Pick of the week
Debussy — Orchestral Works
Royal Scottish National Orchestra, cond Stéphane Denève
Chandos CHAN5102 (2CDs)
The French conductor’s all-too-brief tenure with the RSNO has primarily been documented by Naxos. This superb Debussy set for Chandos makes me wish I had seen more of his concerts in Scotland. I recall an outstanding — but sadly ill-attended — Pelléas et Mélisande, in which Natalie Dessay made her debut in the female lead, and these accounts of Debussy’s orchestral masterpieces — Images, Jeux, Nocturne, La Mer, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune — confirm Denève’s masterly reputation in his native repertoire. He cites Charles Munch and his great Boston Symphony recordings of this repertoire as his model, but his Debussy is his own, muscular yet transparent, colouristic yet atmospheric and mysterious. The RSNO’s playing has moved up a notch under his baton, with luscious string sounds and superb wind soloists. Even that symphonic warhorse La Mer sounds freshly reimagined by the young Frenchman, whose sense of the music’s ebb and flow, with surging climaxes, is unerring. On this two disc-set — an ideal way to acquire Debussy’s orchestral masterpieces — even the makeweights are compelling, and the rare Marche Ecossaise is an apt souvenir of Denève's Scottish sojourn. HC
Round-up
Humperdinck — Hänsel und Gretel
Cast, London Philharmonic Orchestra, cond Robin Ticciati
Glyndebourne GFOCD015-10
Glyndebourne’s soon-to-be music director, Robin Ticciati, makes his debut opera recording with this little neo-Wagnerian masterpiece. He has followed in the footsteps of Colin Davis at Covent Garden, and his Glyndebourne account is unusually spacious for such a youthful conductor, but the LPO and principal singers sustain his tempi admirably. Alice Coote’s coltish Hänsel and Lydia Teuscher’s diamantine Gretel are near-ideal siblings; as their parents, Irmgard Vilsmair’s hochdramatisch Gertrud dominates William Dazeley’s lyrical Peter. Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke steals the limelight with his Mime-like Rosine Leckermaul. HC
Haydn, Schumann — Quartet in E flat, Op 64, No 6;Quartet in A minor, Op 41, No 1
Elias String Quartet
WHLive 0051
The Elias Quartet, founded in 1998 at the Royal Northern College, have won golden opinions, and listening to this live 2010 recording from Wigmore Hall, you can see why. They make a beautiful sound, burnished yet translucent, and play with vigour and subtlety. On the strength of these performances, I find their fluid, yielding style more suited to Schumann than to Haydn. But perhaps I am only saying that I like the lovely opening movement of the Haydn, tender and intimate though it is, attacked more robustly. The Schumann is a delight. As an encore, they add a haunting, Gaelic-inspired Lament by the quartet’s second violin, Donald Grant. DC
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Piers Hellawell — Airs, Waters
RTE National SO, Fidelio Trio
Delphian DCD34114
These six diverse pieces reveal the vividness of Hellawell’s ideas, the deftness of their execution and exploration, and his effective use of abrupt contrasts. Agricolas (2008) is a hugely attractive clarinet concerto, a mosaic of encounters subtly united by a harmonic ground. Robert Plane plays the solo part with a flair matched by Pierre-André Valade’s forces. Orchestra and conductor are equally good in Degrees of Separation (2004), a gradual dissipation of a burst of energy. Mary Dullea comes to the fore on two cleverly shaped piano works. SP
Friedrich Cerha — Konzert für Schlagzeug und Orchester, Impulse
Wiener Philharmoniker, cond Peter Eötvös, Pierre Boulez
Kairos 0013242KAI
This first recording of the Austrian composer’s percussion concerto, premiered in 2009, when he was 83, is coupled with a large orchestral essay, Impulse (1993), in splendid live accounts. Cerha had the electrifying soloist Martin Grubinger in mind: he makes the perhaps odd idea of putting percussion in a concerto role seem violently necessary. The half-hour work could share its companion’s title, for it is launched by ferocious drumming, but if the outer movements are uncalm, the central is becalmed, floaty. Impulse is complex, variegated, “polynomial” (to use Cerha’s word), post-Bergianly turbulent in the main, and gripping. PD