Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - January 2023
Personal favourites from January's rich crop of new releases included a rip-roaring night in Paris with Les Siècles & François-Xavier Roth, a superb recital for unaccompanied works for viola by female composers from Rosalind Ventris, sacred and secular Vivaldi from classy British countertenor Tim Mead, and the world premiere recording of a likeable operatic rom-com set in the Staffordshire countryside by George Alexander Macfarren.
If you've ever wondered how the Vienna New Year's Day Concert might sound if transplanted to the French capital, here's your answer - Strasbourg-born Isaac Strauss may have no family ties to the Viennese dynasty but his dashing Hébé-Polka is surely second cousin to Johann II's Tritsch-Tratsch, whilst numbers like Jeanne Danglas's swooning waltz L’amour s’éveille and Massenet's louche Valse au cabaret add a distinctly Gallic accent to the celebrations. The perfect January pick-me-up.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Kopatchinskaja and Say are both so evidently alive to the folk influences at work in the Janáček and Bartók sonatas, to the extent that there are long stretches (especially in the finale of the latter work) which sound for all the world as if they're being improvised on the hoof. Programming Brahms's Violin Sonata No. 3 immediately after the Janáček really points up the modernity of much of the harmonic language here, and Kopatchinskaja and Say respond in kind with the same edgy, febrile energy that made their Kreutzer Sonata so compelling back in 2008.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The name of Joseph Jongen might not ring many bells (other than for aficionados of organ music), but I'll wager that many of these gorgeous miniatures will nonetheless feel strangely familiar, thanks to the Belgian composer's omnivorous musical appetite and gift for pastiche - Satie, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Scarlatti and Bach are all thrown deftly into the mix, and Ilić shape-shifts with equal aplomb, throwing gentle light on the kaleidoscopic range of colours and textures which Jongen has to offer.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
If you're in the mood for something rather thornier in terms of solo piano programmes this month, then strap in and enjoy this white-knuckle ride from Stefanovich, whose long immersion in the music of Messiaen pays some real dividends when it comes to calmly navigating the dense textures and formidable technical demands of these 15 Etudes by Cypriot composer Vassos Nicolaou (b.1971) - such is the unflappable clarity of her playing that for much of the album you'll swear there's a second pianist involved...
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This ear-opening recital of music for unaccompanied viola by female composers is beautifully curated and performed, with highlights including Amanda Feery's eerily beguiling Boreal (where Ventris summons some suitably ethereal colours from an instrument that's also capable of packing a real punch in the lower register), Sally Beamish's declamatory Pennillion, and Thea Musgrave's haunting Light at the End of the Tunnel (commissioned by BBC Radio 3 during lockdown).
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
There's a very special alchemy at work on this collaboration between The King's Singers and Fretwork, which pays touching tribute to Thomas Weelkes and William Byrd (both of whom died in 1623) - the viols blend into the vocal textures like cornflour when required but add welcome dashes of spice elsewhere, particularly in the more rumbustious secular numbers. Singly and together, The King's Singers are on top vocal form, with particularly alluring solos from first alto Patrick Dunachie in Ye Sacred Muses and What joy so true.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
After Mead's outstanding contributions on Arcangelo's recording of the Bach Mass in B minor and Pygmalion's award-winning St Matthew Passion, it's an unqualified pleasure to hear the British countertenor in a full-length solo programme: the voice is strong, even and richly coloured throughout its wide range, lithe and athletic in the florid 'Nell'orrido albergo' from Cessate, omai cessate and the opening of the Nisi Dominus and supported by typically alert playing from Arcangelo. (An album of seventeenth-century English songs is also in the offing on Pentatone, so do keep an eye out for that one in March...)
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Macfarren: The Soldier's Legacy
Rachel Speirs (Lotty), Gaynor Keeble (Widow Wantley), Joseph Doody (Jack Weatherall), Quentin Hayes (Christopher Caracole), Jonathan Fisher (piano), Edward Dean (harmonium)
This slight but tunefully attractive comic opera about the romantic entanglements of a dashing hussar who lands in rural Staffordshire after the Napoleonic wars is great fun, and sure to appeal to fans of Gilbert & Sullivan (although I can imagine the latter throwing shade at the rather gauche libretto). And it was a pleasure to make the acquaintance of two such fresh, characterful young voices in the form of Speirs and Doody as the young lovers - both certainly names to watch.
Available Format: CD
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
