Kaufmann and Finley in two new recordings of Schubert's Winterreise. 

After a long winter that seemed like it would never end, we all look forward to the spring. So winter as a subject for a spring blog may seem a little unseasonal and just a tad retrospective, and if you take Schubert's 'Winter Journey' literally, you might be right. However it is more often viewed as a beautiful yet tragic metaphor for an inner journey of self-discovery, concluding with 'Der leiermann' (the hurdy-gurdy man), a symbol of inexorable misery and dejection. This last song is asymmetrical, giving it an unfinished quality, its drone perfectly encapsulating a mood of utter futility; here there is no light, it is all darkness, devoid of hope. We have to remember this is a work by a young composer barely in his thirties at the height of his powers. By any standards this work is a magnificent achievement.

There are currently many versions on disc of 'Winterreise', and these two new recordings join the pantheon of great interpretations. Tenor Jonas Kaufmann’s recent forays into Wagner and Late Romantic opera have given his voice a ferocity and dramatic intensity, so his reading of Schubert's cycle is full of 'heart-on-sleeve' passion and drama, aided in no small way by Helmut Deutsch at the piano. It is important to mention the pianist as they are as much part of the interpretation as the singer; in Schubert's songs the piano provides the background and comments on the text, with the music demanding more of a partnership than just a singer/accompanist relationship.

The baritone voice of Gerald Finley gives the work a darker hue, finding the introspective aspect of the cycle. Perhaps this is more of a soliloquy, a confession of  dark thoughts. Finley has a wonderful hushed quality to his voice in the final song. We are left feeling at the end of the cycle that the winter may be over but this is a troubled soul in need of absolution. 

Jason Hatton

3rd March 2014

Schubert: Winterreise D911

Jonas Kaufmann & Helmut Deutsch        Sony   88883795632

Gerald Finley & Julius Drake       Hyperion  CDA68034

“A countertenor voice in its prime.”

So says The Daily Telegraph in a recent review of Iestyn Davies’ new album of Handel Oratorio arias for the Vivat label, entitled ‘Your Tuneful Voice’. If you have been impressed by his sublime countertenor voice, you will love this new collection. We even have a free signed photo from Iestyn Davies when you order this new album.

'Your Tuneful Voice’ is an outstanding programme of arias from Handel oratorios including the lyrical ‘O sacred oracles of truth’ (from Belshazzar), the exquisite ‘Tune your harps’ (Esther), with its vocal and oboe duet set over a delicate bed of pizzicato strings, ‘Eternal source of light’ (featuring supreme trumpet playing from Crispian Steele-Perkins), the melodious ‘Your tuneful voice’, and a virtuoso performance of the warlike ‘Mighty love now calls to arm’. Rarities include two arias from The Triumph of Time and Truth: ‘On the valleys, dark and cheerless’, and an especial jewel, ‘Mortals think that Time is sleeping’, with its gentle, inexorably tick-tocking orchestral accompaniment. 

Iestyn is also joined in two duets by soprano Carolyn Sampson: the ecstatic ‘Welcome as the dawn of day’ (from Solomon) and the ghostly ‘Who calls my parting soul from death’ (Esther). The orchestral accompaniment from The King’s Consort is full of varied colours: the disc also includes the vividly characterised overture to Jephtha, and the bucolic overture to Samson, featuring splendid natural horn playing. 

The disc was recorded in the wonderful acoustic of The Menuhin Hall, bringing great clarity to the sound. The album includes a 36 page booklet with an authoritative liner note by renowned Handel scholar Professor Donald Burrows, together with full texts and translations.

Your Tuneful Voice - Iestyn Davies

VIVAT105

Happy New Year!!

2014 is beginning with an exciting crop of new releases; despite the usual media grumblings and general woes, the record companies seem raring to go with some great new Classical recordings on offer. In particular the Jerusalem Quartet playing Janacek and Smetana String Quartets - going by their previous work these performances are bound to have great vivacity and flair. Jerusalem Quartet HMC902178 Offer £12.99

Jean-Efflam Bavouzet continues his Beethoven Piano Sonata cycle with volume two (a three disc set). The cycle will be completed with one more installment in the near future. Bavouzet CHAN10798 Offer £24.99

Staying with keyboard music, Hyperion has released a disc of CPE Bach played by harpsichordist Mahon Esfahani. Although not yet a household name, Esfahani is presently on tour and has had a lot of positive attention from critics and he was the first harpsichordist to be named a BBC New Generation Artist. Esfahani CDA67995 Offer £11.99.  Returning to Beethoven, we have a new set of his Cello Sonatas performed by Steven Isserlis and his regular collaborator, the forte-pianist Robert Levin. Included on this disc are the three sets of variations and the Horn Sonata. We are running a promotion on Steven Isserlis’ back-catalogue recordings this month as well – just click on Isserlis’ picture on the homepage. Isserlis CDA67981/2 Offer £23.99

