BBC Music Magazine Choices,
BBC Music Magazine - November 2019 Choices
The top spot this month goes to John Wilson’s ‘breathtakingly intense’ account of Korngold’s Symphony in F sharp with Sinfonia of London on Chandos – our best-selling recording of September, and a Recording of the Week for us back in late August.
Honourable mentions include the fourth instalment of Osmo Vänskä’s Mahler cycle with the Minnesota Orchestra on BIS, the Danish String Quartet’s second album exploring the late Beethoven quartets in relation to Bach and twentieth-century composers on ECM, and William Christie’s live recording of Monteverdi’s L'incoronazione di Poppea from last year’s Salzburg festival, starring Kate Lindsey and Sonya Yoncheva as the power-hungry Nero and his lover.
Recording of the Month
'Their playing is astonishingly brilliant. Indeed, there are Hollywood-dream glories in the string tone; and its ensemble is concentrated and unified, no matter how extreme Korngold’s control-freakery becomes – he grew up expecting to have the Vienna Philharmonic at his fingertips and wrote accordingly. The recorded sound matches the playing for liveliness, clarity, definition and warmth.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Orchestral Choice
'This must be about the most accurate reading of Mahler’s First Symphony to have appeared in years, in the sense that every dynamic marking, every nuance of rubato is scrupulously adhered to…Whatever else, in fulfilling [Mahler’s] indications to the letter this remarkable new version demands to be heard.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Concerto Choice
'The Hartmann in particular is an ideal vehicle for her interrogation and she exacts every ounce of expressive mileage. The Allegro molto’s implacable drive scorches as she energises her Bern players (almost like Shostakovich on speed!), and Martin’s portrait of Judas is spikily febrile…Piquantly thought out, suavely executed and impeccably recorded, Kopatchinskaja’s latest project is a thought-provoking winner.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chamber Choice
'They trace the prismatic connections between the three pieces in the order Bach-Schnittke-Beethoven, creating a revelatory connected soundscape in which (even after the agonised hectoring of the Schnittke) Beethoven’s super-compressed introspection feels even more (at times wildly) unsettling than usual…The Danes make sense of this work whilst bringing it to life…it is the ‘Grosse Fuge’ that perhaps inspires the most insightful playing of all.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Instrumental Choice
'The pieces are well-known but Tong’s playing revealed Schumann to me as a thrilling new love rather than a familiar old friend. Schumann’s numerous musical personalities – the heartfelt, the madcap, the enraged, the scholarly – are each given time to materialise before evanescing…Multiple inner voices are lovingly teased out, revealing Schumann’s contrapuntal mastery and giving a spacious feel to this intimate music.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Choral & Song Choice
'Dennehy’s score is inventive, focused and beautiful. Perhaps most commendably, it is also entirely free of sentimentality while always feeling fully alive to the emotional potency of these devastating times…Soprano Katherine Manley and acclaimed Sean-nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird bring both tremendous colour, clarity and pathos to the storytelling…The Hunger is by no means an easy listen but this is without doubt an arresting and deeply rewarding disc.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Opera Choice
Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea
Sonya Yoncheva (Poppea), Kate Lindsay (Nerone), Stéphanie d'Oustrac (Ottavia); Les Arts Florissants, William Christie, Jan Lauwers (director)
'This production is best watched, rather than listened to…The bond between Yoncheva and Lindsey is erotic and disturbing. Other cast members match their intensity…Underpinning all this is a band whose members the directors asked to play as soloists. Their realisations add to a production that, while sometimes overreaching itself, is always provocative and exciting.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Jazz Choice
'The music affectionately and self-deprecatingly presents a take on traditionally Finnish but universally familiar sentiments about the changing seasons…Very approachable, hugely inventive and really quite brilliantly executed, the music cheerily ransacks everything from jazz to salon, cabaret and parlour music and is busy, fluent, capricious and utterly captivating. The recording conveys all the fine detail with just the right degree of warmth. Unique.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
