Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - November 2020
Song-recitals from two superb Schubertians book-end my November favourites, with Ian Bostridge tapping into yet more psychological depths (and a fair amount more vocal brawn) on his third recording of Die schöne Müllerin, and Austrian baritone Georg Nigl joining forces with fortepianist Olga Pashchenko for a transfixing programme which includes a selection of songs on the theme of night and dreams alongside cycles by Beethoven and Wolfgang Rihm.
Further off the beaten track, Philippe Jaroussky and Artaserse explore the highways and byways of baroque oratorio in Italy, and German ensemble TrioW champion chamber music by female composers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Bostridge’s miller-lad has beefed up and acquired an edgy assertiveness (occasionally even menace) since his previous recordings of the cycle with Graham Johnson and Mitsuko Uchida: his lovelorn journeyman now sounds as if he could plausibly beat the stubbly hunter who encroaches on his turf in a fight, and the voice has taken on new colours and muscle that had me wondering if he might one day tackle Britten’s Peter Grimes in the right setting. His volatility is matched at every step by Giorgini, whose big-boned playing would perhaps have dwarfed him in earlier days but is just the ticket here.
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The Buffalo players sound terrific in Schmitt’s two large-scale ‘Orientalist’ ballet suites, with a fabulously glossy proto-Hollywood sheen to the strings and some especially characterful playing from the cor anglais and trumpets; Falletta is mindful of both works’ origins in dance, and achieves a lovely shimmering transparency in passages that could easily seem overblown. It’s also great to hear the world premiere recording of the orchestral version of Musique sur l'eau, composed in 1898 and orchestrated fifteen years later, which has more than a whisper of Debussy’s La mer about it.
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If this first instalment is anything to go by, Järvi’s Tchaikovsky cycle with his Swiss orchestra is going to be a real ear-opener: this is one of the most crystalline and beautifully-balanced accounts of the symphony I’ve come across, with a wealth of woodwind and string detail that often gets obscured by the brass coming to the fore and a real balletic impulse underpinning the outer movements as well as a delightfully airy scherzo. There’s blood and thunder aplenty, though, in Francesca da Rimini - so much so that on first hearing I wondered if I was listening to a different orchestra.
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Beethoven: Christ On the Mount of Olives
Elsa Dreisig (soprano), Pavol Breslik (tenor), David Soar (bass-baritone) London Symphony Chorus
Composed around the same time as the Eroica Symphony and the Piano Concerto No. 3, Beethoven’s passion-oratorio gets relatively few outings in comparison with his other choral works, but Rattle and the LSO perform it with blazing conviction on this live recording from earlier this year; Pavol Breslik is an ardent, impassioned and very human Jesus, whilst Elsa Dreisig is appropriately radiant as the Seraph, retaining her celestial poise even as Beethoven’s typically uncompromising vocal writing takes her to high C and beyond.
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All of the ‘buried treasure’ on this lovely album of chamber works by female composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is polished up to perfection by TrioW here, but the crown jewel for me is the Croatian Dora Pejačević's exuberant, expansive piano trio from 1910, which takes on a near-symphonic grandeur in its irresistibly ebullient finale. Amanda Röntgen-Maier’s 1878 Violin Sonata in B minor is also a gem, and should appeal to any fans of the Franck sonata from eight years later.
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Forgotten jewels of a rather different hue also abound on this world-premiere-stuffed collection of highlights from oratorios by baroque composers with Italian connections, including Johann Adolf Hasse, Pietro Torri and Nicola Fago. Jaroussky’s eternally boyish countertenor might not seem the most obvious vehicle for the Old Testament God’s furious lambasting of Moses in the virtuoso aria from Fortunato Chelleri’s Dio sul Sinai, but the authority of his singing (and of Artaserse’s incisive instrumentalists) ultimately sweeps all before it.
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Having previously only heard Austrian baritone Georg Nigl as Wozzeck, the fine-boned, almost tenor-ish quality of the voice on this luminous recital took me pleasantly by surprise, and Pashchenko (playing a replica of an 1819 Graf instrument in the earlier songs) matches his delicacy and sensitivity to the hilt. The spare beauty of Rihm’s Vermischter Traum (which the pair premiered in 2017) is absolutely spellbinding, and flows with beguiling naturalness into the final set of Schubert songs about night and dreams.
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Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
