BBC Music Magazine Choices,
BBC Music Magazine - May 2021
An 'outstanding recording' of Beethoven's Triple Concerto from the Freiburger Barockorchester and Pablo Heras-Casado on Harmonia Mundi takes the laurels this month, with soloists Isabelle Faust, Jean-Guihen Queyras, and Alexander Melnikov also contributing 'an effective counterweight' in the form of a transcription of the composer's Second Symphony for piano trio.
Choices also include This Departing Landscape, the first full-length disc of music by Scottish composer Martin Suckling - you can read David's recent interview with Martin about his ideas and inspirations here.
Recording of the Month
Beethoven: Triple Concerto & Piano Trio Op. 36 (Symphony No. 2)
Isabelle Faust (violin), Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello), Alexander Melnikov (piano); Freiburger Barockorchester, Pablo Heras-Casado
'There’s no question of a timid approach, and the clean timbre of the period instruments is echoed by the soloists, entering one by one. Especially fetching is the empathy between Faust and Queyras, with total mutual understanding of phrasing and rubato...All in all this really is an outstanding recording.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Orchestral Choice
'Throughout, rather than adopting a headlong interpretative profile, Currentzis inflects Beethoven’s indelible invention with an at times startling range of articulation that bristles with spontaneous relish. Rather than cossetting us in a warm bath of reassuring musical semantics, Currentzis offers up a bracing, tingling cold shower.'
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Concerto Choice
Martin Suckling; This Departing Landscape
Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Katherine Bryan (flute), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, Ilan Volkov
'Bryan is sublime, slicing through fragmented cadenzas and revealing a powerful lower range. Another expert soloist is pianist Tamara Stefanovich, a highly accomplished 20th- and 21st-century music specialist who has a thorough grasp of his 30-minute, five-movement Piano Concerto.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC
Chamber Choice
'Youthful passion occasionally pushes him to stylistic excess...but for most of the time he’s beauty incarnate and in perfect step with his composers’ various voices. He’s also blessed with a superbly understanding piano partner, Christian Ihle Hadland, who proves especially magical in the Grieg Sonata, poetically tapering phrases and effortlessly navigating changing dynamics.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Instrumental Choice
'Prepare to be astonished. Even allowing for the huge technical standards taken for granted today, Ivan Bessonov’s verges on phenomenal. He draws a beautifully rounded sound from the Steinway used in this recording, and the maturity of his searching is remarkable for a pianist still in his late teens.'
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC
Choral & Song Choice
'Riches has the versatility to sound at home in any language or musical idiom. He possesses a natural authority that never has to strive for effect, and his warm, supple bass-baritone is eminently ‘grounded’...In all, imaginatively plotted and beautifully recorded.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Opera Choice
Rameau: Dardanus
Judith van Wanroij (Iphise), Chantal Santon Jeffery (Venus), Cyrille Dubois (Dardanus), Thomas Dolié (Teucer/Magician), Tassis Christoyannis (Antenor); Orfeo Orchestra, Purcell Choir, György Vashegyi
'This exciting and full-blooded account has more historic coherence than any so far of this great opera. György Vashegyi, who already has three Rameau opera recordings to his name, has mustered a uniformly strong cast with lively characterisation from Antenor and Teucer, alpha males pumped to the hilt with testosterone.'
Available Formats: 3 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Jazz Choice
'This album is a tour de force in which a set of ambitious orchestral pieces is leavened with a handful of poignant songs and standards, its eccentric programming being just one reason why the entire project should have been a catastrophic failure...Nevertheless, the whole vast apparatus somehow draws the listener in as if by its own gravitational field and absolutely works in spite of itself.'
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
