Latest reviews released
VALENTIN SILVESTROV: SILENT SONGS; FOUR SONGS AFTER OSIP MANDELSTAM
Sergey Yakovenko (baritone), Ilya Scheps (piano), Valentin Silvestrov (piano) ECM New Series 1898/99 (2 CDs)
*****
Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov's Silent Songs (1974-77) sound uncannily familiar, yet these settings (of poems by Pushkin, Lermontov, Mandelstam, Keats and Shelley among others) are like nothing you've ever heard. For almost the full 108-minute duration of this slow cycle, everything is soft, the singing sotto voce, the voice as if in a state of repressed trembling, the piano a kind of resonating shadow with a partially independent life. The chordal resources are from the romantic past, but the harmonic movement is unexpected, sometimes hazily blurred, sometimes moving with strange elisions, as if distorted either by faults of memory or improvisation that musingly drifts off course. By contrast, the Four Mandelstam Songs of 1982 (with Silvestrov at the piano) show a violent grimness. The performances are exceptional. www.ecmrecords.com
Michael Dervan
LISZT: SONATA IN B MINOR AND OTHER WORKS
Paul Lewis (piano) Harmonia Mundi HMC 901845
****
Paul Lewis's approach to Liszt's Sonata in B minor is thoughtfully measured, the antithesis of the rash display so many young pianists seem to favour in this work. Tonally, his sound is bronzed rather than bright, even veiled in some of the quieter passages, and when the notes are flying fastest he seems concerned not to lose either his poise or
Liszt's. The approach sometimes sounds like a corrective, but the restraint pays rich dividends in his exploration of Liszt's late, prophetically exploratory style, where the selection includes Nuages gris, Richard Wagner -Venezia, Unstern!, En rêve, Schlaflos! and the second La lugubre gondola. www.harmoniamundi.com
Michael Dervan
BARTÓK: ORCHESTRAL & STAGE WORKS
Various Orchestras/Antal Dorati Mercury 475 6255 (5 CDs)
****
Hungarian-born conductor Antal Dorati (1906-88) studied under Bartók and was an uncommonly fine interpreter of his music. The performances here, made between 1955 and 1964 with the Minneapolis SO, BBCSO, LSO and Philharmonia Hungarica, are characteristically finely drawn, sharp in rhythmic response and precise in colouring. Pick of the bunch has to be the BBCSO pairing of the Divertimento for strings and the biting Miraculous Mandarin; the other stage works, Bluebeard's Castle and The Wooden Prince are hardly less impressive. The close focus of Mercury's three-microphone technique typically yields a lot of detail in a dryish perspective. The set also includes the Concerto for Orchestra, the Dance Suite, the Second Suite, the Violin Concerto (with Yehudi Menuhin), the Sonata for two pianos and percussion and a slow account of the Music for strings, percussion and celesta (the only real failure), as well as three excerpts from Berg's Wozzeck. www.deccaclassics.com
Michael Dervan
HOWARD HANSON CONDUCTS AMERICAN MASTERWORKS
Eastman-Rochester Orchestra/Howard Hanson Mercury 475 6274 (5 CDs)
****
This collection of 20 works by 17 US composers is a fine testament to the staunch advocacy of Howard Hanson (1896-1981) who founded the Eastman-Rochester Orchestra in 1924 specifically to promote the work of his composer colleagues. Some of the names are well known (Ives's Three Places in New England and Third Symphony, Barber's Capricorn Concerto and Medea Suite, Piston's Incredible Flutist, Schuman's New England Triptych). Others have remained obstinately obscure (Douglas Moore's Pageant of PT Barnum, John Alden Carpenter's Adventures in a Perambulator and Burrill Philips's Selections from McGuffey's Reader). Although Hanson the composer was a romantic, as a conductor he was chastely classical. The performances have an unassuming, no-frills directness, highly atmospheric of the 1950s, when most of the recordings were made. None of the obscurities here is likely to cause a re-writing of musical history. But you can clearly hear why Hanson was awarded 36 honorary degrees. www.deccaclassics.com
Michael Dervan
