Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - November 2017
Without wishing to sound unduly Scrooge-like, I’ve been exploring a lot of repertoire that’s new to me this month as a palette-cleanser in between the many festive releases that are currently piled high on my desk (more on those later this week…), with discoveries including songs by Rimsky-Korsakov, a brilliant and disturbing tango-opera by Astor Piazzólla, and the string quartets of Hans Abrahamsen (which I’ve been meaning to get to grips with ever since falling under his spell thanks to Barbara Hannigan’s bewitching recording of the song-cycle Let Me Tell You). And back on the beaten track, I’ve been marvelling afresh at Mahler’s Fifth Symphony thanks to a bracing new recording from the orchestra which gave the premiere of the work over a century ago…
Devieilhe dazzles in the coloratura showpieces on offer here, but she’s no one-trick pony, investing Ophélie’s mad scene from Hamlet with real pathos and capturing Mélisande’s other-worldly sensuality to perfection. The Flower Duet from Lakmé comes up as fresh as paint, with Marianne Crebassa’s bronzed mezzo a delicious foil to Devieilhe’s silvery timbre.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Piazzólla: Maria de Buenos Aires
Valentina Montoya Martínez, Nicholas Mulroy, Juanjo Lopez Vidal (narrator) & Victor Villena (bandoneón); Mr McFall’s Chamber
I think I’ll continue to be fascinated and slightly baffled by Piazzólla’s surreal ‘tango operita’ for months to come, thanks to this scorched-earth recording from quirky Scottish chamber ensemble Mr McFall's Chamber. Best known in baroque repertoire, tenor Nicholas Mulroy is outstanding (and unrecognisable!) in multiple roles such as ‘Gaucho Itinerant Singer’ and ‘Sleepy Buenos Aires Sparrow’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Schubert: Nacht & Träume
Wiebke Lehmkuhl (contralto), Stanislas de Barbeyrac (tenor), Insula orchestra & accentus, Laurence Equilbey
Aside from the fun to be had in playing ‘spot the orchestrator’ (Berlioz’s cauchemarish take on Erlkönig, Britten’s witty and wistful Forelle and Strauss’s lustrous Ganymed are particular treats), this is a must-hear for the two immensely characterful young soloists – both voices are surely destined for great things.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
These taut, springy accounts of three Haydn symphonies brim with joie de vivre and affection: the finales of each work are invested with a propulsive energy, whilst the slow movements have a gentle grace and improvisatory, almost folksy charm that’s worlds away from any fusty powdered-wig stereotypes.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
It’s potentially a tough listen in one sitting, but the Ardittis enter into Abrahamsen’s eclectic and often slightly unsettling sound-worlds with whole-hearted commitment. The moto perpetuo-style finale of the Fourth Quartet is hypnotic, whilst the eerie sonorities of the last movement of the Third had me wondering if there was a theremin and/or glass harmonic in the house.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The spacious but not over-resonant acoustic makes these beautifully sculpted performances really glow (the straight-toned but well-rounded altos give particular delight), and the early setting of Gaude gloriosa (using a text by Henry VIII’s final wife) seems to look forward to Spem in alium in all its glorious intricacy.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Rimsky-Korsakov: Romances
Anush Hovhannisyan (soprano), Yuriy Yurchuk (baritone), Sergey Rybin (piano)
A treasure-trove of Russian song from a composer more often associated with symphonic writing and opera receives passionate, idiomatic advocacy from two former Jette Parker Young Artists: Hovhannisyan’s tart lyric soprano has an old-school glamour that puts mind in mind of young Galina Vishnevskaya, and she’s particularly arresting in the Schubertian ‘The Lark’ from In Spring.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Though the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln (who gave the first ever performance of this symphony in 1904) perform on modern instruments, Roth’s Mahler Five has all the raw energy and piquant sonorities of his period-instrument accounts of Ravel, Stravinsky et al with Les Siècles. The clarity in the contrapuntal passages is bracing and illuminating in equal measure.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
