MusicWeb Reviewer’s log: January/February
2008
Reviewer: Patrick C Waller
My experience of classical
music recordings moved into previously
uncharted waters just before Christmas
when I went to Bath to see a recording
being made. This was a truly fascinating
experience despite having a bad cough
and temperatures outside being sub-zero.
Perhaps you’re thinking that I shouldn’t
have been there at all but, as the recording
was being made at my initiative and
expense, and had taken 18 months to
set up, I just had to be there and hold
the coughs in. I also ended up with
the great responsibility of turning
the pages for pianist Nicola Grunberg
and managed to mess up only one take!
The idea was to make a recording of
some of the most important works for
small forces of the Cornish composer
Judith
Bailey, a long-time friend and former
conductor of our local orchestra. It
was originally intended to be a present
for her 65th birthday – in
July 2006 – but better late than never.
I was delighted when
Jim Pattison of Dunelm
Records agreed to make the recording
but he is a busy man and there were
initially some problems in finding a
suitable date and venue. Eventually,
about a year ago, a three-day slot in
the diaries of Jim, Judith, the six
artists, myself and the splendid Michael
Tippett Centre at Bath Spa University
was achieved. In the last couple of
days before the recording I was seriously
worried that something would go wrong
– there seem to be so many possibilities.
But expectations were confounded, the
venue was warm, quiet and comfortable,
the piano was tuned each day at the
crack of dawn, everyone arrived and
I was the only one not in rude health.
It was immediately obvious how much
effort the artists – the Davey Chamber
Ensemble – had put into the preparation
and they had even arranged a special
concert to play some of the works live
shortly beforehand. Details of the music
performed and some pictures from the
sessions are available on Judith’s website
here.
I had seen most of
the artists perform before but cellist
Catherine Wilmers was, I thought, new
to me until we got chatting in a break.
It then emerged that she had recorded
a disc of cello pieces by British women
composers. This splendid disc is in
my collection and was reviewed on MusicWeb
in 2000 (see review).
Although appearing on the ASV label,
this disc was made at her initiative
and a fair amount of research was involved.
When it was deleted Catherine acquired
the outstanding copies and I understand
it is available directly from her via
this e-mail link.
Watching Jim and his
wife/assistant Joyce work was fascinating
although I didn’t arrive in time to
see them set the equipment up, and they
politely refused my offer to help put
it away at the end. Everyone was concentrating
hard but the atmosphere was relaxed
and to my amazement we kept to and,
if anything, ran ahead of schedule.
In deciding which takes were to go in
the master – this was primarily the
composer’s task – there was always a
balance to be struck between absolute
technical perfection and capturing the
spirit of the music. Making the recording
is, of course, only one element of producing
a disc so I shall come to this as things
develop.
At Christmas, the main
present I received was the recently
issued 22CD budget box of Stravinsky
conducting his own music. I
have only listened to about a third
of it so far, focusing on the ballet
music but I have been impressed with
the immediacy of the early stereo sound.
There are some fizzing interpretations
– Stravinsky was no slouch as a conductor
even in his dotage. Although I shouldn’t
be thinking about price for Christmas
presents received, I couldn’t help noticing
how cheap this was – around £1 per CD.
There is a little documentation, some
particularly interesting rehearsal material
and an interview with the composer on
one of the discs but to find out anything
about the music – e.g. when or how it
came to be written – it is necessary
to go elsewhere. Interestingly, the
original large box with jewel cases
is still available for around £100 and
presumably this is properly documented.
It is a pity that there isn’t something
in between – I can’t imagine many people
will be willing to pay such a large
difference just to have the documentation.
A proper booklet would have increased
the cost by just a few pounds and would
have greatly enhanced the bargain product.
One Christmas present
I gave to my good lady also raised an
issue in relation to documentation.
I had an inkling she would like to hear
some Tallis beyond Spem
in Alium and the 2CD set from the
complete Chappelle du Roi recordings
under Alistair Dixon on Portrait reviewed
by Brian Wilson seemed a good bet. Unfortunately,
when the discs were played we noticed
that there were 26 tracks on the second
disc but only 18 listed in the documentation.
