Who Face Dances

For more than fifty years, Eino Tamberg has remained an influential figure in the musical life of his native Estonia. His breakthrough on the international music scene came in 1956 with Concerto grosso, Op.5, which also heralded the success of the ‘new wave' of Estonian composers, including Arvo Pärt, Veljo Tormis and others. The Symphonic Dances, Op.6 incorporates Estonian folk tunes. A later work, the Suite from ‘Joanna Tentata' from 1972, serves as an example of Tamberg's great interest in the theatre. The plot of the ballet for which the original score was composed picks up more or less where Penderecki's famous opera ‘The Devils from Loudun' ends – the story of a French 17th-century convent in which the nuns have become possessed, and of the love between the convent's Mother Superior and a pious young priest.

Every major conductor, and most not-so-major ones, comes around to recording Eine kleine Nachtmusik, but not so many do it as well as George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra strings. And let’s face it, you won’t find a period-instrument ensemble that plays with anything like this level of polish. The fact is, Szell’s conception of Mozart was not terribly far from “period” sensibilities: restrained use of vibrato, incisive rhythms, crisp ensemble, lively tempos, but also a welcome degree of warmth to the sound and of course incredible ensemble discipline and some of the best players on the planet. And he had real period instruments, meaning performers who owned top quality old violins and bows, not inferior modern reproductions of them. The result is as lovely a performance of Mozart’s perennially delicious Serenade as we are ever likely to hear.

What you get on this release by veteran countertenor Dominique Visse and the Capella de la Torre is something less accessible than what is suggested by the Vinum et Musica title but more accessible than the pedantic subtitle "Songs & dances from Nuremberg sources (15th & 16th century)." The collection of pieces here is a sort of tour of the city of Nuremberg, an important German city in Renaissance times but not one that was home to its own compositional school.