Handel: Dixit Dominus; Salve Regina; Laudate Pueri; Saeviat Tellus. Les Musiciens du Louvre/Marc Minkowski (Archiv Produktion)
Graham Dixon's essay accompanying this new CD is titled "Handel's Music for the Carmelites", although the association, he explains, is not unequivocal in all cases. No matter: the disc offers a fine and welcome collection of music written around 1707, some 35 years before Messiah. Marc Minkowski is a sharply incisive Handelian, here directing a chorus with a fibrous strength and sure-footed agility that concert-goers in Ireland can still only dream of. The orchestra is of a sensitivity to match, though the soloists, as so often in period performances of baroque music, have a range of mannerisms that take some getting used to, especially soprano Annick Massis.
- Michael Dervan
Messiaen: Piano Music Vol 3.
Hakon Austb (Naxos)
This volume of Messiaen's piano music steers away from the largest works of the 1940s (Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jesus) and 1950s (Catalogue d'oiseaux). It concentrates instead on the early Preludes and highly-influential works from the late 1940s, the four Etudes de rhythme and Canteyodjaya.
The Norwegian pianist Hakon Austb seems most at home in the Preludes from the late 1920s, where he highlights the influences from the world of Debussy. The other works here played an important part in mapping out the post-war compositional adventure of total serialism, an enterprise which ultimately developed without Messiaen's participation. The playing, however, is oddly muted, as if Austb nurtures a reluctance to face up to the fullness of Messiaen's radical vision.
- Michael Dervan
Alessandro Scarlatti: Cantatas Vol 3. Brian Asawa (countertenor), Arcadian Academy/Nicholas McGegan (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi)
Alessandro Scarlatti is now the "other" Scarlatti, eclipsed by the fame of his son, Domenico. With over 60 operas and 600 cantatas to his name, Scarlatti the elder was no slouch, and the best of his work is certainly deserving of the attention it's at last beginning to attract. The cantatas here typically express the torments of pastoral love. Phrases like "I weep, I sigh and suffer/I slave, adore and ponder," invite the use of anguished dissonance, which Scarlatti does not hesitate to provide. Brian Asawa strikes me as a countertenor more dramatic by nature than lyrical. His success in the five cantatas here is mixed, but Nicholas McGegan's direction of the Arcadian Academy is at all times vividly pointed.
- Michael Dervan