Category Archives: CD Review

Mr. Dowland’s Dream

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So following on from Ruby Hughes’ Dowland heavy album Amidst the Shades we have soprano Clara Brunet and lutenist Bor Zuljan with Mr. Dowland’s Dream.  It’s similar in some ways but very different in others.  For a start Zuljan is playing an orpharion; which sounds a bit like a lute with a reverb pedal.  Mostly he’s using a nine course instrument by Bruce Brook, after a 1617 instrument by Francis Palmer, and sometimes he’s playing an electric orpharion of ten courses by César Arias with magnetic pick ups.  Net result, the sound world is rather different from the Hughes album. Continue reading →

Zanetto

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Pietro Mascagni is really remembered for only one opera; the one act Cavalleria Rusticana, which was sufficiently successful for its composer to be considered for a while a probable successor to Puccini as the next “great Italian opera composer”.  That didn’t happen of course and the only other of his works to get even occasional stagings are L’amico Fritz. and Iris though he wrote a total of fifteen.  Now there’s a recording of his one act opera Zanetto which was made at a live, semi-staged performance in Berlin in June 2022. Continue reading →

Amidst the Shades

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Amidst the Shades is a new album from British soprano Ruby Hughes accompanied by Jonas Nordberg on lute and archlute and Mime Yamahiro Brinkmann on viola da gamba.  It’s a very beautiful record starting, as one might expect, with a selection of English song from the 16th and 17th century plus some pieces for solo lute.  There are songs by John Dowland, including the well known Can She Excuse My Wrongs (possibly to a text by Robert Devereux; if so clear who “she” is).  Robert Johnson makes an appearance with three songs including two Shakespeare settings.  John Danyel also features along with instrumental music by Anthony Holborne and Tobias Hume. Continue reading →

Shostakovich from the Leningrad Philharmonic

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Back when I was first getting acquainted with the music of Dmitri Shostakovich perhaps the most widely available recordings of the symphonies were the ones by the Leningrad Philharmonic conducted by Yevgeny Mravinsky on the Melodiya label.  They were quite distinctive; blaring brass, and in some ways sounding rather crude.  Was that what the conductor/composer wanted?  Was that how the orchestra played?  Or was it an artefact of the recordings?  As many of them are now available in various remasters from assorted labels I could dig a bit bit deeper and maybe I will but meanwhile what has come my way is a remastered release from two concerts the Leningrad Philharmonic; conducted by Arvids Jansons (father of Maris), gave in London in September 1971 and which were broadcast on the BBC.

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C’est nous les dieux, ni yw y duwiau

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HORIZON:MADOG is a new chamber opera with music by Paul Frehner and a trilingual libretto by Angela J. Murphy.  In a not too distant future where the world has been devastated by flooding and electro-magnetic storms, Madog; a descendant of the legendary Welsh prince, leads a movement for a more eco-friendly, less tech dependent future.  He hears (scratchily) a radio broadcast from Wales promising, essentially, a tech fix, which he regards with scorn, and, in his dreams, his ancestor urging him to action.  A plan emerges. Continue reading →

María de Buenos Aires

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Astor Piazzolla’a opera-tango María de Buenos Aires has been recorded, perhaps surprisingly, many times.  The latest version comes from the Orchestra Filarmonica della Calabria and conductor Filippo Arlia with Ce Suarez Pas as María.

It’s a strange piece full of the sort of weird imagery one associates with South American magical realism and then some.  The plot concerns a poor young girl in a very gritty Buenos Aires.  She becomes a singer then a prostitute,  Then she dies and her ghost wonders the city until she forced to give birth ti a daughter, also María, and so ending her role in the eternal cycle (“Forgotten are you among all women”) that will be carried on by her daughter.  Her journeys and her resurrection are directed in some strange way by a spoken word character El Duende (The Goblin).  Along the way she meets all kinds of strange people and others; a sparrow, a thief, a psychoanalyst, noodle kneaders, wizard bricklayers and much more.  It’s really creepy. Continue reading →

Microtonal music for string quartet

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The first release from new record label Mnémosyne Records contains three microtonal pieces for string quartet by young Montreal based composers played by Quatuor Mémoire; Bailey Wantuch and Meggie Lacombe (violins), Marilou Lepage (viola) and Audréanne Filion (cello).

The first piece is by Florence M. Tremblay and is titled Insides.  It’s slightly under twelve minutes and uses a fairly wide range of sonorities without, I think, going into any of the weirder types of extended technique.  Most of what I was hearing hear were a drone like ground at varying pitch and volume on which more solid segments of both bowed and plucked notes were superimposed.  The dynamics are quite complex and one section even sounded weirdly like what you hear inside a plane when it’s taking off.  Plenty there to maintain interest across a fairly short piece. Continue reading →

In Search of Youkali

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In Search of Youkali is a sort of journey through the theatre music of Kurt Weill performed by soprano Mary Bray supported by Murray Grainger (accordion), Marianne Schofield (double-bass) and William Vann (piano).  For me, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.  The German songs; “Barbarasong” and “Berlin im Licht” are quite nicely done but with (mainly) a bright, operatic kind of sound where I would prefer something more cabaret style.  The accompaniments work well though.

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