Steven Isserlis also features on a fascinating new disc, again from Hyperion, this time of his grandfather, Julius Isserlis’ music. The disc mainly contains piano music in editions made by the pianist Sam Haywood. Julius Isserlis CDA68025 Offer £11.99

There has been much interest in Chandos’ new release of rarely heard Overtures from around the British Isles, with some lovely gems by Arthur Sullivan, Frederic Austen, Coleridge-Taylor, Stanford and others. A cracker of a release! British Overtures CHAN10797 Offer £12.49

This month sees the welcome release of Georg Tintner’s Bruckner symphony cycle as a boxed set on Naxos. These are the great recordings he made in the 1990's with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Tintner 8501205 £29.99

Two contemporary British composers are also featured this month: Signum are reissuing their recording of the late John Tavener’s magnum opus, 'The Veil of the Temple'. This is the concert version on two CDs taken from a work that is originally eight hours in length. Opus Arte are finally releasing the much- anticipated DVD of George Benjamin's 'Written on Skin'. Since its premiere at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in 2012 this work has captivated audiences, and the CD recording which came out in February last year (on Nimbus NI5885) is regularly asked for. Tavener SIGCD367 £19.99  Benjamin OA1125D £24.99

This is just the tip of the iceberg – check out our ‘New Releases’ and ‘Future Releases’ pages (click the ‘What’s New?’ tab).

The first thing I thought when I saw this disc was “not another Brahms violin concerto!” It is after all a rather saturated market, with so many recordings of the great violin concertos by Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Brahms and their ilk. I think it is easy to get rather jaded by the commerce-driven record industry, who can churn out recordings of established artists playing well-known masterpieces, seeing it as a risk free way of making money in today’s difficult record industry.

With this in mind it took me a while to get round to listening to this ‘war horse’ of a concerto. The main attraction for me was the soloist, Leonidas Kavakos, having been interested in his career since hearing his rendition of the Sibelius violin concerto on BIS. Right from his first entry my attention was held, and what followed was playing of miraculous technique and tone. Kavakos seems to bring so much insight to this work. His playing has an individual character and an acknowledgement of the gypsy idiom that Brahms was so keen to assimilate in this concerto. The disc is programmed very thoughtfully, with Joachim's arrangements of some of Brahms' Hungarian Dances for violin and piano (and also Bartok's two Rhapsodies for Violin and Orchestra, again in violin and piano arrangements), continuing the gypsy/folk aspect of the music. Kavakos is a remarkable musician and you would have to go far to find playing of similar calibre.

Brahms – Violin Concerto, Op. 77 (coupled with Bartok Rhapsodies and Brahms Hungarian Dances)

Leonidas Kavakos – violin

Gewandhausorchester/Riccardo Chailly

Decca 478 5342

Taneyev & Arensky: Piano Quintets

A marvellous new recording from Hyperion of Russian chamber music. The two composers featured came from the same stable, but were poles apart in many respects. The stable in question was the Moscow Conservatoire, and the composers: Taneyev and Arensky.  Both of them form an interesting link between the composers of the generation before (the brothers Rubinstein, Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky) and after (Rachmaninov and Scriabin).

Listening to the G minor Piano Quintet on this new disc, I can see why Taneyev has been dubbed the ‘Russian Brahms’. It certainly has the heady mix of swagger and counterpoint associated with the German master, and is also music that is brilliantly constructed.  It has a dense texture, the music working through the motivic relationships in a tight structure, again much like Brahms. It treads the line between spontaneity and academia. Reading the liner notes I came away with the impression that Taneyev did not lack self confidence in his abilities - his teacher, none other than one Piotr Tchaikovsky, had to put up with his star pupil advising him on rewriting the variation section of his great Piano Trio in A minor!

By contrast, the Arensky Piano Quintet certainly sounds far more rhapsodic than the taut structure of the Taneyev quintet. Where Taneyev is constantly developing, Arensky writes with a more open, jovial feel; there is more space to breath in this music. You might say it is an ideal foil to the work of Taneyev. Indeed I think these two works perfectly demonstrate their respective approach to composition.

The recording by the Goldner String Quartet and Piers Lane is quite exceptional, but then again based on their previous productions on the Hyperion label I was expecting great things. This is really worth buying !! Get it !!!

P.S.  Congratulations to Hyperion for a wonderful choice of artwork ('Vasilisa the Beautiful' from Russian Fairy Tales (1899) by Ivan Bilibin). Icing on an already delicious cake I think.

