Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - August 2018
Top of my late-summer playlist (and – look away now, friends and family – my nascent Christmas-list for several people) is an appropriately autumnal collection of jazz standards and music-theatre classics by the marvellous baritone Sir Thomas Allen, a singer who ‘crosses over’ with such nonchalant panache that I forgot I was listening to a veteran Beckmesser and Don Alfonso. I’ve also been exploring some Fauré rarities (don’t devour this one in a single sitting unless you want a serious sugar-rush!) and enjoying playing spot-the-difference with a terrific new recording of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Octet from Anima Eterna Brugge, which uses the original version of both scores.
Warm, witty and wistful, this lovely album is sheer delight, even if it did leave my mascara slightly streaky – Allen has a knack for gently tugging the heart-strings without ever over-doing the sentimentality, and at 73 he remains in fine vocal fettle. Highlights include a raffish account of Cole Porter’s Just one of those things and a deliciously maudlin take on One for my baby, with wry, properly piano-bar-style support from Higgins.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Stravinsky: Perséphone
Andrew Staples (tenor), Pauline Cheviller (speaker), Finnish National Opera, Esa-Pekka Salonen
Sensuous, vulnerable and imperious by turns, the young French actress Pauline Cheviller is absolutely riveting as the eponymous queen of the underworld (a spoken role in Stravinsky’s 1934 ballet), with tenor Andrew Staples incisive and urgent as the narrator Eumolphe. Salonen presides over a taut, edge-of-the-seat performance, with some stand-out woodwind work as Perséphone descends to Hades.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mozart: Piano Quartets
Daniel Barenboim (piano), Michael Barenboim (violin), Yiulia Deyneka (viola) & Kian Soltani (cello)
Characterful, congenial performances from Barenboim and three alumni of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (including his violinist son, Michael) – the tuttis have a big-boned, near-orchestral quality, but there’s no lack of delicacy when required. The pianist is very much Master of Ceremonies in the concerto-like opening of the G minor Quartet, but knows exactly when to take the spotlight and when to recede.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
In Time - Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto & Octet
Chouchane Siranossian (violin), Anima Eterna Brugge, Jakob Lehman
Like Isabelle Faust last year, Siranossian follows performance-markings by early interpreters Ferdinand David and Joseph Joachim (with all the liberal portamento and use of open strings that that entails), but goes one further in using the original version of the score; the differences (apparent from just a minute or two in) are fascinating, but the sheer youthful energy of both performances is reason enough to give this album a whirl.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Secret Fauré: Orchestral Songs & Suites
Olga Peretyatko (soprano), Benjamin Bruns (tenor), Sinfonieorchester Basel, Balthasar-Neumann-Chor, Ivor Bolton
The real revelation for me here was the incidental music which Fauré composed for Alexandre Dumas père’s Caligula in 1889 – the emphasis is squarely upon the notorious Roman emperor’s taste for luxury and sensuality rather than his fabled brutality, and (once the Lohengrin-lite military fanfare of the opening has been despatched) the score has the soft-focus sheen of an early Hollywood blockbuster.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Another new discovery for me this month has been Hans Gál’s 1925 Piano Trio, which receives expansive, ardent advocacy from the newly-formed Briggs Trio; I was expecting something darker and altogether more acerbic from the Austro-British composer, so the open-hearted lyricism and sweeping melodies (shades of Rachmaninov in places) took me quite by surprise. Do give it a try.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde
Magdalena Kožená (mezzo), Stuart Skelton (tenor), Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Simon Rattle
The Australian heldentenor is on ringing, impassioned form in the opening drinking-song, riding the hefty orchestration with Siegfried-like blade, but it’s Kožená’s ethereal, luminous Abschied which makes this a must-have for me: her slender, silvery mezzo may lack the timbral depth of a Ferrier or a Ludwig, but yields nothing in the way of intensity.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Nearly a decade on from her last Vivaldi album, Pyrotechnics, the Alaskan mezzo sounds as fresh and flexible as ever, and her singing’s disarmingly free from the mannerisms that other interpreters have developed in this repertoire over the intervening ten years: the voice remains beautifully even throughout its wide range (albeit with a bit of extra bite lower down), and the coloratura remarkably clean and unaspirated.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
