In ORGAN PLUS WITH W J, Wilma Jensen is heard in a variety of music recordings spanning a long and successful career, as a concerto soloist, as a choral conductor and accompanist, as a concert organ soloist and organist in combination with various instrumentalists and vocal soloists.
Note the three striking elements on this album, from the minute you press play. The first is the quality of the performances. These are top-level musicians bringing their same superlative artistry to Christmas favorites that they do to a Schubert quartet or Taverner score. The second is the sterling quality of the recording. If there is a sonic equivalent to sipping a hot toddy while curled up before a roaring fire, it is Sono Luminus’s peerless mixes and captures. Third–and in every way as essential as the previous two–this is a kaleidoscopic collection of styles and interpretations of beloved songs and carols that keeps one eager for the next number. With such a fetching variety of artists and approaches, you will find yourself going top-to-tail on this one. Simplicity is an underrated avenue when it comes to holiday releases, so the entries by Irina Muresanu & Matei Varga, Bruce Levingston, Kathryn Bates, and Skylark Vocal Ensemble are a breath of proverbial fresh air. Muresanu’s seductive playing is a glimpse into the golden age of violin technique–lush vibrato and delicious sentimentality, which infuses “White Christmas” with every bit of nostalgia one could hope for.
CONTENTS:
Steve Nelson, Jack Rollins: Frosty the Snowman
Tchaikovsky: The Seasons, Op. 37b XII. December "Christmas"
Berlin, I: White Christmas
Marks, J: Holly Jolly Christmas
Blake, H: Walking in the Air
Cory Hills: 'Twas the Night Before Christmas
Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie: Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
Guaraldi: Christmas Time Is Here (From "A Charlie Brown Christmas")
trad: Joy to the World
trad: Good King Wenceslas
Martin, Hugh: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
Gruber, F: Silent Night, H. 145
REVIEW:
This is a well-constructed program of solo piano music that valuably includes the premiere recording of Holst’s Brook Green Suite in Vally Lasker’s transcription and two pieces by Roderick Williams; one an original composition and the other his free transcription of John Ireland’s Sea Fever.
Britten’s Holiday Diary seems to be receiving more recordings and concert performances of late. I last movements from it in a highlights disc from the Husum Festival. The nippy flurries of Early Morning Bathe are finely projected by Maria Marchant, who ensures that the Sailing movement is by no means plain, though after the squalls one returns to its elysian introduction. The big contrast between the showy Fun-Fair aand the subdued Night could hardly be more potent. Ronald Stevenson tended to be more-than-somewhat dismissive of the solo piano writing of some senior British composers. His Peter Grimes Fantasy, which follows with inexorable programmatic logic, is a fugue on two subjects and Britten approved of it according to the paragraph in the booklet that preserves Stevenson’s own introduction to the piece. It’s driving, powerful music, idiomatically laid out, as one would expect of the prolific executant-composer. Maria Marchant’s metronome is set to ‘action’ when it comes to John Ireland’s Ballade of London Nights, which she takes at a real lick—the fastest recording of it yet to be set down, I think. If I happen to prefer the more insinuating tempi of, say, John Lenehan, Alan Rowlands and Eric Parkin, it’s certainly bracing to hear Marchant’s take, if only the once.
Roderick Williams’s Sea Fever transcription opens like Rachmaninov and is vividly accomplished, whilst his own Goodwood by the Sea fits the program delightfully: richly colored, rhythmically vivid, wholly delightful. Kenneth Leighton’s Six Studies are knottier by far, a sequence of so called ‘Study-Variations’, composed in 1969. The color and astringency of the writing is always exciting, the ‘e secco’ instruction fully realized here in the second study, and the way that economy of means develops gravity in the Adagio a particularly revealing example of Leighton’s skill. The garrulous quality of the capricious fourth movement and the dramatic energy of the finale study reinforce the rewarding merits of this brief but intense cycle. Holst’s solo piano music aspires to little more than charm, though the folklorically inflected Toccata is thoroughly engaging: the Brook Green Suite is similarly effortlessly charming and Lasker’s transcription—she was his assistant and ex-pupil—is fresh-faced and effective.
It ends a well selected work list that will reward close listening. Robert Matthew-Walker’s notes are very readable, though he has to strain to make connections between the works from time to time. Fine recording quality.
