6 d. ago Laura Cannell: Brightly Shone the Moon review | Jude Rogers' folk album of the month

(Brawl)The violinist sets out on her darkest exploration of yuletide yet, giving a murky and melancholy twist on familiar Christmas standardsTraditional music finds its popular, cosy home in the carol, despite the uncanniness that surrounds the nativity story, and the fraying thread back to the past that each winter brings. A veteran explorer of the season (in 2020’s sparkling Winter Rituals EP with cellist Kate Ellis, and 2022’s starker New Christmas Rituals, with amplified fiddle-playing from André Bosman), Laura Cannell sets out on her best and darkest journey yet here, exploring the time of year when, as she writes on the liner notes, “joy and heartache try to exist together”.Named after the line in Good King Wenceslas before the cruel frosts arrive, Brightly Shone the Moon begins at the organ – a nod to Cannell’s childhood Christmases in the Methodist chapels and churches of Norfolk. Cannell’s fiddle then quivers around the 16th-century folk melody of O Christmas Tree/O Tannenb...

Politics

7 d. ago Nash Ensemble: Ravel album review – catches the music’s dazzling light and intriguing shade

The Nash Ensemble(Onyx)The chamber group’s all-Ravel CD is an impeccable farewell to its much-missed founderThis all-Ravel recording by the Nash Ensemble was the final project of Amelia Freedman’s extraordinary 60 years as artistic director, and it’s a fitting farewell to the group’s much-missed founder, who died in July. It includes all three larger chamber works plus the composer’s own two-piano arrangement of his orchestral masterpiece La Valse: Alasdair Beatson and Simon Crawford-Phillips are a polished team in this, sounding wonderfully louche early on and then dispatching fistfuls of notes and long glissandos with seeming ease, all while catching the music’s increasingly sinister nature.The 1905 Introduction and Allegro was a commission from a harp manufacturer, intended to make their instrument sound good – which it duly does as played by Lucy Wakeford, although what is most striking is the way the seven instruments coalesce and separate to create kaleidoscopic textural inter...

Culture

2 w. ago Beethoven & Brahms: Violin Concertos album review – as supple and coherent as ever as the ACO celebrates 50

Tognetti/Australian Chamber Orchestra(ABC Classic)Under Richard Tognetti the ACO has established itself as world-class and this 50th anniversary live recording of these two great concertos are a wonderful souvenir of a remarkable groupOver the past quarter of a century the Australian Chamber Orchestra has become a regular visitor to Europe, establishing itself as one of the world’s foremost chamber bands. The group was founded in 1975, and this pairing of perhaps the two greatest violin concertos in the repertory is being released to mark the ACO’s 50th birthday. The soloist and conductor in both works is Richard Tognetti, who has been the orchestra’s leader and artistic director for the past 35 years.Both recordings are taken from concerts given in Sydney’s City Recital Hall, the Beethoven concerto in 2018, the Brahms last February. The close recorded sound very faithfully reproduces the intensely involving approach of the ACO when heard in the flesh, with its amalgam of modern pla...

Culture

2 w. ago Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius album review – Gardner and the LPO’s reading is bold and dramatic

(LPO)Recorded live at the BBC Proms, Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s propulsive performance, with soloists Allan Clayton, Jamie Barton and James Platt, is one to cherishThe Dream of Gerontius may be the unlikely star of Alan Bennett’s The Choral, but it’s hardly in need of a popularity boost: Edward Gardner’s vibrant new recording is one of three released in the last two years, with another due in January.Recorded live at the 2022 BBC Proms, this propulsive reading has a great deal going for it. Allan Clayton captures the febrile nature of the dying man whose every sensation is both a terror and a fascination. His heroic tone thrills in the great prayer, Sanctus Fortis, while an expressive use of text illuminates the philosophical question and answer session in Part Two. Jamie Barton’s luxurious mezzo-soprano possesses a tangible immediacy as well as offering ample reserves of comfort. James Platt’s craggy bass is well-suited to the Angel of the Agony. Continu...

