Gubaidulina: Works for bassoon. Valeri Popov (Chandos)
Sofia Gubaidulina, now 67, is one of the major figures from the former Soviet Union to have emerged into Western consciousness in recent years. In the 1960s and 1970s she followed paths of experimentalism (electronics, improvisation) that were difficult and not a little dangerous in the Soviet Union. Yet the most often remarked-upon quality of her music is its spirituality. The three works here, a Duo Sonata for two bassoons (1977), the trio Quasi hoquetus (bassoon, viola, piano, 1984), and the Concerto for bassoon and Low Strings (1975), all bespeak her interest in venturing, like the 1960s avant-garde, into areas of novel and startling sonority (think Penderecki and you'll be close). Hardly vintage Gubaidulina, but strikingly performed here by the player who inspired these sonic adventures.
By Michael Dervan
Mahler: Symphony No 1. Chicago SO/Pierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez, I'm sure, knows as well as anyone of Mahler's credo that "the symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything". As a conductor, Boulez seems happy to assume that the "everything" to be embraced was thoroughly looked after by Mahler in the act of composition. So he avoids the sort of personal emotional overlay typified by the open-heartedness of a Bernstein. The latest instalment of his ongoing Mahler cycle for DG, the First Symphony, brings keen-edged playing from the Chicago Symphony. Boulez clearly benefits from conveying an open-eyed freshness rather than a knowingness that can seem just too wise. He also has a sharp ear for the sort of expressive micro-inflection and instrumental balance to point up the music's grotesquerie in the later movements.
By Michael Dervan
Brahms: Symphonies 2 and 4. Concertgebouw Orchestra/Willem Mengelberg (Biddulph)
Friend of Richard Strauss (dedicatee of Heldenleben) and early advocate of Mahler (he mounted the first Mahler cycle in 1920), Willem Mengelberg knew a thing or two about other music, too. The long-time conductor of Amsterdam's Concertgebouw Orchestra was the epitome of the romantic, post-Wagnerian interpreter - flexible in tempo, indulgent in rubato and, of course, autocratic in rehearsal. But the intelligence of his conducting here is the opposite of romantically arbitrary. His is not a corpulent Brahms, constrained by rotundity, but a character more lissom, at times brimming with vitality, the passages of sombreness all the more telling for the contrast. Great music-making in well-restored sound from 1938 and 1940.
By Michael Dervan