Favorites On Disc
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Add to these performances some recordings of the year. I have sampled just a trickle of the flood we’ve had, but these are some discs I’ve judged worthy.
To start with the performers we’ve already mentioned: The cellist Truls Mørk is included on a fascinating album called “Pro et contra” (Virgin Classics).That is also the name of Arvo Part’s cello concerto, and it is a highlight of this all-Part album. The music is from an exploratory period in Mr. Part’s life, before he became what many call a “holy minimalist.” Mr. Mørk plays the concerto superbly, and everything else on this disc is authoritative as well.
Christian Tetzlaff has recorded the complete Bartok violin sonatas (Virgin), including the unaccompanied one that the composer penned for Yehudi Menuhin. In the other sonatas, Mr. Tetzlaff’s partner is Truls Mørk’s fellow Norwegian, the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.
And Hilary Hahn? She has indeed recorded the Elgar Concerto, with Sir Colin Davis, and the London Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon). It is hard to get more Elgarian. Coupled with the concerto is Vaughan Williams’s “Lark Ascending.”
Renee Fleming has made a Handelarias disc (Decca), which includes a selection from “Rodelinda,” along with others both familiar and less so. Some consider her too free – too Romantic – a Handelian, but I beg to differ. You have to live with some mannerisms, but you may even grow to like them. And this is unquestionably a singer of the first rank, as will be recognized by one and all once she’s safely retired or dead.
Chanticleer keeps pumping out the recordings, and the one it has pumped out most recently is a rouser – and a soother: It is “How Sweet the Sound,” a collection of spirituals and gospel (Warner Classics). It is to be savored in the midnight hour, and most any time.
A remarkable pianist whose acquaintance you will wish to make is Nikolai Lugansky, yet another Russian virtuoso – but this is a very brainy, very musical virtuoso. On the just-mentioned Warner Classics, he has done an all-Prokofiev CD, including the Sonata No. 6 and the transcribed “Romeo and Juliet” suite, and another CD offering the first and third Rachmaninoff concertos. Pianism like this does not come down the pike every day.
Mr. Andsnes has made a solid CD of Mozart concertos: No. 9 in E flat, and No. 18 in B flat (EMI Classics). He is like that – solid – and he performs the added trick of conducting the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra.
If the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based composer William Bolcom has a magnum opus, it is his big, sprawling “Songs of Innocence and Experience,” now immortalized on vinyl – or its modern equivalent – by the conductor Leonard Slatkin and University of Michigan forces (Naxos).
Jumping to singers – starry ones – Deborah Voigt has made an album excerpting some of her best roles, all from Wagner and Strauss operas (EMI). To say that she is an immortal in this rep is merely to state the obvious. Natalie Dessay is another, much different, soprano, and she has an all-Strauss disc: It is lightish, often coloratura Strauss, and it includes the “Brentano Lieder” (Virgin). No one is more reliable or more desirable in this territory than Ms. Dessay. A bonus is that the excellent Antonio Pappano conducts. Don’t think the conductor doesn’t make a difference, even in these diva albums.
One of the best string-quartet recordings in memory is that of Haydn works by the Alban Berg Quartett (EMI). If you don’t appreciate these works now, you will; if you haven’t marveled at this ensemble yet, you will.
And to go back in time, a bit: RCA Red Seal gives us “Perlman Rediscovered,” a recital that Itzhak Perlman gave in New York’s Webster Hall, in 1965. He was 20 – and he was fearsomely good. One has the feeling of being present at the creation. Interestingly, his accompanist is David Garvey, the pianist long associated with Leontyne Price.
And Sony has come up with something it calls the “Original Jacket Collections,” which gives you remastered recordings … complete with the original art, liner notes, etc. George Szell conducts all the Beethoven symphonies, as only he can, and Bruno Walter conducts Wagner, Bruckner, and Mahler, indelibly. Plus, the nostalgia factor on seeing those old jackets is potent.
End with a couple of oddballs – the first of which is arrangements of movie music played by the 12 cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic. The album – “As Time Goes By” (EMI) – may seem like an iffy proposition, but it succeeds, by miles.
Finally, RCA Red Seal comes up with “Ravel’s Greatest Hit,” which is a CD purveying 10 different versions of “Bolero.” (The number 10 is significant, because remember the movie? With Bo Derek?) We get two “straight” renditions, conducted by Charles Munch and Eduardo Mata, and then a slew of offbeat ones, including Isao Tomita on his synthesizer and Benny Goodman with his orchestra.
This is a novelty album, yes – but it is seriously fun.