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CLASSICAL

ALBENIZ - IBERIA/ESPANA : DANIEL BARENBOIM (Teldec)

DE FALLA - NIGHTS IN THE GARDEN OF SPAIN / ALBENIZ - IBERIA (extracts) : Martha Argerich / Daniel Barenboim (Elatus)

Played by the virtuoso Barenboim (who was raised in Argentina), Albeniz's exile music is a core part of the Hispanic music canon. Born in 1860 it is said that he stowed away on a steamer bound for Argentina at the age of 12 and then dazzled everybody with his playing technique. He travelled around Puerto Rico, Cuba and the US and then went to Leipzig conservatory. 'Iberia ' was written in Paris, 'Espana' in London. Both colour in a Spain of the imagination with lightness, depth and huge emotional giving. Barenboim's interpretation is impeccable.

The second disc is a live recording made in Paris in 1986 with Barenboim as conductor. De Falla's music of 1916 is Andalusian, interior and full of dramatic outbursts. It is contrasted here with the older Catalan personality of Albeniz and the disc as a whole is a useful reference point.


COMPASSION - A Tribute To Yehudi Menuhin (Angel)

" I look to music to bind and heal ", said Yehudi Menuhin. It's best track is 'Wales Visitation 1967' a combination of Allen Ginsberg's beautiful poetry with a Philip Glass piece for two violins and orchestra from '94-'95 whose A - B - A progression for Glass sums up feelings of "serenity, compassion and peace." Also contains Steve Reich's 1995 'Duet' which begins and ends in F in unison canons for two violins.



Respighi - Gli Uccelli : I Solisti Veneti, Claudio Simone (Apex)

Beautiful music, full of Classical chambervibes. Respighi drew on Strauss, Ravel and the aesthetics of D'Annunzio to fashion his rich colourful music. His early 20th Century repertoire includes ‘The Birds’, ‘Ancient Dances And Airs For Lute ‘and Three Botticelli Pictures’. His style draws on music from Gregorian chant through the centuries but always holds a fine balance between taste and exhuberance.

LIGETI - LONTANO/ATMOSPHERES/APPARITIONS : Berlin Philharmonic (Teldec)

Hungarian Ligeti talks of his strange upbringing in the Carpathian mountains, encounters with Romanian folk music, the Stalin years of "incorrect" folk music and how he heard music in terms of beaty "black music", consonant "red music" and diatonic "green music". He wrote in chromatic blocks a form of anarchy, his synaesthetic style of colour and light, matter, density, volume and space. New versions of 'Atmospheres' and 'Apparitions' deepen the tone colour and dynamics of the original 2001 : A Space Odyssey recordings. Remember Ligeti skipped out of Budapest in 1956 and made it to Germany where he met Stockhausen. The rest is history. We also get the micropolyphonic 'Lontano'from the 1960s, the early 'Romanesc Concerto’ (1951) and ‘San Francisco Polyphony ‘(1973).

Manuel Barrueco - Nylon & Steel (Angel)

A wonderful guitar duets disc, up there with the legendary Paco De Lucia/John McLaughlin discs of old. Great phrasing, chordal development and the right mix of nylon and steel. Barrueco teams up with Al Di Meola, Steve Morse and Andy Summers on a recording which includes 'Cavatina' and works by Villa Lobos and Aaron Copland.

PHILIP GLASS - PHILIP ON FILM (Nonesuch)

Glass has always been interested in film music and this little box neatly sums up some of the best bits. Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, Dracula and La Belle Et La Bete are nearly all represented in their entirety with excerpts from Anima Mundi, Kundun, Mishima, The Secret Agent and The Thin Blue Line. The music of Christopher Hampton's The Secret Agent conjures up drawing rooms of the 18th Century. The Thin Blue Line segment and a new recording of 'Facades' are full of that shifting/seismic Glass imprint. Closes with an unreleased cut from an Atom Egoyan film

MICHAEL NYMAN - FILM MUSIC 1980 - 2001 (Virgin)

Unlike most modern film composers, Michael Nyman's music stands up to thorough investigation. It is strong, strident, well-defined, happy in its use of texture and instrumental sonorities. Back in 1989 Virgin Venture released The Nyman Greenaway Soundtracks, a four CD box of film music. This new compilation includes much of the post-Greenaway period and demonstrates Nyman's wonderful grasp of the medium.

On Disc One Nyman's early genius is proven in the way he handles material adapted from Mozart's 'Sinfonia Concertante' on 'Trysting Fields' (violin/viola slow movement heaven) and on the insistent bass horn figures of 'Wheelbarrow Walk'. There is melancholic stuff from Patrice Leconte's Monsieur Hire, an early version of the catchy 'Miranda Previsited' and of course the gorgeously hypnotic theme from Jane Campion's The Piano with its Scottish references intact.

