Boulez: The Complete Webern (DG, 6 CDs)
This "complete Webern" doubles the size of Boulez's Sony set of three decades ago. The extra pieces usefully fill out the picture of the earlier years as well as revealing music excluded from mature works. Webern, often derided in his lifetime, became one of the most important influences on the music of the second half of the 20th century, and there's probably no one who's managed to espouse his music with the consistency and understanding of Boulez. It's no accident that this major issue, embracing recordings by other artists in the DG stable, should form the centrepiece of composer/conductor Boulez's 75th birthday celebrations on CD. There may be individual performances which could be bettered, but it will be hard to surpass the whole as a guide to the potent musical distillations through which Webern marked the past half-century of music.
By Michael Dervan
Penderecki: Orchestral Works Vols 1 and 2 (Naxos) Penderecki: Seven Gates of Jerusalem
The first two volumes of Naxos's Penderecki series under Antoni Wit cover works from the 1960s to the 1990s. Volume 1 juxtaposes early sonic explorations - Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima and Flourescences from the early 1960s and De natura sonoris II (1971) - with the loose, effects-driven Shostakovich-influenced Symphony No 3, completed in 1995. Volume 2, with Symphonies 1 (1973) and 5 (1992), fills in some of the details of the transition from avant-garde to heart-on-sleeve romanticism and beyond. The common thread is Penderecki's interest in writing gut-stirring music. The Symphony No 7 (Seven Gates), effectively an oratorio written for the third millennium of Jerusalem in 1995, here conducted by Kazimierz Kord, employs the well-honed skills with fixity and focus.
By Michael Dervan
Voormolen: Baron Hop Suites 1 & 2; Concerto for two oboes; Eline
The Roussel pupil Alexander Voormolen (18951980) is the subject of the second instalment of the Dutch music project through which The Hague's Residentie Orchestra is working up to its centenary in 2004. The two Baron Hop Suites are in neo-classical vein, with the "neo" taken to be in small letters. Like the Concerto for two Oboes, they were written in the 1930s, but the concerto shows greater freedom from early influences and a richer though still light musical voice. The 1951 Nocturne Eline, originally for piano, expresses a melancholy that remains hoveringly gentle. Even with as sensitive a guide as Matthias Bamert in charge, there's a reserve to this delicate music which is likely to limit its appeal.
By Michael Dervan