CLASSICAL

Latest CD releases reviewed

LIVE AT CARNEGIE HALL
Lang Lang (piano) Deutsche Grammophon 474 820-2 (2 CDs for the price of one)
**
"SATISFIED WITH GREAT SUCCESS," cabled Stravinsky to a Broadway producer who had assured him of even greater success for his Scènes de Ballet if he would permit Robert Russell Bennett to "retouch" the orchestration. What you make of Chinese pianist Lang Lang, recorded at Carnegie Hall last November, will largely depend on how you respond to an interpretative approach founded on musical retouchings. Lang Lang has a fabulous facility of finger and wrist which he uses with puppy-like delight and exuberance. The apex/nadir is reached in Liszt's Réminiscences de Don Juan, which carries all the thrill of being beaten around the head for a quarter of an hour. Schumann (Abegg Variations), Haydn (Sonata No. 50), and Schubert (Wanderer Fantasy) are more mildly interfered with. But the only real successes are Tan Dun's Eight Memories in Watercolour, and Chopin's Nocturne in D flat, whose calm is cunningly placed to maximum effect.
www.dgclassics.com
Michael Dervan

SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONIES 5 & 9
Kirov Orchestra/Valery Gergiev Philips SACD 470 651-2
***
Shostakovich's Fifth (1937) and Ninth (1945) Symphonies stand in stark contrast to their immediate predecessors. After the official attacks on his music in 1936 he withheld the radical Fourth from performance (until 1961), and the traditional manner of the Fifth eased his rehabilitation. The Ninth, expected to be a post-war victory celebration, is a lightweight, sometimes even giddy successor to the epic Eighth. Valery Gergiev steers a sober course through both works. He takes a relaxed view of the Ninth, and in the Fifth (which is now bedevilled by revisionist views of its optimism as forced), he's often surprisingly low-key - the major issues here are some infelicities of pacing. The excitement that Gergiev often generates on disc is only sparingly present, perhaps because the live recordings are not exactly state-of-the-art.
www.philipsclassics.com
Michael Dervan

LIVE FROM THE LUGANO FESTIVAL 2003
Martha Argerich and Friends EMI Classics 562 9702 (2 CDs plus bonus disc)
***
The Martha Argerich Project within the Lugano Festival brings together musicians young and old, with the fiery Argerich herself leading by example. She's heard here in Haydn's Gypsy Rondo Trio (with the Capuçon brothers, who also take on Arensky's D minor Trio with Polina Leschenko, and the Franck Piano Quintet with Alexander Gurning, Dora Schwarzberg and Lida Chen), Rachmaninov's Six Piano Duets Op. 11 (with Lilya Zilberstein) and, especially impressively, in Lutoslawski's Paganini Variations (Giorgia Tomassi). The weak link is an overblown Grieg Cello Sonata (Gautier Capuçon with Gabriela Montero). The bonus disc features Piazzolla arrangements and dazzling gypsy music. If the spirit of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival appeals to you, this set most likely will, too.
www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan

SCHUMANN: MASS IN C MINOR OP 147; REQUIEM IN D FLAT OP 148
Berlin PO/Wolfgang Sawallisch, Düsseldorf SO/Bernhard Klee EMI 585 8192
****
These posthumously published masses by Schumann are here reissued in 1980s recordings by the Chor des städtischen Musikvereins Düsseldorf, the city choir of Düsseldorf, where, towards the end of his life, Schumann was for a time city music director. Schumann, who called himself "religious, but without religion", intended the works for both church and concert hall. Neither piece is often taken up by choral societies, a consequence, perhaps, of the fact that their strength is in a restrained nobility of general mood, an inwardness which hardly seems to seek attention - the Mass carries a strong sense of resignation - and the sparse use of vocal soloists. The performances here are committed in feeling and sure in delivery.
www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan