MusicWeb Reviewer’s log: December 2007
Reviewer: Patrick C Waller
First I must mention
Hyperion’s Bantock set of 6 CDs of mainly orchestral
music recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Vernon
Handley between 1990 and 2003 (CDS 44281/6). This is full of
interesting works beautifully played, recorded and presented.
It is also inexpensive – I paid less than £30. Even in a year
of amazing bargain boxes, this one is hard to beat. Last month
I had just heard Bantock’s Omar Khayyám for the first
time and was pondering whether it might be one of my records
of the year. A second listen and I was convinced – my other
choices and those of all MusicWeb colleagues are now available
here for
your perusal - 2007 was a good year I would say.
2006 wasn’t bad
either and I am still catching up! This time last year both
Rob Barnett and David Barker chose a disc of string music by
Atterberg.
After traversing and enjoying his nine symphonies this was the
obvious next stop and very fine it is too.
Other discs I have
particularly enjoyed recently are the first in a series of Martinů
concertos for Violin and Orchestra from Hyperion and
Finzi’s
Clarinet and Cello Concertos on Lyrita. I remember Yo Yo Ma’s
recording from LP days and suspect that this was my introduction
to the composer – it was wonderful to hear it again. John Denman’s
performance of Clarinet Concerto is in the same league, making
this one of the label’s most desirable releases even in a most
competitive field.
In a review
published in 2002, Rob Barnett wrote: “Karel Ančerl was
something of a hero to any students on a strangulated budget
in the 1970s”. As such a student I remember him too – LPs of
Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with Josef Suk and
Shostakovich’s 5th symphony particularly
sticking in the mind. Quite by chance I discovered that these
are available mid-price on Supraphon (the catalogue numbers
are SU 3668-2 011 and SU 3699-2 011 respectively) – and they
are beautifully presented too. The performances are as good
as I remember but what is different is the sound – an amazing
transformation from some rather cloudy LPs. They are so good
that you simply wouldn’t believe when these recordings were
made if you didn’t know. Thus I also decided to invest in the
5th and 6th symphonies of Martinů
from the same source (SU 3694-2 001) – yet more evidence
of an amazing collaboration with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra
in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
But these days I
am trying to stop buying discs - roughly the equivalent of giving
up smoking, I imagine - in favour of streaming music off the
internet, mostly from the Naxos Music Library. Amongst discs
I have heard there are the concluding part of Marin Alsop’s
excellent Brahms
cycle – a splendid fourth, as Dominy Clements says. But where
the library really comes into its own is with less familiar
music. Kuhlau
is a composer I know only through occasional hacks at his
piano sonatas from a battered manuscript and, like Robert Hugill,
I was surprised how good his flute trios were – these are for
three flutes in case you thought otherwise. I am not sure I
had heard a note of Hungarian composer Rózsa
before but his Violin Concerto is worth a listen as is a disc
of Rorem’s
Second Piano Concerto and Cello Concerto.
I can also report
briefly on some very decent Naxos discs not yet reviewed on
the site – this is one of the advantages of streaming i.e. instant
access to new releases. The Violin Concerto by Kraus
(8.570334) is like a piece of undiscovered Mozart and second
volumes of Bax’s Violin Sonatas (8.570094) and
Canteloube songs – not only from the Auvergne
– sung by Véronique Gens (8.570338) are also very useful additions
to the catalogue. The first six of Liszt’s Hungarian
Rhapsodies in their orchestral form are relative rarities these
days but also worth hearing (8.570230).
All the discs mentioned
in the paragraph above are actually from Naxos but it is important
to realise that there is an awful lot else available in their
library. For example, I was intrigued to discover a disc of
Tomasso Giordani’s Harpischord Concertos on the
Dynamic label (CDS428). I have known for a long time the Concerto
in C from a recording by Maria Teresa Garatti with I Musici
on Philips but I had no idea what else he had written. This
two-disc set includes nine of his Harpischord Concertos played
by Rita Peiretti, Op. 23 No. 2 being the one with which I was
familiar. I am afraid Ms. Peiretti’s relatively ponderous approach
is not a patch on Garatti in the finale but Giordani’s harpsichord
concertos – dating from the second half of the eighteenth century
– are worth exploring.
Another example
of an unfamiliar name I discovered there is the French composer
of Polish origin Alexandre Tansman whose symphonies
are appearing on Chandos label, the recordings being made in
Australia. The symphonies Nos. 7, 8 and 9 on CHSA5054 particularly
grabbed my attention. There is also an attractive disc of guitar
music on Marco Polo (8.223690).
Pick of the releases
for me on the primarily historical Pristine Classical site this
month has been the live recording of Mahler’s
Fourth Symphony which Bruno Walter made in 1953 with the NBC
symphony orchestra several years after his famous NYPO studio
version. Not only is the sound far superior but Irmgard Seefried
sings much more memorably than Desi Halban in the finale. Even
a slightly bronchial audience cannot spoil such an important
document.
On Remembrance Sunday
I was riveted to the radio listening to Foulds’
World Requiem being performed for the first time for
over 80 years. I have since heard it again using BBC Radio 3’s
listen again facility and eagerly anticipate its January release
on Chandos. If that isn’t someone’s disc of the year in 2008
I shall be surprised.
The only truly live music I have heard this month was a concert
given by the newly-formed Per Piacere Chamber
Orchestra in Botley Market Hall, an intimate venue and one
that, unusually, I was to able to walk to. About twenty enthusiastic
musicians did a fine job with two Haydn symphonies
(Nos. 83 and 85), the first of Mozart’s so called
Salzburg symphonies (K.136), and concertos by Vivaldi
and C.P.E. Bach. Conductor Paul Ingram
has made a name for himself in Hampshire music circles with
larger, more modern works but seemed equally at home in this
repertoire, coaxing animated playing throughout. Leader Chris
Knox contributed some fine solo work in the Vivaldi – one of
the shorter concertos from the attractive L’Estro Armonico
set (RV310). I had never heard the Orchestral Concerto in D
by C.P.E. Bach before and haven’t been able to trace the work
precisely yet. The first movement would almost pass for the
work of his father but a sneaky look at the score in the interval
failed to prove illuminating and a search of Grove was unproductive.
A pity because I would like to hear it again.
In contrast to my
enthusiasm for streaming off the internet, not being an i-Pod
owner I have thus far been pretty resistant to the charms of
downloading. Where I feel it might have a place for me is in
obtaining things that I couldn’t otherwise easily hear. For
example, I had never heard Schubert’s 7th
Symphony in E which was reconstructed about 15 years ago by
Brian Newbould and recorded by Neville Marriner as part of his
ultra-complete cycle. Of course, that is available on CD but
only in a 6 CD set. I have the other Newbould completions on
a Hyperion disc conducted by Charles Mackerras and several versions
of all the other symphonies. So it’s hard to justify buying
the whole set just to hear one work. Inspired by the online
music overview which David Barker has recently prepared
I fairly quickly found that this work was available for download
from Classics and Jazz. The site
has quite a large swathe of the Universal catalogue available
and seems reasonably easy to use. Unless you sign up for the
“Dress Circle”, something I was reluctant to do immediately,
downloaded files are subject to DRM – essentially limitations
on what you can do in terms of further copying. These don’t
seem to me to be a significant drawback to legitimate use but
they do involved getting a licence to use the material after
you have downloaded, something not well explained on the site.
Indeed, if your computer doesn’t have the latest version of
Windows Media Player (WMP), then you might not initially be
able to even play the file – this was what happened to me. After
I upgraded WMP the licence was obtained with one click and all
was fine. Even though the file format is “wma” Windows Media
Player will burn a CD without problems and the sound quality
I obtained was truly excellent. The music too lived up to my
expectations. The cost was £5-6 for a work lasting just under
40 minutes.
Having browsed around
download sites a bit further there are other things I might
be tempted by in future but I have to say I find the pricing
policies hard to understand. Staying with Classics and Jazz
for a moment – prices generally seem to be no cheaper than buying
on CD. Bearing in mind you get no documentation (not necessarily
true elsewhere) and may need to burn a CD, I had expected downloading
to be somewhat cheaper. The Marriner set alluded to above costs
almost £40 to download and is certainly available for less on
CD. As far as I can see the only current pluses for downloading
are instant gratification and being able to “pick and mix” from
sets. But just look at the cost of Bernard Haitink’s Mahler
cycle in terms of buying an individual work (or track). OK I
know that these recordings are now seriously unfashionable,
but I have long admired the cycle and I still have the LPs but
no facility to play them. To buy just one of the works – the
Sixth – as a download costs over £15 and the last movement alone
costs £5-29. I doubt that there is much demand for either and
a realistic price for this version of the work would perhaps
be about half of what is being asked. Interestingly, classical.com
which has quite a lot of Sony material asks for about $8-50
in total for Bernstein’s more highly-rated first recording of
the same work if you purchase the 4 tracks separately but it
appears to want $19-99 to buy the whole “album”! On both sites,
Mahler’s Eighth is split up into to lots of tracks and I would
have serious doubts that it would be easy to get them to play
continuously after downloading – Windows Media Player seems
to add pauses between tracks whether you like it or not.
Finally, I was sorry
but not surprised to see Gramophone make a big blunder
on the front cover of the November issue. They had interviewed
Vernon Handley who supposedly said about Bantock that “his literary
mind was easily the equal of Wagner's". Deciding to put
that on the front cover they had "Bantock's mind was easily
the equal of Wagner's" - just one word out but it makes
a lot of difference.
Patrick C
Waller
