Milos: Baroque
Sony Classical
★★★☆☆
Reviewers and sub-editors may be relieved that Milos Karadaglic is now mostly promoted as Milos — it’s one less name to spell wrong. But the latest recording by this starry musician from Montenegro still has one problem: how do you produce a fully satisfying album from a repertoire written, or more usually arranged, for the six-stringed classical guitar?
Recently Sean Shibe, the younger Scottish wonder, has grabbed attention by successfully penetrating one composer (Bach) while also mixing classical niceties with screams from an electric guitar. Milos, like his record label, is more cautious and conservative. Baroque presents nine 18th-century composers and 14 tracks, with the bulk derived from music originally featuring the violin, harpsichord, oboe, lute, and flute. Instrumental support, when needed, comes from Jonathan Cohen and his ensemble, Arcangelo.
Technically, Milos can be as beguiling as Shibe, whether strumming or plucking — his opening Scarlatti sonata, beautifully pensive, easily proves that. If only the album’s assemblage and some of the arrangements didn’t get in his way. The sonic spectacle may be impressive when Bach’s epic Chaconne for solo violin is transferred to the wider tone colours of a guitar, but the music’s intense and burning focus is lost in the instrumental switch. Another transformation misfortune turns a Handel keyboard minuet awkward and sluggish. Brighter tracks include an absorbing passacaglia by the lutenist Weiss and a delicious Boccherini fandango. Vivaldi makes four visits, pleasing if never momentous. And so the album proceeds: ear-tickling in parts but fidgety and frustrating. Not, all told, what it should have been.
Phillips/Tiberghien: Fauré
La Dolce Volta
★★★★☆
Advertisement
Matters are much simpler in Xavier Phillips and Cédric Tiberghien’s cello and piano recital, partly because the music is by Fauré, a composer who never writes five notes when two will do and who can often carry the listener aloft on melodic grounds alone. The programme judiciously frames a series of short charmers with the two late cello sonatas, vigorous and disarming, written between 1918 and 1922 when Fauré was in his seventies. Both artists are on top form, whether leaping through semiquavers, offering a succulent chord or gently riding the waves of song. Highly recommended.
Follow @timesculture to read the latest reviews