Arensky & Taneyev: Piano Quintets

Piers Lane & Goldner String Quartet

Hyperion CDA67965

Offer Price: £11.99

Jason Hatton

October 2013

Transcendental Mahler from Christian Gerhaher

Mahler: Orchestral songs

with Christian Gerhaher; Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal conducted by Kent Nagano

‘A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything’.

When discussing Mahler this quote is never far from my mind. The quote comes from a conversation between Mahler and Sibelius, both of them great symphonists but different in so many ways. Sibelius viewed the symphony as the apotheosis of form, a concentration of organic unity and above all the music was about nothing but itself. By contrast, Mahler viewed the symphony as a grand statement, taking on huge philosophical ideas. His symphonies are all-encompassing and deal with many facets of life. However, the symphonies are only one aspect of Mahler’s genius; his complexity as an artist can only be fully appreciated when one listens the songs in addition to the symphonies. The songs help to explain the thematic origins of the symphonies and also deepen understanding of his symphonic works.

The three groups of songs appear on this new disc by baritone Christian Gerhaher, with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. One could hear the disc as a travelogue - it takes us on a journey turning from naïve sentimentality to cynicism in the first song cycle on the disc (lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, often translated as ‘songs of the wayfarer’). We then enter the realm of the morbid ‘kindertotenlieder’ (songs on the death of children). These songs are a reminder of Mahler’s preoccupation with mortality, and portray the anxiety of parenthood and the unconditional love of the parent/child relationship. This cycle is an internal journey from grief and doubt to comfort and eternal love. Finally, the disc ends with not a cycle but a group of songs inspired by the poetry of Friedrich Ruckert (1788-1866). These songs are contemporary with the fifth symphony, a period of great creativity in Mahler’s life. As is evident in the fifth symphony it was also a time when Mahler had been studying the scores of Bach, resulting in an increased density and contrapuntal complexity in his own music. One famous setting in this group of ‘Ruckert songs’ is ‘Um mitternacht’ (At midnight). It depicts the lonely nocturnal thoughts of a person in turmoil and deals with isolation and self analysis. The orchestration starts out very sparse, just a rocking, sighing motive in clarinets, then a deep brass descending scale. It sounds lonely, isolated. It eventually arrives at resignation and spiritual fulfillment. You may notice a common thread - Mahler is always travelling from one state to another, the listener is always taken from one place and ends up in a different place. In the symphonies it is a large scale, slow process. In the songs it is over a shorter time period and the process is far more explicit.

The performances on this new disc are very fine indeed. I think you would have to go back to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau to find performances of a similar calibre. Gerhaher has a beautiful tone, made even more focused by his lack of vibrato. This results in a very expressive reading. Please listen to this and then try to resist buying it!

CD reference: Sony Classical 88883 701332

Jason Hatton (September 2013)

The Tallis Scholars' 40th Anniversary

What is the connection between a sixteenth-century mass setting and an instrumental work that was to continue for well over 150 years?

The answer is the words ‘in nomine’.

In the early sixteenth-century, John Taverner composed a mass setting based on the antiphon ‘Gloria tibi trinitas’. In the Benedictus section of the mass, Taverner scores the words ‘in nomine Domini’ for a reduced number of singers (four parts). This portion of the work became popular and instrumental arrangements emerged soon after. However these were more than just mere arrangements; the melody was used in numerous different ways and composers wrote free, imitative counterpoint around the melody. This is known as ‘cantus firmus’, literally ‘fixed song’. Music in England seemed to evolve in parallel with the latest trends in the rest of Europe. Instrumental groups made up of viols flourished in England whilst in Italy the violin had been invented and string writing was rapidly changing to a more virtuosic style. There was also a shift away from contrapuntal harmony writing towards functional harmony; florid counterpoint had lost its dominance and a more homophonic style had taken its place. By the early seventeenth–century composers had started a new chromatic style, and text was expressed in a very direct and sometimes radical way.       

Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613) is perhaps one of the best known composers from this period. His music places the expression of the text at the forefront, making the music serve the text and not the other way round. Even to 21^st century ears his music can sound strange - Gesualdo connects distant harmonies with ‘pivot’ notes, sometimes resulting in highly chromatic passages. This highly expressive style previously associated with madrigals is also present in his sacred works. His music for holy week is full of beautifully expressive passages, reflecting the sombre nature of the text.

Over the past 40 years, the Tallis Scholars have produced a formidable number of high quality recordings, and on the 14^th August they will be celebrating this remarkable anniversary at the BBC Proms, with music by Taverner and Gesualdo.

Recordings are available from their back catalogue: The JohnTaverner ‘missa Gloria tibi trinitas’ CDGIM004 is from the early days of the choir. 

They have also recorded the Gesualdo pieces that  feature in the Proms concert on CDGIM015. Both are invaluable introductions to this glorious music.