I’ve listened to and liked a lot of Missy Mazzoli’s operatic and vocal music but hadn’t had much exposure to her purely instrumental writing so was interested to get hold of a copy of her new SACD release Dark with Excessive Bright.
The title track was originally composed as a concerto for double bass and string orchestra but here it’s given in two reworkings for solo violin; one with string orchestra and the other with string quintet. The soloist is Peter Herresthal and in the orchestral version he’s accompanied by the Bergen Philharmonic conducted by James Gaffigan. I think all the hallmarks of Mazzoli’s music, except perhaps the use of electronics, are present in this piece. There’s a baroque sensibility combined with 20th century minimalism but in the context of the 21st century’s embrace of individual voices rather than dominant fashions. So, largely tonal chords are recycled n different, fairly repetitive rhythmic patterns, but it never gets dull or new agey. I think I like the arrangement for string quintet even more. Here it’s players from the Arctic Philharmonic conducted by Tim Weiss accompanying. The textures are lighter and it seems to have more clarity. Good stuff.
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), played by the Arctic Philharmonic and Weiss, is fascinating. There are rococo loops, slow at first, then wilder, playing over a hurdy gurdy like wheezing, droning sound. It gets louder and more insistent and quite ominous before fading away into nothingness. Continue reading
My main reason for getting my hands on a new CD of mainly orchestral music by Sibelius featuring the Bergen Philharmonic and Edward Gardner was to listen to the couple of tracks that feature soprano Lise Davidsen. I first saw her with the TSO in 2019 and I thought 
This new recording of Britten’s Peter Grimes was recorded from semi-staged performances in the Grieghallen in Bergen in November last year. It’s very good indeed. Of course, there are many good audio and video recordings of this piece going back to the composer’s own version with Peter Pears in the title role; recorded in 1959 and many fine singers have recorded the title role. To stand out from the field, a new recording needs an outstanding Grimes and in Stuart Skelton this version has one. He manages to encompass both the brutal, gritty side of Grimes as well as the more ethereal side. Pears did the latter brilliantly but could never quite manage the grit. Vickers, who practically owned the role in the 1970s, was brutal but didn’t have the voice or the stage skills to bring out the gentler side. Perhaps the first person to really portray the full complexity of the character was the late Philip Langridge and there’s much about Skelton’s portrayal that reminds one of him. It shades toward the delicate most of the time with some lovely singing in “Now the Great Bear” and in the mad scene. But when Skelton needs to be brutal he’s downright scary.
operaramblings 