Ichika Nagano

The pianists Mari Kodama, Momo Kodama, Karin Kei Nagano and conductor Kent Nagano present Double and Triple Piano Concertos by Mozart and Poulenc, together with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande on a new CD recording (Pentatone). Similar to Mozart’s own practice of making music with his family, the Nagano-Kodama family recorded Mozart’s piano concerto No. 7 for 3 pianos and No.10 for 2 pianos as well as Poulenc’s concerto for 2 pianos and orchestra.

Ideals of the French Revolution is the unusual title of this two-disc set by Kent Nagano and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal of music by Beethoven with texts by Goethe, Matthisson, and Paul Griffiths. The second, fairly conventional disc includes three works by Beethoven that could reasonably be said to embody the ideals of liberté, égalité, fraternité: his Fifth Symphony, excerpts from his incidental music for Goethe's Egmont, and his fourth setting of Matthisson's Opferlied (Song of Sacrifice). The far less conventional first disc, however, features a single work, called The General, setting a text by the aforementioned Griffiths, noted author and Beethoven scholar, to music drawn from Beethoven's incidental music for Egmont, König Stephan, and Leonore Prohaska, plus the Opferlied.

This unbelievably exciting record is actually a Mahler world premiere! Das klagende Lied was Mahler's first great work–he was only 18 when he wrote it–but he later removed its first part and extensively revised the remaining two. The original versions of the second two parts, then, have never been performed until their release in 1997 as part of the new critical edition. The music is, as might be expected, less polished than the revision, but it's also wilder and even more powerful in many respects. Hopefully it will gain new attention for this neglected but totally characteristic work. This performance is nothing short of spectacular, and makes the best possible case for Mahler's original thoughts.

Few performers are more familiar with the musical language of the French composer Olivier Messiaen than the American conductor Kent Nagano. Nagano has had Messiaen's orchestral works and oratorios in his programme for several decades now, and he also participated in the world premiere of 'Saint François d'Assise', Messiaen's only opera. During the year 1982 Nagano spent his time with Messiaen in Paris, where not only an artistic relationship but also a close personal one developed between the two musicians.

For two consecutive years listeners to Classic FM have voted Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto their favourite among 300 classical works. His melodies have instant appeal and it is good to see three comparative rarities on this disc. Bruch loved alto-register instruments such as the clarinet and viola, and he wrote these works in 1911 when giant leaps were taking place in the development of music, all of which he eschewed in favour of mid-19th-century Romanticism. While the clarinet rides orchestral accompaniment with no difficulty, the viola sits right in the middle and can be drowned (a hazard in performing the Double Concerto but avoided in the recording studio). The viola Romance is a gem, while the Eight Pieces are colourful and varied. All the performers do ample justice to this beautiful and unashamedly Romantic music.

Passionate, dramatic, yet poetic and richly nuanced Mari Kodama brings all these qualities to her interpretation of Beethovens Complete Piano Concertos. This exceptional recording with the Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin shines with extraordinary intensity and contrast, due in no small measure to the artistic bond between Mari Kodama and her husband, the conductor Kent Nagano. Beethovens Piano Concertos are undoubtedly amongst the most influential works in the history of music. Art demands of us that we shall not stand still, the composer once wrote, placing the idea of development at the heart of his music. His five piano concertos saw Beethoven take piano music out of the salon and into the concert hall, playing a crucial role in advancing the genre towards the symphony, whilst simultaneously creating a bridge from the First Viennese School to the Romantic period. Mari Kodama, whose virtuosic mastery of the piano made her a household name all over the world, has completed the Beethoven Piano Concerto Cycle with her husband Kent Nagano, the international star conductor.

I am not an automatic fan of composer-led recordings, even when the composer is as great a conductor as Leonard Bernstein. However, after living with this newcomer for a while, I have to confess that it doesn’t quite match that classic version, even though it does a few things even better. On the plus side, there’s Kent Nagano’s swift and perky direction of some of the music-theater numbers, such as “God Said”, “World Without End”, and in general all of the music in and around the Gloria. But this can be a two-edged sword: The mechanized Credo has less impact than it could; a very quick tempo at the opening of the Agnus Dei prevents the chorus from ever sounding really angry and demanding; and the calamitous Dona Nobis Pacem simply lacks the bluesy sleaze that Bernstein himself wrings out of it. A slower tempo also would have allowed the music’s many layers to register with greater clarity.

Mozart did, it's true, "authorize" the performance of some of his piano concertos by piano and string quartet, as the notes to this Analekta release point out. But, as a Vienna freelancer in uncharted territory, he could hardly have done otherwise, and to suggest, from the perspective of 21st century Canada and its social safety net, that this indicates anything about the desirability of such a performance is questionable. Truth to tell, these two concertos from 1782, although their wind parts are not as prominent as those in some of the later ones, still sound a bit bare in their contrasts between solo and tutti here.

Richard Jones's radical new production of Lohengrin was the talk of the 2009 Munich Festival. It was also a triumph for Jonas Kaufmann in the title role. Die Welt added that they "could not think of any cast more perfectly matched, so youthfully enthralling, in short: so wonderful … ". With striking costumes and designs by Ultz - and directed by Maestro Kent Nagano - it represents a bold new Lohengrin for today's world.