Latest releases reviewed
BEATA VERGINE Philippe Jaroussky (counter tenor), Marie-Nicole Lemieux (contralto), Ensemble Artaserse Virgin Classics 344 7112 ****
This new disc featuring the articulate, firmly projected, rhythmically agile voice of counter tenor Philippe Jaroussky focuses on Marian motets from 17th-century Rome and Venice. The musical style emerges, as it were, out of the shadow of Monteverdi, and shares that great Monteverdian characteristic of maximising expressive effect with the sparest of means. The close recording also maximises the impact of the instrumentalists of Ensemble Artaserse, giving them an almost tactile presence. Not many of the composers' names will be widely familiar, though the expressive quality of the music might have you expect otherwise. Sample Giovanni Felice Sances's Stabat Mater dolorosa or Alessandro Grandi's O intemerata (one of two duets with the perfectly matched Marie-Nicole Lemieux) for a flavour of this disc's little-known delights. www.virginclassics.com
Michael Dervan
SESSIONS: STRING QUINTET; CANONS (TO THE MEMORY OF STRAVINSKY); SIX PIECES FOR CELLO; STRING QUARTET NO 1 Group for Contemporary Music Naxos American Classics 8.559621****
Roger Sessions (1896-1985) is a major name in American music, but a name is what he remains to most people, as public performances are few and far between. He has a reputation as an academic composer, but the dominant characteristic of his First String Quartet (1938) and String Quintet (1958) is a strangely relaxed, dissonant lyricism - the quintet seems to take up where Schoenberg's late quartets left off, only to move in a slightly different direction. The solo cello pieces written for the composer's cellist son date from 1966, the short memorial canons for string quartet from the year of the Stravinsky's death. The Group for Contemporary Music are expertly ardent. They know just when to press and when to relax in a set of performances where music and playing are finely matched. www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
MOZART: 16 SONGS; PIANO AND WIND QUINTET Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (soprano), Philharmonia Wind Quintet, Walter Gieseking (piano) EMI Classics 353 2262 ****
The recordings collected here were all made in April 1955, in advance of the Mozart bicentenary celebrations of 1956. There is a limpid clarity to the songs, as if Schwarzkopf's spinning of a perfect vocal line and Gieseking's production of a beautifully turned, artlessly simple-sounding accompaniment were achievements to be taken for granted. Stereo LPs were a while away yet and, unlike the songs, the Piano and Wind Quintet was recorded in slightly cramped sounding mono rather than stereo. The line-up of wind principals from the Philharmonia Orchestra included the inimitable Dennis Brain on horn. www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan
DECCA RECORDINGS 1949-1968 Julius Katchen (piano), various orchestras and conductors Decca Original Masters 475 7221 (8 CDs) ****
American pianist Julius Katchen, a major recording artist of the 1950s and 1960s, was just 42 when he died of cancer in 1969. He was brilliant of technique, daring and generous of temperament, and broad enough in musical taste for the early recordings here to include Ned Rorem's Piano Sonata of 1949, and Benjamin Britten's Diversions for the left hand, with the composer himself conducting. Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, and Brahms's Paganini and Handel Variations and Third Sonata are meat and drink for Katchen. The big works by Schumann (Carnaval and the Symphonic Studies) fare better than Schubert or Chopin, but his Mendelssohn, done with firm spine, is very fine. The best of the concerto performances are the earliest: Rachmaninov's Second Concerto and Paganini Rhapsody, and Dohnányi's Nursery Variations, recorded with Anatole Fistoulari in 1951 and Adrian Boult in 1954. Like the majority of recordings in this set, these are only now receiving their first international release on CD. www.deccaclassics.com
Michael Dervan
