Category Archives: On record

On Record – Alessandro Marangoni, Orazio Sciortino, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano / Giuseppe Grazioli: Rieti: Piano Concertos (Naxos)

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Rieti
Piano Concerto no.1 (1926)
Piano Concerto no.2 (1937)
Piano Concerto no.3 (1955)
Concerto for Two Pianos (1951)

Alessandro Marangoni, Orazio Sciortino (pianos), Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano / Giuseppe Grazioli

Naxos 8.564505 [80’27”]
Producer Stefano Barzan Engineer Cinzia Guareschi

Dates: 21-22 August 2022, 17-20 August 2023 (Piano Concerto no.3, Concerto for Two Pianos) at Auditorium di Milano

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Naxos continues its enterprising 20th Century Italian Classics with the concertante works for piano by Vittorio Rieti (1898-1994), the Egyptian-born Italian composer whose years in Paris then New York and Chicago afforded contact with a range of illustrious musicians and artists.

What’s the music like?

Dedicated to Poulenc and likely inspired by the success of Prokofiev’s Third Concerto earlier that decade, Rieti’s First Piano Concerto brings a deft touch to its ostensible neo-Classicism – whether in the martially-inflected playfulness of its initial Allegro, laconic but also beguiling ambivalence of its central Andantino, or the theatrical high-jinx of a final Allegro whose nod towards jazz rhythm marks this out as a piece decidedly yet always unaffectedly of its time. Seemingly forgotten following its premiere (by the composer?), its revival is well deserved.

Just over a decade on, the Second Piano Concerto emerged from material originally intended for a harpsichord concerto. On a similar scale to its predecessor, the opening Allegro has an impetus that denotes the uncertainty spreading throughout Europe at this time, and which is intensified by the central Adagio with its plangent discourse between soloist and orchestra; a quality the final Allegro (which follows with barely a pause) does not so much overcome as dismiss through an energetic repartee which brings about the nominally affirmative ending.

By the time of his Third Piano Concerto, Rieti was well established in the United States such that the present work is audibly in the lineage of American works for this medium of the post -war era. Any undue portentousness in the introductory Largo is dismissed with the vivacious Allegro that follows, then the central Andantino confirms that, while Rieti’s idiom might not have altered substantially over his career, it gained in subtlety and depth. Any more ominous expression is avoided in the final Allegro as it wends a capricious course to its decisive close.

Written in the wake of his relocation to the USA, the Two-Piano Concerto helped to establish Rieti’s reputation in a very different cultural climate. There is little moderate about either the tempo or character of the impetuous opening Allegro, then the central Allegretto comprises a set of variations’ which takes its unassuming theme through a diverse range of moods without losing focus on route to the pensive close. The final Allegro turns away from any encroaching inwardness with its energetic fugal interplay such as makes for an ending of pointed defiance.

Does it all work?

It does, provided one accepts Rieti as a product of his age rather than trailblazer or innovator. Stravinsky, Prokofiev and even Jean Françaix are prominent in the stylistic mix, with a more tensile aspect derived from Copland in the works of his American years. Not that this should offset enjoyment of music that feels never less than communicative and often engagingly so, particularly as regards the latter two pieces. Both of these were recorded way back in the LP era, but to have all four works rendered in such sympathetic readings is hardly to be gainsaid.

Is it recommended?

It is, not least when Alessandro Marangoni (alongside Orazio Sciortino) is so attuned to this music, while Giuseppe Grazioli obtains a committed response from the Milan orchestra. The succinct booklet notes are highly informative and further enhance the appeal of this release.

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Naxos website. For information on the performers, click on the names to read more about Alessandro Marangoni, Orazio Sciortino, Giuseppe Grazioli and the Orchestra Sinfonica Milano. An interview between Vittorio Rieti and Bruce Duffie can be read here

Published post no.2,492 – Wednesday 2 April 2025

On Record – Claire Booth & Andrew Matthews-Owen: Paris 1913: L’offrande lyrique (Nimbus)

