Timeless And Contemporary

Unlike the offering in the previous post, Into This World This Day Did Come is a wonderful disk of carols contemporary and medieval sung by the Choir of Gonville & Caius College Cambridge under the direction of Geoffrey Webber. The contemporary composers featured are Diana Burrell, Judith Bingham, Stuart Macrae, Richard Causton, Francis Pott, Gabriel Jackson, Howard Skempton ( who contributes the title setting ), William Sweeney and Robin Holloway. Named composers from the past are John Dunstaple and John Redford and there are also carols from the 12th, 13th, 15th and 16th centuries. The contemporary settings fit in perfectly with the ancient offerings, showing both the restraint shown by the composers featured in portraying these texts in a way that remains true to their musical beliefs while remaining accessible to a wide audience and also the radical nature and dissonances of the medieval carols and sacred songs. The choir are a young choir but seem to be coming from a much more open environment than the Rodolfus, relishing the challenges and showing a sense of genuine joy and committment throughout. Instrumental contributions are sparse but Diana Burrell's Creator of the Stars of Night features atmospheric use of oboe and organ pedals and there are two purely instrumental organ pieces by Judith Bingham that punctuate the disk in a very effective way, adding to the sense of a service. The organist here is Matthew Fletcher. In truth, this could be listened to as an outstanding choral disk at any time but I shall certainly resurrect it annually in December.

Not Such A Merry Christmas

The Christmas Edition of BBC Music magazine doesn't feature a Christmas themed free cover disk every year but this is one of those years when it does. The disk is titled A Choral Christmas and is a specially recorded programme by the Rodolfus Choir directed by Ralph Allwood. The first ever edition of BBC Music that I bought eleven years ago also featured a marvellous Christmas themed disk of choral music from the Hyperion label and I return to that each year at this time. Sadly, that is not going to be the case with this offering from the Rodolfus Choir. The programme is well thought out ranging from Ravenscroft and Byrd from Tudor times, including continental European works by masters such as Victoria and Palestrina, moving on to early 20th century England with Vaughan Williams, Holst, Parry, Warlock and Leighton, taking a diversion with Tchaikovsky and Poulenc and ending with the saccharine sound of contemporary America personified by Lauridsen and Whitacre. My problem lies with the English collegiate sound of the choir which washes all of the colour and individuality out of the material and produces a bland homogenised sound in which all works appear to share a similar background and culture. Exceptions which show more life are Vaugham Williams's The Truth Sent From Above, where the ancient melody withstands the choir's blandness and John Tavener's lively Today The Virgin, which introduces ( belatedly since it is the final track ) a welcome change of pace.

The Fire's Still There

In the days of vinyl, it was accepted as a truism that when a band released a double album, a fantastic single album could be made from the material. If that was true for LPs, then it ought to apply double in the case of CDs. This is a live double CD, Eric Capton and Steve Winwood Live At Madison Square Garden ( in 2008 / 9 )and in fact it would make a superb one and a half CDs. It is not too much of a hardship to put up with the disposable half a disk of routine run throughs. Clapton and Winwood have known each other for 45 years but have only recently teamed up again for the first time since the short lived Blind Faith debacle. They do in fact complement each other very well. Winwood is the stronger singer in his Ray Charles style and it is a delight to hear the neglected sound of the Hammond organ played so effectively. He occasionally joins Clapton for duelling guitar bouts, most tellingly on Can't Find My Way Home. The material is taken from the back catalogue of Traffic and Blind Faith and Clapton's Derek and the Dominoes period ( thankfully no Layla ) and a couple from more recent solo albums. Perhaps the main reasons for investing in this set though are the two blistering blues workouts, Otis Rush's Double Trouble where Clapton's vocal is to be heard to best advantage and especially an epic version of Hendrix's Voodoo Chile. If there is a suspicion on one or two of the journeyman uptempo numbers that Clapton is going through the motions while playing through the changes, these two tracks remind any doubters what an electrifying and emotional blues guitarist he is. These two long tracks make time stand still, as was once memorably written on the sleeve notes of the Bluesbreakers' Beano album.

Mysterious Or Mystical ?

