Berg reviews

Berg reviews

Clair-Obscur

Sandrine Piau (soprano); Orchestre Victor Hugo Franche-Comté/Jean-François Verdier (Alpha Classics)
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Lento Religioso

Amsterdam Sinfonietta/Candida Thompson (Channel Classics)
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Vienne 1900

Eric Le Sage (piano), Zvi Plesser (cello), Daishin Kashimoto (violin), Paul Meyer (clarinet), Emmanuel Pahud (flute) (Alpha Classics)
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Berg • Schreker • Webern: Orchestral Works

Auvergne National Orchestra/Roberto Forés Veses (Aparté)
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Perspectives 7: Works by Berg, Beethoven, Liszt & Mussorgsky

Andreas Haefliger (BIS)
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Brahms the Progressive: Works by Brahms, Berg and Webern

Pina Napolitano (Odradek Records)
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Nightingale: A Tribute to Jenny Lind

Elin Rombo (soprano); Västerås Sinfonietta/Simon Crawford-Phillips (db Productions)
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Belle Epoque

Daniel Hope (violin), Simon Crawford-Phillips, Lise de la Salle (piano), Stefan Dohr (horn), Yibai Chen (cello); Zurich Chamber Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon)
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Berg: Violin Concerto; Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 3; Schleiermacher: Relief for Orchestra

Baiba Skride; Gewandhausorchester Leipzig/Andris Nelsons (Accentus Music; DVD)
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Berg: Wozzeck

Matthias Goerne, Asmik Grigorian, Frances Pappas, John Daszak et al; Vienna State Opera Choir; Salzburg Festival & Theatre Children’s Choir; Vienna Philharmonic/Vladimir Jurowski; dir. William Kentridge (Harmonia Mundi, DVD)
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Clytemnestra

Ruby Hughes (soprano); BBC NOW/Jac van Steen (BIS)
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Ruby Hughes performs a vibrant selection of vocal masterpieces

‘Ruby Hughes rises to the challenge with bombproof technical strength and control, plenty of firepower where needed, and a thrilling instinct for capturing the persona of this fearsome anti-heroine,’ writes Malcolm Hayes. 

 

Clytemnestra
Berg: Altenberg Lieder; Mahler: Rückert-Lieder; Rhian Samuel: Clytemnestra 
Ruby Hughes (soprano), BBC National Orchestra of Wales/Jac van Steen
BIS BIS-2408 (hybrid CD/SACD)   54:46 Mins

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Twilight People

Andreas Scholl (countertenor), Tamar Halperin (piano) (Modern)
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Hildegard Now & Then

Kismara Pessatti (contralto), Sarah Hatch (percussion) (Drama Musica)
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Simon Rattle conducts Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring

The Rite of Spring does not dominate here, not because the performance is lame. Rather, it is part of something truly exceptional, joined here by masterpieces from Webern, Berg and Ligeti in performances of outstanding beauty, passion and power. This film captures a concert at the Barbican from January 2015, when the public courtship between the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle was still ongoing and their artistic marriage not yet certain.

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Martha Argerich & Friends with the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana

This is the last of Warner’s annual gleanings from the Lugano Festival at which Martha Argerich presides – and definitely the most exciting. She may be 76, but her playing has lost none of its phenomenal precision and brilliance; it’s a rare pleasure to hear her playing solo in Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, which she has never before committed to disc. In every shared track she induces her ‘friends’ – including the excellent Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana – to raise their game to a level with hers.

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Kirill Petrenko directs Berg's opera Lulu

Controversy has surrounded Lulusince its 1937 Zürich premiere, in the form Berg left unfinished at his untimely death two years earlier.
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Berg's Wozzeck conducted by Hans Graf

There are more corpses in Berg’s epoch-making opera, Wozzeck (1914-22), than the two literal ones of its devastating final scenes. Underpinning the harrowing tale of a tormented soldier and the girlfriend he brutally murders is a searing, apocalyptic vision of a society so inhumane as to signal the death – as Berg witnessed, during and after World War One – of any illusion of a just or genteel modern civilisation.

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Berg's Opera Lulu directed by William Kentridge

William Kentridge’s staging of Lulu, co-produced with New York’s Metropolitan Opera and Dutch National Opera, was English National Opera’s surprise hit last autumn. After Mark Wigglesworth’s savage, lyrical account of the score, it is fascinating to now hear Lothar Koenigs’s pristine approach in this live recording from New York, with Marlis Petersen as the super-sexualised young woman who claims that she ‘never pretended to be anything but what men see in me’, in her tenth and final production of Berg’s unfinished opera.

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Nocturnal Variations: Songs by Schubert, Britten, Mahler & Berg

Drawing on the works of four favourite composers, soprano Ruby Hughes’s recital brings together 16 songs about night, ‘a time for contemplation, meditation, sleep and dreams’, as she describes it in her introductory note.

Her singing is exceptional for its consistency. Though her tone is light and delicate, it’s invariably true in pitch and capable of a surprising range of dynamic variety – a perfect instrument of its kind. Every word she sings comes through clearly.

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Röschmann and Uchida play Schumann and Berg

'The whole disc, once I'd adjusted to the sound, seemed the perfect Lieder recital'
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Berg; Mendelssohn

Minor keys often brought out the best in Mendelssohn, and the passionate outbursts in the first movement of this A minor Quartet have an intensity matched by the players and by the recording’s immediate sound. There’s subtlety in the rubato and tonal variety, and the blend of the instruments is exact while allowing four distinct but complementary personalities to emerge. The slow movement, which could become sentimental, has a stern backbone, and the Intermezzo contrasts poise and fleetness of foot.

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