Classical Music Recent Picks

August/September 2009

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The people's artist : Prokofiev's Soviet years, by Simon Morrison.
"Sergey Prokofiev was one of the twentieth century's greatest composers--and one of its greatest mysteries. In 1918, he escaped a Russia engulfed in revolution, eventually settling in Paris. Then, in 1936, he surprisingly returned to the increasingly brutal Soviet Union. There he seemed todisappear, the details of his life and work filtered by a security apparatus that kept Prokofiev--and his legacy--under careful guard.Until now. In The People's Artist, Simon Morrison draws on groundbreaking research to illuminate the life of this major composer, offering profound new insight into the master's work. Morrison was the first scholar to gain access to the composer's sealed files in the Russian State Archives, where heuncovered a wealth of previously unknown scores, unexpurgated speeches and writings, correspondence, and unopened journals and diaries. The story he found in these hoarded documents is one of lofty hopes and disillusionment, of personal and creative upheavals. Prokofiev seemed to thrive onuncertainty during his Paris years, stashing scores in suitcases and drafting librettos and scenarios on hotel letterhead. He stunned his fellow emigres by returning at a time when the All-Union Committee on Arts Affairs took command of all musical activities. At first, Stalin's regime treated himas a celebrity, but Morrison details how the bureaucratic machine ground him down with corrections and censorship (forcing rewrites of such major works as Romeo and Juliet and War and Peace), until it finally censured him in 1948, ending his career and breaking his health. Along the way, the authordeftly analyzes Prokofiev's music in light of these archival discoveries.In The People's Artist, Morrison combines truly groundbreaking research with astute musical analysis to create a stark new image of a great composer." (Global Books)

Daily Telegraph book of hymns, Ian Bradley.
"Here are the full original texts of 150 of the best-loved hymns in the English language, from the time of the Early Church to the late 20th century. Each is accompanied by a fascinating commentary, giving biographical details of the author, such as the Calvinist creator of "Rock of Ages" who once calculated that the average human sins 2,522,880,000 times; notes on the circumstances in which the hymn was written and how it has been used; and variant versions including the parodies of 'The Church's One Foundation' and 'What a friend we have in Jesus' sung by British soldiers in the trenches of Flanders in the First World War. This book should greatly assist all those responsible for choosing hymns in churches and places of worship, provide rich resources for bedside reading and meditation and provide useful background material for the millions who watch "Songs of Praise" on television every Sunday evening. Ian Bradley's commentaries combine wit, elegance and charm with a scholar's erudition and expert knowledge. He has enjoyed singing hymns and playing them on the piano for as long as he can remember. He attributes the origin of this enthusiasm to his father's enthusiasm for revivalist hymns and choruses and his own exposure as a boy to thundering hymns in the chapel of Tonbridge School. Among his other enthusiasms are Gilbert and Sullivan, European spas, hill walking and tennis." (Amazon.co.uk)

New CDs:

Kate Royal - Midsummer Night
"Kate Royal's second recording for EMI Classics is Midsummer Night, an atmospheric recital collection focusing on female characters in 20th century opera and operetta, reflecting their pain and ecstasy in love. The programme ranges from well known turn-of-the-century works by Dvorak (Song to the Moon from Rusalka) and Lehar (Vilja from The Merry Widow) to Midsummer Night, from the English composer William Alwyn's opera Miss Julie. Edward Gardner conducts the English National Opera Orchestra with guest appearances by Thomas Allen, Andrew Staples and the Crouch End Festival Chorus." (Gramophone Magazine, October 2008)

Arvo Part - In principio
"In recent years Arvo Part has written some significant works for larger forces mostly commissioned by major institutions for celebratory occasions. Most impressive is the dramatic 25-minute In Principio (2003) for mixed choir and symphony orchestra which sets to music the famous opening of St John's gospel, "In principio erat Verbum". In its five movements, "tintinnabuli" diatonicism is contrasted with sophisticated harmonic procedures, massive brass chords are juxtaposed with almost stoic calm in the choir. The purely orchestral La Sindone (The holy shroud), a highly expressive piece which mirrors the shroud's symbolic shine-through effects in delicate string textures, was premiered in Turin at the 2006 Winter Olympics whereas Caecilia, vergine romana for mixed choir and orchestra was a commission for Rome's jubilee in 2000. Da pacem Domine, one of Part's most serenely beautiful pieces, responded in a very subtle way to the 2004 terror attacks in Madrid's Atocha station. The piece, heard a cappella on the 2005 ECM release Lamentate, appears in an even more beautiful version for choir and strings. Two instrumental compositions complete the CD: the rhythmically energetic Mein Weg and Fur Lennart in memoriam, a still piece in homage to late Estonian president Lennart Georg Meri. Superbly performed and recorded, this CD is self-recommending to anyone interested in Part's recent work and his tentative ways forward from doctrinaire schematicisim." (Gramaphone Magazine)

Frank Bridge - Piano quintet
"Frank Bridge is one of those composers who has been generally dismissed for his 'Englishness' and is probably remembered best today as the teacher of Benjamin Britten. But this disc of chamber music will radically change this appraisal. It particularly reveals Bridge's strong French influence, the dance-like quality of his writing darkened with a brooding inspiration, and the music's dramatic and emotional heart. Three important and very different works are collected here: the elegant early Idylls, the ambitious Piano Quintet and the extraordinary String Quartet No 4, Bridge's last chamber work, written during a period of near-fatal illness, yet displaying a progressive, forward-looking musical language that shows the great range of this undervalued composer. This is an absolutely splendid disc, with powerful, committed performances that illuminate Frank Bridge's mastery of chamber music in two major scores, early and late, as well as the famous Idylls of 1906: programming that offers a fine introduction to Frank Bridge's astonishing stylistic range." (BBC Music Magazine)

Carl Friedrich Abel - The Drexel Manuscript.
"The fame that he enjoyed in his lifetime clearly hasn't served Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787) well in the two centuries since his death, at least until Hyperion's Gramophone Award in 2008. He was feted all over Europe both for his supreme skills as a performer of the viola da gamba as well as for the quality of his compositions, and was responsible (along with JC Bach) for setting up arguably the first series of subscription concerts in the history of Western music, the "Bach-Abel- Concerts". Even the prodigy that was Mozart benefited from Abel's teachings (and was claimed as the composer of one Abel's own symphonies). All this was known by keen minds of the time such as Charles Burney, JF Reichardt and Goethe and fortunately also, in the 21st century, by Paolo Pandolfo, who delivers here a scintillating rendition of Abel's ever-inventive music which ranges across Preludes, Adagios and sundry other dance forms.Where to place this 'late' music for the viola da gamba? Not Baroque and definitely heading in the direction of the classicism of Mozart, Haydn and even Beethoven. Or as Paolo Pandolfo - who adds dabs of his own highly-advanced improvisatory skills here and there - says, "Simply put, it is Music!". Muscular arpeggiata preludes cede to pizzicato dances of ineffable suavity, and a fugue of dazzling complexity. The sound is intoxicating, Pandolfo's expressivity and technique beyond praise." (BBC Music Magazine)

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