The latest releases reviewed
MOZART: SYMPHONIES 40 & 41; IDOMENEO BALLET MUSIC Les Musiciens du Louvre, Grenoble/ Marc Minkowski Archiv Produktion 477 5798 ****
This is the second coupling of Mozart's final two symphonies to arrive in recent weeks. Marc Minkowski's new Archiv performances may be on period instruments, but the sound is actually bigger and fuller. And, eccentric gear-changes in the Jupiter's slow movements apart, the style of the music-making is in many ways more conventional than Douglas Boyd's with the non-period Manchester Camerata on Avie. Boyd's players can't match the timbre of the early wind instruments, but it's his recording which lays out the music with greater clarity. Minkowski's is the more generously filled disc, adding 12 minutes of the ballet music from Idomeneo to the two symphonies. www.dgclassics.com Michael Dervan
HENZE: VIOLIN CONCERTOS 1 & 3; FÜNF NACHTSTÜCKE Peter Sheppard Skaerved (violin), Saarbrücken Radio SO/Christopher Lyndon-Gee, Aaron Shorr (piano) Naxos 8.557738 ****
Hans Werner Henze called the composition of his First Violin Concerto, written at the age of 20 in 1946, "a feverish struggle against my own inadequacies". Yet the piece sounds masterful and mature, romantic and modern in a post-Bergian way in which Berg is hardly even a shadow. In this fine new performance, the freedom and skill with which Henze expresses his bondage to the past through up-to-the-minute means is not so much inadequate as almost frighteningly assured. The Third Concerto of 1997 is altogether more complex and less spontaneous-sounding, its three movements cast as character sketches from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus. Its general tone is more burdened, and it also sounds more burdensome for the performer than the First. The sometimes heated Night Pieces of 1990 were written for and premièred by Skaerved and Shorr. www.naxos.com Michael Dervan
PUCCINI: MESSA DI GLORIA; PRELUDIO SINFONICO: CRISANTEMI Roberto Alagna, Thomas Hampson, London Symphony Chorus & Orchestra/ Antonio Pappano EMI Classics Great Artists of the Century 356 5192 ****
Just the first 90 seconds of the student essay that is Puccini's Preludio sinfonico here tells a lot about composer and conductor. The musical material is stretched dangerously thin, but Pappano handles it with finesse, while at the same time cultivating all the atmosphere it has to yield. The even earlier Messa di Gloria (written at the age of 22) is better known - it's attractive to amateur choral societies, and economical for them too, with just two male soloists. Antonio Pappano's sterling account dates from 2000. But neither the composer's skill, nor the cosseting and stirring up of the conductor, nor the presence of two first-rank soloists can quite mask a superficiality in the music. The haunting miniature elegy, Crisantemi, is here a tender delight. The recorded balances in all three works are beautifully judged. www.emiclassics.com Michael Dervan
