Latest releases reviewed
COWELL: CONTINUUM PORTRAITS 1 & 2 Contuum Naxos American Classics 8.559192 & 8.559193 ***
These two Naxos CDs offer good selections of the smaller works of Henry Cowell (1897-1965), played by members of the New York ensemble Continuum. This highly-influential, experimental US composer was of Irish extraction - his grandfather was Dean of Kildare Cathedral. He invented the technique of tone clusters in his teens, playing the piano with his forearms in 1913. He wrote pieces to be played directly on the piano strings, most famously, The Banshee of 1925. And he was a major proselytiser for new music . His later work embraces influences from world music as well as an intentional primitivism - the New Grove characterises him as both "Modernist maverick" and "postmodern prophet". His output of nearly 1,000 pieces is uneven, the result, perhaps, of a mind more stimulated by enquiry than conclusion. Cowell's fascinating music is here presented in valuably sound but not always highly polished performances.www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
STRAVINSKY: DUO CONCERTANT; SUITE ITALIENNE; BACH: PARTITA NO 1; SONATA NO 1 Leonidas Kavakos (violin), Péter Nagy (piano) ECM New Series 1855 ***
How do you like your Stravinsky, romantically expressive, or meticulously dry, cool as the proverbial cucumber? If it's the latter, then this is just the disc for you. Kavakos and Nagy are quite prepared to don the workmanlike overalls of Stravinsky's neo-classicism and wear them unadorned, without any trappings to nudge the style closer to the musical mainstream. The effect is to make the music sound at once more individual and more modern than usual. The solo Bach is in the same mould, tonally even leaner, deft in articulation, the curves of the rubato negotiated with a subtle ease to make many another performance seem gauche by comparison. Paradoxically, however, I suspect not everyone is going to relish the stimulation of solo Bach playing that sounds as genuinely stressless as this. www.ecmrecords.com
Michael Dervan
DECCA RECORDINGS 1964-1975, VOL 2 Leopold Stokowski Decca Original Masters 475 6090 (6 CDs) ***
From the start of his recording career Leopold Stokowski showed an experimental spirit in the recording studio to match his frequent exploration of different physical layouts for the orchestra in the concert hall, his role being as much sound designer in the modern sense as conductor per se. The Phase Four recordings he made for Decca are often hyperactive in sonic engineering, just as Stokowski himself can be in his re-touchings of orchestration or his exercise of the blue pen. The music-making, characterful and vital, sometimes wilful and controversial, is let down by what sounds like frequent overmodulation in the original tapes. The repertoire covers Beethoven (Symphonies 5, 7, 9, plus the Egmont Overture), Schubert (the Unfinished), Brahms (Symphony No. 1), Wagner (miscellaneous excerpts), Rimsky-Korsakov (Sheherazade, Capriccio espagnol), Tchaikovsky (1812 Overture, Marche Slave), Mussorgsky (Night on the Bare Mountain, Boris Godunov Symphonic Synthesis), and Borodin (Polovtsian Dances). www.deccaclassics.com
Michael Dervan
NAZARETH: TANGOS, WALTZES AND POLKAS Iara Behs (piano) Naxos 8.557687 ***
No less a figure than Villa-Lobos described Ernesto Nazareth (1863-1934) as "the incarnation of the Brazilian soul". Nazareth had his first polka published at the age of 14, wrote over 200 dances in all, and during the early 1920s played piano at the Odeon Cinema, where Villa-Lobos had earlier been cellist. Brazilian pianist Iara Behs's new CD brings together 17 tunefully appealing and rhythmically alert pieces by a composer who might best be thought of as a sort of Brazilian Scott Joplin. She plays with plenty of spirit, but tends to lack variety of touch in her sometimes over-weighted accompaniments. www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan
