Alpesh Chauhan’s début recording for Chandos – Tchaikovsky: Orchestral Works, Vol. 1 (CHSA 5300) – met with widespread critical acclaim and awards, including recording of the week for both The Times and Presto Music, and the BBC Music magazine’s Orchestral Choice. This second volume – with the same forces – offers equally crisp and attentive playing from the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, in another album that mixes well-known and less-heard Tchaikovsky. Three purely orchestral works form the core of the programme: Fatum (an early concert piece inspired by and dedicated to Balakirev), Hamlet (the last of his Shakespeare-inspired pieces), and Capriccio italien. These are interspersed with works conceived for the theatre: the Introduction to his opera The Queen of Spades and excerpts from The Oprichnik (an early opera) and The Snow Maiden (incidental music for a play by Ostrovsky). The album was recorded in Glasgow City Halls in SURROUND-SOUND and is available as a hybrid SACD.

This disc is a double tribute. The first work, Pictured Within, is a collective effort conceived as a major project to mark the 60th birthday of conductor Martyn Brabbins, whose reputation in new music and British music is beyond reproach.

Following the pattern of Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Pictured Within is a series of 14 variations on a theme, each of which takes up the character of the equivalent variation in Elgar’s work, the difference being that here 14 different composers have each contributed a variation in tribute to Brabbins.

Also on the SACD is Jaakko Kuusisto’s Symphony, a fitting tribute to the composer, conductor, and violinist who passed away in 2022. Illness left Jaakko no time to complete his work, so it fell to his brother Pekka – who conducts here – and Jari Eskola to finish it. The result is a powerful piece, full of familiar themes and melodies derived from Jaakko’s existing compositions, to which are added autobiographical extra-musical elements. The moving conclusion is a collage of fragmented phrases inspired by the signals emitted by lighthouses and ships, as if Kuusisto’s spirit had been sent out to sea.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and its Associate Guest Conductor John Wilson record for the first time together on Chandos, embarking on a new series devoted to the brilliant orchestral works of Sir Richard Rodney Benentt. While internationally famous for his dances, jazz creations, and film and TV scores, Bennett wrote sumptuous works of ‘concert music’ as he called it. This first volume reveals him as one fo the most brilliant natural talents to emerge in post-war British music. Influenced by both the American Songbook and his teacher Pierre Boulez, he also always strove to place melody- and emotional honesty- at the center of his music. These traits are coupled in the epic Marimba Concerto, an innovative piece for the composer, moving from a colorful and lyrical first movement to highly virtuosic passages and strikingly athletic cadenzas. The demanding solo part is tackled here by the multi-award winning Colin Currie, nowadays seen as the world’s finest and most daring percussionist, as well as a champion of contemporary music.

In addition to Sir Adrian Boult’s (1889–1983) masterly conducting of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s symphonies, these live stereo performances include several new additions to the conductor’s illustrious discography: Rossini’s La scala di seta and Beethoven’s Die Weihe des Hauses Overtures, as well as Weber’s Euryanthe Overture which he last recorded in 1937.

Born in Birmingham, Alpesh Chauhan studied cello under Eduardo Vassallo at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester before continuing at the RNCM to pursue the prestigious Master’s Conducting Course. Alpesh has studied with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, participated in masterclasses with Juanjo Mena, Vasily Petrenko and Jac van Steen, and was mentored by Andris Nelsons and Edward Gardner in his post as Assistant Conductor of the CBSO 2014-16. Newly appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker from the 21/22 season, he is also Associate Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of Birmingham Opera Company. He frequently appears as guest conductor with acclaimed international orchestras including the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National d’Île de France, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale RAI, Malmö Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

For this, his debut recording for Chandos, he has chosen a collection of Tchaikovsky’s symphonic fantasias, alongside the Overture and Polonaise from the comic opera ‘Cherevichki’. The Tempest, from 1873 is based on the Shakespeare play, and shows that Tchaikovsky’s unique voice and style were already fully developed. Francesca da Rimini (based on the tale in Dante’s Inferno) was written only a few years later, but after Tchaikovsky had attended the premier of Wagner’s Ring cycle in Bayreuth – an influence discernible particularly in the brass chords. Cherevichki (the Slippers) is a revision of his earlier opera Vakula the Smith, based on Gogol’s Christmas Eve. Tchaikovsky’s Symphonic Ballad The Voyevoda is based on Adam Mickiewicz’s poem ‘The Ambush’, and is the first orchestral work to include the (newly invented) Celeste.

REVIEW:

Chauhan proves in this disc that he loves Tchaikovsky and is not afraid to show it, at a time when so many conductors appear embarrassed by the emotional intensity and try to tame the music, with results that are sometimes desiccated.

-- Gramophone