ROBERT HUGILL - WEBLOG - December 2005
- January 2006
Wednesday 7th
December
The 18th
and early 19th centuries
were rather low points for Anglican
church music so it should come as no
surprise that Nelson’s Funeral service
contained music of variable interest
and no particular work by a significant
contemporary composer. Still, it was
an enterprising idea of Portsmouth Cathedral
to record it.
Tuesday 12th
December
John Mark Ainsley’s
Tippett recital on Signum Records is
billed as the first of a new collaboration
with the BBC; the pianist is Ian Burnside
from Radio 3’s Voices programme and
he is responsible for the CD’s content.
I hope that this venture does work as
it not only would provide a useful outlet
for young singers but would enable them
to use the expertise available to create
imaginative programming on disc. It
also, of course, provides a useful re-use
of material that would otherwise have
limited availability after broadcast.
More power to their elbow. (review)
Wednesday 13th
December
My first live encounter
with the Mozart Requiem was playing
viola in the orchestra whilst at university.
It was the university chamber orchestra
so we did it with a relatively small
ensemble and small choir. Ever since
then, balance has been important to
me in the work; the feeling that Mozart’s
sombre wind colouring can dominate the
tone colour of the ensemble and sense
that orchestra and chorus are in balance
with neither dominating. (review)
It is also one of those
works which has a couple of key moments
by which I make snap judgements of performance
and soloists. The tenor and bass soloists’
first entries are pretty good pointers.
There is also an off beat orchestral
passage which few ensembles get exactly
right. A friend of mine used to judge
performances of Beethoven’s 9th
symphony on whether, at the first entry
of the soloists, the contralto was still
audible after the soprano solo had entered.
It is surprising how many major recordings
fail the test!
Monday 19th
December
It is inevitable, I
suppose, that we must accustom ourselves
to having to download off the internet
the libretti for budget discs. This
was true of Naxos’s Italian Dramatic
Laments (review),
from the Catacoustic Consort, and I
was very glad to have access to the
original texts and translations on Naxos’s
web site. But the CD booklet has little
information about the items performed;
the essay just covers the general background
and some details about the composers.
If we are going to have to download
information, couldn’t we have extended
programme notes as well, I’m sure that
the performers could easily provide
information.
Wednesday 21st
December
Lammas’s new record
of Elgar’s sacred choral music is an
interesting Anglo-American collaboration.
The choir is a small professional one
based at St. Paul’s Church, Rock Creek,
Washington DC, but their director is
Graham Elliott who spent 18 years as
Master of the Music at Chelmsford Cathedral.
I’m very fond of Elgar’s early Latin
pieces; we sing some of them at St.
Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Chelsea;
but no-one seems to have gathered them
all onto 1 disc. That is something I’d
love to have, even if listening to all
at one sitting might be overdoing it
somewhat. (review)
Friday 23rd
December
I moaned in my personal
blog (http://hugill.blogspot.com)
about the disappearance of Elgar’s recording
of The Dream of Gerontius and
speculated about record companies delivering
CD’s on demand. And now I’m reviewing
a disc from Pristine Audio who do just
that. You can buy CDs from them but
you can also buy tracks in MP3 format
to download to your PC/IPOD or whatever.
Also you can buy economy CDs in cardboard
folders where you print the cover yourself.
All very economical and practical. It
means that they can offer a rather interesting
mix of recordings. Their site includes
the British National Opera I Pagliacci
(with Frank Mullings and Heddle Nash)
which I last heard on 78s. But my disc
under consideration is a wonderful 1954
plainchant Requiem Mass. From a German
Abbey, it is sung in wonderfully confident
Germanic Latin; a recording with a great
sense of atmosphere and place. (review)
7th January
Sometimes its just
difficult to find anything new to say
about a recording. But simply saying
the playing on this disc is fabulous,
buy it, is rather unhelpful and you’ve
got to try and explain why its fabulous
at least. You start to pick on details,
unfortunately my ear and eye get distracted
by concerns such as the editions used;
something that means a lot to me but
might be less influence on another listener.
(review)
10th January
Another fine CD from
Australia; this time one of percussion
music entitled Water Settings. (review).
I don’t always like percussion stuff,
partly because I’m a bit of a fuddy-duddy
and like the old fashioned combination
of pitch, rhythm and dynamics; I just
miss pitch when its not there. But this
disc is right up my street, using some
fabulous tuned percussion, mainly vibraphone
and marimba. I’ve always loved this
sort of instrument since being first
introduced to them via some of Percy
Grainger’s music. (e.g. the Lonely Desert
Man sees the Tents of the Happy Tribes)
12th
January
Well after all the
vicissitudes I’ve managed to finish
the Onegin review; and very fine
it is too. You wonder why it had to
disappear from the catalogue and then
have to be resurrected as a re-issue.
The more I think about it the more the
Pristine Audio model seems to make sense.
(review)
17th
January
I’ve always found songs
by Italian opera composers a little
disappointing; granted Verdi’s songs
can be fascinating as a crucible for
his operas, but they never come up to
the sustained quality of other 19th
century composers. Like much 19th
century English song, these songs by
Italian opera composers have a little
too much of the Parlour about them.
If Richard Strauss’s songs can be dismissed
as being Lieder written for opera singers
to sing; then much of 19th
century Italian can be thought of as
opera arias for the talented amateur
to sing. Or am I being too cruel? There
are some lovely things on Dennis O’Neill’s
disc, but I don’t think that he convinces
me (review).
19th
January
Akathistos Fragments
is one of those discs that surprises
you. It was not, as I thought, a disc
of Byzantine Chant though it has that
at its core. As has happened in the
past, I’ve chosen a disc for review
based on a misunderstanding and come
away entranced. In Akathistos the singers
and players freely improvise and re-imagine
music based on the ancient chants. (review)
20th
January
This was certainly
a case of synchronicity; I listened
to the disc of Clytus Gottwald’s choral
arrangements just once and went scurrying
to the musical director of the choir
that I sing in (London Concord Singers)
recommending them to him. He had just
had his ear bent by another choir member
about the same pieces, except this guy
had heard them in a concert given by
the Rodolphus Choir. Moral – if you
sing in a choir, buy this disc and give
it to your musical director, these arrangements
just cry out to be sung (review).
26th
January
Naxos do a wonderful
job at providing fine, affordable recordings
of the outer reaches of the repertoire.
Sometimes they seem to buy in recordings
which are of insufficient quality and
sometimes they seem to push ensembles
into directions that they ought not
to go in. No danger of this on Tonus
Peregrinus’s fine new Dunstable disc
(review).
6th
February
A final stray disc
from the Naxos Milken Archive. Unfortunately
this was one of those discs that had
me wondering whether it would have an
audience outside of the Jewish faith;
certainly it left this ‘Anglican but
sings in a Catholic church’ reviewer
a little cold. But if you turned the
tables and foisted some discs of Anglican
chant on an unsuspecting religious non-Christian
(or even non Anglican) would they appreciate
it.Gottlieb Love Songs for the Sabbath
review
