Latest releases reviewed
SZYMANOWSKI: MASQUES; SONATA NO 3; MÉTOPES Piotr Anderszewski (piano)Virgin Classics 545 7302 ****
The piano music of Szymanowski remains a rarity in concert programmes, although it has had its distinguished advocates over the years, including Arthur Rubinstein (a close friend of the composer's), Sviatoslav Richter, and Marc-André Hamelin. Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski here plays three major works as to the manner born. All were written during the first World War. Scriabin and impressionism are the most obvious influences on the picturesque Métopes and Masques. The grittier and less immediately appealing Third Sonata responds equally well to Anderszewski's sonically wide-ranging mastery. www.virginclassics.com
Michael Dervan
SVEN-DAVID SANDSTRÖM: THE HIGH MASS; INGVAR LIDHOLM: KONTAKION Claudio Barainsky (soprano), Siri Torjesen (soprano), Sara Olsson (soprano), Malena Ernman (mezzo soprano), Lilli Paasikivi (mezzo soprano), Michael Schönfelt (organ), MDR Chor Leipzig, Leipzig Gewandhaus/ Herbert Blomstedt Deutsche Grammophon 20/21 477 5111 (2 CDs) ***
Swedish composer Sven-David Sand-ström has said he wants to compose "a simple kind of music . . . that touches and moves people. The unsophisticated listeners, too - even children." His 90-minute The High Mass of 1994 sets its text in the same 25 sections as Bach's Mass in B minor. It is conceived in bold, repetitive gestures that seem to deal in primal expressive urges, garbed in the sophisticated panoply of vocal, choral and orchestral effects open to a composer who was long a choral singer and whose style has ranged from avant-garde to neo-romantic. Its sometimes bludgeoning force, moments of soprano-driven ecstacy and interludes of calmness are delivered with the effectiveness of a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster. Herbert Blomstedt's live Leipzig performance (the 2003 German premiere) is rather smoother than the earlier (also live) recording under Leif Segerstam. The set also includes the orchestral Kontakion by Sandström's teacher, Ingvar Lidholm, an avant-garde unveiling of the Orthodox Hymn for the Departed, insinuated into a Russian tour in 1979. www.dgclassics.com
Michael Dervan
TIPPETT: A CHILD OF OUR TIME Faye Robinson (soprano), Sarah Walker (mezzo soprano), Jon Garrison (tenor), John Cheek (bass), City of Birmingham Symphony Chorus, CBSO/Michael Tippett Naxos 8.557570 ****
Michael Tippett (1905-98) was already an old man when he made this recording of his early masterpiece, A Child of Our Time, for Collins Classics in 1991. He had been moved to compose the oratorio after the Nazi pogroms that followed the murder of a German diplomat in Paris in 1938, and he would find himself imprisoned as a conscientious objector a year before its premiere in 1944. His performance of this deeply compassionate work is a slow-burning one. The music is allowed to speak for itself. The sense of composure, influenced by recorded perspectives which keep the listener at a distance from the performers, will probably not be to everyone's taste. I found it strangely compelling. www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
SHOSTAKOVICH: STRING QUARTETS 1, 4 & 9 Jerusalem Quartet Harmonia Mundi HMC 901865 ***
Shostakovich's First and Fourth Quartets were written after bruising clashes with the Soviet authorities. Gérard Condé's sleeve note observes that their straightforwardness is "not so much intended to comfort the listener as to allow him to observe the extent to which oddness can become worrying when everything seems so well ordered". He's pointing to one of the major challenges these works pose for performers: the risk on the one hand of making the neo-classical clockwork sound banal, on the other of stressing the musical material for effects it cannot yield. The Jerusalem Quartet err on the side of sweetness and conventional expressive devices, missing the sometimes almost deadpan rigour necessary to counter the music's blatant formulas. They're more at home in the Ninth Quartet, though they still steer clear of the chilled steel that other musicians find here.
www.harmoniamundi.com
Michael Dervan
