fri 29/03/2024

Classical CDs Weekly: Nyman, Hallé Orchestra, Vaughan Williams | reviews, news & interviews

Classical CDs Weekly: Nyman, Hallé Orchestra, Vaughan Williams

Classical CDs Weekly: Nyman, Hallé Orchestra, Vaughan Williams

Featuring neglected British orchestral music and a contemporary opera

This week we’ve some neglected British orchestral music played by the UK’s oldest professional orchestra, including a spectacular work later championed by Britten. An offbeat disc of concertos for two pianos provides scintillating entertainment. And there’s a contemporary opera by a composer best known for his film soundtracks.

Michael Nyman: Facing Goya Soloists, Michael Nyman Band/Michael Nyman (MN Records)

Michael Nyman’s jaunty brand of Minimalism is still powerfully evocative – memories of late-night screenings of impenetrable Peter Greenaway films came flooding back within seconds of starting to listen to Facing Goya. Plot wise, there’s a lot going on, and those chugging rhythms do keep us interested. Nyman’s music is often harmonically lively, never lapsing into New Age stasis. Victoria Hardie’s occasionally baffling libretto begins with an unsung account of the painter’s body being exhumed years after his death, minus its head. What follows is the story of the modern-day Art Banker’s voyage through time – rescuing Goya’s skull in 1828, travelling back via the eugenics-obsessed 1930s to a present where Goya’s DNA is used to create a clone of the artist.

All of which seems overheated and portentous in print, but Nyman does fashion a witty, entertaining piece from unpromising source material. It’s a work of many incidental pleasures – the insidiously catchy "Leonardo says" aria in Act I, or the resuscitated Goya asking the scientists why he couldn’t have been left in peace in the third act. Contralto Hilary Summers’s low contralto is perfect for the key role of the Art Banker, and the small multitasking supporting cast, notably sopranos Winnie Böwe and Marie Angel, are excellent. Nyman’s own chamber ensemble provides punchy, incisive backing under the composer’s direction in a reissue of a recording dating from 2003.

HalleEnglish Spring: Music by Bax, Delius and Bridge Hallé Orchestra/Sir Mark Elder (Hallé)

Reviving neglected works is always a bit of a gamble; all too often it becomes clear just why they were forgotten in the first place. Sir Mark Elder resuscitates three rarely performed pieces on this new Hallé recording, and the results justify the effort. Arnold Bax’s Spring Fire is a baggy five-movement programmatic symphony describing "the first uprush and impulse of spring in the woods". It could be a cowpat pastoral response to a more famous Stravinsky work. And, while you’re listening to it, it does sound absolutely fantastic – the soft dripping rain of the opening, slowly yielding to a central section full of whooping brass and a seductive slow movement. In terms of orchestral technique, it’s colourful, mercurial and confident, even if Bax’s melodies are never quite memorable enough.

Frank Bridge’s Enter Spring famously impressed the young Britten at its 1927 premiere – a 20-minute symphonic poem, which the younger composer described as "a riot of colour and harmony". The quiet moments linger longest, particularly the soft birdcalls and chiming percussion 11 minutes in. The coda is a riot of pealing bells and organ-like sonorities, with exultation levels suggesting the close of Janáček's Taras Bulba. The two shorter Delius works charm. Idylle de printemps is a fragrant, kitschy miniature, and The March of Spring sounds lovely but is instantly forgettable. Brilliant orchestral playing throughout and ripe sound.

VWillainsVaughan Williams, McDonald and Suesse: Concertos for Two Pianos Beatrice and Christina Long; Eskisehir Greater Municipal Symphony Orchestra/Patrick Souillot (Sono Luminus)

Dana Suesse studied piano under Alexander Siloti (who’d been taught by Liszt) and was a composition student of Nadia Boulanger. She composed music for Paul Whiteman’s band and also wrote popular songs. She died, forgotten, in 1987, and her 1942 Concerto in E minor for Two Pianos is a real find. Opening with what sounds like a musical depiction of someone being slipped a mickey before rapidly diving into classic film noir territory, it’s cogent, lucid and idiomatically scored, with a brooding slow movement which hints at just how sophisticated a composer Suesse was. It’s followed by Harl McDonald’s uproarious, jazzy 1936 Concerto for Two Pianos, containing a brilliant last-movement Mexican Juarezca.

Vaughan Williams’s Concerto for Two Pianos is a 1946 revision of a single piano original. Two soloists provide a better, more percussive foil for the dense orchestral writing and at times it’s as if Bartók had upped sticks and moved to the Cotswolds. It’s dourer and more enigmatic than the Suesse and McDonald works, though full of marvellous things, notably a haunting, downbeat close. At first glance, a compendium of obscure two-piano concertos played by Taiwanese sisters with a provincial Turkish orchestra might seem a risky proposition. But this is one of the most enjoyable releases I’ve heard all year – the performances are alive with missionary zeal, and it’s exciting to hear Patrick Souillot’s orchestra let rip with such abandon. Excellent production and sleeve notes too.

The Long sisters talk about the recording

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