BBC Music Magazine Choices,
BBC Music Magazine - May 2017 Choices
Paavo Järvi's first recording with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo leads the BBC Music Magazine choices in the May issue, with their disc of music by Richard Strauss picked as Recording of the Month.
Category choices include Ligeti concertos, songs by Pavel Haas, and Christopher Simpson's musical journey through the seasons - plus Haitink's recent recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 3, which featured as our own Disc of the Week in January; you can read Katherine's full review here.
Recording of the Month
'This is their first recording together, and everything you need to know is here in the first few minutes of Strauss's 1888 tone poem Don Juan: a George Szell-like cut and thrust in the opening swagger, a gorgeous dissolve in a mist of harp-spangled cushioning for the first love-scene; the NHK Symphony Orchestra does both bright sunlight and chiaroscuro to perfection.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Orchestral Choice
Mahler: Symphony No. 3
Gerhild Romberger (contralto), Augsburger Domsingknaben, Frauenchor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Bernard Haitink
'At any rate, this is a perfect beauty of a performance, natural sound matching natural evolution and every solo perfectly intoned...there's great mystery in the low string rockings and the expressive colours of mezzo Gerhild Romberger in the setting of Nietzsche's 'Midnight Song'.'
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Concerto Choice
Ligeti: Concertos
Christian Poltéra (cello), Joonas Ahonen (piano), BIT20 Ensemble, Baldur Brönnimann
But beyond this machine-like side of Ligeti's persona, what comes across in all this music is his unerring ear for colour and harmony. The performances by Baldur Brönnimann and the Norwegian BIT20 Ensemble are brilliant throughout. An indispensable disc.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Opera Choice
Camilla Tilling sings Gluck and Mozart Arias
Camilla Tilling (soprano), Musica Saeculorum, Philipp von Steinaecker
'Tilling's fresh-sounding soprano is, on this showing, a protean Classical instrument...but everywhere employed with such unassailable technical mastery...that not even the extravagant high-and-low flourishes of Fiordiligi's 'Come scoglio' emerge flustered or short-changed. But it's the sense each performance creates that all these women have been lived in 'on the inside' that makes this CD a truly remarkable achievement.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Choral & Song Choice
Fata Morgana: Songs by Pavel Haas
Anita Watson (soprano), Anna Starushkevych (mezzo soprano), Nicky Spence (tenor), James Platt (bass), Navarra Quartet, Lada Valesova (piano)
'Pianist-musicologist Lada Valešová has gathered together a stellar group of young singers and musicians. Fata Morgana...receives an impassioned premiere recording by Nicky Spence and the Navarra Quartet alongside Valešová...From joy to despair, every emotion is here in subtle colours; a legacy of great human and musical worth.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chamber Choice
'These beguiling, ever-changing works...have a pervasively wistful quality, entwining reflective fantasias with lithe dances and embroidered 'divisions'...Frauke Hess, Hille and Marthe Perl...balance eloquence and virtuosity here in a finely-judged equilibrium. Warmly recorded by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, the whole makes for a subtle yet sensuous odyssey through the cycle of the year.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Instrumental Choice
'Cooper's keyboard mastery is as searching as the music itself: the whirling bravura of the 'Deuxième valse oubliée' and 'Bagatelle sans tonalité' has their harmonic world sounding astonishingly forward-looking...This is altogether exceptional music-making, graced for good measure with the warmly beautiful acoustic of Snape Maltings Concert Hall.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Flora Lucas - Former Head of Marketing
