A MusicWeb International Recording of the Month!

This is a marvellous new B Minor Mass and it is, without a doubt, the most French-sounding version of the piece to have yet come my way.

That might sound like a lazy stereotype. After all, it’s performed by that most renowned Francophile among musicians, William Christie, who has dedicated his life to rehabilitating the French Baroque and whose efforts have meant that names such as Lully, Rameau, Charpentier and Marais have been not only rescued from their specialist niche but have been given an uncontested place among the concert programmes of the Anglo-Saxons. With his ensemble Les Arts Florissants he has become one of the greatest champions of that music, so it’s hardly surprising that some of the interpretative dust of the French Baroque should rub off onto his Bach.

It’s not just a trope to describe his Bach as Gallic, however. It’s there right from the start. The opening Kyrie is the most mellifluous and honeyed I have heard since the advent of historical performance practice. The two great fugues proceed with cultured smoothness that sounds as though they have one eyebrow perpetually raised. It’s a sound of which, I suspect, Lutheran Bach would have profoundly disapproved. I rather liked it, however, and as a change from what has become the norm of period practice I found it very effective.

That’s only one example of one of the performance’s wider traits. Throughout, it has an elegance, an élan, a nonchalance, almost, that would make them seem entirely at home if performed in the court of ancien regime Versailles. The solos with their instrumental obligatti, for example, sound refined and polished in a manner that is a hundred miles away from the church and more from the realm of the theatre. There’s nothing wrong with that, though, and it’s in keeping with Christie’s vision. My favourites included Katherine Watson in the Laudamus te, with a wonderfully dusky violin, and André Morsch’s playful combat with the horn in the Quoniam. Tim Mead’s lovely countertenor is a repeated highlight, be it slotting into Watson’s soprano in the Christe or sustaining a blisterinly poignant Agnus Dei at the end.

Not only are the orchestral and instrumental playing super throughout, but the choral singing is top notch, too. That, however, will come as no surprise to those how know and love the work of Les Arts Florissants, and it’s great to hear them tackling one of the central works of the German repertoire. It’s a Teutonic world that they can’t be too practised in, but they bring something remarkably distinctive to it.

The main reason for the performance’s success, however, is Christie himself. Bringing his lifetime’s experience to the B Minor Mass must, surely, have been a labour of love rather than an expectation, and the results are wonderful. There is majesty aplenty in the Gloria, whose opening casts off the mellifluousness of the preceding Kyrie as though emerging into a new light, producing rumbustious, gloriously winning tone that brought a broad grin to my face, as did the outer bookends of the Credo. The Sanctus is taken at a rapid pace, with brilliantly detailed violin inflections to enliven the texture, and the final Dona nobis pacem is brilliantly paced.

Perhaps the highlight of the work is the Easter sequence, however, and, in particular, the Crucifixus. Here you get the unmistakeable whiff of the Opéra, because Christie slows down the pace and stresses the beat with what comes close to string (and voice) sforzandi in a way that surely mimics the nails being repeatedly battered into Christ’s suffering body. It’s this movement that will tell you whether this performance is for you. Some might find it vulgar or too overtly theatrical. I thought it wonderful, an example of the conductor using his experience in the theatre to enlighten and deepen his vision of Bach.

Choose for yourself, but I thought this the most memorable B Minor Mass to have come my way since the (entirely different) performance from John Butt and the Dunedin Consort. Explore it and be surprised.

– MusicWeb International (Simon Thompson)

From the mid-1810s until the end of his life, Beethoven constantly tested to the limit the forms he had inherited from Haydn and Mozart. His last two cello sonatas bear witness to this structural preoccupation, which opened up so many new spaces, as did the final sets of Bagatelles, which are as disconcerting as they are innovative. Two genres shrewdly linked by Andreas Staier and Roel Dieltiens in these interpretations, in which eloquence merges with historically informed performance practice.

This new album rounds off the complete recording of the symphonies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach that the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin began over two decades ago. The final batch offers the quintessence of his art, revealing the full originality of Johann Sebastian's inspired son, whose freedom and inventiveness paved the way for Haydn and Mozart.

