Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - September 2021
September favourites include the first instalment of what promises to be an electrifying Florence Price series from the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, a searing recital of Mahler, Grime and Ives from Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton, a journey through baroque Dalmatia with the Marian and Illyria Consorts, and several world premiere recordings of works by Miłosz Magin from Lucas Debargue, Gidon Kremer and friends.
Price's Symphony No. 1 (the first work by an African-American female composer to be performed by a major US orchestra) received its premiere recording from the Fort Smith Symphony a couple of years ago, but this first instalment in a projected Price series from Nézet-Séguin finds still more beauty in this remarkable, instantly appealing score thanks to the sheen and shimmer of the Philadelphia strings, some delectable woodwind solos, and the sonorous glow which the brass bring to the chorale-like writing in the Largo.
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The Łódź-born composer's work was entirely new to me until this month, and what a splendid case these artists make for his richly melodic, often cinematic voice: Debargue revels in the helter-skelter virtuosity of the Piano Concerto No. 3 (composed seven years after a car-accident derailed Magin's own distinguished career as a pianist), whilst Kremer is athletic and puckish in the neo-Classical, Stravinsky-ish Concerto rustico No. 1. The miniatures, too, are enormously enjoyable, in particular Nostalgie du pays which Debargue delivers with just the right amount of sentiment.
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Adriatic Voyage: Seventeenth-Century Music from Venice to Dalmatia
The Illyria Consort, Rory McCleery, Bojan Čičić (violin) Marian Consort, Gawain Glenton
There are many things to love about this collaboration between the Marians and Čičić's Illyria Consort, not least the way that ornate contributions from the solo violin and cornet weave organically into the already rich tapestry created by the singers (who impress jointly and severally throughout); the repertoire, too, is enormously attractive, with highlights including Tomaso Cecchino's energetic, dance-like Surge propera and Usper's Battaglia per sonar e cantar a 8, which brings the programme to a delightfully boisterous close.
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It's relatively unusual to hear a light, bright soprano in the two Mahler cycles, but Hughes's vernal freshness and vulnerability pay real dividends in the second Wayfarer song in particular, complemented by some sparkling, detailed playing from Middleton; the real attraction here, though, is Helen Grime's vivid and often visceral Bright Travellers, which sets poems by Fiona Benson's prize-winning collection of the same name and paints a compelling picture of the joys, anxieties and pain of pregnancy and early motherhood.
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Fleur de mon âme
Karen Cargill (mezzo), Simon Lepper (piano), Royal Scottish National Orchestra Soloists
Coming to this lovely recital with my ears still pleasantly ringing from Cargill's orotund Brangäne in Glyndebourne's Tristan und Isolde last month, I'm in awe at this lovely artist's ability to paint on these much smaller canvasses without any loss of focus or colour; the intimacy and tenderness which she and Lepper bring to Hahn's evergreen À Chloris is worth the price of the disc alone, but everything here is utterly beguiling, with the strings of the RSNO providing luscious support in Joseph Jongen's Calmes, aux quais déserts and Chausson's Chanson perpétuelle.
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The warm, liquid tone which Daniel draws from all three instruments (cor anglais, Leon Goossens's 110-year-old oboe and his own modern model) is a constant source of pleasure throughout this programme of works by Bax, Delius, Vaughan Williams, Finzi and Bliss, and contrasts effectively with the muscular, at times astringent sound of the Dorics, who summon a near-orchestral weight in the outer movements of Bliss's Oboe Quintet from 1926.
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This terrific, imaginative debut recording from the young British quartet is built around the eponymous 2011 work by Thomas Adès, which is interleaved with the group's own arrangements of works by Gurney, Florence Price, Bartók and others as well as individual movements of Cassandra Miller's birdsong-inspired Warblework; William Marsey's Be Nice To See You (composed around snippets of phone-calls from his family in Hartlepool) may have you adjusting your set at first, but its gentle affection evoked a few pangs of nostalgia for this ex-pat North-Easterner.
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Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
