Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1-5 Garrick Ohlsson (piano), Grand Teton Music Pageant Orchestra/Sir Donald Runnicles (Reference Recordings)
This set can be a creative deal with had it been captured onto a few C90 cassettes with a boombox. As a substitute, Garrick Ohlsson’s Beethoven concerto cycle was taped over per week in July 2022 in Stroll Pageant Corridor, a medium-sized wood venue in a small Wyoming village, Sir Donald Runnicles conducting a competition orchestra drawing its members from elite ensembles within the US and Europe. There’s an fascinating booklet essay from producer Vic Muenzer outlining precisely how the recordings have been made (the gist of which appears to be: discover a good corridor and use first rate microphones, strategically positioned), and the outcomes are spectacular even by this label’s excessive requirements. There’s a palpable bloom and heat to the sound, Ohlsson’s deft rhythmic sense guaranteeing that issues by no means really feel complacent. Take the bubbling finale to the primary concerto, the interaction between orchestral winds and soloist completely judged. Concerto No. 2 is one other deal with, with ear-tickling string enjoying within the introduction, Runnicles displaying us Beethoven’s debt to Mozart whereas hinting at the place he’d find yourself as a mature composer – among the harmonic gear modifications nonetheless sound startling.
Concerto No. 3 is a really completely different beast, Runnicles and Ohlsson relishing the primary motion’s grandeur with out sacrificing the wit. It’s tough to not smile at Ohlsson’s enjoying in the beginning of the event part, or on the approach Runnicles will get his flute, oboe and bassoon soloists to sing out over the piano line. The “Largo” is rapt and contemplative, the finale’s rondo theme a successful mix of perkiness and severity. Concerto No. 4’s quietly radical first motion is beautiful right here, the orchestral textures full of sunshine and color after No. 3’s glowering C minor. Runnicles makes the gradual motion’s string interjections sound like indignant recitatives, and he and Ohlsson give us a finale filled with balletic grace. I’ve by no means discovered No. 5 as fascinating as its two predecessors, however there’s a lot to take pleasure in on this efficiency: time stands nonetheless in Ohlsson’s gradual motion and the 6/8 finale skips alongside, timpani properly audible earlier than the ultimate bars. As a bonus, there’s the overture to The Creatures of Prometheus. My new favorite Beethoven Piano Concertos set, then. Do examine – it’d grow to be yours too.
Chopin Ballades & Scherzos Marianna Shirinyan (Orchid)
Chopin Full Mazurkas vol.2 Peter Jablonski (Ondine)
I hadn’t come throughout pianist Marianna Shirinyan previous to listening to this album of Chopin Ballades and Scherzos. She is Armenian born however lives in Denmark, and I quickly bought diverted down a rabbit-hole of her different recordings: wonderful Niels Gade, Rachmaninov two-piano music and a revelatory album, out this yr, of lieder by Alma Mahler. All extremely advisable, as is the one at hand right here. I’ve all the time had a gentle spot for Chopin, from fumbling my approach by means of varied Impromptus and Nocturnes as a youngster. I used to be by no means remotely ok to get anyplace close to the Ballades, however they have been all the time for me the summit of Mount Chopin. And Marianna Shirinyan is sort of the mountaineer.
Within the first Ballade she is suitably monumental and quixotic, but additionally with a pleasingly no-nonsense chopping to the chase. There may be lyrical cantabile, there’s heft within the large moments. Quantity two might be my favorite, sunnier, its folksong like opening melody performed with simplicity and directness. Once more, no frills, however a lot to take pleasure in. Likewise the third, a favorite of Schumann’s, with its music-box triple-time tune that I like a lot, cranking into life right here then constructing into one thing tumultuous. I do know the Scherzos a lot much less nicely. They’re substantial items, three of the 4 in minor keys, a great distance from the custom of the scherzo as light-weight and good-humoured. Just like the Ballades, they weren’t conceived of as a set and carry separate opus numbers, however Shirinyan binds them collectively thoughtfully, the fourth representing one thing of a leisure after the hearth of the primary three, the extreme technical difficulties worn flippantly.
The Mazurkas, against this, are a lot shorter, easier of their development, much less emotionally wrought and with folkish origins, reworked by Chopin into high-art bonbons. That is quantity 2 of Peter Jablonski’s Full Mazurkas – quantity 1 got here out in 2022 and on a fast pay attention by means of just about all the things I might say about quantity 2 additionally applies to 1. The Mazurkas weren’t created as a single set, however have been revealed in teams of three or 4 at a time, rising steadily all through his profession. On one studying they’re quick, inconsequential salon items, a lot of solely reasonable problem, and with out the long-breathed melodies of the Ballades or Nocturnes. However on one other they’re a few of Chopin’s most intimate and private statements of his emotions as an émigré composer in direction of his deserted homeland.
