Liszt: Sacred Choral Music. Choir of Radio Svizzera, Lugano/Diego Fasolis. (Naxos) Nothing could be further from the virtuoso showmanship of the young Liszt than the sacred music he composed in his later years. His Via Crucis, an extended choral meditation on the Stations of the Cross, setting a text prepared by his mistress, Princess Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein, is almost provocatively spare. And, while its questing chromaticism inhabits a world that sounds more of the 20th century than the 19th, it is still able to incorporate almost seamlessly a Bachian chorale setting. Conductor Diego Fasolis (doubling as pianist) and his Swiss radio choir take an approach that is direct and, by the standards of the piece, unlingering. The four shorter works on the disc are convincingly done, too.
By Michael Dervan
Offenbach: Highlights from "Les Contes d'Hoffman" (Erato) From Kent Nagano, the conductor who made his international reputation on the back of spiky stuff like Prokofiev's Love For Three Oranges, comes a tongue-in-cheek - not to say downright cheeky - version of Offenbach's comic favourite, with a distinct undercurrent of self-parody punctuating the Busby Berkeley gloss of the opera's surface. Anyhow, what a surface: glorious choruses, terrific tunes and a hero to die for - which the heroine obligingly does, three times. It used to be deeply unfashionable to have three different sopranos sing the three-in-one role of Olympia the doll, Antonia the mad violinist and Giulietta the courtesan, but it's done here - and deliciously - by Natalie Dessay, Leontina Vaduva and Sumi Jo: meanwhile a single baritone, the indefatigable Jose Van Dam, effortlessly juggles all four baddies. And yes, Roberto Alagna is a handsome, heroic Hoffman.
By Arminta Wallace
Stravinsky: Piano music. Martin Jones. (Nimbus, 2 CDs for the price of one) How does Martin Jones stretch Stravinsky's solo piano music to justify two well-filled CDs? The answer has nothing to do with choice of tempo, but rather the inclusion of solo piano arrangements of the symphonic poem Chant du rossignol, the Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Guido Agosti's transcription of three sections of the Firebird ballet. The Tchaikovskian Sonata in F sharp minor of Stravinsky's student years also accounts for a good half hour. Jones's approach is one of studied plainness, not so successful in the early Etudes or the movements from Petrushka, but with a useful, dry lucidity in the neo-classical works of the 1920s. The rarely-heard arrangements will appeal to completists.
By Michael Dervan
