Tag Archives: classical-music

On Record – Naresh Sohal: Complete Piano Music (Konstantinos Destounis) (Toccata Classics)

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Naresh Sohal
A Mirage (1974)
Chakra (1979)
Prayer (2006)
Tsunami (2007)
Piano Trio (1988)

Konstantinos Destounis (piano); Cristina Anghelescu (violin), Adrian Mantu (cello), Mark Troop (piano) (Piano Trio)

Toccata Classics TOCC0689 [56’30”]
Producers and Engineers Konstantinos Destounis and Bobby Blazoudakis, Peter Waygood (Piano Trio)

Recorded 18 January 2022 at Dmitris Mitropoulos Hall, Athens; 1-3 June 2001 at Gateway Studio, Kingston-upon-Thames

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics issues the first of a likely series devoted to chamber and instrumental music by Naresh Sohal, featuring all those acknowledged pieces for solo piano along with his Piano Trio, on a release that also continues the posthumous rehabilitation of this significant figure.

What’s the music like?

Although he composed sparingly for the medium, the piano pieces Sohal did write afford an overview of how his music evolved across three decades. Primarily this involved an active as well as frequently confrontational exploration of more radical tendencies in post-war music, resulting in a distinctive while personal synthesis which the composer duly refined and made more pliable with what came after. Those later pieces are not necessarily simpler technically or expressively, yet they convey their essential concerns with greater clarity and immediacy.

At the time of A Mirage, Sohal was still preoccupied with aspects of a European avant-garde he encountered on arrival in the UK some 12 years earlier. Hence the influence of Xenakis in its tendency toward registral extremes and stratified figuration which coalesce more through gestural force than motivic logic. This is already changing in Chakra, which likewise unfolds as an arch but now with a tangible sense of resolution at its apex – though little prepares one for the sudden upsurge at its close after a definite subsiding of tension across the latter stages.

Moving on almost 30 years and Prayer demonstrates a more methodical amalgam of formal means towards expressive ends, though there is nothing at all reactionary about the outcome – whether in the unforced eloquence of its initial Adagio or the fluid interplay of its ensuing Allegretto as it pursues an increasingly intricate and eventful course. A piece titled Tsunami might lead one to expect a headlong discourse, but Sohal’s study is far more controlled and understated by evoking this natural phenomenon in all its awesome and destructive majesty.

Although it comes nearer chronologically to the former group of pieces, the Piano Trio might well be the latest work here as regards overall elaboration. Thus, its three continuous if well-defined sections outline an active process of thesis, antithesis then synthesis which is audible at every stage, though here the evolution is one of a constantly increasing velocity towards a violent or even tragic denouement. Immersed in Indian philosophy as he was, Sohal was only too aware of those darker and negatory forces which are to be found at all levels of existence.

Does it all work?

Yes, in that Sohal’s is a powerful and flexible musical idiom that predicates communication of emotion over theoretical consistency. A quality always to the fore in these accounts of the piano pieces – Konstantinos Destounis searching out their imaginative reserves without ever falling short of their frequently considerable technical demands. Neither is there any lack of insight or commitment in that of the Piano Trio which, in terms of compactness and overall immediacy, is an ideal way into this composer’s language at its most characteristic or potent.

Is it recommended?

Indeed. The sound accorded Destounis is almost ideal in its clarity and definition, though the Piano Trio is rendered at a slightly oblique perspective. Informative notes on life and music, and good news that a follow-up release of Sohal’s string quartets should soon be available..

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Konstantinos Destounis and composer Naresh Sohal.

Published post no.2,500 – Thursday 10 April 2025

On Record – William Wordsworth: Complete Piano Music (Christopher Guild) (Toccata Classics)

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William Wordsworth
Piano Sonata in D minor Op.13 (1938-9)
Three Pieces (1932-4)
Cheesecombe Suite Op.27 (1945)
Ballade Op.41 (1949)
Eight Pieces (all publ. 1952)
Valediction Op.82 (1967)

Christopher Guild (piano)

Toccata Classics TOCC0697 [81’08”]
Producer and Engineer Adaq Khan

Recorded 13 April, 29 May 2022 at Old Granary Studios, Beccles, 2 April 2023, Wyastone Hall, Monmouthshire (Three Pieces)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics intersperses its continuing survey of William Wordsworth’s orchestral music with a release devoted to that for solo piano, including several works not otherwise recorded and all ably performed by Christopher Guild, who already features prominently on this label.

What’s the music like?