On Disc Two Nyman widens his palette to accompany the Hollywood success of The Piano with music from Carrington, The Ogre, Gattaca, Practical Magic, Ravenous, Wonderland, The End Of The Affair and The Claim. Intriguing is the orchestral song 'If' from a Japanese animated film by Akinora Nagaoka of The Diary Of Anne Frank. His robust writing for Andrew Nicol's Gattaca shows a composer getting better with age. His writing for Irishman Neil Jordan's The End Of The Affair would have been inconceivable in the Greenaway period, its piano title track as far away from the avant-garde Classical music of The Draughtsman's Contract as you could possibly get. The set ends with what he describes as a "quasi-operatic cinematic 'scene' " where the canvas is at full stretch. A dazzling evolution from one of the great guys of music.

RAVI SHANKAR

A Morning Raga / An Evening Raga (EMI, 1968)
In San Francisco (EMI , 1969)
Genesis (BMG, 1986)
Bridges - The Best Of Ravi Shankar On Private Music (BMG, 2001)
Full Circle - Live At The Carnegie Hall 2000 (BMG, 2001)

A broad selection of Shankar re-issues. The Raga album features Alla Rakha on tablas and is a playful exploration of the form. The live in San Francisco comes much from the same period. Everything jumps in a different direction for the Marinal Sen film Genesis (whose sleevenotes are in French). This is a wide-ranging soundtrack which uses production technique and electronic texturing to add depth. Moreover it is far away from the traditional Indian performances of the first two discs and has a freshness of wind-blown sound which delights : the foresty flute on 'Fair', the punchy playing of 'Variation On Genesis', the Celtic sounding 'Bounty Full Crops', the dance beat of 'Swing'. Bridges presents selections from his Private Music period. Tana Mana was an abum made in 1987 with George Harrison and features Shankar's sister-in-law on vocals and his late son Shubho. It also uses synths & sampling and produced a Shankar classic in 'Friar Park' (after George's home).

Inside The Kremlin (1988) was a collaboration between 140 musicians in Moscow and broke new ground for merging Russo-Indian music. There are three tracks from the superb 1990 Philip Glass album Passages, a meeting of Minimalism and Indian music which begun in 1965. It was in 1938 that Shankar ascended the podium at Carnegie Hall. He would return there 19 times , in the 1990s with daughter Anoushka. Full Circle is spirited stuff, and at 82 Shankar can still cut it .

Anne Dudley - A Different Light (Angel)

Exceptional recap of her work with new recordings of different aspects of her career. As she says from BBC Playschool to the Art Of Noise and S Club 7 to winning an Oscar for The Full Monty ST. Here she re-records everything with an ensemble and she's an exceptional pianist. Kicking off with her music for The Crying Game we then get an eleven-minute version of 'Moments In Love' with string quartet and reverb-laden piano, an exotic tempo-laden 'The Club With No Name', the catchy 'An Inspector Calls' and Dudley's glowing piano on 'A Different Life'. Satisfaction guaranteed.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK 100 YEARS - A BERNARD HERRMANN FILM SCORE TRIBUTE (Milan)

No doubt Hitchcock's use of the film-score intensified his films no-end and his relationship with Bernard Herrman (1954 - 1964) produced some of the greatest cinema music in history. From those stabbing violins of Psycho to the melancholy overload of the Vertigo love scene. More serenity is here in the score for Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451 plus there's an interview with the composer himself. Superb.

JERRY GOLDSMITH - THE FILM MUSIC OF.. London Symphony Orchestra (Telarc)

The composer of 250 films and TV programmes gets the new Super Audio CD treatment from Sony/Philips with a Surround sound CD. Born in 1929 , Goldsmith studied under various people including Miklos Rozsa before starting his career as a clerk/typist for CBS's Music Dept. Star Trek, Chinatown, Basic Instinct, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Waltons, Patton and such are all on display. Everything is lush , full of big horns and flourishes but you yearn for the intimacy of an ensemble.

KRONOS QUARTET - NUEVO / REQUIEM FOR ADAM (Nonsuch)

Anarchic recording in California / Mexico and Skywalker Sound of a variety of Mexican music including bawdy songs, foot-stomping party music, Mexican TV tunes, mariachi music and the use of such new instruments as musical leaf and organillo. Lovely packaging of Esquivel, Lara, Briseno etc .Most effective is the Ambient 'Festival For the Holy Mother Guadalupe 2001'. ‘Requiem For Adam' is a dedication to Adam Harrington which features the Quartet and Terry Riley on his cadential piano.

