Just over two weeks ago the sad news of the death of popular British soprano Dame Felicity Lott was announced. ‘Flott’, as she was affectionately known, was one of the finest singers to grace UK opera houses and concert stages from the second half of the 20th century onwards.
This obituary for the Guardian reveals her career and accomplishments in detail, but Arcana had great enjoyment in putting together this Tidal playlist below as an indication of just how strong her career on record came to be.
Francesco Celata (clarinet); Roger Benedict (viola); Daniel Herscovitch (piano)
Margaret Sutherland Trio in C major (1935) Peter Dart Peripheral Visions (2021-22) Roger Smalley Clarinet Trio (1992-99, rev. 2001) Andrew Schultz Stick Dance no.2 Op.22b (1989) Richard Vella Tango (1990) Brett Dean Night Window (1993)
Heritage Records HTGCD119 [71’25”]English texts included Producer David Kim-Boyle Engineer David Kinney
Recorded 27 & 29 November 2023, 14 & 15 April 2025 at Verbrugghen Hall, Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Heritage releases an enterprising anthology of pieces for clarinet trio from three generations of Australian composers that, in the process, demonstrates a stylistically varied while always imaginative approach at the forefront of these consistently assured and committed recordings.
What’s the music like?
Thanks to recent revivals (not least her tone poem Haunted Hills at last year’s Prom season), the importance of Margaret Sutherland in the context of Australian music is well established. Unheard for eight decades, her Clarinet Trio typifies the unforced Classicism of her maturity – whether in that modal tinge of its restrained opening Allegro, winsome poise of its central Adagio or the amiable impetus of its closing Allegro giocoso. It certainly provides a telling contrast with Stick Dance by Andrew Schultz which, as reworked from his earlier piece for larger ensemble, leaves a distinctive impression through often disjunctive contrasts and an ominously visual quality doubtless emanating from its inspiration in Indonesian puppetry.
At the forefront of new music in the UK and subsequently Australia, Roger Smalley latterly found a productive rapprochement with the musical past as demonstrated by his Piano Trio. Its concise sonata-form design is overlaid with that of variations in what becomes a process of continual development away from then back to that melodic fragment from the finale of Brahms’ Clarinet/Viola Sonata in E flat. From the intrinsically musical to the overtly visual – Peripheral Visions finds Peter Dart referencing poems by W. G. Sebald or drawings by Jan Peter Tripp as it unfolds from stealthy dialogue in ‘Reflections and Shadows’, via contrasts of darkness and light in ‘Above the Somme’, to emotive effects of colour in ‘After Cézanne’. The no less visual (and theatrically derived) immediacy of Richard Vella’s Tango makes for an ideal upbeat to Night Window, Brett Dean’s engagingly oblique take on the piano trio as genre or medium. Here an ‘Introduction’ of cadenzas for bass clarinet and viola leads into a ‘Fast, vigorous’ movement, with piano making its presence felt in music incisive and agile. There follows ‘Variations’, on a chorale-like theme whose otherness is as pervasive on the brief first four of these as on a more extended fifth variation that crystallizes the expressive essence overall. It only remains for ‘Return’ to bring about closure, its capricious progress drawing salient motivic facets from across the work into purposeful and inevitable accord.
Does it all work?
Very much so. What comes across most tellingly throughout this recital is a lack of inhibition, shared by these composers, when it comes to writing for a medium already much favoured by those in France and Germany during the previous century. The highly distinct nature of these three instruments is inevitably exploited; so too their timbral or textural similarities for what can equally become an ensemble unified as to its overall sound and conception. In touching on both premises, these three musicians convey the potential of all six pieces in full measure.
Is it recommended?
It is. Sound could hardly be improved on for clarity or definition, without sacrificing warmth, while the booklet note features succinctly informative commentaries by five of the composers as part of an overview that in itself segues unobtrusively between description and biography.
Acoustic Alchemy [Greg Carmichael (nylon guitar), Miles Gilderdale (acoustic and electric guitars), Jay Rowe (keyboards), Gary Grainger (electric bass), Greg Grainger (drums)] with Julian Crampton / Dave Pomeroy (electric bass), Geoff Dunn / Bert Smaak (drums), Berthold Matschat (harmonica), Mario Argandoña (percussion)
Onside Records CDONSIDE04 [16’02”] Producers Miles Gilderdale, Greg Carmichael Engineer/Mixer Klaus Genuit Recorded at Hansahaus Studios, Bonn, Germany
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Acoustic Alchemy is now into its fifth decade and, still gigging regularly with some 16 studio albums to its credit, has opted for the EP format – familiar to an earlier generation – to release its latest music. Not there is anything at all predictable or routine about what is on offer here.
