Montreal Bslakirev

The Orchestre symphonique de Montréal and its Music Director Rafael Payare extend their Pentatone discography with a recording of Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben and Gustav Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, sung by superstar soprano Sonya Yoncheva. The pairing of works may seem odd at first, with Strauss at his most exuberant and Mahler at his most introspective. They share, however, a deeply personal and autobiographical approach by two giants of fin-de-siècle music coming to terms with the world they lived in and their place in it. After their acclaimed recording of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, Payare and the orchestra further explore this late-Romantic repertoire that fits them like a glove.

As Austrian pianist Till Fellner has aged, his performance style has naturally matured. This CD of Beethoven's Fourth and Fifth piano concertos shows Fellner is still impetuous but more commanding, still virtuosic but less demonstrative, and still playful but less prankish and more thoughtful. His touch is generally light, as in the Fourth's airy closing Vivace, and often legato, as in the Fifth's lyrical central Adagio, but he displays plenty of power in the Fourth's dramatic Andante and the Fifth's mighty opening flourish.

Since a cappella pioneer Bobby McFerrin singlehandedly gave the vocal arts a hand up to a whole new level of possibilities in the 1980s with his iconic hit "Don't Worry, Be Happy," we have looked at him and listened to him with awe and gratitude. Experiencing him perform live several times only increased these feelings exponentially, and we had the feeling that everyone in the audience was on exactly the same page.

Don't let the ugly cover fool you. There's a reason why this album is long out of print. No doubt, the ugly cover has something to do with its demise. But this sinfully delectable album would have surely pleased only the most hardcore matrons of ondes martenot, who usually have coarse palate anyway―and rightly so in my opinion. All of the works featured on this mind-blowing disc deserves to be heard at least twice but the piece by Serge Provost is especially notable.