Music Register

At the very end of the 1980s, Anssi Karttunen and Kari Kriikku, old friends from their days at the Sibelius Academy, decided to commision works from all major Finnish composers for the then-usual combination of cello and clarinet. Sure enough, most composers agreed, and the two performers were even able to premiere the pieces in short order. It took 15 years, however, for Ondine to release the recording which Karttunen and Kriikku promised. I am not a fan of all the composers here, so I will limit my comments to four works……….. Lots of fun.

Christopher Culver @ Amazon.com

You might think that Handel's Water Music, HWV 348-350, arguably the most familiar piece of Baroque music (the Four Seasons of Vivaldi can give it a run for its money, but its popularity is more recent), has received every possible interpretation. And you would be wrong, as the musicians of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin have shown in this Harmonia Mundi release, precisely recorded in Berlin's Teldex studio. You get a steady parade of innovations here, marked overall by, but not in the least restricted to, blisteringly fast tempos that turn the horn-dominated movements into tests of virtuosity. Unexpected dynamic contrasts and the unusual rhythmic treatment of the "Overture" to the Suite No. 1 (sample track one) are other novelties, but this veteran group is not out for shock value. The Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin operate without a conductor, and their coordination in these crisp prestos is worth the price of admission in itself. Their ability to act as one in really unusual shapings of each individual movement is remarkable, and the treacherous horn parts are near perfection in the hands of Erwin Wieringa and Miroslav Rovenský.

Alison Balsom & Quentin Thomas - Music for Trumpet and Organ
Works by J.S. Bach, H. Purcell, O. Messiaen & others
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 222 MB | Full Artwork: 55 MB | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: EMI Classics "Debut" # 7243 5 75683 2 6 | Country/Year: Europe 2002
Genre: Classical | Style: Baroque, Contemporary, Trumpet, Organ

"The EMI Debut series has now been successful in drawing a number of exceptionally promising young artists to public attention, amongst them Thomas Adès and, more recently (and currently particularly newsworthy) the bass-baritone Jonathan Lemalu, hailed by some as the next Bryn Terfel and having just picked up a Gramophone award for best debut disc. (…) Alison Balsom is a player we are likely to hear considerably more from in the coming years and this debut disc will do much to galvanise her already growing reputation." ~musicweb-international

Balsom explains in her booklet note that EMI gave her considerable freedom in choosing her programme for the disc and thereby lays my only real reservation. The objective (a daunting one as Balsom readily admits) was to seek out new material although what we get is a slightly uncomfortable blend of one vast original composition in the Eben, that whilst well coupled with the shorter Tomasi work seems rather ill at ease with the likes of Shenandoah and George Thalben-Ball’s well-known organ Elegy. It may be that Balsom was conscious of not duplicating works with Håkan Hardenberger’s release of music for the same combination that appeared on BIS earlier this year (also reviewed by the writer) although in fact it is only the Tomasi that is common to both discs.

Ten English composers set the Latin text of the Lamentations of Jeremiah in the mid-16th century, in the reigns both of the Catholic Queen Mary and the Protestant Elizabeth I. Precise details are hard to establish of when works were performed, as Andrew Carwood explains in an illuminating note to this disc, but there seems little doubt that Tallis, though a Catholic, wrote his masterpiece for Elizabeth. The repeated final lines, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn to the Lord your God”, unforgettable once heard, have a dark resonance here, thanks to the sonorous basses of the Cardinall’s Musick (Robert Macdonald, Simon Whiteley). The rest of this fine recording draws on music from across Tallis’s career, with English and Latin settings (Sancte Deus, Te Deum, Come, Holy Ghost and more). The singers reach the highest standards.