MacMillan: Stabat Mater / Christophers, The Sixteen, Britten Sinfonia
Coro
CD
$10.49$20.99Save 50%Mar 17, 2017
Few living composers communicate with the emotional directness of Sir James MacMillan and his belief that "beauty is at the heart of our Christian faith" is profoundly present in his new setting of the Stabat mater. Arguably one of the most powerful poems in the liturgy, only a small number of composers have tackled the Stabat Mater in the last 30 years and the musical world has waited a long time for a substantial setting. In James MacMillan's version we are witness to a new and intensely personal work which encapsulates the power of the poem in a way no other composer has done to date. Harry Christophers writes: "James digs deep underneath the surface of this 13th century Marian hymn meditating on Mary's suffering as she stands at the foot of the cross. He speaks of 'a painful world of loss, violence and spiritual desolation' and the score is packed to the full with those intense feelings. Our collaboration with the Britten sinfonia on this project has been a marriage made in heaven - both groups have had long associations with James's music and both give of their all in bringing this score to life." Sir James MacMillan writes: "It was a great delight and honour to respond to The Sixteen...I regard Harry Christophers' choir as one of the great choirs of the world and their standards of vocal brilliance and blend are unsurpassed."
‘Lyla’ is Avishai Cohen’s first release with Razdaz Recordz. Piano legend Chick Corea appears as a special guest performing a duet with the leader. Avishai Cohen is an Israeli jazz double bassist, composer, singer, and arranger. He began playing the piano at 9 years old but changed to the bass guitar at the age of 14, inspired by bassist Jaco Pastorius. In 2002, Cohen founded his record label, Razdaz Recordz. "I've always been interested in several genres of music, including jazz, rock, pop, Latin and funk," says Cohen. "I'm always packed with ideas. I decided to start my own label because I'm involved in so many different projects." Cohen's signature sound is a blend of Middle Eastern, eastern European, and African-American musical idioms.
Sir John Tavener describes the Lament for Jerusalem as a mystical love song. The Lament brings together Christian, Judaic, and Islamic texts and is sung in Greek and English. The musical structure is that of a lattice whose proportions are carefully designed so that the listener is invited to focus on key points of the text which are themselves supported by transcendental melodic, harmonic, and textural devices. The simplicity of the work's form and it's logical progression through a series of seven linked, self-referential tableaux allow the Lament to grow in power and beauty during it's course. The American composer Steve Reich has described some of his own music as purveying 'a kind of dynamic stasis' and that aptly sums up the effect of Tavener's Lament for Jerusalem. The Lament is rooted in grim tradition, yet it looks longingly into the future to a time when beatific vision is restored, and, as in much of the very greatest art, form and content are inseparable.
The Carols Album / Huddersfield Choral Society, Et Al
Signum Classics
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Jan 01, 2007
Favourite carols in varied and attractive arrangements, well sung and recorded.
There are a few surprises right from the start of this disc. First, an introduction to the carol "Hark the herald angels sing" by an unnamed brass group, second the use of a new (to me) arrangement, and finally the sound of a well trained and well recorded choir but singing with polished Southern vowels. Whilst I regret the loss of some of the individuality which a more characteristically Yorkshire sound used to give this splendid choir, it is by no means a serious defect, and the other surprises I have mentioned are positive gains. The brass group are used sparingly in a small number of carols, but there they do add a distinctive colour of a kind familiar to devotees of Songs of Praise. The new arrangements (again, to me) of many of the carols are generally welcome, especially most of those by the excellent organist, Darius Battiwalla. The contrasting "Little Jesus, sweetly sleep" and "I saw three ships" show him able to grasp the essence of a tune and embellish it without swamping or contradicting that essence. Unfortunately this does not apply in the final item – "Christians awake" – which loses its wonderful rough dignity in gaining a regrettable Broadway Musicals sound.
Many of the other arrangements are by the conductor, Joseph Cullen, who shows a similarly approach and skill to Darius Battiwalla. Older arrangements are by no means completely neglected, and "Gabriel’s message" in Edgar Pettman’s lovely arrangement and Harold Darke’s "In the bleak midwinter" are highlights for me. Less so are John Rutter’s perversion of Adophe Adam’s delightful song or the pleasant but by now hackneyed arrangements by David Willcocks. One surprise is the inclusion of Reginald Spofforth’s Glee, "Hail! smiling morn". Even if it does sound better with single voices to a part, it makes a delightful effect here, and I hope that other choirs may be tempted to include it in carol concerts, even if the words have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.
