Weill: Symphony No 2; Violin Concerto; Mahagonny Suite. Frank Peter Zimmermann, Berlin PO/Mariss Jansons (EMI) Nearly half a century after his death, Kurt Weill has never quite escaped from the association with Bertolt Brecht which produced The Threepenny Opera in 1928. Tangy, jazz-influenced instrumentation, snappy contours and an ironic manner are seen as his quintessential characteristics. The American musicals of his later years saw a softening of tone, but his Second Symphony of 1933, a work that's decidedly unsymphonic in feel, aligns stylistically with the theatrical works of the Berlin years. Written nine years earlier, the Concerto for violin and wind orchestra is a mostly astringent melting pot of styles. Jansons and, in the concerto, Zimmermann, draw both works closer than usual to mainstream orchestral manners; less happily, the Mahagonny music is too careful to sound truly seedy.
Michael Dervan
Haydn: String Quartets Op 20 Nos 1, 3 & 4. The Lindsays (ASV) Haydn was the first great composer of string quartets, and the six quartets of his Op. 20 (nicknamed the Sun after an early title page vignette) were his first set of great quartets. They're noted for their contrapuntal richness (though none of the ones with fugal finales are included here) and share something of the drama and intensity of the contemporaneous Sturm und Drang symphonies from the early 1770s. The Lindsays give maturely trusting performances where the idea seems to be to let the music speak for itself, without undue pointing or highlighting. But, within their intimacy of manner, they remain alert to the music's urgency and drama, and their generally understated approach is one that bears repeated hearings well.
Michael Dervan
Mozart: "Don Giovanni" and Donizetti: "La Fille du Regiment" (Naxos) Have you ever secretly wondered, when opera buffs start droning on about how singers aren't what they used to be, whether these fondly-remembered blasters from the past were actually any good? These remasterings of taped 1940s performances from the New York Met bring a procession of famous names to fascinating life - and, hey, these guys are good. Ezio Pinza is the Don Giovanni di tutti Don Giovanni; measured, mischevious and malevolent by turns, effortlessly persuasive, he is aided and abetted by Alexander Kipnis as Leporello and two marvellous sopranos whose names seem to have been fondly forgotten, Rose Bampton as Donna Anna and Bidu Sayao as Zerlina. Fun and games are the name of the game in Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment - and on the delightful evidence of these CDs, there's no better woman for the task than the effervescent Lily Pons.
Arminta Wallace
