This week's classical releases reviewed
MOZART: MUSIC FOR HORN
Teunis van der Zwart (natural horn), Orchestra of the 18th Century/Frans Bruggen Glossa GCD 921110 ****
This new Glossa disc approaches Mozart's relationship with the horn in a cross-sectional way, offering just one of the concertos (in E flat, K447), some chamber music (the quintet for horn and strings, and a selection of duos), an aria withhorn obbligato ( Lungi da te from Mitridate, sung by Claron McFadden) and the take-it-or-leave it humour of the Musical Joke. 21st-century ears still wonder at the uneven tone production of natural horns, with its sometimes bizarre alternations of thin- and fat- sounding notes (muffled and growling, suggests the liner note). Teunis van der Zwart and his period instruments colleagues deliver performances that capture the music with an earthy embrace. The quintet and concerto sound particularly well. www.glossamusic.com
ANTICO/MODERNO
Capriccio Stravagante/Skip Sempé Paradizo PA 0008 ****
Skip Sempé points out that many composers of the renaissance and baroque periods "were also brilliant improvisers and mesmerising performers". They not only embellished music in improvisatory performances, but sometimes wrote down embellished versions of works by themselves and others. And the procedures for undertaking these "diminutions" were documented in published tutors. The ornamentation, says Skempé, "is rather like creating a new façade on an old building, incorporating elements of the old and the new". The CD's subtitle ( Renaissance Madrigals Embellished, 1517-2009) reveals all, so you find versions by the performers on the disc jostling with treatments from earlier centuries. The concentration is on melodic elaboration, with virtuoso turns for recorder, viol, harpsichord, and that most vocal of instruments, the cornetto. www.paradizo.org
DIMINUITO
Rolf Lislevand ECM New Series 476 3317 ***
Norwegian lutenist Rolf Lislevand's Diminuitois a similar undertaking to Skempé's, but one that's altogether more concerned with the sensuality of the recorded presentation, with toe-tapping rhythms, and with a 21st-century sensibility that ventures almost into the realm of the pop song. Sample the transition that takes place around three minutes into Terzi's Petit Jacquetfor the flavour of a mix that often includes early music analogues of bass guitar and kick drum. A later fantasia by Mudarra even has a kind of new-age shimmer as a background. "All arrangements by Rolf Lislevand" says the booklet, and your responses to his particular brand of self-intoxication will probably define how much of the actual renaissance you manage to hear in these gorgeously fanciful performances. www.naxosdirect.ie
BARTÓK: ORCHESTRAL AND STAGE WORKS
Various orchestras/Pierre Boulez Deutsche Grammophon 477 8125 (8 CDs) ****
DG here bring together the Bartók recordings Pierre Boulez made in Chicago, London and Berlin between 1991 and 2008. Boulez responds not just to Bartók the modernist, but also yields in ways you mightn't expect to the impressionism and romanticism of the earlier works. Listen to the little-known Cantata profanafor a biting experience, or the ballet, The Wooden Prince, for an enveloping shroud of suggestive magic. Boulez has a fine team of hand-picked soloists, including Krystian Zimerman, Leif Ove Andsnes, Hélène Grimaud, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Gil Shaham, Gidon Kremer, and Yuri Bashmet, though Jessye Norman is a bit too firm in the opera Bluebeard's Castle. This is a fine tribute from one 20th-century master to another, but beware the absence of sung texts. www.dgwebshop.com
