Embracing the whole world, Mahler's Symphony No. 3 is a vast fresco in which nature, man and the spiritual interact on a cosmic scale. Directing the combined forces of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Philharmonia Chorus and Tiffin Boys' Choir, and with the movingly expressive voice of Hanna Hipp, Vasily Petrenko reveals all the richness of this visionary peak of Post-Romanticism.

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.

From the tenderness of Faur�'s songs to the famous Sonata by Franck, via Honnor�, B�sser and Enescu, the viola here champions the French School in it's widest sense: full of lyricism, sophistication and intensity, here is a program to match the abilities of Timothy Ridout and his partner at the piano, Jonathan Ware.

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.

The fact that Timothy Ridout has recorded a whole album of music for unaccompanied viola before the age of thirty is a telling indication of the meteoric rise of this prodigious, boundary-pushing artist. As is his choice of contrasting the Baroque era (Telemann and Bach) with two figures of modern music, in Britten's rarely heard Elegy and Caroline Shaw's in manus tuas. This program is a breathtaking ode to the viola over the centuries, played with all the fire of youth.

The superlative Pygmalion chorus are at the center of this new recording of the St. John Passion. Their striking presence radiates throughout the work, their exemplary articulation and collective energy moulding the drama and carrying it's emotional charge. Rapha�l Pichon's flexible yet precise direction restores it's original dramatic arc, instilling the peerless team of soloists with the same demandingly high standards of musical narrative and truth. This Passion wins out through it's clarity of gesture and compellingly forceful actualization.

The Curious Bards immerse us in the 18th-century popular music of Ireland and Scotland, with reels, jigs, songs and dances that circulated in the oral tradition and in print, from the airs of Turlough O'Carolan to the great collections of the period. Impelled by an irresistible energy and underpinned by historical research, this album restores the vitality of this music that lives for the dance, for the preservation of folk memory, and for sharing with others.

Continuing their exploration of Ravel's output, Fran�ois-Xavier Roth and Les Si�cles offer us two works linked by his love of Spain. Alongside the famous Bolero, which regains it's original flavor here on period instruments, is Ravel's first opera, which flirted with libertinism: though it's outstanding cast consists entirely of native French-speakers, this caustic 'Hour' remains quintessentially Spanish!

Lionel Tertis (1876-1975), a great genius of the viola, is little known to today's public. Timothy Ridout pays tribute to this key figure in his instrument's history with a flamboyant program featuring music by Tertis's friends, teachers and students alongside some of his own original works and transcriptions. A marvelous musical journey, rich in discoveries.

On this new album, Florence Bolton and Benjamin Perrot revisit the composer who gave their ensemble it's delightful name, La Rêveuse. Drawing on his heritage (Sainte-Colombe), his friendships (Robert de Visée) and his own visionary genius, Marin Marais blazed new trails for his instrument in his second book of viol pieces (1701). Alongside the customary dances and sets of variations, he invented the 'character pieces' that were to become so popular in the eighteenth century.

Fran�ois-Xavier Roth and Les Si�cles offer us a double-sided portrait of Saint-Sa�ns here. On one side, some of the most fascinating symphonic poems of French Romanticism are revealed in all the shimmering timbres of the period. On the other, we rediscover a composer who enjoyed a good laugh (The Carnival of the Animals also returns to it's original colors), when he was not involved in the early days of the cinema, with the very first music ever composed for a film.

Campra's famous Requiem emerged from a tradition that is still unjustly neglected. Sébastien Daucé and Ensemble Correspondances offer us an opportunity to discover these maîtres de musique of Notre-Dame who, though now overshadowed by their brilliant colleague, made no less of a contribution to the development of the 'French style' emblematic of the reign of Louis XIV.

A few years after a complete recording of Mozart’s solo piano works that has gradually come to be regarded as a benchmark, Kristian Bezuidenhout has taken all the time he needed to tackle Haydn, the other towering figure of the Viennese Classical keyboard repertory: “Preparing for this recording has been a vivid reminder that it is remarkably difficult to play Haydn’s music well, but that with enough care, and attention to detail, his music has the potential to come jumping from the page. It would be hubris to suggest that I am even close to unlocking any of its secrets, but I am so humbled by the sheer beauty, humanity, wit and delightful irony of this music, that the desire to continue is irresistible.”