On a technical stage, rubato is on the coronary heart of this music. And Peter Jablonski makes use of the impact sparingly however to nice impact (as does Shirinyan). I’ve a hunch that to a contemporary listener Chopin’s personal enjoying would sound hopelessly affected as fashions and style change out of all recognition over time. To this listener on this yr, each pianists have a just-enough-but-no-more strategy to rubato. Jablonski (a Swede of Polish descent) finds a pleasingly rustic sound in no.34, elsewhere, similar to no.31, there’s actual heat to the enjoying – a combination of polish and Polish. I significantly love the bewitching no.47 and am very moved by the chromatic wanderings of no.49, written simply weeks earlier than Chopin’s loss of life on the age of 39, removed from his beloved homeland. Bernard Hughes
Neglect this Evening Katherine Dain (soprano), Sam Armstrong (piano) (7 Mountain Information)
This music assortment’s title comes from a poem by the Indian author Rabindranath Tagore. Intriguingly, two settings are included, one (in Polish) by Grażyna Bacewicz, the opposite (in German) by Karol Szymanowski. Bacewicz’s is terse and declamatory, Szymanowski’s tender and ruminative. Soprano Katherine Dain’s recital disc comprises some beautiful music, and also you’re frequently questioning why so many of those songs aren’t better-known. The Bacewiecz and Szymanowski numbers are heard alongside numbers by Lili Boulanger, whose music cycle Clairières dans le ciel is essentially the most substantial work included. Boulanger accomplished the work in 1914, setting 13 texts by the poet Francis Jammes on themes of affection, loss and remorse. The smallest particulars are mirrored within the music; we hear a coronary heart fluttering “like an exhaustible fountain”, and a lover’s “passionate gaze” is about to rapturous, dreamy music. None of which prepares us for the devastating nearer, an eight-minute lament in contrast by Dain to an operatic mad scene, her narrator “with nothing extra” to maintain her. Dain, idiomatically accompanied by pianist Sam Armstrong, is magnificent, alternately consolatory and stentorian, her voice by no means sounding strained when she’s at full tilt. Pattern her within the album opener, Boulanger’s “Attente”, a sensual Maeterlinck setting. Or within the heart-breaking nearer, a beforehand unrecorded late fragment present in a Boulanger sketchbook, an unaccompanied Dain bemoaning the bodily pains she’s struggling, asking “why do I all the time really feel unhealthy/it’s not truthful”.
The 4 Bacewicz songs make for an fascinating distinction, their language clear, sharp and direct (Bacewicz studied with Nadia Boulanger within the Thirties). Dain and Armstrong deliver them to life – “Mamido”, setting a tenth century Arabic textual content, is irresistible. 5 numbers by Szymanowski are lush, perfumed treats, the ultimate “Lean silently over the cradle” essentially the most putting, seductive lullaby you’ll hear. A marvellous recital, in brief. Texts and translations are included (these from French and German made by Dain, who additionally contributes an interesting sleeve notice. Good sound too.
Verismo: Preludes and Interludes Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/Domingo Hindoyan (Onyx)
Wow. This disc is a blast, the kind of assortment you might need discovered on a budget-label LP again within the day. Who else remembers Classics for Pleasure, Fontana or Pye Golden Guinea? This being 2023, we’re not coping with dodgy engineering and fallible enjoying from a lesser-known outfit; this Onyx launch is fantastically engineered and boasts excellent orchestral enjoying from Domingo Hindoyan’s energised Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. This collection of acquainted and unfamiliar Italian operatic preludes and intermezzi is a reminder of how not often these items are carried out exterior opera homes now, although you may hear a few of them tackled by youth orchestras or as Proms encores.
You may battle to recall how the primary theme of the “Dance of the Hours” from Ponchielli’s Mona Lisa goes, however inside seconds of urgent play it’ll come flooding again. It’s tough to not hum alongside, and don’t the opening bars sound like Mahler 4? The Act III Intermezzo from Puccini’s Manon Lescaut is a knockout, with radiant higher string enjoying – Domingo’s Liverpudlians making the case for its six minutes as among the many most shifting in all music. Intermezzi from Mascagni’s Pal Fritz and Rusticana Cavalry are sweetly achieved, the latter’s hushed opening beautiful. Frothier extracts from Wolf-Ferrari’s Susanna’s Secret and The Jewels of the Madonna are numerous enjoyable. The Puccini gadgets are the perfect although, a reminder of what an outstanding orchestral composer he was, and the way luxurious his music can sound when heard exterior of a cramped theatre pit. The nearer, the prelude to Act II, Half 2 of Madame Butterflyglows. Hear out for the chicken whistles.