Events

2 w. ago Debit: Desaceleradas review | Ammar Kalia's global album of the month

(Modern Love)The producer’s second album is a granular dissection of cumbia rebajada, forcing the listener to focus on the strangeness of every moment in her ambient soundworldMexican-American producer Delia Beatriz, AKA Debit, has a talent for making historical sounds her own. Her 2022 breakthrough, The Long Count, featured woozy, ambient soundscapes made from electronically processed samples of ancient Maya flutes. On her latest record, Desaceleradas (Decelerated), Beatriz turns her attention to the 90s trend of cumbia rebajada. Slowing the Afro-Latin dance genre of cumbia to a sludgy tempo, cumbia rebajada is a dub-influenced take on a typically upbeat, party-driven sound. DJ Gabriel Dueñez popularised the style with his bootleg cassettes; two of his earliest releases now form the basis of Beatriz’s experiments.Landing somewhere between composer William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops and DJ Screw’s chopped’n’screwed production style, Desaceleradas slows the shaker-rattling, synt...

Politics

3 w. ago Brahms: Symphony No 1, Tragic Overture album review – Petrenko and the Berliners give Brahms organic momentum

(Berliner Philharmoniker)Brahms’s Tragic Overture leaps to life while there is much interest in a careful reading of the composer’s First Symphony in this new recording from the Berlin Philharmonic with their chief conductor The Berlin Philharmonic’s in-house label continues its mission to document chief conductor Kirill Petrenko’s considered interpretations of the classical canon. In this case, it’s Brahms’s First Symphony, captured live at the Philharmonie just two months ago, coupled with the Tragic Overture, recorded last year.For this performance, Petrenko examined Meiningen Court Orchestra scores marked up with specific directions given by the composer himself. The results may strike some as interventionist, however there’s an organic momentum here that is hard to resist with a pronounced flexibility that, according to the excellent booklet essay, clarifies Brahms’s “furious struggle against the bar line”. Balance is impeccable, although solos seem over spotlighted at times by...

Events

3 w. ago Víkingur Ólafsson: Opus 109 album review – pianist’s concept album opens up transcendent vistas

(Deutsche Grammophon)Olafsson’s account of Beethoven’s Op 109 is one of the most beautiful on record, the centrepiece of a recording that links the composer to Bach and SchubertDisinclined to follow the herd and record Beethoven’s three final piano sonatas as a job lot, Víkingur Ólafsson has chosen to circle one of them, No 30 in E major, Op 109, locating it in a musical timeline that reflects both the composer’s past and the Viennese milieu of the early 18th century.For Ólafsson, looking backwards means turning to Bach, whose musical fingerprints he detects all over late Beethoven. The latter’s uninhibited invention, he argues, has its roots firmly in the baroque with its improvisatory elements and enthusiasm for the dance. Continue reading...

Culture

3 w. ago Oneohtrix Point Never: Tranquilizer review | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

(Warp)Made using a cache of Y2K sample CDs that Daniel Lopatin salvaged from the internet’s fringes, the kaleidoscopic result speaks to contemporary information overloadIt should come as no surprise that the new album by Oneohtrix Point Never comes with a concept attached. They usually do. When not composing film soundtracks, or producing an eclectic range of other artists – the Weeknd, Anohni, Charli xcx, Soccer Mommy – Daniel Lopatin has released a string of acclaimed works, each with their own overarching idea.The “hyperreal world music” of 2010’s Returnal was inspired by the fact that people now see more of the world than ever without actually leaving their homes. In 2015, Garden of Delete had an accompanying origin story about an adolescent humanoid alien called Ezra; 2018’s Age Of imagined artificial intelligence attempting to recreate human culture after humans themselves had been rendered extinct. Lopatin also has an all-consuming obsession with nostalgia and forgotten pop c...

Politics

4 w. ago Schubert 4 Hands album review – affectionately searching accounts from two pianists in emotional synergy

Bertrand Chamayou, Leif Ove Andsnes(Erato)Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou find lyrical intimacy and finely tuned emotional balance in Schubert’s late masterpieces for four hands Schubert’s late works for piano four hands have attracted some starry pairings over the years, from Benjamin Britten and Sviatoslav Richter to Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia. Pulling them off requires an affinity for the composer’s distinctively private soundworld and a willingness to share a single instrument, often requiring a different way of thinking about the mechanics of making music.Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou are thoughtful musicians, and it’s immediately apparent from these affectionately searching accounts that they possess an emotional synergy. The great F minor Fantasia finds the Norwegian spinning seamless lyrical lines over the Frenchman’s cushioned bass. Dynamics are impeccably sculpted; the central Largo is weighty with perfectly balanced trills throughout. They can be playful...

Culture