Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - October 2020
Personal favourites from October include five evocative orchestral works from British composer Anna Clyne, Reynaldo Hahn’s enchanting teenage opera L’île du rêve, an intimate recital of French mélodies with guitar from Laurent Naouri and Frédéric Loiseau, and a mesmerising sequence of riddles and rune-songs from Stef Conner and friends.
Anna Clyne: Mythologies
Irene Buckley (speaker), Jennifer Koh (violin) BBC Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop, Sakari Oramo, Andrew Litton, André de Ridder
All five works here teem with vivid, near-cinematic imagination and atmosphere, from the swaggering, carnivalesque Masquerade (the curtain-opener at the Last Night of the Proms 2013) to the turbulent fever-dream of Night Ferry, composed in 2012 for the Chicago Symphony. The highlight for me, though, is the hypnotic The Seamstress, in which Irene Buckley’s whispered fragments of a poem by WB Yeats intertwine with Jennifer Koh’s solo violin to weave a tapestry of strange, frayed beauty.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Rodrigo’s evergreen comes up as fresh as paint in the hands of Garcia and Glassberg, with lightly-sprung, vivacious dance-rhythms in the outer movements and some beautifully-shaped solos from the Toulouse players; the same Terpsichorean spirit is ever in evidence in Alexandre Tansman’s Robert de Visée-inspired concerto, given with a supple courtly grace that never stiffens into starchiness, and the four dances by Sainz de la Maza, who premiered the Rodrigo.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Australian period-instrument ensemble’s work is underpinned by rigorous scholarship on performance-practice, and it certainly shows in these hugely engaging accounts of two nineteenth-century piano quintets, given plenty of spirit and life through judicious use of rubato and portamento and opening out into near-symphonic grandeur in places as the strings rise to match the big-boned sonorities of Neal Peres Da Costa’s mighty 1869 Erard concert grand.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Dussek: Messe Solemnelle
Stefanie True (soprano), Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Gwilym Bowen (tenor), Morgan Pearse (bass), Choir of the AAM, Academy of Ancient Music, Richard Egarr
Once choral societies are back in business, this superb world premiere recording of Dussek’s late masterpiece will hopefully inspire a few enterprising groups to continue Egarr’s sterling work in putting this glorious piece back on the map – and what a case he and the AAM make for it here, the period brass instruments alternately glowing and blazing, and the choral singers making light of the scintillating fugue of the Credo. Of a fine quartet of soloists, Helen Charlston’s assertive, characterful mezzo stands out, whilst Stefanie True’s perfectly-placed top Cs are a marvel.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
If, like me, you’re a fan of Naouri’s handsome, imposing portraits of operatic villains, the soft-focus delights of this beautifully intimate recital of French song might take you a little by surprise on several levels: swapping out the piano for guitar shines a seductive, dimmed light on these favourites by Fauré, Debussy and Poulenc, with the raindrops of Fauré’s Spleen falling with special magic thanks to the unusual instrumentation. It’s simply gorgeous.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Taking its cue from Anglo-Saxon poetry, this mesmerising album from the British singer and composer is the perfect companion for a long winter’s evening, and springs surprises at every turn. The spare beauty of the Rune Poems for upper voices and Conner’s solos to her own lyre accompaniment are interspersed with starkly powerful contributions from vocal ensemble Everlasting Voices, and it’s all wonderfully captured by Delphian’s engineers – close your eyes and you’ll be transported to a candlelit crypt on a chilly Northern night.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Reynaldo Hahn: L’île du rêve
Hélène Guilmette, Artavazd Sargsyan, Cyrille Dubois, Anaïk Morel, Thomas Dolié, Ludivine Gombert; Munich Radio Orchestra, Chœur du Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet
Written when Hahn was still in his teens, his first opera about a French officer who falls in love with a young Polynesian woman is shot through with echoes of Gounod and Massenet (who was an enthusiastic advocate of the work) and includes an affectionate homage to the Bell Song from Delibes’s Lakmé; the young composer’s own nascent voice, though, is already in evidence, with the two gorgeous love-duets exuding the same blend of sentimentalism and sincerity which make his later melodies such favourites.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Tarik O'Regan: The Phoenix
Thomas Hampson (baritone),Luca Pisaroni (bass-baritone); Houston Grand Opera, Patrick Summers
Like John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (which also received its world premiere audio recording on Pentatone), this exuberant opera on the life of Lorenzo Da Ponte uses the opera-within-an-opera device to tell the picaresque story of one of Mozart’s literary inspirations, and it shares some of that earlier work’s madcap energy and flair for pastiche; real-life father-and-son-in-law Thomas Hampson and Luca Pisaroni bring bags of character to their roles as the elderly librettist and his son.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
