THE WORLD’S BEST CLASSICAL MUSIC REVIEWS Est 1923 . APRIL 2018 gramophone.co.uk Robin Ticciati The young conductor looks to the future PLUS Paul Lewis explores Haydn’s piano sonatas Handel’s Saul: the finest recordings UNITED KINGDOM £5.75 Intimate concerts featuring internationally acclaimed classical musicians in central London Now Booking Until July 2018 Igor Levit Cuarteto Casals: Beethoven Cycle Roderick Williams: Exploring Schubert’s Song Cycles O/Modernt: Purcell from the Ground Up Haydn String Quartet Series Jörg Widmann as Composer-Performer and much more… The Wigmore Hall Trust 36 Wigmore Street, London W1U 2BP Director: John Gilhooly OBE www.wigmore-hall.org.uk Registered Charity Number 1024838 A special eight-page section focusing on recent recordings from the US and Canada JS Bach Solo Violin Sonatas and Partitas, BWV1001-1006 talks to ... Johnny Gandelsman vn In a Circle F b ICR101 (124’ • DDD) Johnny Gandelsman The violinist and co-founder Bach’s Violin of Brooklyn Rider discusses his Sonatas and debut solo recording of Bach Partitas are among the most frequently Was it a challenge to plunge straight into performed works for the instrument, Bach for your first solo recording? or any instrument. Recordings evince a Not really. Over the the last three years spectrum of approaches, from historical I’ve performed all six Sonatas and Partitas treatments on period instruments to in concert about 30 times, which has been concepts Romantic and beyond. deeply rewarding. I wanted to capture this Among the newest journeys is Johnny moment of personal learning and growth. Gandelsman’s freshly considered account Do you miss the collaborative process of these monuments. The violinist, a Does your varied musical diet – folk, jazz, when playing alone, or is it in some co-founder of the string quartet Brooklyn classical – influence your approach to Bach? sense liberating? Rider and a member of Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Absolutely. Through my work with Brooklyn One of the reasons I wanted to work on Road Ensemble, imbues the music with a Rider and Silk Road Ensemble I have been solo Bach at this point in my life was to focus lean, focused sound, animating rhythmic lucky to work with incredible masters of inward, after spending almost two decades impulses, and sterling attention to line various non-classical traditions. When working mostly working in collaborative settings. and harmonic implication. on the opening movement of the G minor I found it incredibly fulfilling, from carrying Gandelsman plays his modern violin Sonata, for example, I tried to imagine how sole musical responsibility for a performance with gut strings, transitional bow and the great Iranian kemancheh virtuoso to the simple things like travelling by myself. whispers of vibrato, offering something Kayhan Kalhor would approach and develop Of course there are moments of self doubt, of a crossover view of the Sonatas and an improvisation. When working on the and those are particularly lonely and Partitas. The performances abound in Partitas, I often thought of the incredible Irish frustrating, but overall it’s been a good journey. nuance and character, with every note, fiddler Martin Hayes. Like Kayhan, Martin is a even in multiple stops, emerging in lucid magician with the bow, with great articulation What is your next recording project? detail. But what’s most arresting is the and maximum freedom of expression. I have some ideas – watch this space! violinist’s ability to tie phrases together with seamless inevitability and provide a fluent sense of structure from beginning to end. Gandelman’s keen ear for the Danielpour indicative of Danielpour’s longstanding long-term is most evident in Partita No 2’s String Quartets – No 5, ‘In Search of La vita love of Italy, where it and its successor, mammoth Chaconne, which he shapes nuova’; No 6, ‘Addio’; No 7, ‘Psalms of Solace’a Addio (2009), were composed. The Fifth’s with both forthright vigour and aHila Plitmann sop Delray Quartet three modest movements, written for and ruminative elasticity. Some violinists stress Naxos American Classics M 8559845 intended to give pleasure primarily, follow the work’s epic and spiritual ramifications; (76’ • DDD • T/t) a moderate-fast-slow pattern repeated Gandelsman’s subtle urgency has its own but extended in No 6, an altogether more commanding impact, especially given the ambitious work with a gravity missing from taste and agility of the reading. the Fifth. Danielpour writes in the notes In the various dance movements, the As with his symphonies that the Sixth ‘narrates the story of how violinist revels in the music’s irresistible and concertos, Richard families are eventually broken apart motion, whether lilting or courtly, Danielpour (b1956) through distance, time, and ultimately almost