Presto proved to be all their name implies with the prompt deivery of these discs and might yet become the natural place to look when sourcing further necessities. Yuja Wang's new release wouldn't have been quite so long awaited if I'd gone to them first.
Yuja Wang, Rachmaninoff, Los Angeles Philharmonic/Dudamel (Deutsche Gramophon)
The unsightly gap on the shelves where the Rachmaninov concertos should be will now be filled in with this when it is time for it to be put there. I am glad to go as far as Rachmaninov extravagance, and to Liszt, while really being one for pristine Bach. It is passionate, lyrical and big but always inventive and not indulgence for indulgence's sake. For programming reasons, disc 1 has Concertos no. 1 and 4 with the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and 2 and 3 are on disc 2 so we effectively begin with the lesser known pieces, no. 1 announcing itself boldly before embarking on its cross currents and tides in the flow of Yuja's expansive command.
More than most concertos, perhaps, these and for piano and orchestra whose role is above and beyond that of the soloist's wallpaper which in more classical concertos they might be. One is soon struck by the spaciousness they create in these live recordings from February this year.
No. 4 broods and wanders rather more in its Largo before its Allegro Vivace makes a case for having been included in Fantasia, especially since this was recorded in the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It's difficult to believe that Rachmaninov didn't write film music or with films in mind whereas Korngold hardly ever stopped.
The Rhapsody in this performance is impish and quicksilver but at 23.39 not overly quick which suggests that it lingers when necessary.
Concerto no. 2 is where the orchestra most obviously carries the main theme with the familiar broad sweep. Live performances are immensely preferable to studio recordings -much less so for me in pop music when the euphoria can seem compulsory- and the quality of recordings like this by now make them also the preferred option because they are what happened and not, as can be the case, something that never did with different parts laid down in different studios, sometimes on either side of the Atlantic Ocean on different days.
It has long been a standard joke to say 'the production on this album is amazing'. I did actually hear somebody say that before it was taken up by Rowan Atkinson playing a sophisticated, tame gorilla on Not the Nine O'Clock News. However, this is remarkable even on my cheap back room portable machine as the strings stretch out their longing and regret in the Adagio.
It is noticeable at concerts that the flashy, bravado pieces generate the most generous and spontaneous ovations from enervated audiences and Gustavo Dudamel got famous for those that he brought forth with his Venezuelan Youth Orchestra but while that is stirring stuff and understandable, it would be a mistake to think that is all Rachmaninov does or even what he was best at. The entirely choral Vespers go to deep, dark places and the mysterious opening of Concerto no. 3 is all introspection.
It doesn't remain that for long as its sumptuous twists and turns, in the whole 16 minutes of the first movement, set out Rachmaninov's shadows and light to best effect in this superlative account, probably more so than no. 2 and so the programme does build from its grandstand beginnings to its highlight. All in one go, it is a high octane experience but that is what I've been doing, possibly for the first and last time.
It wouldn't be fair on the other discs, or me, to play them immediately following that. I'll do them another day. I don't know whose records of these pieces are regarded as the best, beyond those of the composer himself, but Yuja Wang must surely have put herself in among them and it's a fine thing when waiting for something you think might be special turns out to be so.
Maconchy, Lutyens & Wallen, Works for Piano & Orchestra, Martin Jones, Rebecca Omordia, BBC Concert Orchestra/Andrews (Resonus)
There are as many Errollyn Wallens as there are pieces written by her, one might think, her breaking down of musical barriers making her a less identifiable brand than Haydn, say, or obviously Vivaldi.
It is to this album's great credit that it is not billed as 'music by women composers', as if it hadn't noticed, and that is how it should be. Elizabeth Maconchy is ostensibly the least 'modern', sometimes recalling the likes of Rachmaninov in a demonstrative but also lyrical Dialogue for Piano and Orchestra. But 'modern' is an old-fashioned term by now, being more than a hundred years old and referring to a particular revolution in the 'arts' and so it is Elizabeth Lutyens that sounds more out-dated in her two pieces with their crash, bang, wallop that became such a 'lingua franca' in C20th music but which lost much of its shock value when its bursts of sound became as commonplace as gunfire in films about cowboys.
We are back into more recognisably 'musical' territory with Errollyn's Piano Concerto, sizeable in its conception and rarely doing what Western music was always expected to do, which was develop by repeating itself. Languid blues is in part Gershwin but doesn't remain so for very long. It is music outside of any comfort zone that existed pre-C20th but shifting, engaging and with a purity and originality over and above genres that won't ever replace Bach and Handel but does as much as anybody has recently done to find its own language after so much has by now been said.
Daniel Barenboim, The Early Recordings (Guild)
Recorded in 1955, when Daniel Barenboim was 12, one wonders at the talent born to Jewish parents in Buenos Aires all those years ago that also produced Martha Argerich.
On very first hearing, the sound sounds like an old recording but either it improves or the re-mastering improves it. I don't know, I'm in it for the music and not the technicalities of hi-fidelity.
The Shostakovich made into the headline items on the cover are somewhat angular but not as Shostakovich as he can be because he could be almost as Errollyn and various as the various Errollyns are.
It is a shame to have only seven of opus 34 but fitting to finish with the C20th's best answer to the C17th genius that the programme opens with, a formal Bach Sonata. It is also great to have two Pergolesi sonatas, 'rare' indeed, before Mozart's variations on Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star that are charming enough but, having heard both the Diabelli and Goldberg in the flesh this year, only really child's play in comparison.
Bought only to offset Presto's p&p charge at a bargain price, this was effectively for nothing and if it takes a long time before Yuja Wang at her finest to be finally filed onto a shelf, the boy Barenboim, whose Mozart concertos were among the limited collection of cassettes I had to hand as a teenager and thus made an immense impression, might not arrive there much sooner.
So many discs, no obvious shortage of time to complain about but so much to take in.
Yesterday morning, a recommendation on the proper Record Review highlighted the slow movement from Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 2. No. 2 !!!! I'd hardly been aware there were any before no. 19. And, it turns out, I can have Murray Perahia playing the whole shebang on 12 discs for about £15. It's an offer one can't refuse. It is to be hoped I can either take them with me or that the heaven I'll surely go to has a comprehensively library. It won't be heaven if it doesn't have. Churchill said he would spend his first thousand years painting and will thus hardly have started. I'll be catching up with all the music I missed while stuck down here on earth.
