MusicWeb Reviewer’s Log May/June 2008
Reviewer: Patrick C Waller
The disc of Judith Bailey’s
music which I helped to produce is to be released in
June on the Metier label and has been reviewed by Rob
Barnett. A sample movement from the Egloshayle Nightingale
Trio can be heard on Divine Art’s website.
The second English Music Festival took
place at various venues near Oxford in late May. I managed to
get to two of the concerts, the first of which took place late
on a Saturday evening in the splendid setting of Dorchester
Abbey. Billed simply as “David Owen Norris plays Billy
Mayerl”, this was an informal affair during which
it seemed that the programme was being constructed on the hoof.
Playing partly from memory Norris was unperturbed by a loss
of memory in one particularly repetitive piece - he simply stopped,
found the music and then carried on. Not everything he played
was by Mayerl, pieces by "rivals" were included and Marigold
was the only well known work. A ravishing - and Lisztian
according to Norris - transcription of the song "Smoke
get in your eyes" was one of the highlights.
Norris entertained us superbly both with his pianism
and wit as an hour slipped by very quickly indeed.
What better way
to spend a wet Bank Holiday Monday is there than listening
to a top-notch string quartet playing live in a small church
(in this case All Saints, Sutton Courtenay)? The ensemble in
question was the Carducci Quartet and their programme consisted
of the two Vaughan Williams quartets in reverse
order with Moeran's E flat quartet in between. The
latter is a two movement work, probably written early in his
career but only found in the composer's papers after
his death and notable for its Irish jig derivations. These
performances were tremendously alive - this was virtuosic, spellbinding
playing from a relatively young quartet with a big future. The
Carducci's have recently started their own label and their recording
of quartets by Graham
Whettam is well worth hearing and was a MusicWeb
recording of the month in January of this year.
Talking of recordings
of the month, the name Siegmund
von Hausegger was unfamiliar to me, unlike the Mahlerian
idiom of his Natursymphonie. This
release on CPO is well worth the accolade as is Simon Rattle’s
recent re-take on Mahler’s
Ninth symphony. Listening to this with the score I was struck
by how little Rattle imposes himself on the music. Another Mahlerian
I have always had a lot of time for is Bernard Haitink. His
recording of the Sixth symphony with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
has just been released and may prove more controversial. The
approach is spacious with wonderful playing and sound. Overall
the reading lasts 90 minutes but the tempi in the outer movements
don’t seem to me as slow as the timings suggest and I enjoyed
this recording greatly.
A sale of CPO discs
prompted me to complete my collection of their recordings of
Villa-Lobos symphonies, the first time I had heard
most of these works. The relevant discs of the Third
and Ninth, Sixth
and Eighth and the Seventh
have all been appreciatively reviewed on MusicWeb and this cycle
is a fine achievement from the Stuttgart Radio orchestra under
American conductor Carl St. Clair. I am still hoping the score
of the lost Fifth symphony turns up.
It is always good
to catch up on old favourites. I can still remember the first
time heard Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for wind
(K297b) – it was in the car when I was about 10 years old. We
were on the way to visit my uncle and, when we arrived, it turned
out that he had been listening to it too. The recording was
new at the time on DG with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted
by Karl Böhm (4744242). Both my father and uncle were so enthused
that they bought the LP. Now released as an “Original” I really
enjoyed hearing it again for the first time in many years. A
much newer Mozart recording I should mention is Sir Charles
Mackerras’s take on Cosi fan Tutte in English for Chandos
(CHAN31523). This has a fabulous cast but Mackerras still steals
the show and the three discs are an unmissable bargain costing
around £15.
Speaking of bargains
and my first thought would be of EMI who continue to release
big boxes full of treasure. Their Nielsen box
based on Blomstedt’s Danish Radio recordings from the 70s was
a bargain of the month (review)
and another opportunity to revisit some old friends. I have
only got about a third of the way through the Vaughan
Williams box of 30CDs (2066362) which I bought for the
opposite reason (for less than £40) – unfamiliarity with most
of the recordings. In particular it has been good to hear Vernon
Handley’s highly-rated symphony cycle. One of the discs I do
remember hearing a long time ago is a gem – Christopher Bishop
and the London Madrigal Singers in some wonderful folksong arrangements.
Speaking of prices
and bargains, the new symbols on MusicWeb led to an interesting
discussion on what to do about DVDs. I was a bit sceptical about
the existence of bargain price DVDs but was rapidly proved wrong
by a swathe of release of late Karajan recordings on Sony. The
one I decided to go for (at a mere £7) was of Bruckner’s
Eighth and Ninth symphonies from 1988 and 1985 respectively
(88697202399). The former is with the Vienna Philharmonic and
there is no audience, the latter is “live” with the Berlin Philharmonic
Orchestra. Both performances are tremendous although, inevitably,
the sound is not comparable with Karajan’s VPO Eighth on CD
made at the same time. Perhaps that reflects my equipment to
some extent. The camerawork is very focused on the maestro and
the handling of the applause in the Ninth is strange – about
a second of it is heard abruptly faded to a closing jingle.
I shall be ready with the remote next time!
A couple of excellent
Lyritas I have recently heard are Havergal Brian’s
Sixth and Sixteenth symphonies coupled with Cooke’s
Third (review)
and a disc of horn concertos by Hoddinott, Searle,
Banks and Maw (review).
It was also good to hear more Ries string quartets from the
Schuppanzigh’s on CPO (review)
and to explore the Cello Concertos of John Garth through
an enterprising issue on Divine Art (review).
As always, I have
spent some time exploring the Naxos Music Library’s new additions.
I am gradually working my way through Leon McCawley’s generally
excellent Mozart sonata cycle on Avie (reviewed
back in November 2006). As well as issuing material on their
Historical label, Naxos is putting archive recordings into the
library without issuing them on CD. For example, I found some
of Sir Adrian Boult’s 1950’s recordings including Butterworth’s
A Shropshire Lad. There is also a cycle of Boult’s Brahms
symphonies from the same period but I haven’t got round to them
yet. Unfortunately there is no information provided about the
original sources. As I write this up, I have been listening
to the second volume of Leroy Anderson’s orchestral music on
Naxos which Ian Lace has just reviewed
– great fun!
Patrick C Waller
