Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is CD whose pleasures have grown and grown with repeated listenings, as new subtleties are noticed and the perfection of the ensemble work becomes more evident.

The Aquarelle Guitar Quartet was originally established at the Royal Northern College of Music at Manchester by students of Craig Ogden and Gordon Crosskey. In its present incarnation it is a fine, accomplished group and the understanding of the idioms relevant to the music on the present CD cries out from every track. My only quibble is with their choice of name – a term which refers to thin watercolours seriously underplays the vibrancy and drive of their work. I say this even if their playing does also have, at times, the subtlety and transparency one might also associate with aquarelles.

Most of the music here is engaging without being especially profound. Two generations of the Brazilian Assad family are represented, father Sergio and daughter Clarice. Sergio Assad is a distinguished guitarist-composer and this performance of his Uarekena no doubt benefited from the fact that the group spent a week with Assad shortly before making the recording. It shares its name with one of the Amazonian tribes, the sense of such a geographical background partly evoked in the chattering cross-rhythms of this intriguing piece and its flickering alternations of dense and simple textures. Clarice Assad is represented by Bluezilian and Danças Nativas. The first was premiered by the Aquarelle Quartet in 2006 and is an infectious confection of the phrases and rhythms of blues and jazz as well as of such Brazilian genres as the samba and the baião. A similar mixture characterises the first of her three Native Dances, Twisted Samba (with a glance at Antônio Carlos Jobim’s Samba Torto), samba rhythms underlying some jazzy harmonies and phrases; the second movement, Reflective Cançao does indeed start off as a thoughtful song before morphing into a lively waltz. The third, Mad Baião, interweaves intriguingly the rhythms of the baião with some sharply strummed phrases. Ms. Assad’s music is witty and cool, constantly inventive and always pleasing to the ear.

The longest work here is a six part suite by Roland Dyens, the important French guitarist-composer; Brésils is an attractively various work, its movements grouped in a clearly structured fashion. Its first movement, De Natureza, echoes musically the natural sounds of the Amazon, full of clicks and rustlings, chirrups and whispers, miniature explosions of activity and brief silences, insect- and bird-like patterns of call and response. Chôro Legal moves us into a human world, a world expressed in relaxed and flowing music, a sense of human friendship and communication. Its relative intimacy is succeeded by the more public music of Marchinha do ceù (Celestial March), which audibly alludes to the drums and marching bands of the Carnival. Things are very different in Modinhazùl, predominantly introspective and sad, imbued with a kind of graceful and dignified melancholy. The penultimate movement, O Spirito do João is dedicated to the legendary figure of João Gilberto and, aptly enough, is a bossa nova. The suite closes with Xaxarê (the title relates the piece to a Brazilian dance, the xaxádo, traditionally associated with the bandits of Pernambuco, which takes its name from the sound of sandals beating on sand); Dyens demands the use of extended techniques from the players in a piece full of percussive writing, a reminder of the contribution to the language of Brazilian music made by its large population of African slaves.

No musical representation of the ‘Spirit of Brazil’ could be complete without Villa-Lobos. Here we get an arrangement of the familiar (and still lovely) melody from the fifth Bachianas Brasileiras; much arranged as this piece is – and one can understand why many ensembles of different kinds would wish to play it – I always find myself hankering for the original, even in a good arrangement such as this. The witty Brincadeira (A Joke), the brief second movement of the composer’s first String Quartet of 1915, works well in its new form.

Pauolo Bellinati’s A Furiosa alludes, according to the booklet notes by Michael Baker and Rosy Russell, “to the incredibly virtuosic street musicians of Brazil, known as ‘The Furious Ones’” and is a contagious piece based on the maxixe, which has been described as a kind of Africanised polka.

Egberto Gismonti, classically trained - including two years in Paris with Nadia Boulanger - is one of the great musical eclectics, a multi-instrumentalist (and vocalist) whose interpretation of the Brazilian tradition is informed by his familiarity with the languages of jazz and classical music, the blues and African music as well as by his openness to the folk music of other cultures. He is a great improviser and the duet version of his Palhaço has been transcribed (by James Jervis) from a recorded performance on piano and synthesiser – the results are beautiful, a gently melancholic meditation of great character. Gismonti’s Memória e Fado closes this fine album, played by the duo of Mike Baker and Vasilis Bessas, an intimate and wistfully reminiscent piece of nostalgic loss; one only misses the evocative lyrics of the original.

This is CD whose pleasures have grown and grown with repeated listenings, as new subtleties are noticed and the perfection of the ensemble work becomes more evident.

-- Glyn Pursglove, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

This selection is a Super Audio CD, which is designed for use only on Super Audio CD players. It is also available in standard CD format.
Includes traditional work(s). Ensemble: I Musici de Montreal. Conductor: Yuli Turovsky.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Recorded in: Henry Wood Hall, Glasgow 1 April 1985 & 1 May 1985 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Philip Couzens [Assistant]

'Where has this fabulous choir been all my life? No choral strength you can name eludes them... Chandos' usual lucid and unaffected notes, full texts and resplendent SACD-hybrid sound conspire with irresistible choral wizardry to make this an absolute must', wrote American Record Guide on Shakespeare in Song, the first release by the Phoenix Chorale (then the Phoenix Bach Choir) in 2004. Four years on and the Phoenix Chorale has released a further three discs on Chandos, in conjunction with the Kansas City Chorale, including Grechaninov's Passion Week for which choirs were nominated for five Grammys, winning in the Best Engineered Recording, Classical category. On this new SA-CD the Phoenix Chorale returns with an international anthology of songs to celebrate the Virgin Mary. The rewarding and unique programme, which includes premiere recordings, will appeal to all lovers of beautiful choral singing.

