The Cardinall's Musick/Andrew Carwood: The Byrd Edition Vol Three (ASV)
The third volume of ASV's ongoing complete Byrd Edition on CD rounds off the recorded survey of the Latin church music that this Catholic composer in a Protestant land never actually had published. It's paired with the Propers for Epiphany from the Gradualia of 1607. However, not all of the works included here have survived intact. Missing voice parts have had to be restored and a range of other adjustments carried out in the editions prepared for the recordings by David Skinner. The performances by the Cardinall's Musick under Andrew Carwood live up to the high standards the group is known for. The rich tapestries of Byrd's writing rarely fail to fascinate. The issue can be recommended to Byrd-lovers and Byrd-novices alike.
- Michael Dervan
Penderecki: Chamber Music. Ensemble Villa Musica (MDG Gold)
The 1960 Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima remains Krzysztof Penderecki's best-known work. It's from a period when his work in the electronic studio had led him to explore sliding clusters and sounds that were closer to noise than conventional music. The chamber music here, six works written between 1953 and 1993 show a very different composer. The earliest, a Sonata for Violin and Piano, shows a young man flexing his muscles in post-Bartok mode; the latest, a Quartet for Clarinet and String Trio, reveals a composer who has retreated from the earlier extremes he had explored. The String Trio of 1991 and the Cadenza for Solo Viola (1984) show aspects of his later style that are less pallidly self-absorbed.
- Michael Dervan
Buxtehude: Organ music. Rainer Oster (Arte Nova)
Dietrich Buxtehude is probably the most strongly represented composer of the pre-Bach era in the programmes of organ recitalists. The Arp-Schnitger organ of St Jacobi in Hamburg is one of the most important organs in Europe, expensively restored in 1993, when it was 300 years old, and Rainer Oster is a German organist who took first prize at the Pachelbel Competition in Nuremberg in 1992. The selection of Buxtehude's music has been well made here, so, at under a fiver, this Arte Nova CD clearly has a lot going for it. Oster plays cleanly and smoothly - perhaps too smoothly, in fact. What's lacking is a sense of articulative breathing to allow time for the music to be communicated with a stronger sense of expressive shape. In spite of this, though, a disc not to be ignored at the price.
- Michael Dervan
Gian Carlo Menotti: The Consul (Chandos)
When people complain that good new operas just aren't being written any more, they tend to forget about Menotti, who has - for no very good reason, as is the way of these things - drifted to the edge of musical fashion. But when it was premiered in 1950, The Consul's sensational score and emotional resonance ensured it attracted rave reviews. Nowadays its tale of political oppression, bureaucratic indifference, and the plight of asylum-seekers - some clearly desperate, some simply demented - packs, if anything, an even greater punch, and this new recording, with a mainly English cast in a 1998 Spoleto Festival production conducted by Richard Hickox, makes the most of Menotti's razor-sharp recitatives and offbeat orchestration.
- Arminta Wallace