ESA-PEKKA SALONEN - Works 1992-1978 (Finlandia)

In 1983 the young Finn was invited to conduct Mahler's 3rd Symphony with the Philharmonia at the age of 25. He became an overnight conducting sensation. He's also a composer but this is mostly esoteric stuff. The best tune is 1978 'Nightsong for Piano and Clarinet' inspired by the meditative writing of Alban Berg.

Emerson Plays Emerson (Emi Classics).

Now signed to EMI Classics here Keith Emerson performs on 22 tracks which mix classical idioms from the ELP days with such jazz standards as 'Summertime'. Ends with collaboration with Oscar Peterson and a 14-year old Keith making his first piano recordings.

The Medieval Babes - (Nettwerk)

Nine girls with wonderful names like Cylindra Sapphire and Rachel Van Asch sing 11th, 13th , 14th, 15th and 16th Century poems, Roundels and Dante in French, Italian, English, Latin, Old English, Spanish and Greek. Katharine Blake with the big buns is the musical director who also plays zithers / autoharp / violin / recorders,keyboards / harmonium / glockenspiel / strings. See www.medievalbaebes.com

Remember Shakti - Saturday Night In Bombay (Universal)

John McLaughlin and Zakir Hussain re-unite Shakti, the revolutionary fusion of Hindustani, Carnatic and improvised guitar music that was such a 1970s success. Here they are joined by mandolinist U. Srivinas and a host of guest musicians who bring in fantastic instruments like the plucked Persian santur, the tiny percussion kanjira and the percussion bowls mridangam and ghatam. Though the intention is wonderful the whole doesn't take off until the final track 'Bell'Alla'.

Stockhausen - Electronic Music With Sound Scenes Of Friday From Light (Stockhausen-Verlag)

A 145 minute 2CD recording of the electronic music which Stockhausen recorded between 1991 and 1994 at WDR Cologne with Simon Stockhaausen (synthesizer, sampler) and Kathinka Pasveer (soprano voice). Stockhausen himself plays the mixing console and bass voice. An EMS Vocoder is used in which the voices, electronic sounds and such are modulated with those of a cat, dog, typewriter, pinball machine, pencil, racing car driver and various found noises. In the booklet Kathinka Pasveer is seen sucking an ice-cream cone and rustling a dry bird's nest. Karlheinz and his son Simon are pictured hard at work in the studio. The best audio bits are the large chunks of electronic Ambient music titled 'Schluss Tonszene'.


JOHN ADAMS - NAIVE & SENTIMENTAL MUSIC : Esa-Pekka Salonen, Los Angeles Philharmonic (Nonesuch)

There is a truly breathtaking moment in this piece - it is where David Tanenbaum's picked electric guitar comes in over the shifting string base and wow it recalls Randy California's playing on Spirit's wonderful 1968 opus Clear. It is moving, elegiac and mindful of the soundtrack music of Spirit's 1960s work which was steeped in jazz and Ambience. It also recalls Adams's youth in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. It occurs during the first 3 minutes and last 2 minutes of the second movement 'Mother Of The Man' which is based on Busoni's ‘Berceuse Elegiaque’, to Adams a perfect example of the meeting of 'naive' and 'sentimental music'.

In Ingram Marshall's wonderful sleevenote we get a a fascinating insight into Adams's craft, and possibly his best album ever. In 1795 German poet Schiller distinguished between the naive or " natural form of expression " and the sentimental "searcher, aware of his place in history. " In this work Adams moves from his 'naive' position as a Minimalist into the outer expanses of Bruckner, Sibelius and Mahler. But none of it is apparent or even obvious. Written in his retreat in Northern California in 1998-9, this 44 minute piece begins with a melody a la The Beatles, a naive melody of , guitar flutes and oboes which floats through a myriad of orchestral textures. Adams sees the second movement as " a return to the uncorrupted state of infancy ". The final movement 'Chain To The Rhythm' is a return to cellular composition as a series of darting "rhythmic cells move back and forth to culminate in a viryuouso surge of orchestral energy . " And the man at the helm of the orchestra is the peerless Finn Esa-Pekka Salonen who always turns the myriad musicians into one beautifully chromed instrument. Described as a journey, a trip , a dream; this is certainly a post-Minimalist classic.