Although not a large part of his catalogue, piano music features prominently in Wordsworth’s earlier output – notably a Piano Sonata that ranks among the finest of the inter-war period. Its first movement is introduced by a Maestoso whose baleful tone informs the impetuous while expressively volatile Allegro. The central Largamente probes more equivocal and ambivalent emotion before leading into the final Allegro, its declamatory and martial character offset by the plangent recall of earlier material prior to a denouement of surging and inexorable power.

His status as conscientious objector found Wordsworth engaged in farm-work in wartime, the experience duly being commemorated in his Cheesecombe Suite whose pensive Prelude and dextrous Fughetta frame a quizzical Scherzo then a Nocturne of affecting pathos. Written for Clifford Curzon, Ballade is a methodical study in contrasts which makes an ideal encore; as, too, might Valediction – though here the emotions run deeper and more obliquely, as befits this inward memorial to a lifelong friend from comparatively late in its composer’s creativity.

This release rounds out our knowledge of Wordsworth’s piano music with two collections not previously recorded. Among his earliest surviving works, the Three Pieces comprise a taciturn Prelude, fleeting Scherzo then soulful Rhapsody which between them find the composer trying out whole-tone figuration with resourcefulness but also a self-consciousness that might have decided him against publishing. Published by Alfred Lengnick as part of its five-volume educational series Five by Ten, the eight miniatures wear their didactic intention lightly; only one of these exceeding two minutes, yet all evince a technical skill that is never facile along with a pertinent sense of evocation that should commend them to amateurs and professionals alike. Here, as often elsewhere, Wordsworth proves a ‘less is more’ composer of distinction.

Does it all work?

Very much so and Christopher Guild, with admirable surveys of Ronald Stevenson (Toccata) and Bernard Van Dieren (Piano Classics) to his credit, is a natural interpreter of often elusive yet always rewarding music. His charged and often impetuous take on the Sonata has more in common with the pioneering account by Margaret Kitchin (Lyrita) than the overtly rhetorical one by Richard Deering (Heritage). Similarly, his approach to the Cheesecombe Suite and the Ballade draws out their depths if occasionally at the expense of their expressive immediacy. Interestingly, Valediction is played from a copy by Stevenson that alters aspects of keyboard layout or pedalling if not the notes themselves; resulting in a greater emotional ambivalence and textural intricacy which Wordsworth, had he heard it, would most likely have endorsed.

Is it recommended?

Indeed, not least when the sound of both Steinway D’s are so faithfully conveyed and Guild’s annotations are so perceptive. Those who have the Deering release should consider acquiring this one also, while those new to this music need not hesitate in making this their first choice.

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Christopher Guild and composer William Wordsworth.

Published post no.2,500 – Thursday 10 April 2025

In concert – Ex Cathedra, CBSO / Robert Ames: Northern Lights

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Ex Cathedra (George Parris, chorus-master), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Robert Ames

Arnalds arr. Geoff Lawson Momentary (2018)
Jóhansson arr. Robert Ames Kanguru (2016)
Guðnadóttir arr. Ames For Petra (2022) [UK Premiere]
Jóhansson arr. Anthony Weeden Arrival – Suite No.1 (2016)
Guðnadóttir arr. Ames Ascent (2009)
Arnalds Og Lengra (2009)
Jónsi & Somers arr. David Handler Boy 1904 (2009)
Björk arr. Ian Anderson Jóga (1997)
Sveinsson Der Klang Der Offenbarung des Göttlichen (2014) [UK Premiere]

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Saturday 5 April 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Saturday’s concerts often ring the changes in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s season and this evening proved no exception – Northern Lights comprising a programme by the younger generation of Icelandic composers that has come to the fore of European music.

Much has been made of the inclusivity and non-conformism of music in Iceland – spurred on, no doubt, by that country’s geographical isolation well into the 20th century with its lack of a classical tradition as regards composing or performance. Yet the main impression left by what was heard tonight was its overall lack of diversity in terms of sound and, as a consequence, its uniformity as regards expression. For a country which is synonymous with spectacular natural phenomena as well as its off-the-wall attitude, this was surprising and not a little disconcerting.

