original-instruments Archive
Harald Vogel: Buxtehude Early Organ Works – MDG
Performaned on Buxtehude’s Organs by Harald Vogel, Buxtehude’s Early Organ Works.
HAYDN: 107 Symphonies (complete) – Christopher Hogwood; OCTAVO PANTONE – cond. by Frans Brüggen – Decca (34 CD set)
HAYDN: 107 Symphonies (complete) – Christopher Hogwood (Artist, cond.), OCTAVO PANTONE (Comp. & cond.): Frans Brüggen (Artist, cond.), The Academy Of Ancient Music Chamber Ens, (Orch.), Salomon Quartet/ The Academy of Ancient Music /Accademia Bizantina – Decca 478 9604, (34-CD set) About 1.5 days [5/13/16] ****¾: The discs should have imprints of chocolate chip cookies on them. Once you finish one, it’s hard not to indulge in the next one. How many times have you encountered a set like this for sale: The complete symphonies of Franz Josef Haydn, performed on original instruments? Never. That’s right, according to the packaging, this set contains the “first complete cycle on period instruments.” That horn you may have heard in a conventional recording of Haydn’s Symphony No. 5. In Christopher Hogwood’s recording, as a “natural horn,” it now has a charming antique sound to it (particularly when played presto). If you’ve heard Leonard Bernstein’s 1991 recording of the Paris Symphonies, you know they have a commanding, concert hall presence, fit for the 2,738 seat auditorium of Lincoln Center. Under the baton of Frans Brüggen, they have a more intimate feel, less booming and muscular perhaps, but more subtle. Yet there are other reasons why I believe […]
MOZART: Serenade in B flat major, “Gran Partita”; HAYDN: Notturno No. 8 – Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ens./ Trevor Pinnock – Linn
MOZART: Serenade in B flat major, K. 361, “Gran Partita”; HAYDN Notturno No. 8 in G major – Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble/ Trevor Pinnock – Linn multichannel SACD CKD516, 60 mins. (4/8/16) (Distr. by Naxos) *****: A fine hi-res surround recording of the Mozart Gran Partita, on modern instruments. The collaboration between Trevor Pinnock and the modern-instrument Royal Academy of Music Soloists Ensemble proves to be mutually beneficial. He inspires 20 professionals of tomorrow – and many already of today – to explore and flesh out their historically-informed stylistic instincts under the guidance of an iconic expert in the music he loves best. In return for his authority and experience, they give him a warmth in their virtuosity that amounts in Mozart’s very seductive Serenade, to sex appeal. That this is also the first time Pinnock, who has recorded a lot of Mozart, has recorded the big Serenade, makes it feel like the recording was close to his heart; it must have been particularly gratifying to have the opportunity to record with students whose own artistic profiles he had helped develop in the context of their historical research. Whether they played original instruments or not. The fact they they […]
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, “Eroica”; Coriolan Ov.– Le Concert des Nations / Jordi Savall – Alia Vox
BEETHOVEN: Symphony No. 3 in E-flat, Op. 55, “Eroica”; Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 – Le Concert des Nations / Jordi Savall – Alia Vox multichannel SACD AVSA9916, 52:14 (4/29/16) *****: Beethoven in wonderful, powerful overdrive: the finest original-instruments performance of the Eroica that I know. I usually think of Jordi Savall only in connection with Baroque and before, a period that he and his original-instruments band do great justice to. But this recording from the Alia Vox archives shows that Savall has a full grasp of the Classical idiom and of Beethoven’s monumental Classical style. Savall’s achievement is, as always, the result of deeply informed scholarship, but more, he inspires his players with a real sense of the drama inherent in the music of the Napoleonic Era. The result is just about the most unrelentingly dramatic Eroica I’ve heard in many years and certainly my favorite original-instruments version of the piece. Savall’s interpretation is fleet of foot, dynamic in the extreme. There’s a famous anecdote about the first time the symphony was performed. An audience member was supposed to have stood up and offered the conductor a thaler if he would “just make the damned thing stop.” Well, there’s no […]
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