What’s the music like?
It may be just four tracks, but it certainly plays to the band’s strengths. Back to Back launches the EP in fine style with its perky tune on acoustic guitar; listen out for those brass harmonies on keyboards with a lively break from electric guitar on the outro. More down-tempo without being down-beat, Other People sounds a reflective or even ambivalent note – listen out for the softly dissonant mid-point harmonies – and Alisio (evidently a meteorological term for ‘trade winds’) brings the return of AA reggae-inspired music with its lilting back-beat then nagging rhythmic hooks. By the same token, 8,000 Miles is in a lineage of AA ‘road’ numbers with its fluid drumming and evocation of widescreen vistas through contributions from harmonica or piano, before this fades out (surprisingly?) swiftly as though in anticipation of tracks to come.
Does it all work?
It surely does. With Greg Carmichael and Miles Gilderdale interacting via a familiarity borne of respect, judicious keyboards from relative newcomer Jay Rowe, and the Grainger brothers being a rhythm-section with few equals, all the expected ingredients sound enticingly in place.
Is it recommended?
It certainly is. At a time when all previous notions of what constitutes an album have been left behind, it will be interesting to see what this band has in store as follow-up. Whether a further four-track or maybe even two more EPs, the omens for new AA music could hardly be better.
Gabriel Schwabe (cello), Sinfonieorchester Aachen / Christopher Ward
Tchaikovsky Variations on a Rococo Theme Op. 33 (1876) – original version Pezzo capriccioso in B minor Op.62 (1887) Nocturne in D minor Op.19/4 (1873, arr. 1888 by composer) Canzonetta in G minor Op.35/2 (1878, arr. 2025 by Schwabe) Valse sentimentale Op.51/6 (1882, arr. 2019 by Schwabe) Fantasy Overture, Romeo and Juliet (1870 version)
Naxos 8.574741 [56’45”] Producer / Engineer Patrick Lemmens
Recorded 14 September 2018 (Romeo and Juliet) and 23-26 May 2025 at Eurogress, Aachen
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Naxos issues its latest recording by Gabriel Schwabe, featuring Tchaikovsky’s Variations on a Rococo Theme, alongside arrangements for cello and orchestra and a first recording of Romeo and Juliet in its second version, with the Aachen Symphony Orchestra and Christopher Ward.
What are the performances like?
Although long ago published and recorded on numerous occasions, the original version of the Rococo Variations still lags behind that made by Wilhelm Fitzhagen for whom it was written, and who shamelessly pointed up those opportunities for virtuosity at odds with the essentially Classical poise of Tchaikovsky’s own conception. Opting for the original, Schwabe makes the most of its innate formal or expressive modesty while never neglecting the element of display as surfaces in the guise of a playful humour not so often associated (though hardly unknown) with this composer. In particular the eighth variation, summarily omitted by Fitzhagen, has a genial animation that makes for a far more fitting segue into the coda – hence seeing through to its close a work whose keen lack of pretence is out of all proportion to its musical rewards.
Tchaikovsky finished one other piece for cello and orchestra, Pezzo capriccioso veering from moodiness to recalcitrance with its deftness much in evidence. Also here are his arrangement of the Nocturne from the Op. 19 piano pieces, pensive and soulful, together with Schwabe’s idiomatic takes on the Violin Concerto’s Canzonetta and wistful Valse Sentimentale from the Op. 51 piano pieces. Odd, however, that Tchaikovsky’s cello arrangement of the Andante cantabile from his First Quartet has been omitted as there was more than enough room for it; as there was for two song transcriptions – namely Legend, the fifth of his Op. 54 set, and Was I Not a Little Blade of Grass?, the seventh of his Op. 47 set – the composer also devised and which would have helped to place what is heard here in a wider, more balanced perspective.
What has been included is the second version of the fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet with (surprisingly?) its first commercial recording. Those familiar with the 1869 original will find this much closer to the third and definitive version from 1880 with the masterly introduction now in place (albeit its climax slightly underscored) then a very different lead-in (not a little akin to Balakirev) to the coda, which here seems rather over-protracted next to that of eight years later. All the right pieces are here, just in a different and ultimately less effective order.
Does it all work?
