SUPER FIDELITY

This issue, Audiophile Audition’ s John Sunier reviews some classic pieces from the likes of Wagner and Brahms, plus discovers a disc of clarinet and piano pieces that were all written by American composers.

MAHLER Symphony No 5

This new recording of the Mahler 5th is the beginning of a projected Mahler series from BIS, the Minnesota Orchestra and conductor Osmo Vanska. There are plenty of fine Mahler Fifths around, including my favourite by Bernstein recorded in the 80s, as well as those of Chailly and Dudamel. I am a bit conflicted about this one. I find the first movement detailed but slow and lacking energy. My conflict arises from the quality of the recording. It’s marvellous, revealing details in this symphony I haven’t heard in other recordings. The highs sparkle, and the bass is prodigious when it needs to be. I auditioned the SACD 5.0 layer and from an audiophile standpoint, the recording left nothing to be desired. This is an eccentric interpretation that some Mahler lovers will appreciate and is a worthhile purchase for the sound alone...but not everyone will like the rendition.

TRACEUR American Music for Clarinet and Piano

Michael Norsworthy (clarinet) and David Gompper here play Souvenirs (Robert Bleaser), Black Anemones (Joseph Schwantner), Three American Pieces (Lukas Foss), Nebraska Impromtu (Marti Epstein), SchiZm (Derek Bermel) and Gompper’s own Traceur. The opening work is my favourite on this recording. Souvenirs was originally written for piccolo and piano and is a charming and very effective set of works that have a very nice, accessible somewhat jazz feel to them. Schwantner’s Black Anemones (1980) was originally one of a set of songs for soprano and orchestra. While I prefer the original, I cannot fault the use of just this one particularly beautiful melody which holds up as just that. Three American Pieces is the oldest work here and adds an interesting ‘Bernstein-esque’ feel. Traceur is the longest and most involved of the works here, but more abstract than the others. The performances and selections are terrific. Highly recommended!

ALBERT ROUSSEL Symphonies/Suites

This disc is a fine compilation of this somewhat obscure composer’s best works. Roussel was one of those composers whose innovation and skills were greater than his name recognition, an eclectic writer whose music is trapped in a grey area in-between the late Romantic and the Impressionist realm. Perhaps even more interestingly, some of his music actually sounds ahead of its time with moments of orchestration and harmony that seem to presage Prokofiev. This is a nice compilation of Roussel’s bestknown works, and the recordings (Bernstein in New York, Karajan with the Philharmonia, Cluytens with the Paris Conservatory and Detroit under Paul Paray) are in many ways ‘the one’ for each. The Symphonies 3&4 and the Suites from Bacchus et Ariane are Roussel’s best-known works, though the inclusion of the Suite en Fa was a pleasant surprise.

BRAHMS Piano Works Volume 5

I have not followed the entire series of Brahms’s piano works from Rittner, but of the issues I’ve sampled, Volume 5 strikes me as the most successful. Rittner employs one of the best period-authentic pianos in the series, a Steinway & Sons from around 1860. This piano makes a mighty sound, fully worthy of Brahms’s grand-scale, virtuoso works. Indeed Rittner and his Steinway even manage to make Brahms’s two lesser efforts from Op. 21— Variations on an Original Theme and Variations on a Hungarian Song— sound more important than they really are. As for the grand Handel Variations, Rittner plays them with steely-fingered virtuosity that never flags, a rousing performance. Rittner causes us to take note of Brahms’s resourcefulness, as well as monumentality, in this great work. MDG’s typically fine multi-channel SACD recording completes the package.

THE WHO Isle Of Wight 2004

The ‘Who’ who performed at the Isle of Wight Festival in 2004 whose performance is captured on this Blu-ray (and two CDs) was actually just Townsend and Daltrey (Moon and Entwhistle having died in 1978 and 2002 respectively) backed up by a tight band who all put on an energetic 2+ hour set of mind-blowing rock that includes I Can’t Explain, Substitute, Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere, Who Are You, Behind Blue Eyes, Bargain, Baba O’Riley, The Punk And The Godfather, 5:15, Drowned, My Generation, Won’t Get Fooled Again, Pinball Wizard, Amazing Journey, Sparks, See Me, Feel Me/Listening To You and Magic Bus. What a night! The audio quality is very good. It defaults to stereo, but the DTS Master Audio 5.1 mix sounds superior. The power of the electric instrumentation is more prevalent in this audio setting. The video displays crisp editing, excellent stage close-ups and is very sharp.

FRED HERSCH {Open Book}

Fred Hersch’s latest release of solo piano music is a judicious amalgam of his own compositions, along with covers of jazz standards. In deciding how any composition is to be played, Hersch may be compared to a crafty baseball pitcher who paints the corners of the plate, never anything over the middle. The session opens with a Hersch original, The Orb, a ruminative piece filled with calmness and fastidious harmony. Benny Golson’s Whisper Not has a Mozartian feel and a bold and complex attack that provides an inner tension. Antonio Carlos Jobim’s Zingaro transmorphed into a new piece— Portrait In Black and White— for which Hersch uses a soft and sparse approach to tell a story that is filled with colours and a precise musical vocabulary that does not stray far from the melody. All-in-all a tour de force of solo piano playing. www.audaud.com