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REVIEW:

The listener is drawn in by the myriad subtleties of Bezuidenhout’s playing and by the glorious sounds he draws from his instrument. Soon you’re hanging on every note of this sequence that seems to travel from darkness to darkness. Most important, though, is Bezuidenhout’s playing itself. Technique is obviously not an issue. Decoration, too, is sparing rather than trowelled on. This is the very opposite of ‘look-at me’ pianism.

– Gramophone

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

Antoine Tamestit and Masato Suzuki, Principal Conductor of the famous Bach Collegium Japan, immersed themselves in Bach's three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord in order to present this sublime interpretation using a modern viola. The change in instrumentation allows the artists total freedom to rediscover the exquisite qualities of these all too rarely played masterpieces. HARMONIA MUNDI

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.

A musical banquet from the Golden Age. This programme brings together a true choral landmark from the sixteenth century, with its present-day reflection, a commission by Sir James MacMillan. These two monumental, large-scale pieces bookend a ‘tasting menu’ of Renaissance works by Byrd, Tallis and many other composers. Common to them all is a link to Nonsuch Palace, arguably the location of the first performance of Spem in alium, and the centre of a rich vein of Tudor musical patronage.

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REVIEW:

Standing at either end of this programme are the forty-part motets. Spem in alium is very familiar and is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of Tudor polyphony. Suzi Digby directs a performance that is simply magnificent. She had at her disposal a group of expert singers who were positioned in a circle with the conductor at the apex. The combined skills of the musician and the engineers means that, even in “vanilla” stereo the listener gets a very clear sense of the eight separate choirs – goodness knows what the performance would sound like in surround sound! There’s a truly thrilling sound at the points where the full ensemble sings flat-out, but just as impressive are the more subdued passages, which are delivered with admirable subtlety.

It can’t be an easy task to compose a homage to Spem but few composers are better equipped than Sir James MacMillan who has shown a deep understanding of and respect for the music of the Renaissance – notably that of Robert Carver – in some of his previous scores. In the booklet he comments that he “used the Tallis original as an inspiration in the way I utilised the eight five-voiced choirs, and how I moved the music from choir to choir, gradually building the sound up from one to forty voices.” He doesn’t quote from Spem in his score but he has used the structure of Tallis’s masterpiece as an inspiration. For his text, MacMillan used the text ‘Vidi aquam’ from the prophecy of Ezekiel.

As a homage to the great Tudor masterpiece, I’d say that Vidi aquam is an unqualified success. More than that, though, I’d say the work is a masterpiece in its own right. It is a wonderful response to the chosen text. In addition, it challenges both performers and listeners, yet it never leaves the listener behind because it exercises a huge sensory appeal.

The camera work and sound on the DVD is excellent. As for the CD, producer Nick Parker and engineer Mike Hatch have made a fantastic job of the recording. All the smaller pieces benefit from clarity and intimacy of sound. The two big pieces have been captured with great success. You can hear an abundance of detail and when the full ensemble sings out at full volume, the sound is magnificent. John Milsom’s notes are first-rate.

This is a simply terrific disc. I’ve admired all of the previous ORA Singers releases but, considering both the expert performances of the smaller works and the thrilling forty-part performances, I’m inclined to think this is their finest achievement to date.

– MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

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

Four symphonies were enough for Robert Schumann to leave his mark. Without allowing himself to be overawed by Beethoven's shadow, he succeeded from the outset in coining a highly personal idiom, with an astonishing combination of formal rigour and freedom of inspiration. Pablo Heras-Casado and the M�nchner Philharmoniker offer their interpretation of this corpus, more mysterious than it appears, which tells of it's composer's passionate and tormented soul.

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.

One morning in 1822, Schubert wrote down an enigmatic text in which all his ghosts seem to take shape: wandering, solitude, consolation, disappointed love. Inspired by this dreamlike narrative, Rapha�l Pichon, Pygmalion and St�phane Degout have devised a vast Romantic fresco, combining resurrection of unknown treasures with rediscovery of established masterpieces.