Marais, M.: Viola Da Gamba Suites

MISHIMA

THE COUNTERTENORS

Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto No. 2; Symphony No. 1 - Mendelssohn's first symphonic work scored for full orchestra, the Symphony Op.11 in C minor, paved the way for even greater examples of the genre he was soon to produce. The concert overture Die sch�ne Melusine and the sparkling Piano Concerto No.2 rely on the type of orchestration and harmonic language that are best served when played on period instruments, as heard here. Devoid of the atmosphere of Romantic doom and gloom, nearly every page of both scores is marked by an exuberant cheerfulness, youthful drive and irrepressible energy in these splendid performances from fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout and the Freiburger Barockorchester led by Pablo Heras-Casado.

Rachmaninoff's output of chamber music is small but all the more precious for that. Two absolute gems bear witness to the fact: these ‘elegiac trios’, which were produced by a young composer still indisputably under the influence of Tchaikovsky. However, Rachmaninoff’s personality is already fully present, reaching heights of emotion and expressiveness.

The pieces by Suk and Grieg add a further touch of character to the picture, which is painted with an exceptionally rich palette: the artistry of the phenomenal Trio Wanderer.

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REVIEWS:

The Rachmaninov Trios share not only a sombre soundworld but a clarity of line that’s captured engagingly in these lyrical yet unsentimental performances by the Trio Wanderer. The Wanderers’ performance, a notch faster than many, has an urgency that is highly persuasive. Grieg’s dark and impassioned Andante con moto fits right in after all this, and the disc is rounded off with a sweetly understated Elegie by Suk. – BBC Music Magazine

The Trio Wanderer’s new disc, centred around Rachmaninov’s youthful trios, has all the finesse and subtlety that we’ve long associated with this French ensemble. From the start, though, one thing struck me – how curiously un-Russian these pieces sound in their hands. It’s partly due to their emphasis on clarity of texture, together with a certain Classical restraint.

– Gramophone

Isabelle Faust has gone back to the original manuscript sources to offer US her personal vision of these iconic masterpieces of the violin repertoire. In Bach's time, music for solo instruments was still little explored territory, and his Sonatas and Partitas immediately established themselves as a benchmark, technically challenging and brimming with creativity. On the second and final volume of the set, Faust plays the 'Sleeping Beauty' Stradivarius of 1704, kindly loaned to her by the L-Bank Baden-Wurttemberg.

Accompanied by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Teodor Currentzis, Alexander Melnikov captures this feeling admirably in the two Piano Concertos, and perhaps still more poignantly, - "with disarming sincerity and fearless directness," to quote his booklet note - alongside Isabelle Faust in the Violin Sonata Op.134.

In the early eighteenth century, London become the capital of Italian opera. The 1720s witnessed a feverish demand for music that led many foreign virtuosos to move to the city. Concert-loving Londoners relished the last sonatas in the style of the old master Corelli and the works of the youthful newcomer Handel. On their first recording for harmonia mundi, La R�veuse invite us to relive this lively scene.

With his masterly Vespers, composed for a cappella choir in 1915, Rachmaninoff immerses the listener in a musical universe of sublime profundity and interiority. This work, inspired by the ancient church modes, is one of the fi

This set assembles for the first time the Beethoven legacy of the Trio Wanderer. The group's superb interpretation of the Triple Concerto is now presented alongside it's masterly recording of the composer's complete original works for piano trio, a genre inherited from Haydn and Mozart in which Beethoven opened out new horizon.

La Mer is one of Debussy's most universally admired orchestral works. By contrast, his Premi�re Suite d'Orchestre was lost for more than a century, and came as a complete discovery in 2013 when Les Si�cles made the world premiere recording, played on instruments of the period. This brand-new remastering is an ideal opportunity to view in a fresh light the career of a composer we thought we'knew everything about.

Romain Leleu and his musical partner Julien Gernay, captivated by the sounds of the unique instruments in the Mus�e de la musique, invite us on a whirlwind tour around the land of the French trumpet and cornet. Other musicians have joined them to add a touch of horn and trombone to these pieces, whether originals or transcriptions of emblematic works from a 'Belle �poque' indeed.