The latest releases reviewed
BIZET: L'ARLÉSIENNE & CARMEN
SUITES
Choeur de l'Opéra National de Lyon, Les
Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble/Marc Minkowski
Naïve V5130
*****
Here is music from Bizet's
Carmenand
L'Arlésienne, but not as you've known it before. Marc
Minkowski offers the Prélude and Entr'actes from
Carmenrather than either of the familiar suites; and
between the well-known
L'Arlésiennesuites he's created a third one, rescuing
eight further numbers from the music Bizet wrote for Daudet's play.
His period instrument players clear off some of the sentimental
syrup which has attached to Bizet's music over the years.
Traditionalists may well balk at some of the tempos, but for my
money Minkowski carries it all off with real aplomb, even moments
such as the
L'ArlésienneMinuetto, where the flavour seems to flow
backwards from Rodion Shchedrin's 1967
Carmenre-orchestration.
www.newnote.com/naive
MICHAEL DERVAN
SINFONIAS FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT
moderntimes_1800/Ilia Korol
Challenge Classics CC 72193 (2 CDs)
****
There are two major symphonies here: Haydn's
little-known No 39 in G minor, its first movement cut through with
startling silences, and Mozart's well-known No 29 in A, one of the
greatest symphonies written by a teenager. There's an attractive,
bristly freshness in the playing of moderntimes_1800, a young
Austrian period instruments band. And their approach yields good
dividends, too, in five altogether rarer - and shorter - pieces,
two symphonies attributed to CPE Bach, and one each from his
brother Wilhelm Friedemann, Johann Gottlieb Graun and Johann Adolf
Hasse. There's a rangy stride to the fast movements, a caressing
tenderness to the slow ones, and resourceful colouring throughout.
The playing time of under 95 minutes is rather short for a two-disc
set.
www.newnote.com/challenge
MICHAEL DERVAN
WEISS: LUTE SONATAS VOL 9
Robert Barto (lute)
Naxos 8.570051
*****
"Rightness" is the word that most comes to mind
when listening to Robert Barto playing the music of the prolific
Silvius Leopold Weiss, whose surviving output extends to more than
100 lute sonatas and 90 separate pieces. Barto trusts the music not
to need the exaggeration of special pleading. His playing has at
once the feeling of utter simplicity and total aptness. And the
music itself, by the 18th- century's most famous lute player, is as
effective and resourcefully conceived for the lute as Scarlatti's
sonatas were for the harpsichord. The three sonatas on Barto's
latest disc (Nos 52, 32 and 94) are all made up of dance movements
that offer musical delights as sheer as you're likely to hear all
year. No wonder the great JS Bach was one of Weiss's admirers.
www.naxos.com
MICHAEL DERVAN
FIESTA
Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of
Venezuela/Gustavo Dudamel
Deutsche Grammophon 477 7457
****
Conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón
Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela have become one of the
musical phenomena of the early 21st century. The orchestra, one of
more than 200 youth orchestras in Venezuela, is the flagship of
"music as a social saver" project (Dudamel's words) targetted at
the underpriveleged. Dudamel, who has's been snapped up by the Los
Angeles Philharmonic while still in his 20s, here takes his first
orchestra through a joyous Latin- American celebration of pieces
familiar (Bernstein's Mambo, Ginastera's Estancia, Revueltas's
Sensemayá) and unfamiliar (by Inocente Carreño, Antonio
Estévez, Arturo Márquez, Aldomaro Romero and Evencio
Castellanos), with all the swaggering colour and impact that the
orchestra is famous for.
www.deutschegrammophon.com
MICHAEL DERVAN