The problem of the order in which to perform carols to ensure a good variety of character is solved very well, so that the disc can be enjoyed when listened through as a whole. All in all, if you want a recording of most of your favourite carols (but no "Good King Wenceslas" or "While shepherds") in varied and mainly attractive arrangements, well sung and recorded, this may well be exactly what you are after.
MAYR Gioas • Franz Hauk, cond; Andrea Lauren Brown (sop); Robert Sellier (ten); Cornel Frey (ten); Andreas Burkhart (bs); Bavarian St Op Ch; Simon Mayr Ch & Ens • NAXOS 8.572710-11 (2 CDs: 111:22)
Only two issues ago (36:2), I had my first taste of music by Simon Mayr, on a Naxos CD featuring three of the composer’s concertos led, as here, by Franz Hauk, who seems to be somewhat of a Mayr specialist. In that review, I was forced to admit that I was not previously familiar with Mayr, most likely because his main area of endeavor was opera, a field in which I claim no particular expertise. The review concluded by wondering if, as mainly a composer of opera, Mayr was best represented by a disc of his concertos, and with a promise to get back to the reader with an answer once I gained more familiarity with his work.
The wait wasn’t a long one. Here we have Mayr’s Gioas (Joash, King of Judea), designated a “parody oratorio,” so-called because it draws upon Mayr’s opera, I misteri eleusini for its material. I gather that the work bears certain similarities to the composer’s David in the Cave of Engedi, reviewed by Patrick Rucker in 32:4, and Samuele, both previously recorded for Naxos by Hauk. A parody oratorio, as I understand it, involves the practice of adapting popular operatic works to religious texts so they could be performed during Holy Week while his Holiness looked the other way.
Gioas dates from 1823 and is set to a libretto by an unknown author (or one who preferred to remain anonymous) that tells a story of internecine blood-letting over rights to the throne, treachery, and retribution, all of which through self-sacrifice and appeasement of various gods, goddesses, and priests—that’s the religious aspect—culminates in a happy ending. The work is appropriately referred to in the program note as “pseudo-sacred,” or, to call it what it is, a barely disguised excuse to present an unstaged opera in the guise of an oratorio. Mayr was not alone in fashioning such Church-sanctioned entertainments. The tradition persisted, mainly in Italy, through much of the 19th century, with Emilio Cianchi’s Giudetta, composed in 1854, being performed as late as 1912. Knowing this, it’s a bit difficult to follow the intrigues of the plot and to listen to the impassioned arias, the pattering recitatives, and the solemn and celebratory choruses without a smile and a smirk. No matter how much holy water you sprinkle on it, the opera that’s inside this oratorio won’t be exorcised. Considering that Gioas was written in the same year as Rossini’s Semiramide, Mayr’s work sounds rather dated for its time. But having been born in 1763, Mayr was almost 30 years Rossini’s senior. So, perhaps it’s not surprising that Mayr’s style should more closely resemble Mozart’s than it does Rossini’s.
The music is delightful, often touching, and artfully crafted for the voice. It’s no wonder that Mayr was so celebrated for his operas. The four soloists are all very convincing in their roles and well matched vocally. Add to that enlivened playing from Hauk’s instrumental forces, and you have a winning performance. Unfortunately, Naxos has not provided a text or translation, but the album note gives a pretty good synopsis of the mishmash that calls itself a plot. If you can pretend while listening to Mayr’s Gioas that it’s not just an opera masquerading as a sacred oratorio, you will find much in the work and in this recording of it to enjoy.
The Hungarian-born composer TIBOR HARSÁNYI is now recognized as an important personality in 'L'École de Paris'. He had a lifelong interest in modern dance, represented here by the Petite suite and Trois Pièces de danse, and he also embraced jazz, which was part of the Parisian atmosphere of the inter-war period, and other influences, while keeping the Central European rhythms and tonalities of his Hungarian origins. The Trois Pièces lyriques is a rare example of Harsányi expressing torment during the turbulent years of the Second World War. GIORGIO KOUKL is a pianist/harpsichordist and composer. He studied at both the Conservatories of Zürich and Milan, where he took part in the masterclasses of Nikita Magaloff, Jacques Février, and Stanislaus Neuhaus, and with Rudolf Firkušný, friend and advocate of Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu. It was through Firkušný that Koukl first encountered Martinu's music, and is now considered one of the world's leading interpreters of Martinu's piano music. As a logical continuation of this work, Koukl has recorded the complete solo piano works of Paul Le Flem, Alexander Tcherepnin, Arthur Lourié, Vítezslava Kaprálová, Witold Lutoslawski, and more recently, Alexandre Tansman and Tibor Harsányi.
