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Jasper Hoiby, doublebass – Fellow Creatures – Edition

by Audiophile Audition | Nov 16, 2016 | Jazz CD Reviews

Jasper Hoiby, doublebass – Fellow Creatures – Edition EDN1075, 55:11 (7/15/16) *****: (Jasper Hoiby – bass, composer/ Mark Lockheart – saxophones/ Laura Jurd – trumpet/ Will Barry – piano/ Corrie Dick – drums) Vital new music from a Danish bassist and composer that features group interaction at the highest level. As I look out the window at the mud and the rain on what seems like an especially cruel and dark November day, I can’t say that I’m in the mood for an up rendition of “Autumn Leaves.” Nor does the doctor recommend any nerve-flaying aggression. Likewise, I politely decline musical narcotics and soporifics, accepting the condition of being fully awake in the world. What is called for is a new music which will affirm the old verities: Intelligent composition, comradely interaction, and hard swinging. If it can conjure up a world that is friendly to man and beast, all the better. We first meet Jasper Hoiby standing on a dock in Denmark. He looks like a thoughtful Viking, who, having surveyed the blue horizon, has decided to do some work on the land. [I thought he was just thinking “Why are you taking a photo of me?”…Ed.] The title […]

JENKINS: Cantata Memoria – For the Children – Bryn Terfel, bass-bar./ Elin Manahan Thomas, sop./ Cywair and CF1 Chorus/ Sinfonia Cymru/ Karl Jenkins – DGG

by Audiophile Audition | Nov 14, 2016 | Classical CD Reviews

JENKINS: Cantata Memoria – For the Children (In Memory of Aberfan 1966) Bryn Terfel, bass-bar./ Elin Manahan Thomas, sop./ Cywair and CF1 Chorus/ Sinfonia Cymru/ Karl Jenkins – DGG 4796486, 56:00 (10/7/16) ****: A magnificent cantata that will leave the listener moved. This piece was written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the disaster on October 21,1966 when a coal spoil tip enveloped a school and houses in the South Wales village of Aberfan, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Cantata Memoria bears the subtitle For the Children and, as well as remembering the tragic Welsh catastrophe and its aftermath, mourns the loss of children in universal terms, as witnessed in the Dunblane shooting (1996), the Beslan school siege (2004), the Korean ferry disaster (2014) and the Peshawar School massacre (2014). Cantata Memoria is scored for chorus – both mixed and young voices, baritone and soprano vocalists, orchestra with prominent solos for violin, euphonium and harp, and sets a libretto by poet Mererid Hopwood. The work is sung in English, Welsh and Latin. This is a magnificent and moving work. Beautiful, yet horrific in its rendering of this tragedy. The soloists, orchestra, and the conducting by Jenkins are all first rate. If you […]

R. STRAUSS: Suite from Elektra; Suite from Der Rosenkavalier (arr. Rodzinski) – Pittsburgh SO/ Manfred Honeck – Reference Recordings/ Fresh!

by Audiophile Audition | Nov 14, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

R. STRAUSS: Suite from Elektra (arr. Honeck/ Ille); Suite from Der Rosenkavalier (arr. Rodzinski) – Pittsburgh SO/ Manfred Honeck – Reference Recordings/ Fresh! multichannel SACD FR-722, 58:33 [Distr. by Naxos] *****: A brilliant performance of both works on this SACD. Ex-Vienna Opera violinist turned outstanding conductor Manfred Honeck is taking his Pittsburgh band down a new road with this unbelievably concise and brilliant arrangement of music from the difficult, astringent opera Elektra. The work has been considered a monumentally difficult piece to cast and pull off for many years, and even though its once-formidable harmonies were considered grating to the ear, today they don’t sound too difficult, even if they are a world away from the opera that followed, Der Rosenkavalier. One of Herbert von Karajan’s initial calling cards was the fact that he managed to conduct Elektra several times before WWII, astoundingly from memory, as he did everything. Honeck has given a lot of thought to the opera, not always simply excising passages and stringing them together in a suite, but evaluating the place of the vocal lines in relationship to the orchestra, and making other changes—in most cases, a thinning out, according to the conductor—to ensure more clarity […]

“Russian Oboe Concertos” = By KITKA, RUBTSOV & ESHPAI – MD&G

by Audiophile Audition | Oct 4, 2016 | SACD & Other Hi-Res Reviews

“Russian Oboe Concertos” = VALERY KITKA: Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra No. 1; Concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra No. 3; ANDREY RUBTSOV: Concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra; ANDREY ESHPAI: Concerto for Oboe and Orchestra /Maria Sournatcheva, oboe /Göttinger Sym. Orch./ Christoph-Mathias Mueller ‒ Musikproduktion Dabringhaus und Grimm, multichannel SACD MDG 901 1947-6 (and 2+2+2), 72:24 (5/13/16) ****: Accessible concertos from contemporary Russia. The oldest composer on this program, Andrey Eshpai (1925‒2015), was born shortly after the October Revolution, served in the Russian Army in World War II, and studied with Soviet stalwart composers Nicolai Myaskovsky and Aram Khachaturian. However, his Oboe Concerto of 1982 sounds the most contemporary of all the concertos on this disc. It is also, as far as I can recall, the only work by a composer from the Republic of El Mari (part of Russia since the days of the Czars). Bordered on the south by the Volga River, El Mari is situated in the European Plain of Russia. Eshpai’s music draws on the folk music of his birthplace (from which his family moved, to Moscow, when the composer was three). However, being no ethnomusicologist, I can’t say that the folk element in his […]