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Caplet En regardant ces belles fleurs
Milhaud L’innocence Op. 10/3
Hahn À Chloris
Ravel arr. Stravinsky Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé M64
Auric Trois Interludes: Le pouf.
Ropartz La Route
Durey L’Offrande lyrique Op. 4
Saint-Saëns Petit main Op.146/9
Fauré Il m’est cher, Amour, le bandeau, Op. 106/7
Chaminade Je voudrais être une fleur
Debussy Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé L127
Satie ed. Dearden Trois Poèmes d’Amour
Lili Boulanger Clairières dans le Ciel: Vous m’avez regardé avec votre âme
Grovlez Guitares et mandolines

Claire Booth (soprano), Andrew Matthews-Owen (piano)

Nimbus RTF Classical NI6455 [66’23”] French texts included
Producer & Engineer Raphaël Mouterde

Recorded 11/12 March, 4-6 September 2023 at Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Another enterprising song recital from Claire Booth and Andrew Matthews-Owen, this one focussing on songs that were either conceived, composed or premiered in Paris during 1913 and resulting in an absorbing collection best heard as a diverse while unpredictable totality.

What’s the music like?

Interleaving standalone songs and song-cycles, this recital opens with André Caplet’s take on Charles d’Orléans, its limpid modality highly appealing, then continues with an early song by Darius Milhaud as already demonstrates his distinctive and amusing approach to word-setting, while that by Reynaldo Hahn typifies the teasing charm familiar from his vocal music overall. Maurice Ravel’s triptych to texts by Mallarmé is performed in a version by Stravinsky with its accompanying nonet reduced to piano which, in preserving and maybe even accentuating the music’s questing introspection, represents no mean fete of transcription. Still relatively little known, this certainly deserves to be heard as at least an occasional alternative to the original.

Remembered best as a prolific writer of film scores, Georges Auric had shown a precocious talent for song as is evident in his sensuous setting of René Chalupt. A composer who often wrote on a symphonic scale, Guy Ropartz is heard in a setting of his own verse that amounts to a ‘scena’ in its wide expressive ambit. Interest understandably centres on the eponymous cycle by Louis Durey, a member of Les Six whose increasingly far-left conviction tended to marginalize his creativity yet, as these lucid and empathetic settings of Rabindranath Tagore (as translated by André Gide) confirm, had emerged as a protean talent by his mid-twenties. Hopefully these artists will be encouraged to investigate other of his songs from this period. By contrast, a late song by Camille Saint-Saëns exudes a touching poignancy, while that by Gabriel Fauré typifies the elusiveness of those in his last decade. As is evident here, Cécile Chaminade was a songwriter of style and elegance, then the Mallarmé triptych by Debussy (its first two texts identical to those of Ravel) finds this composer probing the inscrutability of these poems while drawing back from any more explicit intervention. The inscrutability conveyed by Erik Satie’s aphoristic settings (edited by Nathan James Dearden) of his own texts is altogether more playful – after which, the recital continues with a pensive offering by Lili Boulanger, with Gabriel Grovlez’s sultrily evocative setting of Saint-Saëns to finish.

Does it all work?

Yes, given the fascination of this collection taken as a whole and, moreover, the quality of these renditions. Booth is not a singer willing to take the easy option in her interpretations, and so it proves here with singing as fastidious as it is refined, while Matthews-Owen duly instils often deceptively spare accompaniments with understated insight. They contribute a succinctly informative note, but the booklet includes only the French texts with the English translations available at https://rtfn.eu/paris1913/: might it have best the other way round?

Is it recommended?

Very much so. There is much to fascinate even those who consider themselves afficionados of the ‘chanson’, and those who are unfamiliar with much of this repertoire could not have a better means of acquainting themselves with certain of its treasures – hidden or otherwise.

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Ulysees Arts website. For information on the performers, click on the names to read more about Claire Booth and Andrew Matthews-Owen

Published post no.2,466 – Friday 7 March 2025

On Record – Gavin Higgins: The Fairie Bride, Horn Concerto (Lyrita)

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Gavin Higgins
Horn Concerto (2023)
Fanfare, Air and Flourishes (2021)
The Fairie Bride (2021)

Marta Fontanals-Simmons (mezzo-soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone), Ben Goldscheider (horn), Three Choirs Festival Chorus; BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Jaime Martin (Horn Concerto), Martyn Brabbins (The Fairie Bride)

Lyrita SRCD440 [84’14”] English/Welsh libretto included
Producer Adrian Farmer Engineer Andrew Smilie

Recorded in Hoddinott Hall, 11 January 2024 (Horn Concerto), Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, 4 April 2024 (Fanfare, Air and Flourishes), live performance from Gloucester Cathedral on 23 July 2023 (The Fairie Bride)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Lyrita adds to the already growing discography of Gavin Higgins (b.1983) with this release featuring two recent major works, both of which are heard in their first performances and thereby confirm this composer’s place among the leading British voices of his generation.