Misterioso is the title given to one of those typical ECM New Series disks of contemporary Eastern European chamber music. It features various combinations of a trio of performers comprising Alexei Lubimov on piano, Alexander Trostiansky on violin and clarinettist Kyrill Rybakov. The disk follows a nice symmetry, beginning and ending with sonatas for violin and piano and by Valentin Silvestrov and Galina Ustvolskaya respectively with three pieces in the middle of the disk featuring various combinations including clarinet. After Silvestrov's opening sonata which has the title Post Scriptum is another piece by him, the title piece of the disk Misterioso. This is a work for one player, Rybakov, who has to play both clarinet and piano, sometimes consecutively but at other times in tandem. A virtuosic feat but one can't help wondering about the point when a pianist is on hand to perform. Maybe the idea is to get one single perspective on the work. Both Silvestrov pieces inhabit the same kind of introspective meditative world that is epitomised by the third work on the disk, Arvo Part's familiar Spiegel Im Spiegel but here played in it's less familar version for clarinet and piano. Preceding the final violin and piano sonata by Ustvolskaya is a trio for clarinet, violin and piano. Ustvolskaya's sound world is spikier and more pessimistic perhaps but still fits the spiritual nature of the rest of the programme. All three players devote themselves scrupulously to this low key but demanding repertoire, demanding of discipline as much as technique.

We Are Talking Now Of Summer Evenings

It was listening to an edition of BBC Radio 3's Building a Library feature on Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 that encouraged me to acquire this disk. It is the "winning" performance by soprano Dawn Upshaw with the Orchestra of St Luke's conducted by David Zinman. Knoxville is unusual since it is a setting of prose from an essay by James Agee as opposed to a setting of poetry. It works perectly though and one is in no way reminded of any lack of rhyme or rhythm in the text. Upshaw's voice and delivery contain just the right note of knowing innocence required for the subject matter of a child's musing on a lazy summer evening as the old order is on the cusp of passing. Barber's chamber orchestra setting is one of his most notable achievements. The disk is filled with other works from 20th century America. There is an aria and recitative from Gian Carlo Menotti's The Old Man and the Thief and settings of poetry from 16th century India by John Harbison in Mirabai Songs. Both of these occupy some kind of middle ground between art song and Broadway, given idiomatic performances but not strictly to my taste. The other notable work is an extract from Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress with the recitative and aria No Word From Tom. I probably couldn't take a recording of the entire work but am glad to have this sample.

Squeeze My Lemon

The first two Led Zeppelin albums were recorded and released within a year and could really have been one double album, representing as they did the band's initial live set with its origin in the days when they were the "New Yardbirds" and vying for attention with Jeff Beck's band who were operating in much the same area musically. What Led Zepellin II did highlight was the birth of Robert Plant as the strutting rock god, especially with Whole Lotta Love and The Lemon Song. It's an image he has been trying to live down more or less ever since, with a lot of success musically if not in the popular imagination. It is probably the most riff heavy of all the Zepellin albums and perhaps the least varied and containing the least folk elements, though Thank You is a more laid back track. It's still a very powerful album and the material on it was the basis for extended half hour long workouts on stage showcasing Plant, Page and Bonham in solo action. It remains slightly shameful that there are still no writing credits given to Willie Dixon on the album, though the Stones were equally guilty in this regard. Strange given the respect both bands had for the original blues pioneers. One suspects the heavy hand of management.

Plugging A Gap

Filling in a glaring gap in my collection, this disk includes Elgar's Cello Concerto. It is not the obvious Du Pre / Barbirolli selection since I preferred the fillers on this disk where it is played by Paul Tortelier with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Groves. This is not a heart on sleeve full on emotional rendition but one that has obviously studied the score and still manages to bring out the valedictory feeling inherent in the work. Both Tortelier and Groves are at the end of long careers at the time of this recording in 1988 but there is no diminution in their talents. The aforementioned fillers are Elgar's Serenade For Strings played by the strings of the RPO and two other works featuring Tortelier as soloist. Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme is typically attractive and melodic, though at nearly 20 minutes does occasionally threaten to outstay its welcome. In contrast, the Rondo in G minor by Dvorak is a model of concision. The recorded sound isn't quite state of the art ( strange to be saying that of a recording as recent as 1988 ) but is more than adequate.

The Essence Of Spain

On this two disk set, Artur Pizarro tackles two epics ( THE two epics ? ) of Spanish piano music, Goyescas by Granados and Albeniz's Iberia. He tackles them and he wins, giving convincing performances which handle all the many technical difficulties and capture the mood and essence of the pieces. Not being a pianist, I tend to find it difficult to write at length about solo piano pieces which is not to say that I do not enjoy them thoroughly. Pizarro explains in his booklet notes that he has very direct links to this music both in terms of familial background and of his teachers. A lot is made of nationality in music ( Pizarro is Portugueese rather than Spanish but close enough given the links mentioned above ) but I do feel that it helps in this instance to keep in touch with the folk elements that are undoubtedly there. The other comparisons are with the French impressionistic school of Debussy and Ravel, both of whom wrote Spanish flavoured pieces of course, and Pizarro is also an accomplished performer of their works as evidenced in the recent BBC music free disk. All in all, as good a modern performance and recording of these works as you are likely to find.