Frank Loesser: Guys and Dolls Sierra Boggess, Nathaniel Hackmann, Louise Dearman, David Seadon-Young et al, Sinfonia of London/John Wilson (Chandos)
Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls is one of the truly great Broadway musicals. Conductor John Wilson suggests that this 1950 score has endured because, in addition to having “great music, great lyrics and great book”, it’s hysterically funny. David Benedict’s booklet essay usefully traces the show’s genesis, playwright Jo Swerling’s adaptation of a short story by New York journalist and comic author Damon Runyon falling flat until radio scriptwriter Abe Burrows rewrote the book, adding elements from a second Runyon story. Loesser supplied both music and lyrics, brilliantly. There’s not a dud number in Guys and Dolls, every song containing rhyming couplets to die for, “Love is the thing that has licked’em./And it looks like Nathan’s just another victim,” a choice example. The scenario is ingenious, with gambler Sky Masterson challenged by Nathan Detroit to woo a Salvation Army sergeant, the main subplot concerning Nathan’s inability to commit to long-suffering girlfriend Adelaide.
I grew up listening to the 1982 National Theatre cast album, the production directed by Richard Eyre. Bob Hoskins. Julia Mackenzie and Ian Charleson are superb, but the backings often sound tinny and strident. Whereas Wilson’s set features Larry Moore’s new reconstructions of the lost original orchestrations, Moore basing his restoration on the mono original cast LP and the simplified arrangements made after the show’s premiere by copyist Mathilde Pincus. The results are beguiling; less punchy and brassy than, say, those used in the recent Nicholas Hytner London production, but full of warmth and colour. Listen to the bustling strings at the start of “Runyonland”, or the muted trumpets in “If I Were a Bell”. This is billed as a recording of the complete score so the fragments of music written to accompany scene changes and transitions are included, many of them ripely scored. And it’s fun to hear the nine-minute orchestral interlude which opens the Havana sequence.
Good casting adds to the fun: Nathaniel Hackmann plays it commendably straight as Sky, he and Sierra Boggess’s Sarah delivering a melting “I’ve Never Been in Love Before”. Boggess is tipsily terrific in “If I Were a Bell”, sung after her character has been tricked into necking Bacardi. David Seadon-Young as Nathan and Louise Dearman’s Adelaide give us a show-stopping “Sue Me”, and Damien Humbley’s Nicely-Nicely Johnson excels in “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat”. Sir Thomas Allen (!) drops by to sing “More I Cannot Wish You”, and nails it. Plus, having a crack chorus makes the big ensemble numbers spring into vivid life, as with the crowd in “The Oldest Established” audibly swelling as successive crap shooters stroll onstage. Chandos’s production values are high-end, the discs in a natty box with a thick booklet containing essays, cast biographies and a full libretto. This is a seriously impressive recording of a bona fide masterpiece, and one of the best things Wilson has done.
Brahms: Klavierstücke András Schiff (piano) (ECM New Series)
Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1, Klavierstücke op. 118 Francesco Piemontesi (piano) Leipzig Gewandhausorchester/ Manfred Honeck (Pentatone)
Brahms: Violin Concerto/Symphony No. 4 Shunske Sato (violin), De Nieuwe Philharmonie Utrecht/Johannes Leertouwer (Glaux)
This flurry of new Brahms interpretations in the autumn could be an algorithm at work...or it might just be a coincidence. Of the three releases here, the one which has the idea of the music being “autumnal” most to the fore – and also the one likely to generate the most interest – is András Schiff’s two-disc set of solo piano music. The majority of Schiff’s programme here was written in 1892 and 1893, when Brahms was turning sixty. We hear the complete sequence of twenty late pieces of Opp. 116 through to Op. 119.
The mood of concentration from Schiff is always deep. The recordings were made in early 2021 (in the spring), on an 1859 Blüthner in the Beethovenhaus in Bonn, and Schiff provides lengthy, insightful and detailed booklet notes piece by piece, pointing out their contrasts and intricacies. Sometimes Schiff in his note will invite us to enjoy a piece, and play it with lightness, as in Op. 116/2 where he writes “This is as Hungarian as it gets”. But there are also moments in this set where the determination to bring out the rhythmic instability makes it harder going. Such deliberate faltering (in, say Op. 119/2) is an acquired taste, and can make one yearn for a simpler, more lyrical, more flowing approach, maybe less aggrandizing, and a little friendlier to the ear of the listener.
