Classical, February 2024

Classical, February 2024

Scottish CO/Maxim Emelyanychev

Mendelssohn: Symphonies Nos 3 & 5

Linn CKD0667 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit decision)

Elijah on the 2023 BBC Proms gave discover of Emelyanychev as an exemplary fashionable Mendelssohnian who might convey tender care and never simply scrubbed purity to the composer’s fastidiously balanced textures. There is one thing of Mitropoulos’s relentlessly wound pressure to the opening dramas of each symphonies, and neither sluggish motion relaxes regardless of beneficiant rubato within the phrasing. Beyond their pinpoint articulation, the SCO color the scherzos with mists and melancholy not so distant from the canvases of Caspar David Friedrich. The forces themselves are small-scale, however ship an imposing coda to the ‘Scottish’ all of the extra satisfying for the previous hush and thriller. PQ

Pina Napolitano, Wiener Concert-Verein/Zlabinger, and many others

Schoenberg: Piano Concerto, Chamber Sym No 1, Lieder Op.22

Odradek ODRCD340

A chamber model of the Concerto is such a superb and apparent concept, but apparently a brand new one. Napolitano brings an ideally relaxed, Brahmsian sense of freedom to the solo half. The Lieder likewise achieve in each readability and cantabile from piano-quintet accompaniment, sung with heartfelt assurance by baritone Christoph Filler. Mezzo Ida Aldrian by no means has to pressure for impact within the composer’s discount of the ‘Song Of The Wood-Dove’ from Gurrelieder. And Zlabinger directs an upbeat, exhilarating First Chamber Symphony with simply sufficient Viennese lilt to the rhythms. PQ

Dubois, Orfeo Orch/Vashegyi

‘Jouissons de nos beaux ans’: Rameau, Mondonville, Philibert, et al

Aparté AP319 (downloads to 48kHz/24-bit decision)

French Baroque opera: all frills and no thrills? Far from it: sceptics and initiates ought to begin right here. Taking in all the foremost gamers within the recreation, and a number of other unknowns, this assortment provides as much as a sampler of the style. There is pageantry and splendour, after all, in a sequence from Grenet’s Triumph Of Harmony, and softly tinted bucolic enjoyment of arias by Philibert and Rameau. Beside them, arias of solitude by Francoeur and Mondonville strike notes of excessive drama. Cyrille Dubois encompasses all these moods with the quivering depth and hovering head-chest register that’s the pure property of an actual French tenor. PQ

Household Cavalry Band, St George’s Chapel Winds Orch

Music by Elgar, Parry, Walton, Saint-Saëns, et al

CRD CRD3545 (downloads to 96kHz/24-bit decision)

Recorded at St George’s in March 2022, this model of I Was Glad should be the final to function ‘Vivats’ celebrating ‘Regina Elizabetha’ quite than ‘Carolus Rex’. In an association with band in addition to organ, it makes a wonderful, equipment-stretching noise, likewise the finale from Saint-Saens’s ‘Organ’ Symphony. Organist Luke Bond is not any much less intricately virtuosic and rhythmically robust in Britten’s Hymn To St Columba and Elgar’s Te Deum And Benedictus. The sequence is intelligently diversified, together with a sublime band transcription of Elgar’s Chanson De Nuit alongside VW’s church-filling model of ‘The Old Hundredth’. PQ

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February 29, 2024 at 11:33PM