Classical

The latest releases reviewed

BIZET: L'ARLÉSIENNE & CARMEN SUITES
Choeur de l'Opéra National de Lyon, Les Musiciens du Louvre Grenoble/Marc Minkowski
Naïve V5130
*****
Here is music from Bizet's Carmenand L'Arlésienne, but not as you've known it before. Marc Minkowski offers the Prélude and Entr'actes from Carmenrather than either of the familiar suites; and between the well-known L'Arlésiennesuites he's created a third one, rescuing eight further numbers from the music Bizet wrote for Daudet's play. His period instrument players clear off some of the sentimental syrup which has attached to Bizet's music over the years. Traditionalists may well balk at some of the tempos, but for my money Minkowski carries it all off with real aplomb, even moments such as the L'ArlésienneMinuetto, where the flavour seems to flow backwards from Rodion Shchedrin's 1967 Carmenre-orchestration. www.newnote.com/naive MICHAEL DERVAN

SINFONIAS FROM THE ENLIGHTENMENT
moderntimes_1800/Ilia Korol
Challenge Classics CC 72193 (2 CDs)
****
There are two major symphonies here: Haydn's little-known No 39 in G minor, its first movement cut through with startling silences, and Mozart's well-known No 29 in A, one of the greatest symphonies written by a teenager. There's an attractive, bristly freshness in the playing of moderntimes_1800, a young Austrian period instruments band. And their approach yields good dividends, too, in five altogether rarer - and shorter - pieces, two symphonies attributed to CPE Bach, and one each from his brother Wilhelm Friedemann, Johann Gottlieb Graun and Johann Adolf Hasse. There's a rangy stride to the fast movements, a caressing tenderness to the slow ones, and resourceful colouring throughout. The playing time of under 95 minutes is rather short for a two-disc set. www.newnote.com/challenge MICHAEL DERVAN

WEISS: LUTE SONATAS VOL 9
Robert Barto (lute)
Naxos 8.570051
*****
"Rightness" is the word that most comes to mind when listening to Robert Barto playing the music of the prolific Silvius Leopold Weiss, whose surviving output extends to more than 100 lute sonatas and 90 separate pieces. Barto trusts the music not to need the exaggeration of special pleading. His playing has at once the feeling of utter simplicity and total aptness. And the music itself, by the 18th- century's most famous lute player, is as effective and resourcefully conceived for the lute as Scarlatti's sonatas were for the harpsichord. The three sonatas on Barto's latest disc (Nos 52, 32 and 94) are all made up of dance movements that offer musical delights as sheer as you're likely to hear all year. No wonder the great JS Bach was one of Weiss's admirers. www.naxos.com MICHAEL DERVAN

FIESTA
Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela/Gustavo Dudamel
Deutsche Grammophon 477 7457
****
Conductor Gustavo Dudamel and the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela have become one of the musical phenomena of the early 21st century. The orchestra, one of more than 200 youth orchestras in Venezuela, is the flagship of "music as a social saver" project (Dudamel's words) targetted at the underpriveleged. Dudamel, who has's been snapped up by the Los Angeles Philharmonic while still in his 20s, here takes his first orchestra through a joyous Latin- American celebration of pieces familiar (Bernstein's Mambo, Ginastera's Estancia, Revueltas's Sensemayá) and unfamiliar (by Inocente Carreño, Antonio Estévez, Arturo Márquez, Aldomaro Romero and Evencio Castellanos), with all the swaggering colour and impact that the orchestra is famous for.  www.deutschegrammophon.com MICHAEL DERVAN