UNKNOWN PUBLIC 14 - BLOODY AMATEURS (UP)

A fascinating edition of UP with a change of style, from box to hard-backed book with colour. In essays with range from Charles Ives to Apollinaire we get the age-old dichotomy between professional and amateur musician. Which is better? Is it important? Anyway the music's good and bad. It begins with Russell Mills's wonderful Ambient recordings from Ambleside and winds its way through music from a Zanzibar wedding, a frankly Reichan piano piece from James Young, an Indian Recorder piece by Chris Gander, an extract from a Creation mass by Neil Ardley, a scratch piece by Barry Russell titled 'Everthing Put Together Sooner Or Later Falls Apart', a collage of extracts for Radio 3's Mixing It compiled by Mark Russell and concluding with two excerpts from 'The Great Learning' - Cornelius Cardew's revolutionary interpretation of a Confucious text. Absorbing. See www.unknownpublic.com

Flamenco Fantasy - Montesano/Royal Philharmonic (EMI)

Played by Gustavo Montesano and arranged by Jorge Alvarez, both of whom love The Beatles, The Stones, Miles Davis, in order to arrive at a new fusion after a meeting in Madrid. This new idea is Flamencoed-up classics. A London/Madrid cross-pollination featuring Albinoni, Beethovan, Pachelbel, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi and so forth. Most successful are the pieces which are steeped in Flamenco like the intro to 'Rumba Allegro' or Ravel's 'Bolero'. Some of the other stuff sounds twee especially Beethovan's 'Fandango' on 'Fur Elise'. In the sleevenote Alvarez talks about Flamenco coming from Iran, spread by Arab conquests through Jewish music and Roman Spain. Its expansion reached The Far East and even Mozart knew of its styles. Interesting.

GEORGE WINSTON - Winter Into Spring / December (BMG/Windham Hill)

It was easy to dismiss Winston's easy-on-the-ear piano style in the 1980s but he sold millions of records with versions of Satie. Here is a genuine classic from 1982 inspired by The Doors, Steve Reich, Brazilian music and the Red Clay hills south of Montana. Lavishly re-issued with a bonus track. Released the same year, December, is a beautiful soundtrack to the Winter season drawing on music from such diverse sources as Bach the Ukraine, Appalachian carol, Pachelbel, Alfred Burt and the Peanuts animation soundtrack. Reissue includes bonus tracks like a John Barry score.


JOHN TAVENER - Lamentations & Praises (Teldec)

Tavener teams up with Chanticleer (a mens' choir from Boston) for a liturgical drama which includes weird instruments like Byzantine monastery bell, Tibetan temple bowl and a simantron (large wooden sounding-board struck with a hammer). Quiet spiritual stuff described by Tavener as “ikons linked by a corridor of music .”

ALSO OUT

Maurice Lennon - Brian Boru 'The High King Of Tara' (Tara): Former Stockton's Wing fiddler writes symphonic traditionl celebration of Brian Boru (941-1014 A.D.), High King of Tara who united the tribal kings and drove the Vikings from Ireland. Produced by Donal Lunny and featuring many great instrumentalists.

Cellorhythmics - Invasion (Tetrahedron) : James Hesford's and Alfia Nakipbekova's stunning amalgam of Classical, Ethnic and Jazz/R & B styles. Look out for Khachaturian's 'Sabre Dance' rocked up on a cello.

Mahler - Symphony No 5 / Rattle, Berliner Philharmoniker (EMI)
- Symphony No 9 / Barbirolli, Berliner Philharmoniker(EMI)

Simon Rattle's big opener with the Berliner Philharmoniker includes a velvet-touch reading of the sumptuous 'Adagietto'. Barbirolli's interpretation of the 9th is the equally sumptuous classic version from 1964.

Debussy / Ravel - Orchestral Works / Martinon, Orchestre de Paris,L'Ortf (EMI):

Wonderful box set of eight CDs comprising recorded between 1974 and 1975 in Paris. For Debussy we get ‘La Mer’, ‘Nocturnes’, ‘The Prelude’, ‘Iberia’, ‘Children's Corner’, ‘Danse Sacree’ and various ‘Fantasies’, ‘Rhapsodies’ etc orchestrated after his death. For Ravel we get ‘Bolero’, ‘Boat On the Sea’, ‘Ma Mere L'Oye’, ‘Rapsodie Espagnole’, ‘The Tomb Of Couperin’, ‘Pavane’, ‘Waltzes’, the entire Daphnis & Chloe on one disc, the sombre ‘Concerto For The Left Hand’ and the ‘G Major Piano Concerto’ with its beautiful 'Adagio Assai'. Exemplary packaging make this the best introduction to orchestral Impressionism anywhere.

Piazzolla - The Tango Way - The Classic Way (EMI) : Fourteen aspects of Piazzolla's tango genius from the '40s, '50s, '70s, '80s, '90s to today on a double disc.

Look Out For

Gyorgy Ligeti - The Ligeti Project 3 (Teldec)
Michael Nyman - Facing Goya (Warner Classics)

COPYRIGHT ON ALL OF THE ABOVE RESIDES WITH MARK PRENDERGAST. ANY EDITOR’S OR PUBLISHERS WISHING TO QUOTE FROM THE ABOVE WRITINGS CAN DO SO AS LONG AS THEY ENQUIRE BY EMAIL markp@cdboxset.co.uk

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