Any such trend was largely bucked by the late Jóhann Jóhansson, whose numerous film scores were represented by two extracts from that to sci-fi drama Arrival – the first enlivened with its quirky vocal syllabics, then the second building up an ominous and ever more menacing aura. They were preceded by a track from Ólafur Arnalds’s album Re:member that set the sombrely evocative scene, and each of them followed with music by Hildur Guðnadóttir – a simmering extract from the ambitious while overwrought film Tár, then a track from her album Without Sinking that ended rather less arrestingly than it began. An excerpt from Arnalds’ ballet score Dyad 1909 has atrophied even before its close, and the Jónsi / Alez Somers collaborative track from their album Riceboy Sleeps was appreciably less than the sum of its intriguing parts. At least the first half closed on a relative high with a track from Björk’s Homogenic – one of her finest achievements here given an arresting twist by Ian Anderson, whose album reworkings with his outfit Wooden Elephant should have garnered more attention in the classical domain.

Little of Björk’s bracing idiosyncrasy – let alone the eruptive physicality of Iceland’s musical ‘father’ Jón Leifs – was evident during Kjartan Sveinsson’s Der Klang Der Offenbarung des Göttlichen occupying the second half. A former member of that (over?) influential post-rock band Sigur Rós, his ‘opera’ inspired by Halldór Laxness’s seminal novel World Light eschews individual characters and specific actions, though its presumed scenario of acceptance within the midst of adversity feels vestigial at best. Admittedly its opening threnody unfolded with a Górecki-like eloquence, but the ensuing dialogue between choir and strings sounded akin to a Germanic liturgical setting by a forgotten composer of the later 19th century – far from those expressionist canvasses by Ragnar Kjartansson that formed a backdrop at its Berlin premiere.

It should be added that the members of Ex Cathedra gave their collective all for what was an all too rare appearance with the CBSO. As, moreover, did the orchestra itself when conducted with such expertise by Robert Ames who, as a violist with whom to reckon and founding co-director of the enterprising London Contemporary Orchestra, is nothing if not well-versed in this music. What a pity that the outcome as experienced tonight was music often uninvolving, sometimes dull and conformist in a way that contemporary Icelandic culture should never be.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about conductor Robert Ames and the choir Ex Cathedra

Published post no.2,498 – Tuesday 8 April 2025

On Record – Arnold Cooke: Complete String Quartets, Volume One (The Bridge Quartet) (Toccata Classics)

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Arnold Cooke
String Quartet no.1 (1933)
String Quartet no.3 (1967)
String Quartet no.5 (1978)

Bridge Quartet [Colin Twigg, Catherine Schofield (violins), Michael Schofield (viola), Lucy Wilding (cello)]

Toccata Classics TOCC0696 [56’05”]
Producer and Engineer Michael Ponder

Recorded 21-22 November 2022, 5-6 March 2023, All Saints’ Church, Thornham

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Toccata Classics continues its coverage of Arnold Cooke (his organ music is on TOCC0659) with this first volume of his string quartets, performed by The Bridge Quartet and confirming him as a skilful practitioner of a genre such as found favour with many composers of his era.

What’s the music like?

Premiered by the Griller Quartet in March 1935, the First Quartet gained the praise of no less than Havergal Brian and helped to establish Cooke’s wider reputation. Completed a year after his return from study in Berlin, this undeniably shows the influence of Hindemith but offsets it with a lyrical poise as to suggest lessons well learned from an earlier generation of British composers. Although cast in four movements, the opening Lento is a fugue whose emotional austerity never seems unduly severe – with the ensuing Vivace and Allegretto a scherzo then intermezzo of respective impetus and suavity. The final Presto rounds off proceedings with a keen yet never wanton energy that sets the seal on a substantial and approachable work; one which should not have had to wait 84 years until its revival by the present ensemble in 2022.

First given by the English Quartet in May 1968, the Third Quartet is contemporaneous with Cooke’s Third Symphony – whose coupling on Lyrita with a suite from his ballet Jabez and the Devil doubtless introduced many to this composer. Here one senses the presence, rather than influence as such, of Bartók – specifically his Sixth Quartet, the underlying rhythm of whose Marcia informs the initial Allegro of this work, and whose recurrent Mesto theme proves hardly less pervasive in an Andante which none the less emerges as one of Cooke’s most thoughtful and revealing statements. The brief scherzo exudes a driving impetus that carries over into a final Allegro that, in its ongoing vivacity and affirmative close, confirms this as the most likely of these quartets to find its place in the repertoire of the 20th century.

By the time his Fifth Quartet received its premiere in March 1979, Cooke had evidently been eclipsed by a younger generation though there is nothing overtly reactionary about this piece. Unfolding as a single movement, it has three clearly defined sections (as on this recording) -thus, a tense if ambivalent Moderato leads into an Allegro which adeptly elides scherzo and slow movement with no loss of ongoing momentum, then a Presto whose sheer brevity does not preclude allusions to earlier ideas as it steers this compact work to a decisive conclusion.

