Category Archives: CD Review

joy & asymmetry

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joy & asymmetry is a new recording from the Helsink Chamber Choir and their conductor Nils Schweckendiek.  It consista of music by Finnish composers Kalevi Aho and Einojuhani Rautavaara, although by no means all the texts are in Finnish.

There’s some interesting music on the recording but a lot of it is relatively stately, layered, polyphony.  That’s not exactly unusual for contemporary choral music and if it’s your thing there’s a lot to like her.  I’ll admit though to finding much of it quite soporific.

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Coups de roulis

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One might be forgiven for thinking that French operetta ended with Offenbach since, outside of France anyway, nothing much gets performed.  However, the tradition continued.  Reynaldo Hahn, for example, produced Ciboulette in 1923.  Another has now come my way.  It’s an audio recording of Andrê Messager’s 1928 work Coups de roulis.

It’s set on a French battleship, the Montesquieu in the Mediterranean.  Christmas leave has been cancelled to allow the visit of the High Commissioner M. Puy-Pradal on a cost saving expedition.  He is accompanied by his daughter Béatrice who is his secretary.  Both the ship’s captain Gerville and a young officer Kermao fall in love with Béatrice. During a party given during a courtesy visit to Egypt Puy-Pradal forms a liaison with the aspiring actress Sola Myrrhis who believes Puy-Pradal’s influence can get her into the Comédie-Française. He accompanies her on her Egyptian tour.

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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 →