This week's classical releases reviewed
HAYDN: DIE SCHÖPFUNG
Sally Matthews (soprano), Ian Bostridge (tenor), Dietrich Henschel (baritone), London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra/ Colin Davis LSO Live LSO 0628 (2 CDs) ****
This is a luxuriant and heartfelt performance of Haydn's most inventive, most heartfelt oratorio. The sharp-edged, brightly lit, upbeat manner of period instrument performances is not the goal. It's the mystery and not the dissonance of the opening Chaos movement that Colin Davis concentrates on, and he conducts throughout with an impressive sense of space. With extremely fine choral singing, and a wholesome trio of soloists, this German- language performance of Haydn's Creationmanages to capture a strong sense of narrative, even of venturing into the unknown. tinyurl.com/mj63qp
REQUIEM
Conspirare Harmonia Mundi HMU 807518 ****
Herbert Howells wrote his Requiem in 1936 after the loss of his nine-year-old son to polio, and suppressed it until 1980 “for personal reasons”. In the hands of the 34-voice professional Texan choir Conspirare, it sounds a work of infinite tenderness, creating an effect like a cushioned, silken, compassionate embrace. Howells’s texts bear little relationship to the familiar Requiem texts. The 1922 Requiem by Ildebrando Pizzetti is textbook true, and offers a persuasive blend of conservative 20th-century style and Renaissance practice. This disc of unfailingly beautiful singing also includes more recent and altogether slighter pieces by Eric Whitacre, Donald Grantham, Stephen Paulus and Eliza Gilkyson. tinyurl.com/mvm8g2
FELDMAN: PIECE FOR FOUR PIANOS; FIVE PIANOS; VARÈSE: AMÉRIQUES
Helena Bugallo, Amy Williams, Amy Briggs, Benjamin Engeli, Stefan Wirth Wergo WER 6708 2 *****
Morton Feldman once said of Edgard Varèse, "It is not his music, his 'style' that I imitate; it is his stance, his way of living in the world." The two composers' stances had very different outcomes, Varèse (1883-1965) gloried in the liberation of loud sounds; Feldman (1926-87) was a whisperer. Even for Varèse, his own reduction of the blazing, battling 140-strong orchestra of Amériquesto eight hands on two pianos might seem extreme. But the blanching of colour through the restriction to piano tone leads to an almost paradoxical intensification of parts of the music. Feldman's pieces for four and five pianos are not so much about volume or weight as about soft spatialisation. tinyurl.com/mfmc8m
ZEMLINSKY: SINFONIETTA;DIE SEEJUNGFRAU
New Zealand SO/James Judd Naxos 8.70420 ***
Alexander Zemlinsky's Die Seejungfrau (The Mermaid), a late romantic "symphonic fantasy" after Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale, was premièred in the same programme as Schoenberg's Pelleas und Melisandein January 1905. After a few further performances it languished until the 1980s, since when the fortunes of this sumptuous score have revived along with the rest of the composer's music. Zemlinsky's language is much simpler than Schoenberg's, with Strauss a stronger influence, especially inthe closing movement. The Sinfonietta of 1934 is a tauter piece, at its best in its introspective central Ballade. The New Zealand performances of both works under James Judd are attractively full-blooded. www.naxosdirect.ie
