January 2021 Classical Record Reviews

Jakob Bangsø: Corigliano, Caravassilis, Siegel: Guitar Concertos

Jakob Bangsø, guitar; Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Kaisa Roose, cond.

Orchid Classics ORC100142 (CD, auditioned in 24/44.1 WAV). 2020. Pouya Hamidi, et al., engs.

Performance ****

Sonics ****

Danish guitarist Jakob Bangsø, 32, may not be widely known in the US, but he has already commissioned seven works. This generous recital includes premiere recordings of Constantine Caravassilis’s beautiful, must-hear Saudade: Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra (2018) and Wayne Siegel’s more derivative Chaconne: Concerto for Guitar and Chamber Orchestra (2016). Both were inspired by the one modern classic on this generously timed recording, Corigliano’s Troubadours: Variations for Guitar and Chamber Orchestra (1993).

Troubadours, composed for Sharon Isbin, features a beguiling Spanish melody, eerie accompaniment, original language, and a pervasive sense of nostalgia. Hence Caravassilis’s title, Saudade, which in Portuguese evokes bittersweet memory. I can’t get enough of Saudade‘s mysterious, wistful beauty, with iridescent touches punctuated by deep bass and fascinating percussion. Its Adagietto evokes memories of the Adagio from Mahler’s Symphony No.5, but it’s strikingly unique.

Less unique is Siegel’s Chaconne, which quotes Philip Glass too often and directly. Chaconne starts strong, with evocative vocals, but can’t seem to decide what it is or where it’s headed.

Thanks to the superb partnership between Bangsø and conductor Kaisa Roose, as well as excellent editing and mixing by a team of engineers, balances are ideal, with a natural-sounding guitar placed in front of an orchestra whose percussive ventures are captured well. If only someone had excised the splice around 10:41 in Troubadours and enhanced realism with a higher sampling rate.—Jason Victor Serinus

Beethoven: Christus am Ölberge

Elsa Dreisig, soprano (Seraph); Pavel Breslík, tenor (Christus); David Soar, bass (Petrus); London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Sir Simon Rattle, cond.

LSO Live LSO0862 (CD). 2020. Andrew Cornall, prod.; Jonathan Stokes, Neil Hutchinson, engs.

Performance ****

Sonics *****

Christus am Ölberge, a sacred oratorio, is a Beethovenian anomaly. It eschews storming the heavens, balancing dramatic passages against gentler lyric episodes. Most of its vocal solos would fit easily into a Haydn oratorio.

Sir Simon Rattle conducts firmly and forthrightly, without his tendency toward spinelessness. The dramatic passages are taut and driving, although some of the tremolos could use more rhythmic point, and the quieter bits move with purpose. Some soft string chorales remain pallid and under-energized. Rattle conjures buzzing anticipation at the start of the tenor aria, precisely gauges the interplay of chorus and soloist in O Heil euch, and launches the concluding fugue with a nice lightness. The playing is characterful with liquid, sensitive reeds and strong, clean brass accents: The trombone-and-reed chords before the duet suggest Don Giovanni. Against this, the string afterbeats impede the opening number’s motion; later, we get some imprecise, miscoordinated patches of ensemble.

Soprano Elsa Dreisig’s clear, vibrant legato, lovely trills, and dramatic urgency are fetching, though she has to slow down for her aria’s runs. Pavel Breslík is initially unsettled as Christus, straining up top, but his singing improves as he proceeds, ringing out clearly. David Soar’s solid bass evokes an authoritative Petrus. The LSO Chorus is disciplined, well-blended, and attentive to articulations.

I’ve never understood the complaints about the Barbican acoustic. In any case, this recording is first-class, registering brass interjections with vivid depth.—Stephen Francis Vasta

Sir John Tavener: No Longer Mourn for Me

Steven Isserlis, cello; Matthew Rose, bass; Abi Sampa, vocals; Trinity Boys Choir; Philharmonia Orchestra, Omer Meir Wellber, cond.

Hyperíon CDA68246 (CD, auditioned in 24/96 WAV). 2020. Mark Brown, prod.; Simon Eadon, eng.

Performance ****½

Sonics ****

This recording is profoundly personal, the fulfillment of a promise Isserlis made to Tavener shortly before the composer’s death. It collects five of Tavener’s most inspired late pieces, two of which—Preces and Responses (2013) and No longer mourn for me (2010)—Isserlis arranged, à la Villa-Lobos, for an orchestra of eight cellos.

Isserlis, who premiered Tavener’s The Protecting Veil (1988), centered the recording around the thorny, Tolstoy-inspired The death of Ivan Ilyich and the revised version of Mahámátar (2000). Ivan Ilyich is rendered forbidding by the dry voice of Matthew Rose, whose instrument cannot compare to that of the three greatest Boris interpreters on record, Feodor Chaliapin, Alexander Kipnis, and Boris Christoff. The soulful mantra Mahámátar, composed for a film about pilgrims by Werner Herzog, to whom it is dedicated, is a resonant invocation of the Great Mother Mahámátar in Sanskrit, and of the Theotokos (God-bearer) in Greek. Isserlis plays the “vocal line,” while Abi Sampa, the UK’s marvelous young champion of Sufi and Qawwali music, touches the heart with her vocal improvisations.

Popule meus (2009), which was composed shortly before Tavener’s heart attack, may be overly repetitive, but its evocative nature and fabulous use of percussion make it a perfect fit for this wonderful recording. Rendered more eloquent by Isserlis’s poignant liner notes, the excellently recorded compilation’s sole engineering weakness is the volume disparity between the all-cello tracks and the rest of the album.—Jason Victor Serinus

Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake (excerpts)

Philharmonia Orchestra, Santtu-Matias Rouvali, cond.

Signum SIGCD648 (CD). Jennifer Howells, prod.; Mike Hatch, James Waterhouse, et al., engs.

Performance ***½

Sonics ***½

Any Swan Lake suite is “conductor’s choice,” but this sequence, from a November 2019 concert, is quixotic. Bypassing the Introduction entirely, the Act I Waltz makes a lovely but tepid start. The Act III Scène, unresolved, jumps to the middle of the Pas de six. We get two “characteristic dances” instead of, say, more of the glorious waltzes. The Finale starts, unprepared, on the big tutti. Even a timpani roll would have helped.

Rouvali, the Philharmonia’s incoming director, plays the Waltz buoyantly. The clarinet in the Pas de trois is cheerful and insouciant; the middle section of the cygnets’ dance strolls easily. The Pas de six chunk has a nice uplift. The strings are grimly sturdy in the Spanish Dance, and, after a soggy start, the Neapolitan Dance approaches suspended animation. The Pas de deux just gets louder, without filling out.

Rouvali’s Luftpausen between sections give both the resonance and the listener’s mind time to clear. His unmarked ritards, however, sound arbitrary and artificial; when they recur, as with the basses in the resplendent Dance of the Goblets, they become an irritating mannerism.

The Philharmonia is mostly fine. I loved the crisp string run that launches the Act III Scène, after which the syncopated woodwinds are graceful. Rouvali allows the trumpets to blare, but their later fanfares are trim and focused. The oboe is plaintive in the “signature” Scène, the clarinet liquid in the Pas de deux. The Waltz soloist has a cornettish vibrato.

The recording comes across best in the quieter passages, where the textures are open and clear. The climaxes can be strident.—Stephen Francis Vasta

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