Gramophone Choices,
Gramophone Editor's Choices - October 2019
Christian Tetzlaff’s third recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto (coupled with his second of the Sibelius) takes the laurels this month; Rob Cowan describes these performances with Robin Ticciati and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin as ‘sidestepping interpretative convention without offending or displacing their finest rivals’.
Editor’s Choices include the newly reformed Sinfonia of London’s debut album of Korngold with John Wilson, which James reviewed for us a couple of weeks ago, and Chinese sheng player Wu Wei’s East-meets-West collaboration with Holland Baroque on Channel Classics – you can read an in-depth interview about the album (prepared in collaboration with Wei’s assistant Katharina Parczyk) here.
Recording of the Month
Beethoven & Sibelius: Violin Concertos
Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Robin Ticciati
'Tetzlaff may at times excitedly rush his fences, but in collaboration with Robin Ticciati and his alert Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, he transforms aspects of what so many have treated as a sort of Holy Grail into a beer tankard…If Beethoven’s Concerto emerges as uncompromisingly provocative, Tetzlaff’s Sibelius also errs on the side of danger…In many respects, a real knock-out.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Editor's Choices
'For this Austrian-American exile symphony he evokes a great post-war US orchestra – the weighty, satin string tone, the skyscraping brass and questioning woodwinds that you might find on a 1950s Chicago or Philadelphia disc…The result is both gripping and sincerely moving…Stirring, thought-provoking and superbly played, this disc is a tonic.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Veress: String Trio & Bartók: Piano Quintet
Vilde Frang (violin), Barnabás Kelemen (violin), Lawrence Power (viola), Nicolas Altstaedt (cello), Alexander Lonquich (piano)
'Bartók’s Piano Quintet summons Brahms and Strauss as obviously influences…I think it fair to say that Kelemen, Frang, Katalin Kokas, Altstaedt and Alexander Lonquich sell this lovable product of youthful creative excess more securely than any oft heir predecessors on disc…But what makes this CD unmissable is the Veress Trio, a masterpiece and a performance to match.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'It’s a mistake to consider Per Nørgård a dogmatic composer and this release proves it in style, placing some of his strictest system-based musical structures alongside wide-eyed film music as if to prove that both are built of the same clarity, sincerity and joie de vivre…I can think of few composers of the last half century whose music is so disciplined yet so heartfelt, so original yet so rooted.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'The sounds that Wei conjures on his sheng are tough to describe. Sometimes they are ethereal, a prophecy spun on the air. They can also be entirely present…The cultural reciprocity of the disc is astounding – the listener begins to hear the baroque in Wei’s Chinese performing traditions, as well as to find elements of the Chinese aesthetic in the historically informed playing of Europe.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'Suzuki is a class act in every component of his planning…His greatest challenge lies in taming the remarkably evergreen and resourceful Silbermann organ in Freiburg Cathedral. He draws on all its inherent glories: the dazzling couplers, the earthy French reeds, luminous flutes and those specifically German concentrated chests of projected sound and hearty, marauding bass lines…For all Bach lovers, not just organists!'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'That Kapsperger’s music for solo theorbo or chitarrone, is – if you’ll forgive the pun – endlessly captivating is due to its strangeness as much as to its beauty…The sudden shifts in mood, in rhythm, in tonality, in texture, often within a very short time frame, by turns bewilder and beguile…Upon all these Nordberg, playing a darkly pungent 14-course theorbo by Lars Jonsson after Tieffenbrucker, lavishes a rare artistry.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
'It is difficult to imagine Debussy-playing more personal, suggestive or voluptuous. Cooper has lived with this music long and well…She gives us an Albéniz entirely her own, all the more vivid perhaps for its vantage from the outside looking in. Piquant, understated, with a sultry heat that smoulders rather than bursting into flame, these are compelling performances informed by the palette of Goya and undergirded with an inerrantly zesty rhythmic élan.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'I love a big recording project planned with superb scholarship, lively programming and consistent performances, and this Machaut series on Hyperion has it all…This is perhaps the most helpful summation of the present Orlando Consort sound: they bring a gently extrovert storytelling style to Machaut…Having said that, there are also moments of great intimacy.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
'A varied recital of musical miniatures that combines dances, love songs and secular chansons to give a vivid picture of the daily life of Maximilian’s court…The joy of this release is in the detail: the close recording that brings out the grit and gasp of the period strings, their rich colours illuminated against the white purity of the voices, the many stories of unlikely or curious provenance that emerge in the booklet notes.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
DVD/Blu-ray of the Month
Strauss: Salome (DVD)
Asmik Grigorian (Salome), John Daszak (Herod), Anna Maria Chiuri (Herodias), Gábor Bretz (Jokanaan), Julian Prégardien (Narraboth); Wiener Philharmoniker, Franz Welser-Möst
'It transfers to the small screen with electrifying power, particularly due to Asmik Grigorian’s remarkable debut in the title-role…The Lithuanian soprano signs the role superbly, a lighter soprano than many of the tungsten-plated heavies heard elsewhere, but flecked with steel nonetheless…She is a terrific actress, too; sulky, steamy and manipulative…Welser-Möst conducts a terrific account of Strauss’s score, the Vienna Philharmonic on scintillating form. Not to be missed.'
Available Format: DVD Video
Strauss: Salome (Blu-ray)
Asmik Grigorian (Salome), John Daszak (Herod), Anna Maria Chiuri (Herodias), Gábor Bretz (Jokanaan), Julian Prégardien (Narraboth); Wiener Philharmoniker, Franz Welser-Möst
SOUND FORMAT: BD: PCM Stereo, DTS-HD MA 5.1
PICTURE: NTSC, 16:9
Available Format: Blu-ray
Reissue/Archive
'One of the most notable aspects of Rosbaud’s conducting is its consistency…All in all, it’s a most valuable collection, the Bartók, Pfitzner and Sibelius being the highlights. The transfers from original radio tapes are excellent.'
Available Formats: 6 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