Gregson: Dream Song; Works for Orchestra / Tovey, BBC Philharmonic
Chandos
CD
$10.99$21.99Save 50%Jul 29, 2014
Edward Gregson (b. 1945), one of Britain’s most versatile and prolific composers, has gained worldwide recognition for his approachable and engaging music. With the BBC Philharmonic, Bramwell Tovey conducts orchestral works, including two recently arranged for ensemble in the Horn Concerto and Aztec Dances, that take inspiration from an array of musical and extra-musical sources, revealing the breadth of Gregson’s musical imagination.
Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra - Four Symphonic Interludes
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%Sep 25, 2012
This is "as good a performance and interpretation - and technical recording - of Also sprach Zarathustra as one would expect to find" (Gramophone). Inspired and inspiring, Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra is one of a series of tone poems which pushed the form to it's limits. The famous opening introduces a musical interpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical treatise, taking Zarathustra on a complex search through human aspirations. Based on an incident in Strauss's own life, the suite from Intermezzo distills domestic strife and misunderstanding into four jocular vignettes.
At the time of his death in 2010, Almeida Prado was one of Brazil’s most internationally admired composers, one who created music of unique sonority and color, rooted in his native country. InAurora(‘Dawn’) he employs his newly developed ‘transtonality’ to radiant effect, while theConcerto Fribourgeoisfeatures a collage technique. In his Piano Concerto No. 1 Almeida Prado explores a cogent structure in which the soloist opens up, rips apart or transforms the theme and variations, in a work that is both grandiose and luminous.
REVIEWS:
"The performances by Sonia Rubinsky sound like they are totally committed to the music. The range of her expressive control is remarkable. She has all of the requisite strength to deal with the many percussive moments in the music. The Minas Gerais Philharmonic Orchestra, under the expert direction of Fabio Mechetti, provides a well-considered and exemplary accompaniment. The recorded sound is very good."
--Fanfare
"The southern border of the vast Brazilian state of Minas Gerais lies roughly 100 miles north of (and is broadly parallel to) the road which connects the more renowned centres of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Its capital Belo Horizonte lies centrally and seems to be the home of the Minas Gerais Philharmonic, which on the evidence of this disc appears to be an impressive orchestral unit.
Aurora is both dramatic and monumental; the engineers have done a splendid job in taming its excesses and realising an ideal balance between the demanding piano part and the orchestra.
The Piano Concerto No. 1...embodies an arch-like structure, framed by brief panels labelled Apelo (Appeal) I and II in which contain the four-note thematic germ which drives the entire work. Apelo I inhabits murky depths whose severity soon yields to a sequence of rapid variations, performed with remarkable incisiveness and clarity by Rubinsky and the orchestra. The Piano Concerto No 1 makes a lasting impact – it’s difficult to imagine a more compelling or definitive account than Rubinsky’s.
The issue concludes with the Concerto Fribourgeois, commissioned in 1985 to celebrate the tricentenary of the birth of J.S. Bach[.] Rubinsky’s supreme commitment to this music provides yet more evidence of her devotion to Almeida Prado, whilst the recording rates highly in its depth and clarity.
I found all three of these very different works most enjoyable; they are each sufficiently colourful and invigorating to merit further reacquaintance.
To witness a performance of Delius’s A Mass of Life, arguably his supreme creative achievement, is to look into the heart of the composer and his Nietzsche-inspired world. Moreover, this ravishing music, written between 1898 and 1905, represents Delius at the height of his powers, when musical ideas seemed to pour out of him at a time when he had finally learned to assimilate, in an entirely individual, not to say maverick manner, a confluence of modernist styles embracing Grieg, Wagner, Strauss, Charpentier and Debussy.
There is no doubt from the vivid opening choruses of Parts 1 and 2 of this recording (and what openings!) that the message of the work is a life-affirming one. There is a dynamic momentum to the tempi which perfectly evokes Zarathustra’s ruling passion, the Will of Man, and there is a richness to the orchestral sound which adds to the sense of muscularity. The chorus negotiate Delius’s often awkward vocal intervals with great skill and the intonation is virtually flawless. Just occasionally the sheer weight of the orchestral sound, which is quite forward on this recording (more so than Hickox), is apt to overwhelm the voices but this is a minor distraction.
Hill brings energy and élan to the third section, ‘In deine Auge’ (for me perhaps the most exhilarating section of Part 1), where the parallel with the end of Act 2 of Die Meistersinger is almost palpable and where the most unusual example of a Delius fugue (!) is given life, vigour and meaning.
