Nuits blanches is the title of a new CD from Karina Gauvin and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra. It’s largely a subset of the material they performed at Koerner Hall in November and I don’t see much point in repeating my thoughts which are indeed confirmed by the CD. There’s less music on the CD (about 55 minutes) so no Berezovsky sonata or Paisiello divertimento. It’s a collection of mostly arias with the odd instrumental piece by Bortniansky, Dall’Oglio, Berezovsky, Fomine and Gluck.
The performances are as good as at Koerner and the disk, which was recorded at the Église Saint-Augustin in Mirabel in October 2019 is nicely balanced and clear. There is very complete documentation in the accompanying booklet, albeit in cruelly small print.
Hubert Parry’s Judith has been making something of a comeback. A new performing edition by Professor Stephanie Martin was performed 
Pavol Breslik headlines on a new recording of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Disappeared; a song cycle about a young man who runs off with a gyosy girl. The piece is given in its original arrangement which, besides tenor and piano, features a mezzo in several of the songs and a brief appearance by a three member female chorus. No doubt this is one reason it’s performed less often than it might be. Breslik is pretty much ideal for this music. Obviosly he’s completely at home in Czech and he sings with clear articulation and has a rather beautiful instrument. He’s well supported by Robert Pechanec on piano plus mezzo Ester Pavlu; who has quite a bright sound for a mezzo but works well enough with Breslik. Dominika Hanko, Zuzanka Marczelová and Mária Kovács make up the chorus.
I’m intensely interested in the different approaches that composers take to setting text so I was intrigued to read the blurb on a new CD release by American composer Jackson Greenberg. The text is Rilke’s Der Panther and the approach is to take an old (anonymous) recording of an actor reading the poem and provide an orchestral accompaniment for it. It’s quite short; just shy of eight minutes, and the music is an atmospheric variant on largely tonal minimalism. It’s not a big surprise to discover the composer works mainly in film and TV. It’s unusual and worth a listen.
This is a really unusual CD. It combines readings; both in the original Greek and in English translation of some of the best known passages in Homer’s Odyssey with music for period instruments composed by Rachel Stott.
Autumn Winds is a new CD of vocal and chamber music by American composer Kirk O’Riordan. Much of the music is unashamedly beautiful but it doesn’t sound in the least retro. It’s a long way from the neo-Broadway style that drives me nuts.
2020 started with news of yet another anti-semitic atrocity in the United States. My musical 2020 started with a new recording of that finest of all musical acts of resistance to anti-semitism, Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 13 in B-Flat minor “Babi Yar”. It’s a setting of poems by Yevgeny Yevtushenko for orchestra, bass soloist and men’s chorus and it’s powerful stuff. It’s often performed at consistently high energy and volume and seething with anger. Riccardo Muti treats it rather differently. The recording, featuring bass Alexey Tikhomirov, the Chicago Symphony and the men of their chorus, doesn’t lack drama or intensity but it’s also often intensely lyrical. When require, Tikhomirov and the chorus produce some gorgeously beautiful, even delicate, singing and the orchestra do the same. There’s not much of the blaring brass one associates with the Leningrad recordings of the Shostakovich symphonies. Instead there’s some wonderful playing, especially by the low brass. The motif in the fourth movement, curiously reminiscent of the Fafner scene in Siegfried, features a sort of duet between tuba(?) and timpani to great effect. This is very fine music making.