Orazio Vecchi's operatic precursor features a combination of a live performance and specially filmed episodes, is a collection of commedia snapshots, with comic narrations by Simon Callow. Directed by West End producer Peter Wilson.

To this day, music from classic Broadway and Hollywood musicals continues to enjoy immense popularity with audiences and performers alike. Here Simon Keenlyside, one of the world’s most charismatic and sought-after operatic baritones, presents Something’s Gotta Give, an album devoted to songs from musicals – songs that require every bit as much attention to text and interpretation as Lieder, and often the same mastery of vocal technique as operatic arias. Scarlett Strallen, a regular presence of West End and Broadway stages, partners Keenlyside in duets and sings two numbers on her own. They are joined by David Charles Abell, a musician steeped in the tradition of musical theatre, who conducts the BBC Concert Orchestra in wonderfully lush original orchestral arrangements, a number of which have been specially restored for this recording.

The programme includes some of the best-loved numbers in the repertoire, including Cole Porter’s ‘Night and Day’, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’’, and ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ from Fiddler on the Roof. The range represented, from the emotional tour de force of ‘Soliloquy’ to the charming character song ‘Reviewing the Situation’, showcases the many facets of Simon Keenlyside both as an extraordinary vocalist and endlessly charismatic performer.

The seventeen string quartets of Weinberg span nearly half a century, from his student days in Warsaw to the end of his career in Moscow, and show his development as a composer more clearly than his work in any other genre. The Second Quartet, composed in 1939 – 40 whilst studying in Minsk, was dedicated to his mother and sister, who he would later learn had not survived the German invasion of Poland. Quartet No. 5, of 1945, was the first in which he added titles to each movement, and reflects the influence of Shostakovich over the young composer. The final quartet in this programme – No. 8 – was written in 1959 and dedicated to the Borodin Quartet. For many years the best-known of Weinberg’s quartets in the west, this single-movement work is divided into three sections with a coda. The Arcadia Quartet is a passionate advocate for these quartets, writing: ‘[Weinberg’s] music is like a glow of light surrounded by the darkness of the unknown, and it quickly became a goal of ours to attempt to dilute these shadows. With every recording and every live performance of his music, we intend to shine some light on this wide-ranging, profound phenomenon, which has remained overlooked for so long, and we hope that, with time, Mieczys?aw Weinberg will take his rightful place in the history of music.’

REVIEW:

The Arcadia’s evident enthusiasm for the music is perfectly conveyed here with playing that maximises the emotional range explored in each work, as well as exploiting to the full the music’s tonal and textural varieties and its underlying sense of unease. These contrasts are placed in sharp relief when comparing the relentless Bartókian ferocity they achieve in the rhythmically dynamic Scherzo from the Fifth Quartet with the easygoing geniality that is projected in the opening movement of the Second, or the austere solemnity that characterises the slow sections of the Eighth.

–BBC Music Magazine

There's very little competition for this music, which is a shame because these are excellent quartets. It's really very remarkable how Korngold uses timbre to keep the busy textures clear and prevent his often chromatic harmony from turning into sludge. The main competition comes from the Flesch Quartet on ASV, so-so performances spread over two discs because they include the string Sextet as well. In general, the Doric Quartet offers livelier, more colorful, more accurate performances. To give just one example: the score of the Second quartet lists the work's duration at an optimistically fast 18 minutes. Flesch takes 25, while the Doric clocks in at an ideal 21 minutes.

These quartets are quite difficult to play, the first especially, which features frequent changes of tempo, often within a few bars. The Doric players handle all of these with astonishing ease and naturalness. There are a couple of points, as at figure 3 in the Second quartet's first movement, where the group slows down a bit in anticipation of Korngold's marking (his "Un poco più tranquillo" doesn't arrive until seven bars later), but if this is a fault, it's a vanishingly minor one.

Otherwise, you can only applaud the group's tonal richness, immaculate intonation, and a stylishness that never turns tacky (excellent application of portamento). First violinist Alex Redington deserves particular mention for handling his vibrato-less "ohne Ausdruck" moments (figure 7 in the First quartet's first movement, for example) with the right expressive point while never letting his tone turn just plain ugly ("period" performers take note). Violist Simon Tandree also features a particularly attractive timbre in his many solo licks. Korngold asks for many "special effects", including harmonics, col legno, open strings, muting, and lots of pizzicato; all of these are rendered with consistent musicality and are beautifully integrated into the ensemble texture.

Excellent sonics complement this obvious first choice for this music. If you don't know these pieces, you should. There's much more to Korngold than you might think--check out the wonderfully spiky scherzo in the Third quartet for a particularly bracing "fact check" on his theoretically unabashedly late-Romantic style. One final note for score collectors: all three works are available from Schott, the first two quartets in convenient study format, the Third only as a score and parts. An important release for chamber music devotees, and a terrific example of first-rate quartet playing.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Producer(s) Brian Couzens Recorded in: All Saints' Church, Tooting, London 10-12, 14-15 July 1995 Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens