Music to my ears
What the classical world has been listening to this month
Luiza Borac Pianist
The Met in New York has been streaming a lot of operas from its archives recently. One of my favourites is the 1970 performance of Puccini’s La bohème, with singers including Renata Tebaldi, Ion Bozea and Cesare Siepi, and conducted by Fausto Cleva. I love old recordings, especially if they’re live performances, and this one has so much energy and passion, plus great voices and acting – Tebaldi is breath-taking as Mimì and so sensitive. It is very moving.
One disc that I usually put on when Spring arrives, but which I have also been listening to in these more challenging times, is a live recording of Schumann’s Dichterliebe, performed by tenor Peter Pears with Benjamin
Britten at the piano. I think this is the greatest of all Dichterliebe recordings – it is very delicate, poetic and emotional. Britten’s piano playing is so beautiful and accomplished, and his partnership with Pears is exceptional.
Ella Fitzgerald is one of the great ladies of jazz. I’m fascinated by her voice on Intimate Ella – it’s very small and very warm, a bit like talking to a friend. And it’s very beautiful too. Although this disc focuses more on her delicate side, her voice had incredible power and could cover the whole range with such great ease. I listen to a lot of vocal recordings in general because I feel that, as a pianist, it’s important to make the instrument sing.
And also…
In Hanover, where I live, there has been a spectacular digital exhibition at the Landesmuseum
called Leonardo’s World, devoted to the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. Using projections and holograms, they have brought his sketches to life, and you can see how his scientific inventions, flying machines and so on work. It’s like a magical journey into Leonardo’s mind.
Luiza Borac’s The Complete Piano Works of Constantin Silvestri is out now on the Profil Hänssler label Alec Frank-gemmill
Horn player
I’ve been an writing arrangement of Dvo ák’s String Quintet Op. 97, using a horn instead of one of the two violas – which I know some will think is blasphemous! I’ve been playing many recordings of the work, and have been listening really deeply to all of them. On the recording by the Pavel Haas Quartet with violist Pavel Nikl, you feel like you’re in the room with them and can almost understand the personality of each player. They bring so much energy to it too.
A recent release that I’ve been really enjoying is Compagnia di Punto’s recording of Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos 1-3 arranged for chamber ensemble by his contemporaries Ebers and
Ries. The playing, one-to-apart on period instruments, is astonishingly good and it all sounds so right – you rarely find you miss the larger forces. On the one hand, you can hear everything incredibly clearly and, on the other, they make a really exciting sound. Somehow, you also get a bit of added humour there too.
I first came across the jazz trombonist Nils Landgren on an unusual disc of Swedish folk songs he made, accompanied by Esbjörn Svensson on the piano. Landgren has such amazing control of the nuance and timbre of the instrument, and shows an incredible level of expression. On his Ballads album with the Esbjörn
Svensson Trio, there’s a voice singing in a Chet Baker-like way that I couldn’t at first identify. It is, in fact, Landgren himself, and he’s brilliant at it.
And also…
I have been enjoying reading The Mirror and the Light, the final novel in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf
Hall trilogy. For a bit of lighter relief, though, I’d recommend the two TV series of What We Do in the Shadows to anyone. It’s like a vampire comedy, and is very scatological and incredibly puerile. The opening theme music alone makes it worth watching – it’s got some really fun cross-rhythms. Alec Frank-gemmill’s new recording of Brahms chamber music is out now on BIS Records Fatma Said Soprano
When I moved to Italy, I didn’t speak a word of Italian, so I started listening to music by Gino Pauli to get used to the language and widen my vocabulary. He’s an Italian singersongwriter who has been popular since the 1950s, and last year, in his 80s, he released another album, Appunti di un lungo viaggio.
His voice has matured over time, and his life experiences have affected his songwriting. He’s not just a singer; he’s also a communicator and an interpreter.
Barbara was the queen of French pop and chansons. She’s so underrated: everyone always talks about Edith Piaf, but Barbara is a classic French singer. She doesn’t show off her voice – she simply shows that she has something more to say. If you gave her music to anyone else, they wouldn’t be able to perform it. She has such an intelligent way of phrasing music – if you try to fit her text to the rhythms, it won’t fit.
In Egypt, Abdel Wahab wrote music that was accessible for listeners, but revolutionised the form, connecting western music with Arabic music and adding orchestral elements. Previously, people used to play the oud and sing the same melody. Wahab wrote very romantic music, and Abdel Hakim Hafez has performed and recorded a lot of his songs including ‘Ahwak’, which translates as ‘I Adore You’. The combination of these two giants working together is incredible. And also…
A huge tango fan, I recently saw the documentary Our Last Tango about two dancers who were in a relationship. It made me believe even more in tango as a dance and as a philosophy. It’s not just two bodies coming together – it’s two souls getting to know one another. Fatma Said’s debut album El Nour is out now on Warner Classics
If you gave Barbara’s music to anyone else, they wouldn’t be able to perform it