What’s the music like?

Listeners may have come across Higgins’s music via the release Ekstasis (see the link below), a collection of chamber pieces which attests to a distinctive and searching personality. Such is equally true of those here, not least the Horn Concerto that takes its place in a notable lineage of such works ‘in E flat’, while taking in Schumann and Ligeti as part of its range of stylistic or conceptual allusions. Its three movements have as their inspiration the Waldhorn – the first, Understorey, duly outlining an emergence from the (Wagnerian) depths to the forest floor in mounting waves of activity. There follow Overstorey with its airily expressive evocation of the forest canopy as builds considerable fervency over its course, then Myelium Rondo with its overtones of the hunt and energetic fanfares which propel this work to an affirmative close.

No stranger to the horn (being his own instrument), Higgins had indirectly prepared for this concerto with Fanfare, Air and Flourishes, a brief but eventful solo triptych which tries out several gestures or motifs to be developed in the larger work as well as in his second opera.

Commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival, The Faerie Bride takes a legend from the Book of Hergest for its synopsis of the coming together but eventual (its being inevitable) disunion between water spirit and earthly man. This is played out over seven scenes divided into two parts – Francesca Simon’s succinct yet artfully constructed libretto moving from their initial encounters at the lake, via the gradual dissolution of their relationship through events during each of the four seasons, to a climactic juncture when the woman returns with her extended family into the depths. Musically the work encompasses the range of Higgins’s idiom up to this point, its richness and variety of texture complemented by an instrumental clarity which ensures vocal audibility throughout – certain discrepancies between the libretto as published and as sung being immediately evident. That this opera keeps its emotions close to its chest much of the time only makes the closing stages the more powerful, not least in the way the ending reaches back to the beginning for a tangible sense of resolution borne of experience.

Does it all work?

Yes, in that Higgins is able to integrate his influences into a coherent and personal language. It helps that these performers are audibly attuned to this music – not least Marta Fontanels-Simmons as an otherworldly Woman and Roderick Williams as the uncomprehending Man – with Ben Goldscheider a consummate exponent of works for horn. The Three Choirs Festival Chorus characterizes the Villagers with suitable aggression, while Jaime Martin and Martyn Brabbins secure idiomatic playing of real finesse from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. Those yet to do so should certainly acquire the earlier release on Nimbus, but the works featured here round out the potency of Higgins’s music accordingly. Detailed and informative notes by Gillian Moore, though watch out for those discrepancies in the libretto.

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Ulysees Arts website. For information on the performers, click on the names to read more about Ben Goldscheider, Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Roderick Williams, Jaime Martin, Martyn Brabbins and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Click to read more about composer Gavin Higgins and about Ekstasis

Published post no.2,465 – Thursday 6 March 2025

On Record – BBC SSO & BBC SO / Sir Andrew Davis – Naresh Sohal: The Wanderer & Asht Prahar (Heritage)

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Naresh Sohal
Asht Pradar (1965)
The Wanderer (1982)

Jane Manning (soprano), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Asht Pradar), David Wilson-Johnson (baritone), BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra (The Wanderer) / Sir Andrew Davis

Heritage HTGCD135 [77’36”] English text included
Remastering Engineer Paul Arden-Taylor

Broadcast performance from BBC Studios, Glasgow on 6 January 1973 (Asht Pradar); live performance from Royal Albert Hall, London on 23 August 1982 (The Wanderer)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Heritage issues what will evidently be an ongoing series of archival releases devoted to the music of Naresh Sohal, taken from BBC sources and featuring performers who championed his work over a career whose achievement is not reflected in the availability of recordings.

What’s the music like?

Although he came belatedly to the UK, Sohal (1939-2018) rapidly made up for any lost time when arriving in London in 1962 (further biographical detail can be found in the booklet note for this release and on the composer’s website). Within three years, he had produced his first major (and latterly his first acknowledged) work. Asht Prahar then had to wait until 1970 for its premiere (at the Royal Festival Hall conducted by Norman Del Mar), but it attracted much favourable attention and led to another hearing three years on – the performance featured here.

