Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - October 2021
October favourites include vividly characterised galleries of strong women from French mezzos Marianne Crebassa and Lea Desandre, an illuminating and highly entertaining Mussorgsky recital from soprano Claire Booth and pianist Christopher Glynn, and The Hermes Experiment's sophomore album Song, which surprises and delights quite as much as their debut disc on Delphian last year.
Séguedilles
Marianne Crebassa (mezzo), Alphonse Cemin (piano), Orchestre et Choeur du National du Capitole de Toulouse, Ben Glassberg
Rather like Sean Shibe's recent Camino, Crebassa's well-plotted programme explores musical cross-currents between France and Spain - and again it's a work by Mompou (in this case the song-cycle Combat del somni) that proves to be the real heart of the album. It will come as no surprise to anyone who fell in love with her voluptuous Secrets a few years ago that Crebassa makes such a sensual, nuanced Carmen (a role she's yet to sing on stage), but she also displays a hitherto-unrevealed gift for comedy and rapid-fire patter in the excerpts from Offenbach's La Périchole, whilst Concepción's pent-up sexual frustration in the scene from Ravel's L'heure espagnole registers loud and clear.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Handel's Unsung Heroes
Iestyn Davies (countertenor), Paul Sharp (trumpet), Christine Rice (mezzo), Roger Montgomery (horn), Joe Walters (horn), Lucy Crowe (soprano), Leo Duarte (oboe), Thomas Gould (violin), Joe Qiu (bassoon), La Nuova Musica, David Bates
It's a joy to hear members of La Nuova Musica's crack team of players stepping into the spotlight with such flair and synergy with their respective singers in this programme of opera arias with obbligato instruments: I love the hint of good-natured one-upmanship between violinist Thomas Gould and Iestyn Davies in the avian cadenzas of Cesare's Se in fiorito ameno prato, whilst Roger Montgomery and Joe Walters literally have a blast in Ruggiero's Sta nell'Ircana. And what a treat to hear Crowe on such dazzling form as Cleopatra and Agrippina - here's hoping she might record either or both complete in the near future.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Crebassa's compatriot Lea Desandre emerges as no less compelling a singing actress in this gallery of female warriors from French and Italian baroque opera, grabbing the attention from her first appearance in a blaze of manic glee from Provenzale's Lo schiavo di sua moglie; her pin-sharp coloratura in showpieces from Vivaldi's Ercole sul Termodonte and Giuseppe de Bottis's Mitilene, regina delle amazzoni rivals that of her mentor Cecilia Bartoli (who joins her in a duet from the latter work), whilst the dignified pathos which she brings to the numerous long-breathed laments put me in mind of Véronique Gens (who also makes a cameo appearance).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Trifonov brings uncommon clarity and variety of touch to The Art of Fugue (given here in his own astute completion), but it was the gentle charm and affection which he brings to the slighter works by other members of the Bach family that lingered longest in my memory - particularly JCF's playful set of variations on Ah vous dirais-je, Maman, WF's elegiac little Polonaise No. 8, and a quirky rondo by CPE. And even in evergreens such as Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (in Myra Hess's transcription) and Bist du bei mir there's a special radiance to the playing which makes you listen with fresh ears.
Available Format: 2 CDs
As on the first, equally delightful, instalment of Pike's survey of Polish violin music, Szymanowski accounts for the lion's share of the programme (she has great fun with the pyrotechnics of the Paganini Caprices), but the stand-out for me is Wieniawska's expansive Violin Sonata in D minor from 1914, given with the same combination of muscularity and cantabile beauty which made Pike's recording of the César Franck sonata in 2011 such a winner.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
I love the way that distinctions between voice and instruments slide in and out of focus on this sophomore album from the intrepid contemporary music quartet, with Héloïse Werner's pure soprano often mirroring the timbre of Oliver Pashley's clarinet; highlights include Olivia Chaney's Roman Holiday (an evocative, bittersweet little monodrama in four minutes), Eleanor Alberga's unexpectedly poetic treatment of text from the shipping forecast in Deep Blue Sea, and Kerry Andrew's coolly sensuous setting of William Carlos Williams's much-memed poem about plums in an icebox.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
What a breath of fresh air this album is - partly because a good helping of the songs here are relative rarities on disc, and partly because it's so unusual to here a light, bright soprano in better-known works such as the Songs and Dances of Death and Sunless (excerpts from which feature on Booth and Glynn's cleverly-conceived journey from cradle to grave). Booth brings incisive diction and bags of character to everything here, but the coruscating 'Oh, you drunken sot!' and the skittish The Goat are especial highlights, as is Glynn's eerily beautiful interpretation of Cum Mortuis in Lingua Mortua from Pictures at an Exhibition.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