Alan Opie, who has the lion’s share of the solo music in the work, is almost Wotan-like in his performances. From his first Nietzschean dance he is majestic and brings out of the score that vibrant, heady, Teutonic contemporaneity with which Delius had clearly become enthralled at this point in his career. Opie’s singing of what is effectively the role of Zarathustra has immense authority and his impressive range (up to high G) is ideal for Delius’s onerous vocal demands.
Andrew Kennedy, Catherine Wyn-Rogers and Janice Watson also offer fine lyrical interpretations of their solo parts and the choral accompaniments are allowed to intermingle subtly as an extension of the orchestra. The BSO are on fine form too, and special mention needs to be made of the haunting horn-playing in the introduction to Part 2 (‘On the Mountains’), a sound which sums up so much of Delius’s nature music.
This is a must for any Delius Liebhaber and, with the added bonus of the late Prelude and Idyll, a marvellous starting point for anyone new to Delius’s unique but compelling art.
-- Jeremy Dibble, Gramophone 3622320.az_DELIUS_Mass_Life_Prelude.html
DELIUS A Mass of Life. Prelude and Idyll1 • David Hill, Cond; 1Janice Watson (sop); Catherine Wyn-Rogers (mez); Andrew Kennedy (ten); 1Alan Opie (bar); Bach Ch; 1Bournemouth SO • NAXOS 8.572861-62 (2 CDs: 118:19 Text and Translation)
A Mass of Life is quintessential Delius, musically and existentially, composed over 1904–05 in the first great rush of his maturity. From the bounding affirmative choruses to the breathtakingly sustained nature contemplations, from the melancholy to the ecstatic, the Mass of Life traces and forecasts the gamut of Delian affect with a concision, fullness, and abundance he might rival but never achieve so comprehensively again. Unless I’ve missed something, this is but the fourth recording of the work since Beecham’s nonpareil 1952 account. Though its musical demands are daunting—if nowhere near as challenging as those of Mahler’s “Symphony of a Thousand,” with which it invites comparison—the primary bar to frequent performance is its text, drawn by Delius’s friend Ernst Cassirier largely from the Dance Songs of Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra. For those coming in late, one recalls the oft-quoted passage in Eric Fenby’s Delius as I Knew Him: “When, one wet day … he was looking for something to read in the library of a Norwegian friend … and had taken down a book, Thus Spake Zarathustra—a book for all and none—by one Friedrich Nietzsche, he was ripe for it. The book, he told me, never left his hands until he had devoured it from cover to cover. It was the very book he had been seeking all along, and finding that book he declared to be one of the most important events of his life. Nor did he rest content until he had read every work of Nietzsche that he could lay his hands on”—to which Fenby, a devout Catholic, adds—“and the poison entered his soul.” For listeners and performers today it may still be something of a jolt to find, in place of the supplicating Kyrie that the unfortunate term “Mass” leads one to expect, a glowingly charged hymn to the Will, “dispeller of need, my own necessity,” followed by Zarathustra’s brief praise of laughter (“My own laughter I pronounced holy”), succeeded by Zarathustra’s love duet with Life in a meadow filled with dancing girls, an archetypal encounter transpiring in a mythical dimension “beyond good and evil,” beyond place and time, crowned by the first, murmured, utterance of the Bell Song, the work’s central mystery. A Mass of Life may, of course, be enjoyed for its power and sensuous magic without reference to its text, but only to those nurtured on Nietzsche will it reveal its full import. Shrugging incomprehension of the text renders Benjamin Luxon’s Zarathustra, for Charles Groves (with the London Philharmonic Chorus and Orchestra), merely mellifluous, while Peter Coleman-Wright’s deadpan delivery for the late Richard Hickox—with the Waynflete Singers directed by today’s conductor, David Hill, and the Bournemouth Symphony Chorus and Orchestra—proves anesthetically workmanlike. When it appeared in 1997, I rated that reading, on Chandos, the best since Beecham’s (Fanfare 20:6). That honor goes now to the present offering. While Alan Opie does not efface memories of Bruce Boyce, for Beecham—whose delivery resonated from the nexus of Delius’s realization of Nietzsche—he teases the text gingerly, making a credible Zarathustra. In some numbers, Delius asks the soloists to share parts, with some of Zarathustra’s lines persuasively taken by Andrew Kennedy, and a portion of Life’s happily rendered by Janice Watson, though Catherine Wyn-Rogers’s beguiling, seductive Life recalls Monica Sinclair’s divinatory geste for Beecham. The choral work is beyond praise, though in Hill’s brisk approach the melting lyricism heard chez Beecham tautens and leaps.
