Stephen Biggins

A sprawling masterpiece, akin to the Beatles' White Album, the Stones' Exile on Main St., or Wilco's Being There in its makeup, if not its sound. Rock, folk, blues, country, Latin, and bluegrass have all been styles touched on in Stephen Stills' career, and the skilled, energetic musicians he had gathered in Manassas played them all on this album. What could have been a disorganized mess in other hands, though, here all gelled together and formed a cohesive musical statement.

Fourteen years after his last solo outing, STILLS ALONE, Stephen Stills unveiled 2005's MAN ALIVE!, a remarkably vital and dynamic album that features the veteran performer penning almost every song and playing many of the record's instruments. Although David Crosby is absent, Stills's other CSNY mates, Graham Nash and Neil Young, turn up separately. While Nash subtly sticks to backing-vocal duty, Young contributes his typically incendiary electric-guitar lines to the hard-rocking "'Round the Bend" and offers up vocal harmonies and acoustic-guitar work on the spare, soulful "Different Man." A more unlikely cameo comes in the form of pianist Herbie Hancock's prominent presence on the 11-minute epic "Spanish Suite," which also features Latin percussion great Willie Bobo. Of course, Stills is the main attraction on MAN ALIVE!, with his husky voice carrying every song, including the socially conscious CSN-like track "Feed the People" and the blues-tinged "Piece of Me".

It is seldom these graceful, delightful pieces have such consummate musicianship lavished upon them. Few pianists today besides Stephen Hough could devise such a recital featuring his own compositions beside works by Liszt, Sibelius, Elgar, Mompou and many more. Such stuff is what dreams are made of.

Piano Sonatas by Chopin (No 2) and Hough (No 4) are the twin peaks of a typically stimulating recital which—as always from Stephen Hough—spans centuries and styles with assurance. How often do Liszt’s ‘Funérailles’ and Gounod’s ‘Ave Maria’ share the same programme?Life is nothing if not unpredictable.

The three sonatas Stephen Hough has selected for this recital not only reveal Johann Nepomuk Hummel as a plausible "missing link" between Beethoven and Chopin, but also as a formidable, creative force in his own right. Maybe he's not so memorable a melodist as Chopin nor a protean architect on the level of Beethoven, but Hummel's piano writing still sounds idiomatic and invigorating to modern ears. It's also quite difficult. The F-sharp minor sonata's dramatic finale, for instance, allows little respite from its unrelenting broken octaves, taxing runs, and double notes, while the gnarly dotted rhythms, imitative writing, and thick chords permeating the D major sonata's Scherzo evoke the Schumann to come. No matter how difficult the music, Stephen Hough's effortless technique and eloquent, characterful musicality make everything sound easy. What's more, he never sacrifices power for speed. Listen for example to the way he gives the challenging, spiraling triplets in the F minor sonata's finale their full dynamic due, maintaining a full, tonally varied sonority with virtually no help from the sustain pedal. In sum, it will take a heap of work and tons of inspiration for future pianists to match Hough's reference standards here. This is a valuable release and a joyous listening experience all in one: don't miss it.

The young Felix Mendelssohn's acquaintance with Acis and Galatea was due to Carl Friedrich Zelter, his composition teacher and conductor of the Berlin Singakademie. In 1828 Zelter asked Mendelssohn, by then a student at Berlin's university, to produce rescored versions of both Acis and Galatea and the Dettingen Te Deum for the use of the Singakademie. According to Fanny these orchestrations were a quid pro quo for obtaining Zelter's blessing on Felix's proposed revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion and securing the cooperation of the Singakademie in the venture, which came to fruition on 11 March 1829.

Christmas Oratorio is topical, it’s also universal. It doesn’t require lights or tinsel or presents under the tree to instruct, inspire, and/or entertain, especially if it is presented in as fine a performance as this one fashioned by Stephen Layton and his cohort. Layton is the director of music at Trinity College, Cambridge (having succeeded Richard Marlow), and his choir is top-notch, as is the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, mercifully identified as OAE. OAE’s roster is rife with such familiar names from the period instruments movement as Margaret Faultless (who is just that here) and Alison Bury. To mention Anthony Robson, oboe, and David Blackadder, trumpet, is not to slight any of the other players.

With various record labels compiling complete works to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the death of Bach, EMI's more accessible approach is this luxurious anthology of the Baroque master's sacred music. Over two and a half hours, this program encompasses the grand scale of the Magnificat in D (BWV 243) and Missa Brevis in A (BWV 234). Between these are scared cantatas, the very popular choral Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (BWV 140) contrasting with sensitive solo vocal writing in Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (BWV 12); motets; arias; and an organ prelude and fugue. It's a well-balanced program, covering every aspect of Bach's church music except the Passions.