Category Archives: CD Review

Saariaho – complete music for piano and harpsichord

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Kaija Saariaho wrote surprisingly little music for solo piano or harpsichord.  Over her 40+ year composing career it amounts to a little under an hour of music and it has now been recorded by Tuija Hakkila who had an association with the composer dating back to 1982.  The disk, Touches, contains eight pieces.  Five are actually for solo piano with one piece for piano and cello (Anssi Karttunen) and two for harpsichord and electronics.

Most of the solo piano music is quite meditative though with a rhythmic flexibility that kind of comes and goes.  It’s complex but not in your face.  Arabesques et adages though is a bit different.  It was composed as a set piece for a piano competition and so, as you would expect, it’s got lots of technical challenges.  It’s fast and complex and louder than much of the other music. Continue reading →

The Girl in My Alphabet

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The Girl in My Alphabet is a 2002 CD of music by Errollyn Wallen; the Belize born composer recently appointed Master of the King’s Music.  It contains six works for various instruments and small ensembles; some with vocals, and it’s very varied.

It starts with Dervish, a 2001 piece for piano and cello, played by Dominic Harlan and Matthew Sharp.  It starts slowly with doom laden piano and scoopy cello but, like a Sufi dance, speeds up and becomes very fast and busy.  An impressive beginning.

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Another nostalgic re-release

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Following on from the du Pré cello concerto recordings I was also fortunate enough to get my hands on another Warner Classics remaster of old EMI recordings.  This one consists of the Barenboim/Klemperer recordings of the five Beethoven piano concertos and the Choral Fantasia recorded with the New Philharmonia Orchestra and the John Allis Choir back in 1967.  I used to own these on vinyl decades ago.  Now they are available as a three SACD set.

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Schmaltz and Pepper on CD

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Schmaltz and Pepper have a CD due for release on May 18th imaginatively called Schmaltz and Pepper.  If you have heard them live you will likely have heard most of the eleven tracks on the CD.  They include songs like I’m Sorry Mama (personal favourite) and Evil Eye, tunes drawn from Jewish folklore like Hershel and the Goblins and Ride to Zaslav and cunning musical jokes like Mozart the Mensch.  It’s all composed by combinations of Eric Abramovitz, Rebekah Wolkstein and Drew Jurecka with a bit of help from Mozart. Continue reading →

Confluencias

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Flamenco is an interesting genre.  It’s journey from India to Southern Spain via the Middle East and North Africa means it has influenced everything from Hindustani classical music through just about the whole Islamic world to its influence on Western classical (imagine Carmen without flamenco) and across the pond to Argentina and tango.  Confluencias; a new Juno nominated album by Lara Wong and Melón Jimenez pays tribute to that global influence with a series of flamenco-jazz numbers inspired by that geographic spread.

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The complete du Pré

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I first started to think seriously about the late Jacqueline du Pré when I saw the Woolf/Vavrek opera Jacqueline in 2020 at Tapestry.  Subsequently I listened to the CD release and attended the remount at Tapestry in February this year.  Then I saw that all of her concerto recordings for HMV (back catalogue now owned by Warner Classics) made between 1965 and 1970 had got a major facelift along the lines of the Solti Ring.  The original analogue tapes have been digitized at 192kHz/24 bit using the latest technology and then remastered for SACD.  The result is a four hybrid SACD box set called The Great Cello Concertos. Continue reading →

Fauré music for the stage (mostly)

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This recording from the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and their conductor Jean-Luc Tingaud contains 65 minutes of music; mostly written for the stage, though there are some songs for voice and orchestra.

The first set is based on the incidental music that Fauré wrote for an English language production of Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande given in London in 1898.  There’s a four movement suite and a bonus in “Mélisande’s song” from Act III Scene 1 sung here by Tara Erraught.  It’s really tuneful, pleasant music that evokes the piece well.  I particularly liked the third movement  “Sicilienne” which features a wistful harp melody and the song which is sung with beauty and clarity. Continue reading →

Schubert’s Four Seasons

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Schubert’s Four Seasons is a recital disk on the BIS label by soprano Carolyn Sampson and pianist Jioseph Middleton.  It contains a generous 75 minutes of music made up of twenty Schubert songs about the seasons and nature generally (also death… there’s lots of death).  Most of the songs are less well known ones but there are some more frequently heard one likes Die Forelle, Im Frühllind and Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (which also features Michael Collins on clarinet).

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