CLASSICAL

Latest releases reviewed

MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO 2; DEBUSSY: LA MER
Eteri Gvazava (soprano), Anna Larsson (contralto), Orfeón Donostiarra, Lucerne Festival Orchestra/Claudio Abbado Deutsche Grammophon 477 5082 (2 CDs)
*****
The Lucerne Festival Orchestra of 2003 took its core from the membership of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, but also incorporated members of the Hagen String Quartet, the Sabine Meyer Wind Ensemble, and key players from the world's leading orchestras. There's a palpable sense of occasion in the live performances captured here. Debussy's La mer is contoured and coloured with the freshness of a restored old master. Mahler's Resurrection Symphony is paced to perfection, electrifying in its climaxes, deeply affecting in repose. In both works there's a sense of an ideal that's much talked of but rarely achieved: chamber music-making on an orchestral scale. The 70-year-old Abbado, who survived the removal of his stomach through cancer, conducts with a vivid perfectionism. www.dgclassics.com

SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO 4
Bavarian Radio SO/Mariss Jansons EMI Classics 557 8242
***
Dmitri Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony was withdrawn just before a planned première in 1936 and hidden away for 25 years. It's much more closely aligned to the enthusiastically garish Shostakovich of the opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk than to the milder-mannered composer of the Fifth Symphony. But it's the smoother surfaces of that symphony which Mariss Jansons often evokes here as he tames the excesses of the Fourth, reins in its exuberance, and seems set on providing a carefully balanced account of what is anything but a balanced work. The playing is beautifully controlled, but the raw freedoms of the young composer not yet tamed by Soviet authorities, and his taste for the lugubrious and grotesque, are often downplayed. www.emiclassics.com

STRAVINSKY: OEDIPUS REX;LES NOCES
Simon Joly Male Chorus, Philharmonia/ Robert Craft, Simon Joly Chorale, International Piano Quartet, Tristan Fry Percussion Ensemble/Robert Craft
Naxos 8.557499
****
For Irish audiences the Latin "opera oratorio", Oedipus Rex, and the "Russian Choreographic Scenes" of a village wedding, Les Noces, are among the works by Stravinsky least likely to be heard in the concert hall. Robert Craft, the composer's long-time amanuensis, has tackled both on disc more than once, and these 2001 versions, originally released by Koch International Classics, now appear at rock-bottom Naxos prices. Craft has what you might call a cool-headed ardency in these remarkable works. The hieratic Oedipus is compellingly austere. The irrepressible Les Noces for voices, four pianos and percussion provided a model that many others (most notably Carl Orff) have fed on. With good vocal contributions (though the narration of Edward Fox is very stilted), the disc is unmissable at the price. www.naxos.com

BACH: ENGLISH AND FRENCH SUITES; WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER
Glenn Gould (piano) Sony Classical 517969 2 (Suites, 4 CDs); 517970 2 (WTC, 4 CDs)
***
Glenn Gould wasa pianist with attitude. He regarded composer's texts as raw material for his own creativity, and his fellow Canadian, Jacques Hétu (whose Variations he recorded), described the extremes of the interpretation as being "a little like the negative of a photo compared with the true image". Gould was an anti-romantic whose freedoms could eclipse those of the most romantic performers, a player who scorned pianistic approaches, yet whose crystalline pianism was among his most prized qualities. His Bach is full of paradoxes. It's playfully insouciant rather than reverential, studied rather than scholarly, highly personal yet emotionally detached. It's the sense of airy levitation and the clarity of part-playing that make the style so engrossing. These classic love-'em-or-hate-'em recordings from the 1960s, however stilted, have a style and panache all their own, and now appear at around half the price of previous issues. www.sonyclassical.co.uk