Track 15 was supposedly Spem in Alium
but certainly wasn’t. Someone who knows
the music might not have a problem with
this but, as the set is primarily intended
for people who might want to get to
know the composer, we have suggested
to Portrait label that they should be
reprinting the documentation. This is
all a pity because the performances
are splendid. At least Tallis admirers
can now purchase cheaply the complete
set of Chappelle du Roi recordings in
a 10CD Brilliant box.
When buying presents,
MusicWeb’s recordings
of the year page is always a good
place to look and one that seemed a
no-brainer for my cellist wife was Steven
Isserlis’s recording of Bach’s
Suites, reviewed
and chosen by Dominy Clements. We have
both enjoyed these interpretations very
much although I have been slightly distracted
by various physical noises coming from
the cello on some of the tracks. My
wife says that it’s impossible to play
this music without making such noises
but I wonder if the recording isn’t
a bit too closely balanced. This is
relatively marginal compared to the
noise of the bassoon mechanism on another
disc Dominy has reviewed
– woodwind music by John R. Williamson.
I enjoyed this music considerably more
than him but was also more put out by
mechanistic noise of the bassoon. As
a woodwind player – if you haven’t seen
his contrabass flute click here
– Dominy seemed as sympathetic as my
wife was about the cello! I should stress
that the clarinet and flute pieces on
these discs sound excellent and also
that there is nothing wrong with the
playing of bassoonist Rosemary Richardson.
On New Year’s Day I
was travelling and listened to the traditional
concert from Vienna, conducted by Georges
Prêtre in the car. On the same
day, rather surprisingly, Channel 5
decided to broadcast at 9 o’clock in
the morning the recently issued Tony
Palmer lengthy documentary on Vaughan
Williams entitled O Thou
Transcendent - words which are taken
from the finale of the Sea Symphony.
Having recorded it on the DVD player,
we sat down to start watching late in
the evening, not intending to get all
the way through - but we couldn't stop.
This is certainly compulsive viewing
for anyone interested in the composer
with lots of historic footage including,
most memorably, Sir Adrian Boult conducting
part of the 5th symphony.
The main disappointment I felt was in
the way the modern musical examples
created for the documentary were used.
The players were very artificially arranged
for visual effect and there were unnecessary
departures from the musical chronology.
Also, the use of numbers for some of
the time for the early symphonies will
probably have confused people who are
not very familiar with RVW’s symphonic
canon. But this is something I shall
want to see again sometime and there
are not many documentaries you could
say that about.
Moving on to some CDs
I have heard recently, perhaps the most
outstanding is the one containing two
string quartets – the first and fourth
of Graham Whettam. His
name was unfamiliar to me until I read
Rob Barnett’s review
of the Carducci Quartet’s disc. There
is also an oboe quartet thrown in for
good measure and the music is indeed
gripping. I should also mention the
Hyperion disc of Coleridge
Taylor quintets that John
France enjoyed so much back in October.
The Clarinet quintet is particularly
attractive. Sibelius’s
only mature string quartet, the Voces
Intimae is a favourite of mine and
it was good to see the Fitzwilliam Quartet’s
1980 reading being released on the Australian
Eloquence label coupled with the Delius
quartet (442 9486). I bought this from
Buywell
Just Classical along with an interesting
and excellent sounding disc of orchestral
music by Pizzetti, Respighi
and Rota (476 9766). It
is hard to believe that the Pizzetti
recordings date from 1966 and it was
certainly worth the modest cost - and
carbon miles - to have them shipped
half way round the world.
Much of my listening
to unfamiliar music continues to be
through the Naxos
Music Library which grows at an
amazing rate. I regard myself as an
avid listener but, even if I listened
to nothing else, I wouldn’t have time
to listen to all the new discs that
go onto the Library. Top of the recent
finds is a disc of the contemporary
Russian composer Igor
Raykhelson on Toccata Classics.
Yuri Bashmet leads the artists in attractive
music which successfully and originally
bridges the jazz/classical divide. Next
up, the Maggini Quartet’s splendid readings
of Lennox Berkeley’s three
quartets (8.570415) and a disc of songs
by William Alwyn (8.570201)
notable for Seascapes - four
songs in which soprano Elin Manahan
Thomas is accompanied by a treble recorder
in addition to a piano.
