Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - May 2023
This is genuinely revelatory stuff. Nigl is passionate about bucking the trend for performing Lieder in large venues, with modern concert-grands and quasi-operatic delivery, and for long stretches here it's as if he's whispering these tales of the unexpected directly in your ear. Nor does he shy away from making an 'ugly' sound when the text demands it: Wolf's Feuerreiter and Die Rattenfänger are cases in point, and Loewe's Erlkönig is pure nightmare fuel. Prepare to be beguiled and unsettled in equal measure.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Surprises do indeed abound on this colourful collection of suites from Pancrace Royer's operas, packed with startling harmonic twists and turns and inventive orchestration: Rousset (who recorded two albums of the composer's harpsichord works in the late 2000s) clearly adores this music and he's audibly having enormous fun here, particularly in the raucous tambourins and the grand ceremonial marches from Le pouvoir de l'amour and La Zaïde.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Stanford: Requiem
Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Marta Fontanals-Simmons (mezzo), James Way (tenor), Ross Ramgobin (baritone); City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, University of Birmingham Voices, Martyn Brabbins
The consoling spirit of Brahms's German Requiem (written three decades earlier) hovers over the mass which Stanford composed in memory of his friend Lord Frederic Leighton in 1896, but the Irish composer remains very much his own man - his treatment of the Dies Irae is especially interesting, as is the valedictory Lux Aeterna. The well-drilled young Birmingham singers sound fresh and incisive throughout, and there's marvellous work (singly and collectively) from the solo quartet - particularly Sampson, floating a radiant top C in the Rex Tremendae.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Sparks (and rosin) really do fly on this high-octane album of violin concertos by what Siranossian calls the 'four musketeers' of Venice - Veracini, Locatelli, Tartini and Vivaldi. It's perhaps the former who steals the show: his extrovert D major concerto opens proceedings in a blaze of swashbuckling glory, Siranossian duelling so vigorously with pairs of trumpets and oboes that you fear a string might snap at any moment. But the more ethereal colours which she finds for an excerpt from Locatelli's L'Arte del Violino are scarcely less arresting - particularly in the slow movement, with its echoes of Caesar's great lament from Handel's Giulio Cesare.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Der ferne Klang...
Chen Reiss (soprano), Matthias Goerne (baritone), Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Christoph Eschenbach
This superbly performed programme of orchestral works and songs by Franz Schreker (1878-1943) gets off to a luminous start with the Nachtstück from the opera which gives the album its name, Eschenbach ensuring that every little detail of the delicate orchestration shines through. Goerne's trademark baleful intensity is perfectly suited to the bleak Fünf Gesänge from 1909, whilst Reiss's bright, vernal soprano enchants in the two Walt Whitman settings.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Max Bruch & Florence Price: Violin Concertos
Randall Goosby (violin), Philadelphia Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
I love Goosby's clean-lined, fresh-faced and unsentimental way with Bruch's evergreen concerto (Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra completely in tune with his approach), but the main attraction for many listeners here will be the two concertos which were rescued from Price's abandoned summer-house in Illinois back in 2009. The first of these (dating from 1939) cheekily tips its hat to the Tchaikovsky concerto, but the single-movement concerto from 1952 is the more interesting work in terms of both structure and orchestration - and Goosby plays both like he really loves them.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
There are hidden gems aplenty on this fascinating collection of nineteenth-century dramatic monologues by composers including Viardot, Donizetti and Zingarelli - Bonitatibus really gets under the skin of historical and mythological characters including Hero, Hermione and Joan of Arc, and perhaps most especially Mary Stuart as imagined by the young Wagner. And d'Aronzo gets a lovely solo moment in the spotlight in the form of Mel Bonis's portrait of Salomé, a piece which really deserves to be better known.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
