“Mendelssohn”
Isata Kanneh-Mason, piano; London Mozart Gamers; Jonathan Bloxham, Conductor (Decca)
Pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason has the glad behavior of creating musically pleasing albums which might be additionally unusually properly thought out. Her first solo launch for Decca was an essential survey of the work of Clara Schumann; her second “Summer Time”, they took Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Amy Seashore, in addition to George Gershwin and Samuel Barber; one third “Tales from childhood”, included a uncommon account of Ernst von Donany’s Variations on a Nursery Rhyme. Every was performed solidly and every made for a full hear.
A lot the identical is true of Kanneh-Mason’s new recording of music by the Mendelssohn siblings, Felix and Fanny. May there be extra stylish within the outer actions of Felix’s first concerto, a piece that Fanny ever performed in public? Extra fairy mud to her reasonably tough account of Rachmaninoff’s transcription of the Scherzo from A Midsummer Evening’s Dream? It actually can. However Kanneh-Mason is a pianist of poise and endurance, of widespread sense and never a simple present. It is exhausting to not admire the easy eloquence of her phrasing in Moszkowski’s transforming of the Midsummer Nocturne, or the cautious finesse she brings to Fanny’s shadowy Notturno and her daring Easter Sonata with its poignant sluggish motion. One other tremendous launch from this pianist. DAVID ALLEN
“The Kurt Weill Album”
Live performance Home Orchestra Berlin; Johanna Malwitz, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)
Kurt Weill’s early music, with its Berlin brightness and feathering, could not sound like Mozart, but it surely has Mozart’s delicacy. The works Weill wrote in his European years earlier than emigrating to the USA in 1935 are so exactly orchestrated and so deceptively easy that they go away no room for imperfection. Too usually, nonetheless, they’re carried out with a prickly cabaret impact that borders on Weimar-era kitsch.
Not so on The Kurt Weill Album, conductor Joanna Malwitz’s Deutsche Grammophon debut, with cowl artwork that might understandably be mistaken for props from “Warehouse.” Not like the fictional Lydia Tarr, nonetheless, Malwitz is the actual deal: she leads the Konzerthausorchester Berlin right here with seething vitality and brilliantly rendered element.
Malwitz’s account of the First Symphony, which rivals that of Kirill Petrenko recent performances with the Berlin Philharmonic, is episodic however cohesive, tending towards late-romantic outbursts that would not be misplaced in Wocek. The second symphony could be very totally different, extra melodic and direct however no much less dramatic, virtually like a collage of operatic interludes. In The Seven Lethal Sins she is joined by singer Kathryn Merling, a Berlin authority on Weill’s music in her collaboration with director Barry Kosky on the Komische Oper. Collectively they’re clear, blunt and completely, convincingly in Weill’s sonic world. JOSHUA BARON
“Juilliard String Quartet Performs Arnold Schoenberg”
Juilliard String Quartet (Sony)
The Juilliard Quartet’s 1975 recording of Schoenberg’s full string quartets was accompanied by an interview with their producer, Stephen Epstein. When Epstein remarked to the primary violinist, Robert Mann, that he had now develop into one of many few musicians to file these works twice, Mann replied, “I’ve lived too lengthy!” He was joking, after all, however his phrases—even now, 150 years after Schoenberg’s start—replicate this composer’s dogged angle towards music: one thing to be endured, maybe admired, however not often beloved or loved.
These recordings seem for the primary time on CD on this seven-disc set of the entire Juilliard Schoenberg research. They create an intriguing distinction with the first version of Juilliardsince 1950. Over the previous quarter of a century, the method has develop into much less pushed and linear, the sound extra spacious and voluminous. The final two actions of the Second Quartet – settings of verses by Stefan George, with the incomparable soprano Benita Valente – have not often sounded so intoxicating, and even within the serial syntax of the Third and Fourth Quartets, bouncy, jaunty rhythms may be heard.
The set is accomplished by two String Trio performances; the delightfully odd Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte with Glenn Gould on piano; and a vivid 1991 account of the sextet model of “Verklärte Nacht,” during which the quartet is joined by violist Walter Trampler and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. DAVID WEININGER
“Aigul”
Aigul Akhmetshina, mezzo-soprano; Apollo Voices; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Daniele Rustioni, conductor (Decca)
Final season, mezzo-soprano Aigul Ahmetshina the youngest singer ever to painting Carmen on the Metropolitan Opera, saved a brand new, borderline unwatchable manufacturing of Bizet’s opera. On her debut solo album, her sly magnetism and sumptuous vocal end come to the fore.
With its sculpted opulence and serpentine movement, Akhmetshina’s finely vocalized Carmen torments and betrays nothing. Her Habanera, stuffed with ask-you-won’t-wrong path, avoids over-the-top sensuality, and “Seguidilla” is so intensely suggestive that you just overlook it is a easy story about getting a drink at a bar. However then Akhmetshina quells the mirth of the trio of playing cards with an opaque voice of concern and foreboding.
The arias from Werther and the Capulets and Montagues lack this vigorous high quality and run the danger of changing into leaden. Counterintuitively, for a voice of such plushness, Akhmetshina shines within the technical wizardry that Rossini calls for. The finale of “La Cenerentola” begins with the exalted proclamation of “Nacqui all’affanno,” her voice thick, nimble and vibrant, earlier than spiraling into fluttering bends and dips of two octaves. Akhmetshina’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” is all low-voice enchantment till she breaks out some surprisingly sharp staccatos.
Daniele Rustioni conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in tight, fluid performances, and the Apollo Voices are a vigorous choir. On the ultimate observe, Akhmetshina’s timbre is crammed with nostalgia in a full-throated tackle “The Nightingale,” a conventional music from her native Bashkortostan in Russia. Wealthy in ardour, her voice speaks for itself. OSAMA ZAHR
“Paul Hindemith – Alfred Schnittke”
Anna Gurari, piano; Orchestra of Italian Switzerland; Markus Poschner, Conductor (ECM)
The 2 composers that pianist Anna Gurari brings collectively in her newest providing appear to make a diametrically opposed pair: Schnittke, the collaborator of untamed eclecticism, and Hindemith, his period’s grasp of orderly, on a regular basis counterpoint. If Gourari hadn’t used the phrase “Elusive Affinity” because the title of her earlier ECM file, it could have labored simply as properly right here.
Listening to those wonderful performances of Schnittke and Hindemith’s works for piano and strings, nonetheless, the connections started to current themselves. In Schnittke’s Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra, one hears initially the combination of various types for which he’s each well-known and reviled. However beneath the floor lie recurring motifs, chorales, even tonal teams that rework in a manner that means a deeper logic to the music’s unfolding. Even a twisted reference to jazz appears according to greedy for order amidst the maelstrom. In contrast, Hindemith’s rating for the ballet The 4 Temperaments has a surprisingly expressive vary regardless of the strict variational type that carries it. No temperament performs to writing, and the ending actually sounds quite a bit much less “choleric” than the title suggests.
The cohesive impression is significantly aided by Gurari’s delicate however exacting performances and by conductor Markus Poschner’s sympathetic accompaniment. He and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana additionally carry a welcome lightness to Hindemith’s “Mathis der Maler” symphony. DAVID WEININGER
