Kathryn Huges

Il pomo d’oro and Francesco Corti present Handel’s Apollo e Dafne and Armida abbandonata, together with two outstanding vocalists: soprano Kathryn Lewek (Armida & Dafne) and baritone John Chest (Apollo). Handel composed these two cantatas shortly after his Italian sojourn (1706-1709), and they demonstrate his acquaintance with and aptitude for Italian operatic music. Compared to opera, supporting roles are left out of these relatively compact cantatas, increasing the focus on the main characters, and heightening the expressive depth of their music. Il pomo d’oro performs these pieces with historically-informed ears, lively and colourful. The cantatas alternate with several delightful orchestral pieces by Handel, including several movements from his Almira Suite.

Filling a gap in the nineteenth century piano repertoire that many listeners would not have suspected was there, this excellent 2006 disc by English pianist Kathryn Stott of piano music by Bohemian composer Bedrich Smetana admirably serves its purpose. Opening with the half-hour-long, six-movement cycle Dreams and closing with several piquant Czech Dances, the program shows Smetana to have been a composer not only of ethnic creations but of virtuoso piano music in the Liszt mold as well. While there have been other excellent recordings of these works before, they have always been by Czech pianists who seemed to have instinctively grasped the specific rhythmic accent of Smetana's music, and this recording proves that you don't have to be Czech to play Smetana. Stott clearly has the big technique to tackle the extreme difficulties of the Concert Étude in C major and the more extravagantly virtuosic movements of Dreams, but she also has the sensitivity to handle the sweetness of "On the Sea Shore – a memory" and "Faded Happiness" (from Dreams) and the rhythmic verve to dance through the Fantasia on Czech Folksongs and the Czech Dances.

A solitaire in French is a single mounted jewel, a concept that seems less than apt for the rather hefty works recorded here by British pianist Kathryn Stott. But this fine recital holds together in another way: Ravel, who so often provides the temporal endpoint for traditional piano recitals, is here, to a greater or lesser extent, the launching point for the other three composers featured. Stott's reading of the neoclassical Le Tombeau de Couperin is beautifully precise and balanced, catching the economy of this Baroque-style suite to the hilt. That economy carries over into the later works, even the rarely performed Piano Sonata of Henri Dutilleux, a work that deftly fuses Ravel's sense of classical forms with a largely dissonant language. The opening Prelude and Fugue of Jehan Alain, actually two separate works that are reasonably enough combined here, is another seldom-played piece that makes an arresting curtain-raiser, and the final "Le baiser de l'Enfant Jésus" of Messiaen, part of the giant Vingt regards sur l'Enfant Jésus, is the splendid climax of the whole, its spiritual, dreamlike ascent at the end superbly controlled. Better still is the sound, recorded at Hallé St. Peters in Manchester: it creates a hypnotic effect all its own.

SOMM Recordings is delighted to present a revelatory collection of orchestral songs by Sir Edward Elgar (on double slimline selling as a single disc), performed by two of today’s most exciting young singers – mezzo-soprano Kathryn Rudge and baritone Henk Neven – accompanied by the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Barry Wordsworth. The Hills of Dreamland takes its title from a line in Elgar’s well-known setting, beautifully still and beseeching, of Arthur L Salmon’s Pleading. Historically the least regarded part of Elgar’s output, his songs contain a treasure-trove of vocal gems and here receive performances of insight, imagination and emotional directness.