Taking its cue from the Indian sub-division of the day into eight temporal units (four each for day and night), Asht Prahar unfolds its eight sections as an unbroken continuity. The sizable forces are, for the most part, used sparingly yet resourcefully; as too the deployment of such devices as quarter-tones, along with influences of Ravel and Stravinsky, in music that makes a virtue of its pivoting between East and West. Cyclical if not necessarily cumulative, its final and longest ‘prahar’ brings wordless soprano and orchestra into tangible and haunting accord.

By the time that The Wanderer received its premiere, Sohal had a number of major works to his credit and rationalized his musical idiom accordingly. Setting an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poem in which the male protagonist speaks movingly and often despairingly of his isolation – both physical and spiritual – after the death of his lord, the work divides into two large parts that expand on the narrative’s emotional import. Such ‘‘existential bleakness’’ is intensified by omission of the poem’s last lines with their invoking a specifically Christian consolation. Despite its more than 50-minute duration, there is nothing discursive or unfocussed about The Wanderer’s content. Much of its text is understandably allotted to the baritone, whose austere character is complemented by darkly rhetorical choral passages while offset by an orchestral component with much soloistic writing (notably for flute) in a texture the more involving for its restraint and its strategic use of colour to define specific incidents or emotional responses. Nor is this an opera-manqué, the work succeeding admirably on its inherently abstract terms.

Does it all work?

It does, allowing for the fact that Sohal is not seeking any overt fusion between Occident and Orient, but rather attempting to forge a personal idiom influenced by both while beholden to neither. Both these performances bear out his convictions, Jane Manning adding her ethereal presence to Asht Prahar and David Wilson-Johnson bringing evident compassion to his more substantial role in The Wanderer. Both works benefit from the insightful presence of the late Sir Andrew Davis, whom one regrets never had an opportunity to record them commercially.

Is it recommended?

It is. The sound of these broadcasts has come up decently in remastering, lacking only the last degree of clarity or definition, and Suddhaseel Sen contributes informative annotations. Those looking for a way into Sohal’s distinctive and alluring sound-world need no further incentive.

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Heritage Records website

Published post no.2,451 – Thursday 20 February 2025

On Record – Gouldian Finch: Schizo (All Ape)

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by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Gouldian Finch is the pseudonym under which we find Martin Horntveth, the drummer for Jaga Jazzist – where he is one of the principal members along with brother Lars. For this work, based on a commission entitled Polaroid from the Kongsberg Jazz festival in 2021, he assembles a band of similar dimensions to carry out his musical wishes- nine musicians to supervise as band leader.

This album reflects the breadth of Horntveth’s musical outlook, but hones in more on his love of jazz and jazz rock, and what he describes as “a love / hate relationship with fusion and funk.” Typically he comes out from behind the drums to play keyboards and other percussion instruments on the album, as well as producing and arranging.

What’s the music like?

If you like Jaga Jazzist, then this will be right up your street – assuming your street is home to all sorts of colourful musical twists and turns.

The overriding observation is that Horntveth loves to celebrate music itself, because Schizo bubbles over with positive energy, its riffs delivered with flair and excitement, dressed in multicoloured clothing.

The best examples of this are CAPS LOCK, a riot of colour that originally scuttles along a little furtively before blossoming into a flurry of activity, and Guilty Pleasure, which is an enormous amount of fun. The title track is made of similar stuff, a rush of musical endorphins that bottles up all the fizz Horntveth projected through his band.

There is an appealing playfulness running through the likes of Guilty Pleasure but there are slower moments too, such as the start of Spinning Pinwheel, a plaintive saxophone choir that proves to be a mask for the exuberant funk that follows. No Filter is closer to ballad territory, a nice freewheeling bit of music with the sun at its back.

Does it all work?

It does – with the caveat that you won’t always be in the right mood for music that does sometimes spill over into hyperactivity, the sonic equivalent of having too much caffeine!

Is it recommended?

It is. Schizo does indeed flit between musical moods, but it is a lot of fun.

For fans of… Jaga Jazzist, The Comet Is Coming, Moses Boyd, Ezra Collective

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,449 – Tuesday 18 February 2025