The latest releases reviewed
MOZART: SYMPHONIES 40, 41 (JUPITER) Manchester Camerata/Douglas Boyd Avie AV 2107 *****
Douglas Boyd made a strong impression indeed when he conducted Mozart's G minor Symphony with the ICO at the NCH in April. And here, now, is a live recording of the same work, paired with the Jupiter Symphony, from a concert given with the Manchester Camerata at the city's Bridgewater Hall last February. The playing has the characteristic of fine chamber music-making, with no player or orchestral group hogging the limelight at the expense of anyone else. The style is selfless but not austere. The rhythmic spring is light and strong, and the ease with which significant musical detail is captured and communicated is most impressive. The sometimes astonishing clarity of dialogue and contrapuntal interplay is achieved not so much by emphasis as de-emphasis. The music-making may be small in scale, but the potency is high. www.avierecords.com
Michael Dervan
This disc collection of short pieces opens and closes with imitations: Sulkhan Tsint- sadze's Chonguri evokes the Georgian lute of the same name, and cellist Thomas Demenga's student composition New York Honk recreates the sounds of Manhattan traffic. The disc is in fact an unusual assemblage of encore pieces, including Bach chorales with accordion accompaniment, some late Liszt (La lugubre gondola), transcriptions of Fauré and Chopin, original Webern (teenage and mature), and some old-fashioned, virtuoso high-jinks in Gaspar Cassadó's Danse du diable vert. It's an attractive and imaginative selection, played with the kind of affection that probably brought it into being in the first place. Demenga is well supported by Anzellotti and Larcher. www.ecmrecords.com
Michael Dervan
VIVALDI: 5 VIOLIN CONCERTOS Giuliano Carmignola, Venice Baroque Orchestra/Andrea Marcon Archiv Produktion 477 6005 ****
Vivaldi has long been a baroque favourite, yet, as Olivier Fourés points out in sleeve note for this new disc, some 40 of his violin concertos remain unrecorded. After all, there are nearly 250 in total, and no one would expect all of them to be of the same high standard. Never mind: the five rarities recorded here (RV331 in G minor, RV190 in C, RV325 in G minor, RV217 in D, RV303 in G) have the abundant, toe-tapping vitality and freedom of invention that have made Vivaldi such a popular composer. Giuliano Carmignola and the period instruments' players of the Venice Baroque Orchestra, directed from the harpsichord by Andrea Marcon, strut, leap, gambol, gyrate and flutter with the ceaseless, sure-fire energy that the music demands. www.dgclassics.com
Michael Dervan
SCHMIDT: SYMPHONY NO 4; VARIATIONS ON A HUSSAR'S SONG London Philharmonic/Franz Welser-Möst EMI Classics Encore 355 6932 ****
The late-Romantic Austrian composer Franz Schmidt (1874-1939) is one of those composers whose work has not yet made much headway in concert programmes outside of the German-speaking world. His advocates view the last of his four symphonies, written in 1932-33 as a requiem for his daughter, as his finest. Schmidt has been described as the "only real successor to Bruckner - in so far as there is one at all," and the symphony does essay a kind of Brucknerian gravitas, while showing the influence of the work of Strauss and Reger. The monumentality of effect is achieved partly through the fact that the material can incline towards the featureless - it's the mood and the rich orchestral handling which hold things together. The upbeat Variations make a nice foil to the elegiac symphony in this bargain re-issue of Franz Welser-Möst's sympathetic 1994 recordings. www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan
