Missa Salisburgensis. Musica Antique Koln/Reinhard Goebel, Gabrieli Consort & Players/Paul McCreesh (Archiv)
The authorship of the Missa Salisburgensis, written for the celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the founding of the Archbishopric of Salzburg in 1682, is uncertain. No matter, the music - in 53-parts, with six major groupings and satellite choirs of trumpets - is the epitome of baroque splendour. Limited in speed of harmonic movement by virtue of the acoustic for which it was intended, it makes its effects through elaboration of texture and joyful exploitation of spatial effects invited by the layout of Salzburg Cathedral. It's captured here in a recording that fully matches a performance of unapologetic sensual indulgence. Conductor Paul McCreesh, who views Biber as its most likely author, does not exaggerate when he describes the Mass as towering above the realm of polychoral music.
Michael Dervan
Ulster Orchestra play James MacMillan and Michael Nyman (Naxos, two discs, £4.99 each)
Takuo Yuasa and the Ulster Orchestra's first foray on Naxos focuses on the music of two of Britain's most popular composers. Michael Nyman's music for the film, The Piano, was a testing instance of sustained banality. Building it up into 30 minutes for The Piano Concerto (the "The" is there to identify the film as source) makes no great improvement. The saxophone concerto, Where The Bee Dances, has the virtue of being shorter. The eclecticism and sheer diversity of sure-fire effects in MacMillan's percussion concerto, Veni, Veni, Emmanuel, here coupled with Tryst, come as a major relief, although soloist Colin Currie has not the glint or flamboyance that Evelyn Glennie brings to the piece.
Michael Dervan
Myra Hess live in Illinois, Vol 1 (APR). Cyril Smith plays Dohnanyi and Rachmaninov (APR). Piano Masters: Clifford Curzon (Pearl)
APR have unearthed the only known live solo recording of Myra Hess (1890-1965), a national institution in Britain for her war-time concerts in London's National Gallery. Her pianism is free-spirited in Chopin and dances by Schubert, scintillating in Scarlatti, but earthbound in Schubert's late B flat Sonata. Cyril Smith (1909-1974), teacher of David Helfgott, who lost the use of his left arm in 1956, offers a rattling, big-boned account of that Rachmaninov concerto and gambols wittily through Dohnanyi's Nursery Variations. The fastidious Clifford Curzon (1909-1982), a pupil of Schnabel, is sensitively self-effacing in a Mozart concerto (K488) and brings a considered virtuosity to Liszt's Mephisto Waltz and the Schubert/Liszt Wanderer Fantasy. 1940s sound quality on all three discs is variable.
Michael Dervan
