Latest releases reviewed.
STEVE REICH: PIANO PHASE; PHILIP GLASS: SIX SCENES FROM LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES
Maki Namekawa, Dennis Russell Davies (pianos)
Orange Mountain Music 0022
***
The earliest of Steve Reich's works that you can hear today are the pieces stimulated by his experience of the phase shifts which occur when identical audio loops are played simultaneously on two tape-recorders. Piano Phase (1967) is a puristic implementation of the same effect that can be exhilarating in its sheer austerity. In this recording by Maki Namekawa and Dennis Russell Davies it is just that. Les Enfants Terribles, for vocal ensemble and three pianos, is one of three operas which Philip Glass wrote around films by Jean Cocteau. Namekawa and Davies have arranged six scenes for two pianos. For anyone who knows Glass's music, the writing has that here-we-go-again, Groundhog Day kind of inevitability which turns some listeners on and others off. For me it was mostly the latter.
www.orangemountainmusic.com - Michael Dervan
COPLAND: PRAIRIE JOURNAL; RODEO; LETTER FROM HOME; THE RED PONY SUITE
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra/JoAnn Falletta
Naxos American Classics 8.559240
***
The tuneful dance episodes from the 1942 ballet Rodeo are among Aaron Copland's most popular pieces. The other works here are less well known. Two of them, Prairie Journal (1937) and Letter From Home (1944), were originally commissioned by US broadcasting companies for radio concerts (the title of the first supplanting the plain Music for Radio on the suggestion of a listener in a competition to name the piece). The Red Pony Suite comes from the 1949 film of that name which starred Robert Mitchum. The music all bears the marks of Copland's outdoor style and flows easily if not particularly imaginatively under the baton of the Buffalo Philharmonic's JoAnn Falletta. The limitation is a kind of dryish literalism. But the colour and impact of heavy brass and percussion are not impeded. www.naxos.com - Michael Dervan
SCHUBERT: QUARTET IN D MINOR (DEATH AND THE MAIDEN); QUARTET IN G D887
Busch Quartet
EMI Great Recordings of the Century 361 5882
****
The name of the Busch Quartet was once almost synonymous with the late Beethoven quartets, and their Schubert received the same sort of acclaim. These recordings from 1936 and 1938 show why. The group's no-frills approach - the music and nothing but the music - gets right to the heart of both pieces. The Busch style was sparing of vibrato, portamento and exhibitionism. These players once held the kind of moral high ground now inhabited by period instruments performances, and their recordings have been around long enough to have stood the test of the time. The current transfers are very smooth, though the filtering seems to have taken out some of the string tone along with the hiss and crackle of the original 78s. www.emiclassics.com - Michael Dervan
THE FIRST RECORDINGS
Herbert von Karajan Deutsche
Grammophon Original Masters 477 7237 (6 CDs)
****
Before Karajan and the Berlin Phil came Karajan and London's Philharmonia Orchestra. Before that there were the Viennese recordings made in the wake of the Second World War. And before those came these recordings, made between 1938 and 1943 in Amsterdam (with the Concertgebouw), Berlin (the Philharmonic and Staatskapelle) and Turin (the city's RAI Orchestra). What's striking here is the modern aesthetic, the unencumbered cleanness and clarity of the approach, and a technical finesse from the young conductor which allows you to feel he has the musicians performing at their peak. Not for nothing was the young Karajan felt as a threat by conductors of an older generation. The repertoire includes symphonies by Beethoven (No. 7), Brahms (No. 1), Dvorak (New World), Mozart (Nos 35, 40, 41), Tchaikovsky (Pathétique), plus Strauss's Don Juan, Smetana's Vltava, and a selection of overtures. Purists should beware that the processing of the transfers has introduced some stereo artefacts. www.dgclassics.com - Michael Dervan
