The Translator’s Mirror For The Romantic: Cao Xueqin's Dream And David Hawkes' Stone

The Stranglers release the long-awaited new album Dark Matters. Surviving Stranglers band members, JJ Burnel, Baz Warne, and newest member Jim Macaulay completed Dark Matters remotely during lockdowns, making it their first album since 2012. The album features the single 'And If You Should See Dave…', an honest tribute to their much-missed keyboard player Dave Greenfield who tragically passed away a year ago from Covid-19.

The Masque of Alfred - apart of course from its finale "Rule Britannia" - has in the 1990s reached CD. Just two years ago a version was issued with the BBC Music Magazine and now we have this more complete account (though there were several variants in Arne's own day) from Nicholas McGegan, an experienced exponent of 18th Century music, recorded in America and using mainly American performers. And very welcome is it. If offers 76 minutes of music, 25 minutes more than the BBC CD and if the OAE's playing on the latter under Nicholas Kraemer often seems rather superior, the Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra are fully equal to Arne's demands which include often atmospheric parts for oboes, horns and flute as well as the basic strings. McGegan uses only four solo singers against the BBC's six.

Conductors have long used Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream to display an orchestra’s refinement, transparency and polish. By contrast, notwithstanding their characteristic smoothness, Frans Brüggen and the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century opt to emphasise the grain of the music rather than its evanescence. Not for them the moon-drenched sheen of the so-called Nocturne – here the horn parses the melody with greater detail than usual, and the flutes in the reprise sigh passionately. Violin mists in the early stages of the overture emerge tangible and rhythmic, while the Wedding March discards the customary streamlined effect in favour of airier accent patterns.