Manze

Andrew Manze's interpretations of Vaughan Williams' Symphonies have been met with acclaim from audiences and critics alike. This third album in the series contains two masterpieces. The 5th Symphony of 1943 displaying a 'greatness of soul' as one commentator at the time wrote, draws on material for 'The Pilgrims Progress' from 1906. The 6th Symphony of 1944-7 stunned the audience at it's premiere - some tried to explain the works last movement as depicting a nuclear wasteland.

British tenor Mark Padmore brings together a collection of English and Italian arias from Handel oratorios and operas. Padmore, who performs works of many eras in a wide range of styles, has primarily settled into the kind of repertoire Peter Pears comfortably inhabited, but with a stronger emphasis on Baroque opera and oratorio. Padmore's voice resembles Pears' in some ways; it's a light instrument, and is capable of great agility. It has some of Pears' limitations, particularly a tendency toward tonal blandness and lack of variety in its colors, as well as a slight edge when pushed. Most importantly, though, Padmore does not have Pears' reedy quality or breathiness – his voice is pure and more mellow than Pears'.

The NDR Philharmonie and Andrew Manze continue their exploration of Mozart’s late orchestral works with a recording of the composers 38th and 39th symphonies. Nicknamed after Prague, where it was first performed in 1787, the 38th shares with its successor a solemn, “Romantic” slow introduction to the first movement, followed by lighter music that shares a kinship with the playful arias and ensembles of Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, composed in the same period. By playing all repeats, Manze underlines the ambitious, expansive character of these works, but the NDR Radiophilharmonie never drags, offering the same energy and sense of urgency as in their acclaimed interpretation of Mozart’s 40th and 41st symphonies, released in 2019.

The wonderful French pianist Cédric Tiberghien has made several admired recital and chamber recordings. Now he joins the impressive roster of pianists who have contributed to Hyperion’s Romantic Piano Concerto series with Volume 60: Théodore Dubois. Three works by this French composer are included here, and they present a captivating panorama of the evolution of Dubois’ style over some forty years: the Concerto-capriccioso of 1876 seems like a preliminary study in the style of such composers as Weber and Mendelssohn, whereas the highly Romantic Concerto in F minor (1897) is reminiscent of Saint-Saëns. The completely unknown Suite for piano and strings (1917), for its part, resembles a neoclassical pastiche.

After their prize-winning Mendelssohn symphonies cycle and acclaimed Mozart symphonies album, the NDR Radiophilharmonie and its chief conductor Andrew Manze now present Beethovens Fifth and Seventh symphonies. While Beethovens Fifth is arguably the most famous symphony in the history of music, the Seventh counts as one of the most rhythmically-advanced pieces of nineteenth-century music; an apotheosis of dance, to quote Richard Wagner. Both works display Beethovens mastery of and audacious approach to musical form as well as the richness of his melodic invention, and are generally praised as paragons of symphonic composition. Andrew Manze brings his experience in the field of historically informed performance to the polished symphonic sound of the NDR Radiophilharmonie, providing an ambience that fits these early nineteenth-century works like a glove.

This is one of the craziest classical CDs you will ever hear, but the madness is inspired. Andrew Manze, following a suggestion in one of Tartini's letters, gets rid of the published accompaniment and plays these pieces on the solo violin. In the other three works he takes plenty of liberties, but in the famous Devil's Trill Sonata he embellishes, improvises, departs from the text and comes back again. The verbal description sounds like my idea of a nightmare, but the execution is so inspired that this is one of the most compelling Baroque performances ever. Whether it is "authentic" or not, I have no idea, and Manze probably doesn't either. But this is a recording you will remember.

It's well known that most of Bach's harpsichord concertos began their lives as violin concertos. Since only three violin originals survive–the ones designated as BWV 1041-43–and since these are among his greatest instrumental works, musical scholars and performers have been reversing the process, turning the harpsichord concertos back into violin originals. BWV 1060 is one such case, a concerto for two harpsichords, which sounds much less clangy and bangy in this reconstructed version for two violins.

Following their hugely successful cycle of Vaughan Williams’ nine symphonies, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is led by Andrew Manze in this album of the composer’s most popular shorter orchestral works. This disc features Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Fantasia on Greensleeves, The Lark Ascending and The Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus, as well as the rarely performed orchestral version of The Serenade to Music.

All we know about the mysterious Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Meali–as his full name runs–is that he "flourished" at the court of Innsbruck between 1660 and 1669. And we probably wouldn't know even that, save for the fact that two sets of violin sonatas, designated Op. 3 and Op. 4, respectively, and dating from 1660, have somehow survived to the present day. Anyone familiar with the music of this period will realize just what a treasure these works potentially represent, for this was the moment of the emergence of the first great school of violin playing in Italy and Austria, typified by the dazzling music of Biber and his Salzburg contemporaries.

This is a very welcome reissue from 1994. Leipzig-born Johann Adolph Scheibe (1708-1776) became the most important and renowned composer in Denmark after settling there in 1740. Though recognized as an astute music theorist and critic, most of Scheibe’s extraordinarily prolific oeuvre remains lost today; and it’s a shame because if these often engaging Sinfonias are even remotely representative, he also was an inspired, innovative, and highly accomplished composer.