Respighi – Transcriptions
JS Bach: Prelude and Fugue in D, BWV 532; Passacaglia in C minor;
Tre Corale; Rachmaninov: Cinq Etudes-tableaux
Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège/john Neschling
BIS BIS-2350 (CD/SACD) 59:08 mins Scuttling double basses duetting with chirruping woodwinds, scampering violins with brass counterpoint and the occasional boom of timpani: it’s Bach, but not as we traditionally know it. Respighi is one of the great orchestrators, and his transcription of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D major for organ is first and foremost a joyful
celebration of the music, lovingly accoutred in the finery of the modern symphony orchestra. But this is not a bombastic, over-thetop transcription. The conclusion of the Prelude roils and rumbles, seeming to anticipate the explicit emotionalism of early Romanticism, yet it’s never heavy-handed. And the fugue that follows is delightfully spruce in John Neschling’s hands, with a twinkling, four-hand piano getting a look-in at one point.
Bigger guns are wheeled out for the Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, a transcription commissioned by Toscanini. Again Respighi’s treatment combines a chamber-like delicacy with power and athleticism in tutti passages, and it’s extraordinary how often the music gives the impression of dating from a much later period.
In the five Études-tableaux by Rachmaninov, Respighi’s alchemy lends coloristic allure and an amplified sense of atmosphere to the piano originals. Rachmaninov found the results ‘amazing’, and
BIS’S vivid recorded sound adds an extra tingle factor. Terry Blain PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★★
Romberg
Symphonies Nos 1 & 3; Die Grossmut des Scipio – Overture Phion, Orchestra of Gelderland & Overijssel/kevin Griffiths
CPO 777052-2 49:39 mins
Like his violin concertos (reviewed in the March issue), Romberg’s symphonies are a pleasant way of passing the time, but rarely match the hype in the sleeve notes, which are unidiomatically translated from the admittedly stiff German. ‘The main theme cheerfully forges ahead, whereas the middle sections are treated rather strictly and erudite.’ This is supposedly a description of the Andante from the First Symphony, a fairly unremarkable and predictable movement. The Menuetto which follows is more interesting, with accents and harmonic displacement wrong-footing the basic three-ina-bar. It’s also one of the best played parts of the disc – elsewhere there isn’t always the unanimity and tightness of rhythm and phrasing which would impart extra zing, especially in faster music.
The Third Symphony is more interesting overall, with the first movement again blurring the location of bar-lines, and a few unexpected harmonic twists, one of Romberg’s most engaging characteristics. And in the Menuetto he cleverly pulls the wool over the listener’s ears with irregular phrase lengths, and finds a darker mood in the minor key in the trio. A firmer grip on the pulse would have enhanced the thrust of the performance, and this is even more evident in the final Vivace, where the contrapuntal lines sometimes become entangled. On the plus side, dynamics are varied and alert, and sound is clear and vibrant. Ultimately though, what is missing in the music is memorable thematic ideas – Romberg would not pass the Old Grey Whistle Test. Martin Cotton
PERFORMANCE ★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
French Music for the Stage
Delibes: Le Roi s’amuse; Massenet: Espada; plus overtures by Auber,
Boieldieu and Ambroise Thomas Estonian National Symphony Orchestra/neeme Järvi
Chandos CHAN 20151 78:40 mins
My doubts over this disc have nothing whatever to do with the performance, which displays the splendid conjunction of subtlety and élan we have come to expect from these performers. It concerns the music itself, in which the entertaining is less splendidly conjoined with the nondescript. One of Pierre Boulez’s many challenging remarks was that after Rameau there had been no French tradition, merely Berlioz. If one is looking for support of this proposition, the overtures by Auber and particularly Boieldieu recorded here provide it in spades. Over half a century ago, Martin Cooper was noting that with Auber ‘the purely melodic interest is generally small.’ As for Boieldieu, after joining the majority of the jury that condemned Berlioz’s Prix de Rome offering
La Mort de Cléopâtre in 1829, he complained to the composer that ‘you refuse to write like everybody else’ – so presumably that was his own intention. The fact that the three consecutive overtures concerned are all in D major doesn’t help.
While I stand by my previous description of Massenet’s Espada as ‘processed cheese’ (Christmas 2020), the disc is worth buying for the music by Ambroise Thomas and Delibes. Thomas did himself no favours later in life by ‘cancelling’ Franck, Fauré, Bizet and others, but he had a strong melodic gift and a fine ear for orchestral sound. Delibes’s incidental music to
Le Roi s’amuse, with its passing modal inflections and abundant charm, provides the undoubted highlight of the disc. Quel musicien! Roger Nichols
PERFORMANCE ★★★★
RECORDING ★★★★★
Journeys – Orchestral Music from Five Continents
Works by Águila, Cekovská, Fokkens, Gendall, Mattar, Seilova, Stafylakis, Zamora and Zhangyi
Norwegian Radio Orchestra/
Miguel Harth-bedoya
Naxos 8.574265 60:48 mins
One of the most exciting elements of Miguel Harthbedoya’s recently concluded tenure at the Norwegian Radio Orchestra was his championship of new and/or rarely heard music. It’s delightful enough that the Peruvian conductor brought South American composers old and new to Scandinavia. But his enthusiasm was hardly limited by personal geography – or by style, as shown by this diverse, energetic and wholly rewarding survey of nine contemporary composers from across five continents.
The title Journeys – the English translation of the joyfully polyrhythmic Uhambo Olunintsi by South African Robert Fokkens – denotes not just different global locations but metaphorical journeys into different soundworlds.
Only three of the pieces set out to reference ‘place’ per se: Carlos Zamora and Miguel del Águila offer colourful pictures of indigenous Chile and wider South America respectively in Sikuris and The Giant Guitar, while Nahla Farouk Mattar’s skittering, bell-like El-áin (Evil Eye) alludes to Egyptian myth while taking inspiration from science.
Indeed matters of physics and musical structure inspire many of the works. Slovakian ubica Cekovská’s Shadow Scale and Kazakh Aigerim Seilova’s Pendulum. Evaporation explore expressive aspects of melody, harmony and time, with cellist Audun André Sandvik an impassioned soloist in the latter piece. Brittle Fracture and Gravitas (that is, scientific weight) prove apt titles for works by Canadian Harry Stafylakis and New Zealander Chris Gendall in describing tense and dramatic evocations of mechanical processes. Conversely, Singaporean Chen Zhangyi takes us effectively beyond the world entirely in his lush Of an Ethereal Symphony. Steph Power PERFORMANCE ★★★★ RECORDING ★★★★