CONTENTS
eviews
ELGAR The Apostles Soloists; Hallé Choir, Youth Choir and Orchestra / Mark Elder Hallé CDHLD7534 ‘Elder’s interpretation evinces an idiomatic pliancy, sure dramatic instinct and iron grip as well as scrupulous fidelity to both the letter and spirit of the score.’
REVIEW ON PAGE 75
MENDELSSOHN Elijah Soloists; various choirs; Gabrieli Consort and Players / Paul McCreesh Winged Lion/Signum SIGCD300 ‘The sound is massive when required, but the articulation is never unwieldy and there is delicacy too.’
REVIEW ON PAGE 75
RAVEL ‘Mélodies’ Nora Gubisch mez Alain Altinoglu pf Naïve V5304 ‘Gubisch, with a vocal timbre of mellifluous beauty and well-focused richness, responds with a strikingly malleable spectrum of sensibility to the varied scenarios that Ravel encapsulates.’
REVIEW ON PAGE 76
VICTORIA Choral Works Collegium Vocale, Ghent / Philippe Herreweghe PHI LPH005 ‘Understatement is a feature of Herreweghe’s conducting of Renaissance music with this choir…Here, the sense that less is more does the music no disservice’
REVIEW ON PAGE 76
DVD/Blu-ray NOBUYUKI TSUJII ‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ Nobuyuki Tsujii pf EuroArts 205 9088; 205 9084 ‘I liked his firmly projected Tempest Sonata with its comparatively brisk Adagio and his masterly handling of Liszt’s “Un sospiro”.’
REVIEW ON PAGE 67
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Reissue/Archive BERLIOZ Grande Messe des morts Cologne Radio Choir and Symphony Orchestra / Dimitri Mitropoulos ICA Classics ICAC5075 ‘The chromatic string phrase with which Berlioz twice fools you into expecting the next section sends shivers down the spine.’
REVIEW ON PAGE 72
Reviewed this month: 510 minutes of Debussy; 307 minutes of Schubert; 2minutes of Hurum
ORCHESTRAL
Latest Haydn symphonies from Thomas Fey; Kabalevsky’s piano concertos reappraised; Benjamin Grosvenor’s first orchestral disc
42
CHAMBER
Debussy and Ravel from the Talich Quartet; Beethoven’s violin sonatas on period instruments; discovering Guillaume Lekeu
54
INSTRUMENTAL
Bach from Bacchetti, Faust and Schiff; Debussy from Cassard, Hewitt and Aimard; Nobuyuki Tsujii on DVD at Carnegie Hall
60
VOCAL
72
Paul McCreesh’s supersize Elijah; Herreweghe conducts Victoria; David Vickers delves inside Archiv’s ‘All Baroque’ box of reissues
OPERA
80
Jacobs conducts one of Mozart’s first operas; Gluck from La Fura dels Baus filmed in Peralada; Michaël Levinas’s new Kafka-inspired piece
BOOKS
Hugh MacDonald’s exploration of the musical universe in the year 1853; tracing the life and work of violinist Viktoria Mullova
86
REPLAY
88
EMI’s big box of Boult; new recordings from ‘Mr Parsifal’ Hans Knappertsbusch; celebrating cellist Erling Blöndal Bengtsson
THE SPECIALIST’S GUIDE
90
David Threasher delves into one of the smallest of musical forms, the concert overture, and names 10 recordings we should all hear
THE GRAMOPHONE COLLECTION
Philip Clark introduces and appraises the available recordings of Charles Ives’s Concord Sonata and names the one to own
92
GRAMOPHONE NOVEMBER 2012 5