Does it all work?

Pretty much. Cooke might never have had an overtly distinctive or even personal idiom, but his music has a technical rigour and a feel for communication as makes listening rarely less than pleasurable. It helps when, in the Bridge Quartet, it has exponents so well versed in the lineage of British quartet writing – not least the composer who provided this ensemble’s name – and as attentive to the wealth of contrapuntal invention as to the greater design with each of these pieces. Hopefully other such groups will be encouraged to include them in their recitals.

Is it recommended?

Indeed so. The recording has a focus and perspective which is ideal for such music, and there are succinctly informative annotations by Peter Marchbank. Hopefully the follow-up volume, featuring the Second and Fourth Quartets, will be appearing from this source before too long.

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Toccata Classics website. Click on the names to read more about The Bridge Quartet and composer Arnold Cooke.

Published post no.2,497 – Monday 7 April 2025

In concert – Alina Ibragimova, CBSO / Dinis Sousa: Sibelius, Dvořák & Arvo Pärt

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Alina Ibragimova (violin, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Dinis Sousa (below)

Pärt Our Garden (1959, rev. 2003)
Sibelius Violin Concerto in D minor Op.47 (1903-04, rev. 1905)
Dvořák Symphony no.8 in G major Op.88/B163 (1889)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 3 April 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Alina Ibragimova (c) Joss McKinley; Dinis Sousa (c)

In what was an auspicious first appearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Dinis Sousa presided over an appealing programme that featured repertoire staples by Sibelius and Dvořák alongside welcome revival of an uncharacteristic early choral piece by Arvo Pärt.

Uncharacteristic but highly enjoyable, Our Garden seems relatively untypical of the Estonian composer even in his mid-twenties – its winning an award at a Soviet-sponsored competition in 1962 bringing plaudits at a time when Pärt’s was very much an ‘unofficial’ presence on the new-music scene. Six decades on this can be enjoyed simply for what it is – an unpretentious celebration of youthful endeavour whose unaffected setting of four not overly polemical texts is as cohesive as it is sincere. Certainly, the CBSO Youth Chorus did justice to writing whose rhythmic unison was offset with some deft harmonic twists and enhanced by the resourceful contribution of a sizable orchestra. An obvious candidate for inclusion in music quizzes, Our Garden is never less than effective on its own terms and made for an attractive curtain-raiser.

Geographical proximity aside, there was little connection between Pärt’s cantata or Sibelius’s Violin Concerto, and while a performance of the latter rarely fails to impress it rarely catches fire as it did here. Alina Ibragimova has given some memorable performances in Birmingham over recent seasons, but this account got to the heart of a piece that, for all its indebtedness to Romantic-era virtuosity, is no less original in form or content than its composer’s symphonies and tone poems of this period. Most notable were Ibragimova’s fusing of the first movement’s central cadenza with developmental impetus, her building of cumulative momentum over the course of the Adagio or a final Allegro which, though this may all but have eschewed the ‘ma non tanto’ marking, exuded a drive and panache maintained through to the scintillating close.

A first-rate accompanist, Sousa (above) brought out much of interest from the orchestral texture – not least its writing for low woodwind and horns which frequently underpins the soloist in a way that could only be Sibelius. Such attention to detail was equally evident in his performance of Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony – music easy to take for granted in its warmth and affability, yet whose opening Allegro is a masterclass in formal innovation as benefitted from the incisive if never overdriven energy Sousa brought to this movement as a whole and its coda in particular.

Even finer was the Adagio, its pathos shot through with an ominous import which came to the surface at its brief if forceful climaxes and so confirmed this as music of rare eloquence. The intermezzo’s twin themes unfolded with an ideal lilt that made its boisterous pay-off the more fitting, while the finale made the most of Dvořák’s putting his trenchant folk-dance through a set of variations whose rapidly growing excitement could always be sensed even as the music subsided towards virtual stasis, from where the peroration made for a truly uproarious QED.

Those expecting Finlandia at the start of the second half (as indicated in this season’s guide) were disappointed, but Sousa did offer the second (in G) of Dvořák’s Legends as an apposite encore – its fluid interplay of poise and humour the ideal way to end this memorable concert.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about conductor Dinis Sousa, violinist Alina Ibragimova and the CBSO Youth Chorus

Published post no.2,496 – Sunday 6 April 2025