Domenico Scarlatti’s
keyboard sonatas are perennial favourites
but I am not sure I had previously ever
heard anything else by him until a recent
release of his sacred vocal music appeared
in the Library (8.570382). After Scarlatti
and, of course, J.S. Bach, my favourite
baroque composer might well be Tomaso
Albinoni. He may not have been
as prolific as Telemann and Vivaldi
but he was certainly in the same creative
league. It was good to hear some of
his vocal music for a change, a splendid
recording of the serenata Nascimento
de L'Aurora having been issued
on Oehms
OC913 and appearing in the Naxos
Library.
Also, in respect of
streamed library listening, I have enjoyed
hearing the eight string quartets of
the Venetian born 20th century
composer Gian Francesco Malipiero,
whose grandfather Francesco Malipiero
was an opera composer during the mid-19th
century. These are on the Dynamic label
and his eleven symphonies are also there
(on Marco Polo) and on my future listening
list. Gianandrea Noseda’s Chandos reading
of Cooke’s performing version of Mahler’s
Tenth symphony (CHAN10456) has just
appeared in the library and first impressions
are that this is very fine indeed.
Speaking of Mahler,
his fourth symphony was on the programme
for Marin Alsop’s last concert in Portsmouth
as music director of the Bournemouth
Symphony Orchestra, for which some tickets
fortuitously fell into my lap. The programme
opened with the Overture to Die Meistersinger
conducted by Kelly Corcoran, the diminutive
winner of a fellowship set up by Alsop
to help aspiring female conductors.
Bernstein’s first symphony – Jeremiah
followed with Lisa Milne in splendid
voice in the finale. Ms. Alsop was mentored
by Bernstein early in her career and
explained that she wanted to go out
with a work which was new to the orchestra;
it was good to hear it. The Mahler was
splendid, a characterful but superbly
controlled reading. The orchestral playing
was excellent and leader Duncan Riddell
deserves special mention for his playing
of the devilish solos in the scherzo.
When you listen to this work on record
it is easy to forget that the leader
needs two violins – one tuned up in
pitch. If there was any doubt about
this reading it was in the finale where
Lisa Milne’s big voice seemed less idiomatic
than in the Bernstein. A year or two
back I heard Alsop’s reading of the
Resurrection symphony on the
radio and wasn’t really convinced; this
time her Mahlerian credentials could
hardly be questioned.
Over the holiday period
the MusicWeb team was busy thinking
about their favourite discs for the
new feature Our
Classic Classics. It wasn’t
easy to choose just 50 or so all-time
favourites but between us all an interesting
list seems to have been created. The
idea promptly caused a sale of a least
one disc when in the space of minutes
I heard Murray Perahia playing Handel’s
Suite No. 3 on the radio and saw it
among David Barker’s choices. And a
splendid disc it is too, with some very
cultured Scarlatti to boot (SK62785).
In mid-January, as
has been the custom for the past couple
of years, Len invited us all to lunch
in Coventry and it was good to catch
up with some now familiar faces and
meet some new ones. I was sat between
new recruit Margarida
Mota-Bull who originally hails from
Portugal and Robert
Hugill who is a composer
and has recently had a disc issued (see
review).
A little further down the table was
Anne Ozorio who had recently heard a
much more controversial Mahler 4 – Gergiev’s
rendition with the LSO (see review).
Across the table were Len and Simon
Foster of Avie and some of the conversation
was about the shortly to be released
Durham
Concerto by Jon Lord
(ex-Deep Purple). Having heard the samples
in the review, I am certainly looking
forward to hearing the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Margarida did her best to
educate me about Portuguese music beyond
Braga-Santos and kindly followed it
up with an e-mail containing some recommendations.
There is a disc of piano music by Vianna
da Motta in the Naxos Library
with various works - the Cenas portugesas
Op. 9 and 18 are striking and unmistakably
Iberian.
On the other table,
my wife was seated next to and charmed
by composer Arthur
Butterworth who will be
85 in August. The first thing we did
on arriving home was to dig out the
two discs of his music currently available
– the First
symphony and Piano
trios and viola sonata - they are
wonderful records. We badly need some
more recordings of Arthur’s music which,
in a way, takes me back to where I came
in. Another long-term project perhaps?
I think a few of us need to put our
heads together on this one.
Patrick C Waller