That wish is fulfilled in Swiss pianist Francesco Piemontesi’s interpretations of the Op. 118 set on his new Pentatone album. There is a real sense of flow, of elegant dance, and even of groove in, say, his recording of the A Major Intermezzo Op.118/2. I also enjoyed his vision, grace and thoughtfulness in the first Piano Concerto with the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester. There is some beautiful piano playing and interplay with the orchestra, particularly in the last movement.
The biggest surprise, however, comes in the disc from Utrecht, and above all in the first movement of the fourth symphony. Conductor Johannes Leertouwer has both violin sections scooping and sliding their way through the opening tune. I found it hard to like, and – we take health and safety seriously here at TAD – readers of a delicate disposition probably do need to be warned. Careful reading does reveal a justification – or maybe it’s a warning. On the seventh page of his eleven-page booklet essay (sic) Leertouwer we find: “The orchestra became a laboratory in which expressive tools such as modification of rhythm and tempo and portamento were re-invented and integrated into our performances.” Leertouwer bases his theories on his academic studies of the way Fritz Steinbach and the Meiningen Orchestra interpreted Brahms under the composer’s guidance.
I did enjoy the Violin Concerto, however. Shunske Sato has the pedigree of having been taught and mentored in his youth by the great Dorothy Delay at the end of her extraordinary life as a teacher. He is a fine soloist, with a wonderful tone and a sense of the architecture and beauty of the piece, keeping bravura in check and serving the music impeccably. His first movement cadenza truly is a thing of beauty in every way. Sebastian Scotney
Mahler: Symphony No. 5 Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra/Sir Donald Runnicles (Reference Recordings)
Before diving into this new Mahler 5 I dipped into Bruno Walter’s 1947 New York Philharmonic performance. It lasts just over an hour but doesn’t feel rushed. While this one, with Wyoming’s Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra conducted by Sir Donald Runnicles, takes 73 minutes but never feels slow. Like Walter, Runnicles knows how to make the piece cohere; tempo changes invariably feel natural and he has a superb ear for orchestral colour. The first movement’s brassy pileups are glorious, as is the trumpet fanfare’s last gasp in the final minutes, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Principal Trumpet Thomas Hooten playing with a rare blend of sensitivity and swagger. We really hear the woodwind cries at the start of the second movement, and the long cello threnody five minutes in is beautifully phrased, Runnicles’ operatic expertise aurally apparent. The spooky coda that follows the brass choral is ear-tickling, prefiguring the scherzo of Mahler’s 7th Symphony.
The huge scherzo doesn’t drag here, Gail Williams’s horn obbligato up with the best on disc, and the lovely “Adagietto” gets a near-perfect performance, lasting just over ten minutes (Walter takes just eight). Mahler’s upbeat finale isn’t driven too hard here, Runnicles avoiding the hysteria that some conductors bring to it and ensuring that the busy contrapuntal sections never sound muddy. Marvellous, in other words; you’d never guess that this was a part-time summer festival orchestra, and the live recording, assembled from performances given in July 2024, is rich and vivid. Plus, the booklet notes and acknowledgements are printed in a font that it’s possible to read without recourse to a magnifying glass. An excellent new Mahler 5.
Monteverdi: 1610 Vespers I Fagiolini/Robert Hollingworth (Coro)
This year has seen the groundbreaking vocal ensemble I Fagiolini mark its 40th birthday with a tour called We’re Not Dead Yet. And they make this clear in actions as well as nomenclature, following up a recent series of brilliant and garlanded releases of the polychoral masses of Orazio Benevoli with this landmark recording of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers. This odd and much misunderstood work has been championed by I Fagiolini and its founder and engine Robert Hollingworth in a stripped-down one-to-a-part version that challenges traditional, large-scale realisations. Last year I reviewed such a performance at Kings Place (they are doing it there again as an album launch next week and I am sorry not to be able to be there) and found the cut-down interpretation very convincing. And that is important: Robert Hollingworth is a scholar of this repertoire and can justify his decisions on historical and academic grounds, but as he would concede, the real test of these decisions must be whether they work as an aesthetic experience. Only then is it worth doing.
