko and the RLPO |
 Vasily Petrenko’s Complete Shostakovich cycle with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra has just reached the seventh of a projected eleven volumes. The cycle is quickly emerging as one of the finest on disc, and has already picked up a Gramophone Award along with almost universal praise from critics all over the world.  Vasily Petrenko Symphonies Nos. 2 and 15 are hugely contrasting works from opposite ends of the composer’s life and career – the former being written in 1927 when the composer was just 20 years old, and the latter in 1971, just four years before his death. I didn’t really know the Second Symphony at all well. Like the Third, Shostakovich later rejected it as ‘unsatisfactory’ and these days it tends to only get programmed or recorded as part of a complete symphony cycle. Commissioned by the so-called ‘Department of Enlightenment’ to mark the 10th anniversary of the Bolshevik October Revolution, Shostakovich was told to incorporate a choral finale with a text praising Lenin and the Revolution. Although experimental in structure and style, there are some powerful moments, and the orchestra and choir give fine and committed performances. The Fifteenth Symphony is an altogether much more powerful work, although again not without its puzzles. Rossini and Wagner are both quoted as well as passages from his own earlier works. This was unusual for him, and I haven’t yet read or heard a convincing argument explaining exactly what he was trying to express in this symphony by doing so. Shostakovich was already suffering from the illness which would ultimately take his life, and it seems likely that he wrote this symphony knowing it would probably be his last. In a recent interview with Edward Seckerson of The Independent Petrenko said he felt that this Symphony had some element of how Shostakovich wanted to be remembered in it, and that perhaps explains the optimism, gusto, wit and playfulness which he maybe feared he otherwise might not be associated with. Petrenko keeps tempos moving throughout (even in the long adagio last movement), thus making a lot less of the areas of darkness in the score than some other conductors. It works well in my view, as although musically very approachable and full of graceful tunes this symphony is a puzzle to really understand and I’ve never been convinced that lingering on the composer’s despair and suffering angle really helps that understanding much. The orchestra play with all the refinement, discipline and intense commitment that has characterised this whole series. We hear every detail of the composer’s scores while colours and atmospheres have an incredible range and contrast. From the finesse shown in the shimmering and subdued opening of the Second Symphony to the vigour and excitement elsewhere this is impressive playing. A mention also for the superb solos from the RLPO principals, and in particular Principal Cellist Jonathan Aasgaard whose playing in the second movement of the Fifteenth Symphony is both beautiful and deeply haunting. Highly recommended.
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 Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 15Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily Petrenko
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Chris O'Reilly - chris@prestoclassical.co.uk |
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Download - download options available for this itemNew Releases11th June 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. |
 Erwin Schrott: AriasErwin Schrott (bass-baritone), Vienna State Opera Chorus & ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, Daniele RustioniOn his second release for Sony Classical, Erwin Schrott transfers many of his stage triumphs to an album of arias. For the most part Schrott has devoted this new CD to classics from the French and Italian bass-baritone repertoire, complementing them with compositions by Verdi and Massenet that are not often heard. |
 Holst: Cotswolds Symphony and other Orchestral WorksUlster Orchestra, JoAnn FallettaGustav Holst’s youthful enthusiasm for Wagner is reflected in his ebullient Walt Whitman Overture written in 1899. Shortly afterwards he composed the Cotswolds Symphony which embraces hints of contemporary British folk music but is dominated by the slow movement, a profound elegy for the utopian socialist William Morris. Though completed at college, A Winter Idyll shows real orchestral assurance. Indra is an accomplished tone poem revealing Holst’s interest in the legends of India, whilst the glittering and evocative Japanese Suite was written in response to a request from a Japanese dancer appearing in London.
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 Saint-Saëns: Orchestral WorksRoyal Scottish National Orchestra, Neeme JärviThe works on this disc are all early, dating from the first half of the composing life of Saint-Saëns – that is, with the one exception of the Marche du couronnement which the composer wrote for the coronation of Edward VII in 1902.
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 Offenbach: Un Mari à la porteGabrielle Philiponet (soprano), Anaïk Morel (mezzo-soprano), Séphane Malbec-Garcia (tenor) & Marc Canturri (baritone), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Vasily PetrenkoA live recording from the 2008 Liverpool Philharmonic Hall performance of one of Offenbach’s dozens of early one-act entertainments written for the Bouffes-Parisien, in which young Florestan, chased by a bailiff, ends up trapped in the bedroom of just-married Suzanne along with her friend Rosita, while at the door knocks Suzanne's husband – the very bailiff chasing Florestan. Offenbach’s songs are less well known but he wrote up to a hundred, including the 1842 set Les fables de la Fontaine. Though not well received on first performance they display the wit and verve typical of the master of the operetta. |
 Byrd: The Great ServiceSteven Devine (organ), The English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble & Musica ContextaThe Great Service, consisting of settings of liturgical texts for Matins, Communion, and Evensong, is among the finest music by William Byrd for the Anglican Church. He wrote this grand-scale work for two five-part choirs who, for added contrast, would sing their respective parts facing each other from either side of the church. The size of the choir was used not so much for volume or declamatory effect, as for an extraordinarily rich variety of vocal textures and sonorities.
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 Delius: Mass of Life & IdyllCatherine Wyn-Rogers (mezzo-soprano), Andrew Kennedy (tenor), The Bach Choir & Bournemouth Symphony, David HillLong an !admirer of Nietzsches poetry, Frederick Delius composed A Mass of Life while at the height of his powers, blending passages from Also Sprach Zarathustra into orchestral textures of great expressive depth and striking beauty. Written in his final years, the Prelude and Idyll sourced music from a long discarded opera, transforming a story of lust and vengeance into one which emphasizes the transience of life and love.
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 Véronique Gens sings Berlioz & RavelVéronique Gens (soprano), Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire, John AxelrodOndine is delighted to announce a new release from star soprano Véronique Gens, who performs Herminie and Les Nuits d’été by Hector Berlioz and Shéhérazade by Maurice Ravel with the Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire under the baton of their music director John Axelrod.
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 JS Bach: Motets, BWV225-230Monteverdi Choir & English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot GardinerThirty years on from their acclaimed recording for Erato, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir return to the Bach Motets in a new SDG recording, taken from a concert in London last year at the end of a tour which saw performances in Italy, France, The Netherlands and Germany.
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 BBC Radio 3 CD ReviewSaturday 9th June 2012 |
Building a Library - Dvorak: Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104 |
 First Choice(part of a 6 CD set of great and rare recordings by Pierre Fournier)Pierre Fournier (cello), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, George Szell (conductor) |
 Single Disc Recommendation(coupled with Dohnányi Konzertstuck)Raphael Wallfisch (cello), London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Charles Mackerras
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Disc of the Week |
 Debussy: Preludes & TranscriptionsAlexei Lubimov (piano) with Alexei Zuev (piano) performing on a 1925 Bechstein and a 1913 Steinway |
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