29709

Rather than trawl for forgotten manuscripts more widely through Latin America, Ashley Solomon and his group Florilegium prefer to concentrate their efforts on the archives in Bolivia. Solomon has founded a choir there, and both his groups regularly appear at the biennial renaissance and baroque festival in the Jesuit missions of the Chiquitos region. Their latest compilation includes pieces from those missions and from those of Moxos, together with music from the cathedral in La Plata, the present-day city of Sucre. Though the sources aren't always made clear, it's a lively, nicely varied sequence, mostly of works showcasing Solomon's excellent Arakaender choir, interspersed with an anonymous trio-sonatas and organ pieces recorded on a wonderfully gutsy instrument at the mission church of Santa Ana in the Bolivian part of the Amazon basin. The Italian-born Domenico Zipoli is the best known composer represented, appropriately enough, perhaps, for he did at least make the journey from Europe to the Spanish colonies in the new world.
Andrew Clements
 

From The Times
October 23, 2009
Ivan Fischer/Budapest Festival Orchestra: Brahms
A latecomer beats the Brahms field with the Hungarian dances, Variations on a Theme and of course Brahms’ First Symphony
Geoff Brown

In normal circumstances, emerging with a Brahms symphony recording at this moment would not be a wise move. Simon Rattle’s complete Berlin set was recently issued; John Eliot Gardiner’s period instrument accounts have been emerging: both of them revisionist enterprises, lively, thoughtful and fresh. Another CD on the Brahms mountain, and the public might not notice.
But with Ivan Fischer and his Budapest Festival Orchestra you have to notice. Even before the laser beam hits the spinning disc, there’s the CD’s programme to take on board. First, one of Brahms’s Hungarian dances, arranged by Fischer for strings, a hesitating, melancholy delight; then the Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn, sparkling and strong. Only then does his First Symphony, the product of 14 anxious years, start to stride.
The fruits of this arrangement can be enjoyed only by playing the disc uninterrupted. Fischer’s rather schoolmasterish plan is to reveal the influences and stepping stones that led to the master work: Hungarian folk music, plus classical poise allied to contrapuntal strength. But the CD never feels like homework. These Budapest players have Hungarian folk music in their blood, and their national inflections of phrasing, tempo and string fingering make the symphony quiver with new life.
Fischer doesn’t press the first movement as forcefully as some, but he’s alive to the inner drama in every phrase, every iteration of those motives, tightly worked in the spirit of Beethoven’s Fifth. Folk music made elegant returns in the second movement. The third and fourth movements almost merge into one, with the finale’s allegro springing in after a magical Alpine landscape conjured up through the calls of the horns and the music’s high-altitude expanse. At the end, Brahms’s argument reaches its climax in a flourish of gaiety and composing muscle, suggesting the Haydn Variations finale, but on a far grander scale.
All this plus the usual finesse of tone and colour expected from this orchestra and conductor. Gardiner and Rattle’s Brahms both have real merit, though neither of them can top the natural sympathy and understanding shown in this outstanding performance. Symphonies two, three and four had better follow.
(Channel Classics)

ROBERT SCHUMANN: Davidsbundlertanze, op. 6; Arabeske, op. 18; Gesange der Fruhe, op. 133 – Paolo Giacometti, piano – Channel Classics multichannel SACD CCS SA 28709, 55:30 ***** [Distr by Harmonia mundi]:

Paolo Giacometti is an up and coming performer of great gifts, and quite accomplished record-wise as well, though he has appeared on more chamber recordings than solo to this point, aside from his very successful series of Rossini discs. He likes to vary the instruments he uses from recording to recording, and here he chooses the standard Steinway D, perhaps the most requested instrument in all of modern concert playing. This is a wonderful recording with Channel’s always reliable and super-spectacular surround sound working to capture these very poetic performances in a lush and resilient atmosphere of great clarity and cushiness. Giacometti’s superb playing compliments in every way the audio excellence.

The Davidsbündlertänze (“Dances of the League of David”) is a work of supreme mastery by the 27-year old composer, deeply in love with the newly-engaged Clara. The “League of David”, an imaginary fellowship populated by Schumann’s own alter egos and some invited composer guests, was created as a sort of antidote to what the composer thought of as a challenge to the musical values that he most admired, and not the more populist and superficial theatrics of Liszt and others. Florestan and Eusebius make an appearance here as in other places in Schumann’s music, the former wild and extroverted, and the latter gently introverted, with the tensions between them amply captured in the music. This is a beautiful performance, easily equal to the best ones on the market, including Kempff and Haskil among others.
 
The Arabeske is given a strong and almost steely reading that also emphasizes the gentle poetry found in this short, but always welcome interlude of Schumann’s. Gesänge der Frühe (“Morning Songs”) make for a picture perfect conclusion to this recital, as they are the last pieces Schumann would write before being confined to the asylum at Endenich, written about to his publisher only one day before tossing himself into the Rhine in a suicide attempt. These are very internal and introspective pieces, moody little things that allow for the sunrise to imprint itself in the imagination the same way it might in an impressionist painting. I have heard only one other recording that comes close to matching this one, that of Eric Le Sage in his recent and comprehensive series on Alpha. This is sterling Schumann of great conviction and substance, and will be enjoyed by everyone who comes across it.

-- Steven Ritter
 

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

August 9, 2008

Pieter Wispelwey

***1/2
Prokofiev Sinfonia Concertante
with Solo Cello Works by Tcherepnin and Crumb
Pieter Wispelwey, cello; Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Vassily Sinaisky
Channel Classics 27909

****
Walton Cello Concerto
with Solo Cello Works by Bloch, Britten and Ligeti
Pieter Wispelwey, cello; Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Jeffrey Tate
Onyx 4042

Dutch cellist Wispelwey, now in middle age, is at a point in his career where he's setting interpretive standards in addition to technical ones, at least in these strong-minded discs, which juxtapose 20th-century concertos against little-known unaccompanied cello works by major composers. Those thrilled by the Prokofiev Sinfonia when performed by the Curtis Symphony Orchestra a few months back will be relieved to find this excellent new performance, which is truly able to encompass the sprawling piece. No Prokofiev gesture is too large or oblique for Wispelwey to find any number of telling details. In the Walton, Wispelwey is crisp almost to the point of brusqueness - welcome in a concerto whose suaveness can hide its own importance.

The unaccompanied cello works that fill out both discs are a mixed lot but mostly worth hearing. On the Prokofiev disc, Crumb's Sonata for Cello Solo is a student work that sounds nothing like later pieces, though an inquiring mind is definitely evident. Tcherepnin's Asian-tinged Suite for Solo Cello isn't so lucky. The Walton disc filler is more appetizing: Though Ligeti's excellent Sonata for Solo Cello is widely recorded, Bloch's rugged, little-known Suite No. 1 is not, and though Walton's 10 Passacaglia for Solo Cello shows the composer in decline, it's a good counterpoint to the more youthful concerto.

-David Patrick Stearns