And I can report that it very much does, on record as much as in live concert. The watchword of the recording is intimacy, the 12 singers and 19 players drawing the listener in, particularly in the solos and duets, which are performed with the utmost loving care. The 1610 Vespers were, like Bach’s B Minor Mass, more CV than liturgical work, and both demonstrate their respective composers at the height of their powers. Monteverdi sits on the cusp of the old style – the “stile antico” – giving way to the modern world of basso continuo and opera aria. But he also shows himself as a master madrigalist, albeit in a manner that was acceptable to the church. So among the arias is the incomparable Nicholas Mulroy in “Nigra Sum”, accompanied by harpist Aileen Henry in a reading that is endlessly flexible and very touching. Likewise Ciara Hendrick and Julia Doyle in “Pulchra es”, sounding so simple but with so much going on under the hood. Of the “madrigals” “Laudate, pueri” dances and sparkles. Then there are the spectacular movements accompanied by the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, whose bright colours (exaggerated by Hollingworth’s decision to record at A=492Hz, a tone higher than the music is commonly heard) dominate the glorious opening movement and the stirring “Nisi Dominus”.
This triumphant recording is very much not the final word on this piece – Hollingworth writes that “our innovations will raise a few eyebrows. We… enjoy being part of a history of recordings in which musicians and researchers have come to different conclusions” – but it is surely the summit of this particular approach. Whether you like this interpretation or not, it couldn’t have been done better. The performers are superb and work as a unit of single mind, and it is all held together by Hollingworth, the force of nature who makes it all happen. Bernard Hughes
Bloom New Note Orchestra/Conal Gleeson (Newnote)
The best introduction to this engaging and eclectic album might be to watch a brief YouTube video (search for “Short documentary about the New Note Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra collaboration”), where members of this Brighton-based ensemble talk warmly about what the project meant to them. New Note supports people in recovery through arts activities, and, to celebrate the charity’s tenth anniversary, members of the LPO along with conductor Conal Gleeson collaborated with musicians recovering from addiction to create, perform and record ten new orchestral pieces. Peter, one of the group’s percussionists, reveals in the film that “when you get sober, the world can be a scary place,” Gleeson affirming that when the players enter the rehearsal room, they’re seen as musicians and not addicts. If you’re reading this review you’re presumably aware of music’s transformative powers, its ability to make us feel healthier, happier and better connected.
That the pieces sound so polished is testament to the hard work that went into the project. The longest track, "Beside the White", is quite something, a luminous 17-minute epic which never outstays its welcome, the tricky metrical changes posing no problems for the players. "Angel's Wings" has a whiff of 70s prog-rock about it, in a good way, and I like the way that "Lumi's Theme" builds over its six-minute span. Electric guitars and keyboards are seamlessly integrated into the ensemble's sound, though I'm less convinced by the inclusion of speech in "Dell's Miniature" and "Hannah's Dance". "Right to Riot" is a blast, a nervy 7/8 dance with a hint of Steve Reich in its busier sections, the playing commendably tight throughout. "The Wood" offers calm respite, and the ensemble's bandoneon-free take on Piazzolla's "Libertango" makes for an uplifting coda. Listen to this, and if you're impressed you can visit the New Note website and make a donation.
Ever Changing Skies Recordare/Harry Bradford (Resonus)
Recordare is one of a decent number of recently-established chamber choirs operating in the UK at the moment, speaking to the quality of both young singers and conductors around at the moment, and to the entrepreneurial instincts of that generation of choral leaders. Founded in 2018 by Harry Bradford and sisters Kirsty and Danni O’Neill, Recordare has its roots in Genesis Sixteen, the early-career artists programme of the Sixteen, and Ever Changing Skies is their first album. It is features truly excellent singing (with both the O’Neill’s in the sopranos) and some interesting programming, with four new commissions featuring (including the O’Neills popping up again as composers). Harry Bradford conducts the 18-voice choir with assurance and fluency the result is a first-rate debut album.