as if he is improvising. And likes to give his through death’; the close of the opening VLADIMIR RADOJICIC VLADIMIR Gandelsman imbeds himself in the quartets (there are seven, spread fairly movement has the same moving interweaving layers of the fugues evenly through his career) descriptive titles. simplicity as Barber’s Adagio (originally to luminous effect. No 5 (2004) bears the sobriquet In Search written as part of a string quartet), but PHOTOGRAPHY: PHOTOGRAPHY: Donald Rosenberg of La vita nuova, a quotation from Dante without the melodic distinction. gramophone.co.uk GRAMOPHONE APRIL 2018 I PHOTO CREDIT: GAL OPPIDO BROUWER THE BOOK OF SIGNS BELLINATI CONCERTO CABOCLO Brasil Guitar Duo Delaware Symphony Orchestra David Amado ...gorgeous tone, rock-solid rhythm, beautiful phrasing...” - AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE NAXOS • 8573603 • 747313360376 • AVAILABLE 04.13.18 PHOTO CREDIT: KAAPO KAMU MAHLER SYMPHONY NO. 6 Minnesota Orchestra Osmo Vänskä ...transparency and purpose were in every phrase.” - NEW YORK TIMES BIS • BIS-2266 • 7318599922669 • AVAILABLE 04.06.18 BARTÓK VIOLIN CONCERTOS NOS. 1 & 2 Christian Tetzlaff Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra Hannu Lintu ...always plays with pure“ and incisive tone...” – NEW YORK TIMES ONDINE • ODE 1317-2 • 761195131725 • AVAILABLE 04.13.18 AVAILABLE AT: DISTRIBUTED BY: SOUNDS OF AMERICA Compelling: the Boston Modern Orchestra Project under Gil Rose recording works by Jeremy Gill Overall, the Sixth is a fine, if –at while in no sense a pastiche composer, Nielsen’s Concerto furnished the thematic 28 minutes – overlong achievement, its many of his works illustrate that fascination impetus for Gill’s compellingly active coda a set of variations where the players and highlight the context into which they and varied Notturno concertante. (Nielsen leave the stage one by one until the cellist fit. The three works on this involving is eventually quoted six and a half minutes alone remains, the others accompanying Boston Modern Orchestra Project disc before the end.) The lighter, playful the final bars offstage. I was less taken by have this trait in common to greater or Serenada concertante is more allusive, using Quartet No 7, Psalms of Solace (2014), lesser degrees. the named forebears as models rather than described as ‘the search for the Divine’ Before the Wresting Tides was written in quoting directly. The playing throughout is via the ‘intellect, the force of will, and 2012 as a companion piece to Beethoven’s superb, the recording first-rate, making this romantic love’, culminating in the finale’s Choral Fantasy, for performances in a very warmly recommendable disc. prayer with its soprano solo, powerfully Philadelphia early the following year. Guy Rickards sung here by Hila Plitmann. The music is Although using similar forces to often expressively static, irrespective of the Beethoven’s, Gill made no attempt to Martin amount of surface detail; if the search was write in a Beethovenian manner and his Concerto for Wind Instruments and Piano. in vain it strikes me that Danielpour’s heart cantata (setting verses by Hart Crane) is Ein Totentanz zu Basel im Jahre 1943 – was not in it. That certainly cannot be said structured very differently. The core of Concert Suite. Zwischen Rhone und Rhein of the Delray Quartet, whose advocacy is the work is the five stanzas of Crane’s Massachusetts Chamber Players / totally committed. Naxos’s sound is rather ‘Voyages II’, alternating the chorus with Matthew Westgate airless and two-dimensional but perfectly duets for soloists within the main body MSR Classics F MS1602 (53’ • DDD) clear. Guy Rickards of singers; this is then framed and punctuated by piano, the orchestra Gill accompanying throughout. Before the Wresting Tidesa. Notturno Serenada concertante (2013) and Notturno This fascinating concertanteb. Serenada concertantec concertante (2014) were conceived as a pair tribute to Frank cErin Hannigan ob bChris Grymes cl of short concerto-type works, the one for Martin is dominated aChing-Yun Hu pf aMarsh Chapel Choir; oboe, its companion for clarinet, when a by a chamber edition Boston Modern Orchestra Project / Gil Rose pair of commissions arrived serendipitously of nine movements from Ein Totentanz zu BMOP/sound F Í 1055 (57’ • DDD • T) in close order in the composer’s mailbox. Basel im Jahre 1943, a piece Martin In both pieces the impact of the past is more composed for his niece, the mime artist musically present, not least derived from the Mariette von Meyenberg, to accompany favourite works of the two commissioning a theatrical presentation of eight meetings The music of the soloists (and performers here), oboist Erin with Death. The music, which initially past is of near endless Hannigan (who chose ‘Mozart, Strauss and seems tame