Presto Editor's Choices,
Presto Editor's Choices - October 2023
Personal favourites from October's crop of new releases include a formidable debut recital centring on women's stories from British-Australian soprano Samantha Crawford with pianist Lana Bode, forgotten Baroque gems from Philippe Jaroussky at the very top of his game, beautifully-played accounts of works by Margaret Bonds, Ulysses Kay and Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Kellen Gray, and a rich and strange new chamber-work from Thomas Adès (courtesy of dedicatees Mark Simpson and Quatuor Diotima).
This witty, poignant and candid recital of songs centring on female experiences has to be one of the most arresting recording-debuts I've heard all year: Crawford's big, bright voice packs a tremendous punch, with diction always crystal-clear and plenty of bite when required (which is often). Stand-outs include the exuberant 'Breasts!' from Judith Weir's woman.life,song, Libby Larsen's frank enumeration of painful beauty rituals in 'Big Sister Says', and the twist-in-the-tale revelation of pregnancy from her cycle The Birth Project - quite a different affair from Robert Schumann's depiction of the same scenario in Frauen-Liebe und Leben...
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Commissioned for Brecon Baroque in 2020, Chad Kelly’s arrangements of the Goldbergs are so idiomatic that one could easily believe that they sprang from the pen of the composer himself (a keen upcycler of his own music): the choice of instrumental forces for each variation feels exactly right, and the sheer brio of the tuttis in the movements inspired by the gigue and French overture sweeps all before it. Podger herself is peerless, both in her beautifully-phrased opening Aria and in the dizzying toccatas - particularly Variation 20, where sparks really fly between her and cellist Alexander Rolton.
Available Formats: SACD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
Premiered by these performers in 2021, Adès's first chamber-work in a decade has to be one of his most engrossing creations to date. Drawing inspiration from Dowland, Byrd and Berg as well as from Shakespeare's The Tempest, it's appropriately rich and strange, and wears its intertextuality lightly - Byrd's The Woods So Wild takes on a new life in the intricate, gleefully scuttling scherzo (Simpson's agility here is breathtaking) and the Diotimas sound for all the world like a viol consort in the haunting Lachrymae.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This second volume of orchestral works by Black American composers draws some outstanding playing from the RSNO: strings sing and shimmer in the evocation of 'Dawn in Dixie' from Margaret Bonds's powerful and brilliantly-paced Montgomery Variations (a response to the Montgomery Bus Boycott of the mid-1950s and the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Alabama) and the brass really blaze in the Passacaglia from Ulysses Kay's neo-Classical Concerto for Orchestra from 1948. The percussion get ample opportunity to shine in Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson's Concert Overture - a real gift for any orchestra looking for an ebullient curtain-raiser by an under-represented composer.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
This gorgeous recital from a couple who were brought together through a mutual love of French Baroque is absolutely hypnotic stuff: spanning four centuries, the programme opens with a delectable chanson by Honoré d'Ambruis (a pupil of Michel Lambert, who also features prominently), and also encompasses operetta arias and 1960s torch-songs. Desandre's limpid, flexible mezzo works beautifully against the delicacy of the theorbo, and Dunford's Satie transcriptions are mesmerising.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
This terrific sequel to A Night in London is every bit as varied and vivid as its predecessor, presenting a compelling portrait of Baroque Naples in all its eclectic glory: stomping tarantellas sit alongside flamboyant operatic arias by Porpora and excerpts from Francesco Corselli's plangent Lamentación segunda del Jueves Santo, with Gaillard herself on scintillating form in concertos by Fiorenza, Leo & Durante and in Barbella's curious, characterful sonata 'Arlecchinessa, Rosetta e Pulcinella'.
Available Formats: 2 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Jaroussky is at the absolute top of his game in this beautifully-curated tribute to the great librettist Pietro Metastasio, who inspired hundreds of Baroque and early Classical composers including Hasse, Jommelli, JC Bach and Gluck; there's a new depth and grit to the voice in the lower register (the opening aria from Andrea Bernasconi's L'Olimpiade takes him down to a resonant low C!), and he conjures some extraordinary colours in Ferrandini's setting of 'Gelido in ogni vena' from Il Siroe.
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Katherine Cooper - Head of Editorial
