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Classical CDs of the week: Luis
Venegas de Henestrosa, Beethoven and others
(Filed:
10/05/2004)
Pick of the week: Ravel,
Shostakovich, Respighi, Schulhoff & Britten: Songs
Magdalena Kozená (mezzo-soprano), Malcolm Martineau
(piano), Paul Edmund-Davies (flute), Christoph Henschel (violin),
Jirí Bárta (cello), Henschel Quartet, DG 471 581-2, £11.99
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Overriding ecstacy: Magdelena
Kozená |
This is a disc to treasure. The Czech mezzo Magdalena
Kozená has put together a collection of songs from five composers,
representing five European cultures and set in five different
languages, none of them her own. Outwardly, there is little to
connect the components of this recital, but there is an underlying
nocturnal theme ranging from the languorous night of Ravel's
Chansons madécasses to Britten's personable A Charm of Lullabies,
with Respighi's Il tramonto, a melancholy Italian setting of
Shelley's poem The Sunset, at its heart.
But the most obvious connecting tissues are Kozená's
overriding artistry and her command of language. Whether she is
singing in French, Russian, Italian, German or English, there is the
utmost confidence that she knows the very essence of the words and
their meaning. She even manages a convincing Burnsian Scots tang for
the second of the Britten songs.
Elsewhere, we find Shostakovich in impish mood, in
his 1960 cycle of Satires, which Kozená presents with real glee and
a sense of the poet Sasha Chorny's keen characterisation; and in the
one representative from her own Czech heritage (though in German),
Erwin Schulhoff's Three Atmospheric Portraits, she revels in the
music's almost Expressionist twists and turns.
The more long-limbed vocal lines of the Ravel and
Respighi bring out the lyrical ease of her voice and also show her
ability to intertwine her vocal line with her instrumentalist
colleagues – flute, cello and piano in the former, string quartet in
the latter. Malcolm Martineau is his distinctive self in the
piano-accompanied works. All in all, a worthy successor to Kozená's
all-Czech debut disc. Matthew Rye
Luis Venegas de Henestrosa:
El arte de fantasía
The Harp Consort, dir Andrew Lawrence-King Harmonia
Mundi HMU 907316, £13.99
The concept of a 40-part motet is familiar enough
from Tallis's Spem in alium, but the appearance on this disc of a
16th-century instrumental piece for 10 four-part groups may come as
rather more of a surprise. Henestrosa's canon Una colle Deum is a
much slighter piece than Tallis's, but in this performance makes a
fine effect: with the aid of modern technology, the five-strong Harp
Consort can show off their panoply of plucked instruments, organs,
viola and psaltery simultaneously.
The other pieces in this fascinating programme are on
a more modest scale: nobody is called upon to play more than one
instrument at a time. But these instrumental arrangements of vocal
works and sets of variations on popular tunes delight the ear with
their intriguingly varied scorings, such as the attractive
harp/guitar duo in Guardame las vacas. The performers can here
display both the exciting virtuosity and the flair for imaginative
improvisation that give the Harp Consort's recordings their very
special flavour. Elizabeth Roche
Beethoven: Piano Sonatas Op 2
Nos 1-3
Stephen Kovacevich (piano), EMI 5 57730 2, £12.99
Beethoven's first published sonatas are the work of a
young man determined to cause a stir among the Viennese elite.
Passages here and there may have reminded early audiences of Haydn,
Mozart and Clementi but, with boundless self-belief, Beethoven is
hell-bent both on dazzling his hearers and imposing his will on
them. So much of this music is more extreme than any previous
sonatas: more forceful, more soul-searching, more violently
compressed (the first movement of No 1) and more expansively
brilliant (No 3).
Stephen Kovacevich has long had a reputation as a
fiery Beethoven player of far-seeing integrity. From the explosive
opening of No 1, these performances – the final instalment in a
complete sonata cycle – have many of his hallmarks: tigerish energy
(several tempos are on the very edge of the possible), a bold,
"orchestral" palette of colour, phenomenal clarity of articulation,
and scrupulous observance of Beethoven's markings.
Other pianists – say, Wilhelm Kempff and Solomon –
have found more grace and whimsy amid the music's dynamism and
drama, but few capture as excitingly as Kovacevich the vehemence,
caprice and sheer virtuoso brilliance of these still astonishing
works. Richard Wigmore
Shostakovich: Symphonies Nos
1 & 6
Hallé Orchestra, cond Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Hallé
CD HLL 7506, £9.99
Early releases on the Hallé Orchestra's own label
have been of recent recordings made specially for this series. This
one, however, pairs studio-made accounts from the mid-1990s, when
the former music director Stanislaw Skrowaczewski returned to
conduct symphonies by Shostakovich. No 1, the composer's remarkably
assured graduation piece, receives a forceful performance that is
both honest in its musical directness and sympathetic to its
changing moods. Many of the solos have real character, not least the
bitter-sweet oboe melody at the start of the slow movement, and the
brass ride the climaxes with assurance.
No 6, though, is less successful: while the first
movement rises to the appropriate pitch of angst, the central
scherzo lacks the last degree of terror at its climax, and there is
a certain sense of desperation in some of the tongue-twisting
woodwind solos here and in the hectic finale. Nevertheless, this a
worthwhile release, even if it reminds us how far the Hallé has come
under Mark Elder's baton in the meantime. As an alternative, Neeme
Järvi (Chandos) offers superior orchestral playing in the same
coupling. Matthew Rye
Rameau: Castor et Pollux
(1754 version)
Monica Whicher, Meredith Hall and Renée Winick
(sopranos), Colin Ainsworth (tenor), Joshua Hopkins (baritone),
Opera in Concert, Aradia Ensemble, cond Kevin Mallon, Naxos
8.660118-19, 2 CDs, £9.99
Perhaps because its central theme is brotherly rather
than romantic love, Castor et Pollux was coolly received at its
premiere in 1737. For a revival 17 years later, Rameau, by now the
standard-bearer of French opera, made radical revisions, dropping
the beautiful but dramatically redundant Prologue and tautening the
action. The upshot was a personal triumph for Rameau, and a decisive
blow in the continuing Parisian war against Italian opera.
As so often in Rameau, some of the finest music comes
in the ballet numbers that were de rigueur in dance-mad Paris. There
are lusty tambourins and gavottes, and a ravishing divertissement of
the Celestial Pleasures, filled with the voluptuous yearning that
Rameau could conjure like no one else. Other highlights include a
series of increasingly vehement demons' choruses and the magnificent
threnody at Castor's tomb.
Though the choral singing can be a bit polite (these
demons don't exactly have you running for cover), the Toronto-based
Opera in Concert give a polished, thoughtfully characterised
performance. Kevin Mallon shapes and paces the opera intelligently.
And while there are no star names here, the principals have fresh,
personable voices and understand the French Baroque style, above all
Monica Whicher, who gives a poignantly expressive account of
Télaïre's sublime lament "Tristes apprêts". RW |
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