CLASSICAL

Latest CD releases reviewed

HANDEL: ODE FOR ST CECILIA'S DAY; CECILIA, VOLGI UN SGUARDO
Carolyn Sampson (soprano), James Gilchrist (tenor), Choir of the King's Consort, The King's Consort/Robert King Hyperion CDA 67463
****

This recording of Handel's Ode for St Cecilia's Day is a far finer production (and is on a disc more generously filled) than the Naxos version I reviewed last April. Handel's inspiration seems to have burnt white hot under the illustrative spell of Dryden's text, in spite of the fact that the composer borrowed heavily in the process of creation. Robert King and his performers deliver the music with palpable relish, glorying in the grandeur of the broad strokes as much as in the detailed responsiveness of the word painting. This is the sort of performance calculated to leave the listener with a warm glow, and the companion piece, the Cecilian cantata Cecilia, volgi un sguardo, is given a performance to match.
www.hyperion-records.co.uk
Michael Dervan

TAVENER: SCHUON HYMNEN AND OTHER WORKS
Polyphony/Stephen Layton Hyperion CDA 67475
****

The music of John Tavener, which is being celebrated at the Belfast Festival this weekend, has often provoked polarised responses. However, there's no doubting the sheer beauty of sonority that the often calm writing of his choral music opens up for singers. In Polyphony's new collection this is successfully achieved not just in the familiar chordal resonances, but also in high-lying soprano lines, which sometimes give the impression not so much of soaring as of a motionless bird, hovering effortlessly. This disc of spectacularly confident choral singing couples As one who has slept and The Bridal Chamber with première recordings of The Second Coming, Birthday Sleep, Butterfly Dreams, Schuon Hymnen, Exhortation and Kohima and Shûnya, and shows how Tavener has recently broadened his musical horizons while maintaining a core sense of repetitive sacred ritual.
www.hyperion-records.co.uk
Michael Dervan

The Italian conductor Guido Cantelli, a protégé of Toscanini, was one of the major talents to emerge after the second World War. He was 36 when he died in an air crash in 1956, a year before he was due to become principal conductor at La Scala. His small legacy of commercial recordings is of a very high standard, and this disc in EMI's new Great Artists of the Century series assembles all the works of Debussy and Ravel that he recorded in studio. Cantelli finds musical sinew in the music as well as sensuality and atmosphere, and his meticulous control never seems to impede the natural ebb and flow of pieces that are difficult to pace effectively. The recordings, all in mono, are fine for their period.
www.emiclassics.com
Michael Dervan

BUSONI AND HIS PUPILS
Ferruccio Busoni, Egon Petri, Michael von Zadora, Edward Weiss (piano)Naxos Historical 8.110777
***

The playing of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), one of the greatest pianists of his time, is documented in just nine performances recorded acoustically in 1922. While anyone with a keen interest in piano playing will want to have them, it has to be said that Busoni's compositions for piano and his huge reputation as a performer suggest far more than this small recorded legacy actually reveals. The playing conveys the music in high relief, with idiosyncratic rubato and pedalling. Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No 13 and Busoni's own arrangement of Bach's Nun freut euch, lieben Christen, BWV734, will give anyone pause for thought, as, in a different way, will a group of pieces by Chopin. Among the recordings by pupils, the spirit of Busoni's probing intellect is best served by Egon Petri, whose own pupils included the Irish pianist Charles Lynch.
www.naxos.com
Michael Dervan