Category Archives: CD Review

Greene’s Jephtha

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Fourteen years before Handel’s 1751 work Jephtha Maurice Greene produced a different English language oratorio on the same theme and with the same title.  It’s now been recorded by the Early Opera Company.

Thje story is taken from Judges and concerns the recall of Jephtha from exile to lead the Israelite army against an Ammonite invasion (the people from the East bank of the Jordan not the cephalopods).  Jephtha promises Jehovah that if he is victorious he will sacrifice the first creature “of virgin blood” he meets (shades of Idomeneo) which, of course, turns out to be his daughter.  There’s no divine intervention and no happy ending.

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Farewell to Natalie Dessay

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Few singers over the years have given me as much pleasure as Natalie Dessay.  She and pianist Philippe Cassard have now announced their upcoming retirement from concert performance (Natalie retired from the stage a few years ago) and are about to release an album of their farewell tour material.  It’s called Oiseaux de passage and it’s half an hour or so of bird themed chansons with some English language musical theatre numbers included for good measure.

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Duke Bluebeard’s Castle

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Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle is a one act symbolist opera for two singers based on a French folk tale.  It’s scored for a large orchestra and uses quite a lot of dissonance and it’s a famously tough sing for the singer (soprano or mezzo) singing Judit.  It’s been recorded a lot.  Wikipedia lists 32 audio or video recordings, not including this new one from Gabor Brertz, Rinat Shaham and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Karina Cavellakis.

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A bit of an oddball

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Once in a while I go out on a limb with recordings.  Sometimes it’s great.  I’m not as a rule particularly fond of “cross-over” material but I loved Emily D’Angelo’s freezing for example.  So I took a listen to Schubert Beatles from the New York Festival of Song.  Broadly speaking, it pairs Schubert Lieder with Beatles’ songs on a similar theme; Yesterday and Im Frühling for example.  The Schubert is mostly presented pretty straight (except for guitar accompaniment on Du bist die Ruh).  The Beatles songs are arranged, by Steven Beier, for various combinations of piano, violin, bass and guitar.  The principal singer is baritone Theo Hoffman with tenor Andrew Owens and soprano Julia Bullock joining on some tracks. Continue reading →

Stravinsky with the TSO

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The latest CD from the Toronto Symphony and Gustavo Gimeno features two works by Stravinsky and a Glenn Gould inspired piece by Kelly-Marie Murphy.  The first piece is the 24 minute long suite from the ballet Le baiser de la fée which is a sort of pastiche of what Tchaikovsky might sound like if Tchaikovsky could orchestrate as well as Stravinsky!  It’s well played but I don’t find it terribly exciting.

Murphy’s piece is another story.  There’s a running joke about short pieces by contemporary composers at the TSO.  They get called “garage pieces” because they get played at the beginning of concerts when half the patrons are still on their way up from parking.  Murphy’s Curiosity, Genius and the Search for Petula Clark absolutely does not deserve the label.  It was inspired by a road trip Glenn Gould took up north one time and it’s fascinating.  There’s a restless energy to it and a kind of flirting with atonality coupled with lyricism and a lot of percussion.  It’s kind of like a feral love child of Holst’s Mars; Bringer of War and a Shostakovich symphony crammed into ten minutes. Continue reading →

Sabine Devieilhe impresses in Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol

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Olivier Py directed a production of Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées in 2023 and a live recording was made for CD.  The Nightingale is sung by soprano Sabine Devieilhe and she is very good indeed.  She has pretty much the perfect voice for this role with its coloratura sections and very high tessitura.  Her voice sounds suitably sweet all the way up and her coloratura is very precise.  She’s very well backed up by an all French cast featuring the excellent tenor Cyrille Dubois as the Fisherman and the unmistakable Laurent Naouri as the Chamberlain.  Jean-Sébastien Bou also impresses as a suitably tremulous Emperor and there’s a nice cameo from Chantal Santon Jeffery as the Cook.  The minor roles are all well sung and French diction is notably good across the board. Continue reading →

A Finnish Gerontius

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Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is very well served on record but a new version with good soloists may still be worth a look.  And there is a new one on the Ondine label featuring Christine Rice, John Findon and Rod Williams.  There’s a rather staggering collection of choirs; the Helsinki Music Centre Choir, the Cambridge University Symphony Chorus, Dominante | Helsinki Chamber Choir and the
Alumni of the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge.  All this plus the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon. Continue reading →