ALBUM OF THE WEEK
WAGNER
Das Rheingold
Cast, Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, cond Jaap van Zweden
Naxos 8660374-75
A brand-new Ring cycle from Naxos? This is the first instalment of van Zweden’s concert-recorded performances of Wagner’s tetralogy — the promised cast for Die Walküre includes Petra Lang as Brünnhilde, with Heidi Melton and Stuart Skelton as the Wälsung siblings — and could hardly begin more auspiciously. The Dutchman is an acclaimed Brucknerian and Mahlerian, and has made a speciality of complete Wagner operas in concert. His tempi are spacious, but he has a great feeling for the ebb and flow of the composer’s musical cosmos, and a thrilling sense of drama in the Descent to Nibelheim. His singers are mostly well known in their roles in Berlin (Anna Samuil’s Freia, Kwangchul Youn’s Fasolt), Covent Garden (Peter Sidhom’s Alberich) and San Francisco (Michelle DeYoung’s gleaming Fricka), but the set is collectible for Matthias Goerne’s seamlessly expressive Wotan, who rises to a powerful and beautiful Entry into Valhalla. Kim Begley’s veteran but word-perfect Loge and Stephen Milling’s baleful Fafner stand out in Naxos’s excellent recorded sound. HC
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MOZART
Opera Arias; Linz Symphony
Christian Gerhaher (baritone), Freiburg Barockorchester, cond Gottfried von der Goltz
Sony Classical 88875087162
Arias from Don Giovanni (both the antihero’s and Leporello’s Catalogue Song), Figaro (the title role and the Count), Così fan tutte and Die Zauberflöte are interspersed with movements from the Linz Symphony, but in the wrong order! It’s baffling and pretentious, but the performances are top-notch. Gerhaher is a thoughtful Papageno, a suave Don Giovanni and Count, perhaps a little too “nobile” for Leporello and Figaro. It’s good to hear him in the jettisoned solo for Guglielmo in Così. HC
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MAHLER
Symphony No 4
Dorothea Röschmann (soprano), Royal Concertgebouw, cond Mariss Jansons
RCO Live RCO15004
Mahler 4 used to be the exception — untroubled, even blissful, as if there had to be at any rate one happy Mahler symphony. Such an idea would hardly survive this vivid live performance. The work’s darkness, as well as its chamber-music refinement and extremes of colour and dynamics, is captured by Jansons and his matchless Amsterdam players (Mahler’s music in their bones), as are the finale’s immortal longings by Röschmann’s characterful, if not ideally pure, singing. DC
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BACH, BEETHOVEN, RZEWSKI
Variations
Igor Levit (piano)
Sony 88875060962 (3 CDs)
This is a quite monumental box of discs. Levit has brought together summa-like variation sets from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, as if demonstrating eternal truths of art. Between Bach’s Goldbergs, Beethoven’s Diabellis and Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated! there is manifest continuity of style and mentality. The maverick Rzewski reins in his experimentalism, even guying it, and writing a keyboard texture every bit as bracing and searching (and tonal) as that of his great forebears. Levit’s interpretations are breathtaking in their virtuosity and finesse. The inner-voice realisation of the Goldbergs is a “keyboard exercise” of the highest order. PD
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TAVERNER
Missa Corona Spinea
The Tallis Scholars, dir Peter Phillips
Gimell CDGIM046
Phillips and co could not have chosen a better work to celebrate passing the milestone of their 2,000th concert. Composed in the 1520s, the Missa corona spinea is a dazzling exhibition of vocal writing, its two stratospherically high treble parts weaving mesmerising lines above a richly expressive polyphonic body. The singing is as wondrous as such great music deserves. SP
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