As a programme, it does. Certainly the Rococo Variations is much more effective a creative entity as Tchaikovsky conceived it, so making his reluctance to overrule Fitzhagen the more perplexing, while the other pieces with cello afford ready-made encore material Schwabe no doubt includes in his own concerts. Ward and his Aachen forces accompany sympathetically, before coming into their own with Romeo and Juliet – a fascinating intermediate version that, for all its failings, was worth making available to Tchaikovsky afficionados in this recording.
Is it recommended?
Indeed so. The performances are never less than well-attuned to the music and lack nothing in conviction, enhanced with weightily immediate sound and insightful booklet annotations. Those attracted (and why not?) to this programme should not hesitate to acquire this release.
Naresh Sohal Aalaykhyam Ia; Chiaroscuro Ib; Kavita Ic; Surya (all 1970)d; Hexade; Night’s Poet (both 1971)f; Aalaykhyam II (1972)g; Poems of Tagore II (1976)h; Inscape (1979)I; The Unsung Song (1993)j; Foray (2006)k
Heritage Records HTGCD122-3 [2 discs, 151’36”] English texts included Remastering Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor
Live performances and broadcasts (London unless stated): d20 April 1971, St John’s Smith Square e13 July 1971, Goldsmiths College; c1 February 1972, Queen’s College, Birmingham; g 1 May 1973 and a 25 September 1974, Queen Elizabeth Hall, b 5 January 1977, BBC Studios, Manchester; h 22 August 1977, Purcell Room; f 8 February 1978, Wigmore Hall; i 18 November 1979, The Round House; j 28 November 1993, Du Maurier Theatre, Toronto; k 16 June 2006, Wilton’s Music Hall
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Heritage continues the extensive series of archival recordings of Naresh Sohal (1939-2018) with this double album featuring vocal and instrumental works, most heard in their premiere performances by a roster of artists synonymous with contemporary music during this period.
What’s the music like?
Although previous issues on this label have tended to focus on those large-scale pieces which established or consolidated Sohal’s reputation, his output abounds in works with more modest dimensions or forces. This release collates various of these in parallel vocal and instrumental sequences as amount to a representative overview of their composer’s career. These underline the continual evolution of his idiom, whatever its stylistic changes, while also making the case – if such were needed – for their revival in what has now become a very different music scene.
To a poem from Tagore’s The Gardner (set a half-century before by Zemlinsky as the opening movement of his LyricSymphony), Kavita I allows Sohal’s aural imagination free-rein with its fraught instrumental movements leading into the eloquent vocal setting. Surya sets texts from the Shakuntalam and Rig Veda in music dense and evocative, charged and incantatory. Night’s Poet draws on Tagore’s The Fugitive as it veers from the speculative to the ecstatic before an alluring close; Poems of Tagore II also draws on that collection in sensuous music with cello as much a vocal element as the two mezzos. Inscape has recourse to Tagore’s Lover’s Gifts in its hieratic aura with fastidiously variegated choral textures, then The Unsung Song draws on Tagore’s Gitanjali in an ethereal exploration of the beyond necessarily remaining unresolved.
As to the instrumental selection, Aalaykhyam I proceeds in starkly contrasted episodes and a disjunction eschewed in Aalaykhyam II with its subtle but never anodyne evolution of motifs that evoke a more inviting ‘abode’. Coming between these chronologically, Hexad favours a methodical yet cumulative unfolding across six movements such that the furtive anticipation of the first meets the assertive fulfilment of the sixth; while Chiaroscuro I turns brass quintet into a succession of overlapping, often conflicting gestures that merge into a vibrant if short-lived recessional. From here to Foray is to jump ahead some 35 years with music of greater expressive focus, distilled into an Adagio then Allegro as might equate to ‘song’ and ‘dance’ were it not for a shifting of ideas and moods across what amounts to a most unlikely diptych.
Does it all work?
Pretty much throughout. Part of the fascination with Sohal’s output are the ways he tackles – and almost always solves – different considerations in successive works, taking the solutions through to the next project so that a consistency of method becomes evident alongside those of form or expression. The performances lack for little in conviction and have been expertly remastered to make them sound more than adequate. More than this, however, it extends the discography of musicians whose contributions to the cause of new music cannot be gainsaid.
Is it recommended?
Indeed it is. The booklet features insightful (if occasionally contentious) notes on each piece by Utsyo Chakraborty along with a detailed biographical overview by Janet Swinney. What has already proved an invaluable series hopefully has several further instalments still to run.
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