Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - July 2018
My July favourites have a distinct twentieth-century bias, with Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton exploring over a century’s worth of songs by composers who studied or taught at the Royal College of Music (Connolly’s alma mater), Italian violinist Domenico Nordio making a great case for the concertos of Gian Francesco Malipiero, and Andrés Orozco-Estrada and the Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra scaling Strauss’s Alpine peak with youthful vigour. There are also first recordings of two works premiered over the past year – Aribert Reimann’s ninth opera L’Invisible (which opened in Berlin last October) and Gabriel Jackson’s Stabat mater, commissioned by the Marian Consort to celebrate their tenth anniversary and first performed in Oxford this March.
Far more than just a few songs at twilight, this recital is one of my summer must-haves as much for the repertoire as for the compelling performances: following Muriel Herbert’s sweetly elegiac To a Lost Nightingale, Ireland’s Earth’s Call sees Connolly letting her full-bodied mezzo off the leash, with Middleton despatching the virtuosic piano part with gusto. It’s great to hear a female voice in Tippett’s elusive Songs for Ariel, as well as two songs which Britten discarded from A Charm of Lullabies.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Malipiero & Busoni: Violin Concertos
Domenico Nordio (violin), Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, Tito Ceccherini
I’d never come across either of Malipiero’s concertos before, and the First in particular (composed in 1932) really deserves to be better-known: the sunny, great-outdoors atmosphere of the first movement put me in mind of Vivaldi through the lens of Copland, whilst the elegiac central movement has more than a whiff of Shostakovich. Nordio makes an equally persuasive case for Busoni’s expansive (and attractively tuneful) homage to Beethoven. Do give this lovely album a whirl!
Available Format: CD
Orozco-Estrada’s team of mountaineers are clearly in peak physical condition – even the most arduous stretches of their adventure exude vitality and direction, without so much as a hint of stodginess or bombast. The lower winds and brass are especially impressive (special mention for the eloquent cor anglais in ‘On the Alpine Pasture’ and the distant horns in ‘The Ascent’), and the ‘Calm Before the Storm’ is one of the eeriest I’ve ever heard.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The authenticity of many of the works here may be questionable, but Bavouzet treats them with the same charm and affection that’s distinguished this lovely series from the outset in 2010. One thing I especially love is his imaginative approach to the repetition of not just whole sections but even of the shortest phrases and motives; there’s some magical cantabile playing in Partita No. 13, and the counterpoint and cascading triplets in the opening Divertimento come across with beguiling clarity.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Jackson’s arresting Stabat mater is the stand-out on this tenth-anniversary album from the British vocal consort; the writing almost out-MacMillans MacMillan in places with its Scotch snaps and folkish flourishes in the ‘Eja Mater’ section. The acoustic of Merton Chapel pays real dividends in Allegri’s setting of the Miserere, whilst James MacMillan’s expansive setting of the same text doffs its cap to its predecessor at the same time as being entirely mesmerising on its own terms.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This fascinating programme of early twentieth-century songs (many of them by composers condemned as purveyors of ‘degenerate’ music by the Nazis) struck me as a sort of alternative Das Lied von der Erde due to the explorations of loneliness, intoxication and alienation and the settings of Chinese (and occasional Persian) poetry. The irreverent cabaret numbers in Viktor Ullmann’s Liederbuch der Hafis are great fun, but the searing songs of exile by Pavel Haas and Gottfried von Einem linger longest in the memory.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Reimann: L'Invisible
Rachel Harnisch (Ursula/Marie/Ygraine), Annika Schlicht (Marthe/Bellangère); Deutsche Oper Berlin, Donald Runnicles
I was inspired to try the octogenarian composer’s latest opera following my recent conversation with Brett Dean (who considers his Lear a masterpiece), and I’m so glad I did: the uncanny, crepuscular sound-world of this triptych of claustrophobic family dramas is unsettling but riveting, and put me in mind not only of Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande but also of George Benjamin’s Written On Skin. Fingers crossed for a UK performance, or failing that a DVD – but this music conjures atmosphere and drama aplenty in its own right.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Verbier Festival: 25 Years of Excellence
Yuja Wang, Martha Argerich, Malena Ernman, Daniil Trifonov, Bryn Terfel, Valéry Gergiev and more
I’ve been dipping into this box of previously unreleased live recordings from the Swiss festival at intervals all month, and every performance is a gem: the line-up could scarcely be starrier, but what makes it special is the fact that everything is more than the sum of its considerable parts. Highlights include a gloriously uninhibited account of Berio’s Folk-Songs from maverick mezzo Malena Ernman, an electrifying Beethoven concerto from Martha Argerich, and a big-boned but lyrical Brahms piano trio from Truls Mørk, Ilya Gringolts and Daniil Trifonov.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