Idyll is a late reworking of music from Margot la Rouge, composed in 1902 for the new opera competition offered by the music publisher Sanzogno. Though it failed to score and was not heard in Delius’s lifetime, it comes from the composer’s ripest years and contains gorgeous swaths of his richest utterance, which he salvaged in 1932, recomposing it to words by Whitman and making an extended love duet of it. Idyll has not lacked for vocally lustrous, persuasive performances submerging Whitman’s quaintness (“Behold me when I pass, hear my voice, approach, draw close, but speak not. Be not afraid of me”) in absolute conviction. Of major interest, the lovingly lingering 1981 account led by Eric Fenby—who took down the score from dictation by the blind, paralyzed Delius—features Felicity Lott and Thomas Allen (deleted Unicorn-Kanchana UKCD 2073). Meredith Davies’s still-available 1968 tilt at Idyll, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, is made memorable by the divinatory partnership of Heather Harper and John Shirley-Quirk. In keeping with his go at the Mass of Life, Hill pushes the work a bit, spurring the impassioned moments to escalate from the pervasive tone of wistful elegy. Opie, as the anonymous man, is authoritatively resonant, in response to Janice Watson’s brightly edged soprano (touched by a bit of vibrato), with its gloriously amber lower register, buxomly filling the part of the nameless woman.
One caveat: In the headnote the title of the work is given per the album, but you will search the catalog of Delius’s works in vain for an orchestral Prelude. The work so designated is simply the first three minutes—an orchestral prelude, to be sure—of Idyll and has never, until now, been listed separately. The fake title generates a phantom work to bedevil buyers, scholars, and connoisseurs, and detracts from—rather than adding to—the program’s generosity.
Sound packs an immediate wallop making for occasional congestion. In the opening chorus, for instance, the leaping underlining of trombones and tubas becomes indistinct, overwhelmed by choral mass, and while one can pick out the glockenspiel, its function of festive accentuation is lost. In quieter passages, and in the capture of the vocalists, on the other hand, this upfront take is gratifyingly welcome. In German, Zarathustra’s pronouncements recall and parody the Lutheran Bible, in light of which the ostensibly stilted thee-ing and thou-ing of William Wallace’s singing translation—made for Beecham and used by him for all of his public performances (according to notes by Delius aficionado Lyndon Jenkins)—fall into place, if not quite into King James English. Whitman’s text is included.
In sum, a superb production and the grandest addition to the Delius discography in many years. Highest recommendation.
2008 brings us the long-anticipated sequel to 1999's second volume in Naxos' John Ireland piano music cycle. Since he began this project in 1995, pianist John Lenehan has grown more responsive to Ireland's impressionistic yet skillfully contrapuntal idiom, noticeably expanding his palette of nuances, colors, and articulations. Note, for example, how he focuses on On A Birthday Morning's emphatic melodic lilt and treats the thick chordal accompaniment as smooth, supportive padding. The Debussy-like passages throughout The Almond Trees and Amberly Wild Brooks (the second of the Two Pieces) are firmly etched and defined yet never at the expense of the long line, and that also applies to Lenehan's thoughtful animation of Equinox's swirling textures. As for the Piano Sonata, I waver between Lenehan and Eric Parkin. I admire Lenehan's ardent sweep and more generous pedaling in the outer movement's climaxes, yet gravitate toward Parkin's more luminous lyricism and superior legato touch in the slow movement. But that's splitting hairs. Besides, you can't disparage Naxos' price tag and first-class engineering, along with Lenehan's committed artistry. In all, a lovely release, warmly recommended.
Sinigaglia: Complete Works for String Quartet, Vol. 1 / Archos Quartet
Naxos
CD
$9.99$19.99Save 50%May 08, 2020
The renowned Italian composer and mountaineer Leone Sinigaglia wrote a fascinating series of pieces for string quartet that reflect his powers of characterization and elegance. Flowing melodies can be heard throughout, not least in the Concert-Etude, Op. 5, while the more substantial Variations on a Theme of Brahms, Op. 22 display his technical skill and expressive variety, whether reflective, somber or exuberant. His String Quartet in D major, Op. 27 exemplifies his dual inheritance: a commanding central European facility, combined with a natural Italian lyricism.
