"The Romantic Flute": Emmanuel Pahud (flute), Eric Le Sage (piano) (Auvidis Valois)
"We have to dispel the cliches about the flute," said the Swiss principal flautist of the Berlin Philharmonic, Emmanuel Pahud, in a recent interview. Auvidis Valois' new set, bringing together at mid-price three discs already issued separately at full price, certainly avoids the cliched metallic sheen of many a flute virtuoso and persuasively makes the case for a softer-grained, almost woody alternative. With a disc each devoted to Beethoven, Weber and Schubert, most of the music comes in the form of poached arrangements - Schubert's Trockne Blumen variations being the major exception. Pahud and his partner, Eric Le Sage, make a really persuasive duo, and handle stylistic problems with impeccable taste. Their wonderfully free sense of musical give-and take and unforced airiness make these performances thoroughly distinctive.
By Michael Dervan
Frederic Lamond plays Beethoven (Biddulph)
A late pupil of Liszt, Glaswegian Frederic Lamond (1868-1948) was more appreciated in Germany, where he lived, than in Britain, where Shaw once described him as smacking out the opening of Beethoven's Fourth Concerto "like a slater finishing a roof". Lamond's work has been scantily treated in latter-day reissues; all the more reason, then, to be grateful for these two Biddulph CDs, running to seven major Beethoven sonatas plus the first ever complete recording (1922) of the Emperor Concerto. The playing is alarmingly paradoxical: granitic in intent, yet quirky in rhythm and fallible in detail, objective by persuasion yet personal in execution. A challenging riddle of historical performance, if ever there was one.
By Michael Dervan
Andrea Bocelli: "Aria : the opera album" (phillips)This album is neither as bad as you might fear or as good - given that Bocelli is being touted as "the new Pavarotti" - as you might be entitled to expect. In the middle and lower registers he scores highly, being possessed of a suitable ringing Italianate tone with a warm baritonal undercurrent; allied to a handwringing Latin intensity of delivery, this gets him through a jaunty Questa a Quella, a passable (if somewhat doleful) E Lucevan Le Stelle and a Di Rigori Armato - not wildly characterful singing, but pleasant enough. It's when he reaches for the Tenor heights that the trouble starts; and with all the Tenors that there are in the world, do we really need one who has trouble with his top? And can I have my packet of "old Pavarotti" back now, please?