The programming follows the well-worn conceit of progressing through the seasons of the year, with four or five short pieces for each. The commissions are scattered throughout a programme of mostly 20th and 21st century repertoire, although Heinrich Schütz and Johannes Brahms are also represented. The O’Neills' setting of A Red, Red Rose has a melody passed around the sections and elaborated with overlapping accompanimental ribbons. Lillie Harris’s From Tiny Beginnings uses a self-penned text to explore the emergence of life in spring through music that begins astringently before becoming richer and more refulgent. Anna Semple’s wordless Old gold song of the almost finished year boasts a springy rhythmic energy, extended vocal techniques and a fine solo by Kirsty O’Neill, while Ben Ponniah’s A Winter Bluejay is more straightforwardly celebratory and primary-coloured.
Of other tracks, I enjoyed Arne Mellnäs’s bracing Sweet Spring, which the choir tackled with vim and gusto, and Ola Gjeilo’s dark-hued, sombre Autumn, lustrous in tone. But perhaps my favourite was David McGregor’s new take on the Sumer is icumen in text, which had a terrific forward momentum and urgency, the singers relishing the demands of the fast declamation and metrical games as an opportunity to demonstrate their virtuosity. This is a thoroughly recommended release. Bernard Hughes
Resound: Music by British Composers Alexandra Dariescu (piano), Alex Mitchell (viola), Rachael Clegg (cor anglais), Manchester Camerata/John Andrews (Resonus)
The brilliant writer on neglected music, particularly that of women composers, Leah Broad, is behind a programme called Unheard Heritage, which aims to make recordings of pieces that have, for reasons of history, been unrecorded. Resound is the fourth album in the series, following the orchestral works of Grace Williams, Ethel Smyth’s opera Der Wald and the orchestral works of Avril Coleridge-Taylor (which I reviewed in this column last year). Her right-hand man on all these has been the conductor John Andrews, whose commitment to promoting this music is admirable, when so many conductors take the easy route of revisiting mainstream classics.
That said, the first (and biggest) piece on this release is relatively well represented in the canon. Doreen Carwithen’s 1952 Concerto for Piano and Strings has previously been recorded twice, by Howard Shelley in 1997 (on an all-Carwithen disc that was well ahead of its time) and the estimable Samantha Ege in 2025, in which year it was also heard at the Proms, played by Alexandra Dariescu. It feels like a piece worthy of more than one recording – and I am delighted to hear Dariescu’s muscular and appealing interpretation – but I wonder if within the terms of Unheard Heritage something really unknown could have taken its place? Nonetheless, the piece comes over well, with Dariescu well supported by the Manchester Camerata strings in a bracing half-hour concerto that is extremely challenging for the pianist. In classic concerto style, the up-tempo outer movements are separated by a slow movement in which Carwithen, a pioneer of women working in film composition, lets in a hint of Hollywood lyricism, always darkly tinged.
Leah Broad’s book Quartet, a biography of four women composers of whom Carwithen is one, paints a portrait of her as a lost talent, giving up composition to support her secret lover, and later husband, William Alwyn, who had taught her at the Royal Academy of Music. He is represented here by the 10-minute tone poem Autumn Legend, which is probably the least interesting piece on the album (its inclusion might be explained by the sponsorship of the William Alwyn Foundation). Rachael Clegg’s cor anglais playing is poised and characterful, but the piece is underwhelming. Ruth Gipps’s Jane Grey, featuring violinist Alex Mitchell, is a student piece and modest in its proportions and ambition, but is evidence of a composer who would go on to bigger and better things. For me, though, most enjoyable was Elizabeth Maconchy’s Life Story, which comes from the other end of her life, written just before her 80th birthday in 1987. It has an energy and invention that belies her advanced years, and shows a skill in writing for strings always evident in her fine string quartet sequence. Maconchy always ploughed a difficult furrow – too “difficult” for mainstream concert-goers but not in the serialist camp either – and if this Life Story is taken as biographical, it speaks of an uncompromising pursuit of a musical ideal, even when that was not the easy path. Bernard Hughes
