Project Harmonia Mundi - Part 15

A dramatic collection of solo arias and scenes for tenor drawn for oratorio and opera - some of HANDEL's most lovely music, brilliantly performed by Mark Padmore and The English Concert, led by Andrew Manze. The concluding duet As steals the morn with soprano Lucy Crowe is an added bonus.

Following a highly successful first recording (HMU 907245), the Eroica Quartet presents three of Beethoven’s most-loved works: Op. 135 with its rare combination of transcendental beauty, classical simplicity, and good-humored wit and charm, and Opp. 74 and 95, two of the torrent of masterpieces that flowed from Beethoven’s pen during his Middle Period.

Both Foss Piano Concertos were written early in his career, the First under the influence of Hindemith, the Second influenced by Stravinsky. Both pieces are energetic, virtuosic romps, entertaining on a superficial level, but both seem rather synthetic, the product of more thought than feeling. Nakamatsu, a superb musician, plays the First Concerto with perhaps too much artistry, while Kasman is as brash as the Second Concerto he plays. There is more genuine feeling in the six-minute Elegy than in the hour of Piano Concertos. The narration, taken from Anne Frank's Diary and read by the composer's daughter, is touching, but it doesn't connect firmly with the music, so the version without narration seems more of an artistic success. Throughout the disc, the playing of the orchestra (from Orange County, California) is spectacular and the sound quality quite vivid. It's an impressive production (and a very long CD at 77:59), but the overall artistic result is a bit disappointing, except, perhaps, for listeners who get a kick out of hearing fingers move very fast over a keyboard.

Leslie Gerber, Amazon.com

For Prokofiev, the piano was the foundation of all of his work, from precocious early pieces to monumental sonatas, to dazzling transcriptions of his later years. Frederic Chiu’s critically acclaimed traversal of the complete Prokofiev œuvre for solo piano has been lauded as “impressive playing by a young pianist with ideas.”

This CD-book offers total immersion in the filmic and musical universe of Nino Rota, one of the greatest composers in the history of the cinema. La strada and The Leopard (with its unforgettable ball scene) are probably Rota’s most famous scores, along with 8 1/2 and The Godfather; echoes of some of their inimitable themes are to be found in the Concerto Soirée premiered in 1962. This apparently ‘classical’ work doubtless contains the essence of the genius of Nino Rota, the most . . . Baroque of modern composers!

Although the string quartet lies at the heart of Shostakovich’s chamber music output, he came late to the genre; the First (1938) was begun as an inconsequential exercise after the Fifth Symphony’s ‘reply to justified criticism’. He then developed such a taste for quartet-writing that he produced no fewer than fifteen in all! But unlike Bartók, who made the genre a laboratory for his experiments, this most controversial composer of the Soviet era considered his quartets more as a kind of ‘intimate theatre’, as paradoxical as their creator – as can be seen in these three key works spread over nearly thirty years of his life.

Soul-searching and black humour. Exhilarating commitment and freshness’ (Télérama). ‘One admires the skilful voice-leading, the splendidly vertical bowing and the vivacity of this ensemble which will certainly continue to dazzle us for a long time to come (Diapason). After a first volume devoted to Quartets nos.1, 4 and 9, the musicians of the Jerusalem Quartet return to one of their great favourites, Shostakovich. Here, even in the luminous G major of no.6, they tackle works of still greater gravity. The humour grows inexorably blacker . . .

Hamburg and its tides. Probably written between 1705 and 1725, the works by Telemann presented on this recording are not united only by the presence of a solo recorder. They also offer an eloquent testimony to that typically German hybrid style composed of French, Italian, and native elements. The celebrated ‘Maritime Overture’ called ‘Hamburg Ebb and Flow’ stands out as perhaps one of the most accomplished orchestral works Telemann ever produced.

With musical tastes changing radically, the transition between the Baroque and the Classical eras allowed for the musical style of Central Europe to flourish, freed at long last from the yoke of French and Italian influences. For a time, the instruments of the Ancient Régime coexisted with the newer pre-Romantic models, although when a level of technical complexity in the music was added to this mix, the end for the lute and the viola da gamba was signalled: a swan song which enjoys all the charm of a period of decadence.

English 16th and 17th century music found its inspiration as well as its vitality in folklore. Dowland's melancholy or Tobias Hume's rustic fantasy are two of its aspects; however, we could also add the courtly delicacy of one of Robinson's lullabies, or the somewhat drunken cheerfulness of the soldiers in Purcell's King Arthur. Contrasting feelings and situations that show the musical plurality of the "Old Albion".