Schumann: Manfred Overture; Konzertstuck for four horns; Symphony No 2. Philharmonia/Christian Thielemann (DG)
The much-hyped Christian Thielemann opens his Schumann disc with a heavily finger-printed account of the Byron-inspired Manfred Overture. It's a leisurely performance, butit's not the slowness that bothers; it's the woolliness of the conducting, which recurrently intrudes to cause the music-making to sit down. If concentration on melodic elongation is what you're looking for in Schumann, then Thielemann is probably your man. The unnamed horn quartet in the rarely-performed Konzertstuck is wellgroomed and often pointed. But, mostly, the resonantly-recorded Thielemann seems set on a misguided Karajanish course of smoothness and sweetness.
By Michael Dervan
Roberto Gerhard 6. Anna Cors (soprano), Francesc Garrigosa (baritone), Coral Carmina, Barcelona SO/Edmon Colomor (Auvidis Montaigne)
The Catalan composer Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) seems set, on disc at any rate, to become Spain's most celebrated composer since Manuel de Falla. Like Falla, Gerhard studied in Barcelona with Felipe Pedrell, founder of Spanish musical nationalism, and later in Vienna and Berlin with Schoenberg. The colourfully-textured pieces here were written between 1928 and 1941 and were all inspired by folk-music. Catalonia's national dance is celebrated in two Sardanas, the second involving a surreal conflict of pitches between orchestral instruments and piercing, reedy xirimias. The rewards of the cantata L'Alta Naixenca del Rei En Jaume and two sets of orchestral songs (one a centenary tribute to Pedrell), are limited by the lack of texts.
By Michael Dervan
Roberto Gerhard: Symphony No 3; Piano Concerto; Epithalamion. Geoffrey Tozer (piano), BBCSO/Matthias Bamert (Chandos)
Chandos focus on the later, exploratory Gerhard, when the composer had joined the ranks of the international avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s. The Symphony No 3, Col- lages (1960) for orchestra and tape, was inspired by the experience of sunrise on a transatlantic flight approaching the Irish coast, and traces the sequence of a day from dawn to darkness. Both Collages and Epithalamion (1966) show Gerhard at his most texturally rich and challenging. The 1951 Piano Concerto is almost Honegger-ish; A busy but somehow subdued piece, its finale embodies a peculiar identification between the Spanish Folia tune and God save the Queen.
By Michael Dervan
