Musica post-romantica

Consultando il libretto di “Diffusion” non verremo a sapere molto del Verona Quartet. E la biografia sul sito dell'ensemble non aggiunge altre informazioni significative. I quattro musicisti (Jonathan Ong e Dorothy Ro, violini; Abigail Rojansky, viola; Jonathan Dormand, violoncello) di questo quartetto nordamericano, in pianta stabile dall'agosto 2020 al prestigioso Oberlin College and Conservatory, vogliono mantenersi in qualche modo misteriosamente celati?Per saperne di più, occorre immergersi nella musica, e che magnifica sorpresa! L'incredibile piacere dei suoni, delle texture, dei timbri. Ciò che colpisce immediatamente durante l'ascolto di questo originale programma - che unisce tre ammalianti quartetti dell'inizio del XX secolo nella sintesi estetica europea più suggestiva di quel periodo - è l'equilibrio insito nell'ensemble. La polifonia è di una chiarezza senza precedenti; gli attacchi si distinguono nella loro nitidezza, accattivante e morbida; le trame sonore sono costellate di sfumature sempre nuove, che tengono l'ascoltatore sull'orlo della sedia. Basta ascoltate il bellissimo Allegro moderato dello String Quartet di Ravel (1903), veramente morbido, tanto nel fraseggio quanto nei respiri, e nelle intenzioni espressive. La dolcezza di Ravel è anche e soprattutto una storia di tenerezza. Impressionante!La ricerca di precisione dei quattro membri del Verona Quartet non sfocia mai nel territorio della rigida oggettività o della fredda analisi; Se il Quartetto di Ravel chiude questo album con alcuni momenti di rara poesia, nel suono del Verona Quartet c'è sempre qualcosa di leggermente malizioso (come nel II. Assez vif) che getta una luce insolita sulle ambivalenze espressive delle Intimate Letters di Janáček (gennaio-febbraio 1928), in equilibrio tra il nostalgico e il giocoso. E il Quartetto di Szymanowski? Il Verona Quartet lo colloca esattamente tra due mondi, associandolo tanto all'ascendenza viennese quanto allo spirito popolare slavo: le ampie linee melodiche (Moderato dolce e tranquillo) e il gioco polifonico (Lento) si irradiano con lo stesso slancio dello spirito di rottura che lascia spazio a degli attriti armonici spesso pungenti (Vivace, scherzando). Un album altamente raccomandato. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel has recorded Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in E flat major ("Symphony of a Thousand") once before. In 2012, he took the work's subtitle (which is not Mahler's) at its word and performed the work with a giant ensemble of more than a thousand players and singers, expanded to an awe-inspiring 1,400 in a Venezuelan performance a few weeks later. Those performances featured not only Dudamel's Los Angeles Philharmonic but the Simon Bolívar Orchestra of Venezuela, plus several massed choirs. Here, the forces are cut down to a more usual 350 or so, and the performance, at the orchestra's usual Walt Disney Hall, is several minutes quicker than the earlier version. It's a good example of Dudamel's work in this phase of his career. He's no longer the wunderkind from the south, compelled to produce miraculous performances, but can, and indeed must, think through a work in greater detail, and so he does. The earth-shattering moments are there, but they move past more quickly. Of course, one's reactions to this will depend on one's conception of the work, which Mahler himself, to some extent, conceived of as being over the top. However, the quieter passages emerge more clearly here, and the Philharmonic's players dispatch them with crackling precision. The three choirs involved have a remarkable sense of cohesion, fully justifying their Grammy nomination (eventually, an award) for Best Choral Performance. The soloists, led by the resonant bass Morris Robinson, are wonderful. This album earned a second Grammy nomination (for Best Engineering), and this too will inspire varying reactions. The live 2019 performance was recorded in a kind of surround sound that to these ears favors the soloists (they seem to be coming at the listener from all sides) but slightly muddies the big choral passages. Listeners are invited to sample for themselves; the effect is clearly audible, without the need for high-end audio equipment. At any rate, the performance hangs together uncommonly well. Those in search of maximal impact may wish to go back to Leonard Bernstein's epochal recording of this most extreme of Mahler's works. © TiVo

Reynaldo Hahn's opera L'île du rêve bears the date 1898 but was begun considerably earlier when the teenage composer was a student of Massenet at the Paris Conservatory. It was based on an 1880 autobiographical novel by Pierre Loti, detailing the author's liaison with a 15-year-old Polynesian girl; the novel was also a partial source for Léo Delibes' Lakmé. The novel was a prime document of French colonialism, but in the hands of Hahn and librettists André Alexandre and Georges Hartmann, it is toned down into a lightly exotic short opera. There is a comic Chinese rival suitor, but L'île du rêve is not an operetta, although it occasionally leans in that direction. It is filled with strong romantic melodies and a natural way of setting speech in song that brings to mind Puccini more than any French composer, although it is not clear how much Puccini Hahn had heard. His manner here will be familiar to anyone who treasures Hahn's mélodies. Historical performance specialist Hervé Niquet leads the Münchner Rundfunkorchester and his Choeur du Concert Spirituel in a strong performance that catches the liveliness of the score. His work is enhanced by a cast of singers, led by Hélène Guilmette as the young Princess Mahénu and Cyrille Dubois as Loti, who respect the modest dimensions of the score. L'île du rêve here receives its world premiere recording, and it has been performed live less than a dozen times and only in one production since the 1940s. It is certainly of interest to anyone drawn by French opera and its context, but the unexpected thing is that it stands easily on its own merits. © TiVo

Is the imitation of rolling thunder, howling winds and bleating sheep a form of musical composition worthy of the name? Can we take seriously a composer who boasts of being able to ‘set a restaurant menu to music, if need be’? These were the kinds of questions that Richard Strauss, one of the most virtuosic composers of the so-called ‘programme music’, had to ask himself. His answer: ‘I am a musician from head to toe; for me, all “programmes” are merely incentives to invent new forms, nothing else.’ The NDR Orchestra, conducted by Krzysztof Urbański, has chosen to devote its sixth Alpha Classics recording to three of Richard Strauss’s most famous symphonic poems: Also sprach Zarathustra Op. 30, Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche Op. 28 and Don Juan Op. 20. © Alpha Classics

Some music lovers are familiar with Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne, Liszt’s symphonic poem based on Victor Hugo. But who knows that, ten years earlier, César Franck was inspired by the same poem? This early piece is recorded here by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France conducted by Mikko Franck. They couple it with the famous Symphony in D minor, dedicated to Henri Duparc and premiered, without much success, in 1889. Even if the score is quite well-known today, in the end it is performed quite rarely, which is a pity, because it really has all the characteristics of a masterpiece: melodic and harmonic inspiration, refined orchestration, variety of mood, an ingenious structure. Two works by Franck ... by Franck! This album marks the beginning of a collaboration between Alpha and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, which will focus on very varied repertories. © Alpha Classics

Sibelius' Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43, had an almost Beethovenian recording frequency in the 2000s and 2010s, with several new recordings appearing every year, and young Scandinavian conductors had their work cut out for them to stand out from the crowd. It is no problem, however, for Santtu-Matias Rouvali, who has performed the work with several groups and honed it into a set of large lines that are unusually coherent and powerful. His reading of the work with the Philharmonia Orchestra was one of the leading factors propelling him to the position of principal conductor with that venerable group. It's easy to see what they liked: this is a fresh and accomplished Sibelius Second. He was already chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra when this album appeared in 2020, and the group is well under his control here. Rouvali runs a bit counter to type: this is not a Sibelius that puts the listener in mind of Scandinavian pine landscapes. Rather, this is a Sibelius still under the influence of Tchaikovsky, with the swelling rising third at the beginning of the first movement a bit restless, and the entire movement, faster than most other readings, having an uneasy tone. The slow movement is a bit more typical in its tempo, but again, it has an unsettled quality, and the Vivacissimo scherzo is high-speed and brilliant. Some may want more sentiment in the finale, which became one of the great Finnish patriotic numbers, but Rouvali has it unfold in a single compelling motion. The Suite from King Christian II perhaps benefits less from Rouvali's unsentimental approach, but that is a small complaint compared to the accomplishment of a young conductor who has forged a major Sibelius Second early in his career. © TiVo

 

20 anni e una spregiudicata quantità di talento. Il violoncellista afro-britannico Sheku Kanneh-Mason ha tre idoli: i violoncellisti Jacqueline du Pré e Mstislav Rostropovitch e la leggenda del reggae Bob Marley, tre forze passionali ed estroverse. La sua carriera è realmente decollata in seguito alla sua performance al matrimonio del principe Harry e Meghan Markle, nel 2018. Uscito nello stesso anno, il suo album Inspiration ha battuto ogni record di vendite nel Regno Unito, e Nottingham - la sua città natale - ha persino intitolato un autobus con il suo nome. Nell'ambito di una collaborazione con l'etichetta Decca, è tornato con un nuovo lavoro, questa volta dedicato al famoso Concerto per Violoncello in Mi minore, Op. 85, accompagnato dalla London Symphony Orchestra, guidata dal loro nuovo direttore, Sir Simon Rattle. Un sodalizio di prima classe che restituisce una visione poetica, quasi cameristica, di questo noto concerto. Reso celebre dalle versioni di Jacqueline du Pré (prima con Barbirolli e successivamente con il marito Daniel Barenboim), il Concerto di Elgar è accompagnato in scaletta da altri brani più brevi, che una volta erano popolari tra i solisti e gli amanti della musica del secolo scorso, e che le generazioni più giovani stanno riportando in auge. L'album include arrangiamenti di musica tradizionale e opere di Bloch, Elgar, Bridge, Fauré e Klengel. Questo album vi condurrà dall’incommensurabile fino all'infinitamente piccolo grazie allo straordinario virtuosismo di questo giovane e brillante talento. © François Hudry/Qobuz