Though setting a poem of the American Gothic, this choral symphony breathes Russian soul in every bar. Peter Quantrill finds that modern versions have the edge on record
Towards the end of his life, Rachmaninoff looked back in the early 1940s and regarded his recent Symphonic Dances as one of his finest works. But in the same bracket he placed his choral symphony of three decades earlier. Again, as well he might, for he borrowed and adapted the opening teaser of the early piece for the later one, as well as a good deal else such as the Dies Irae plainchant. This became a signature theme (almost an idée fixe), and an orchestral palette which continually evokes bells without resorting to the literal use of them.
This month we review: Alexander Melnikov, Les Talens Lyriques/Rousset, David Le Page, Orch of the Swan/ Philip Sheppard and Huelgas Ensemble/Paul Van Nevel.
Peter Quantrill takes a personal journey through the music of a Transylvanian-born composer who defined the space age in sound and continued to discover new worlds
Kylwiria is a beautiful, unknown land with rivers, mountains and lakes, a fairytale place where people live together in harmony. It has its own language, its own grammar. But Kylwiria does not really exist. At least, it existed only in the imagination of a Hungarian teenager, born in a small town in Transylvania in 1923.
This month we review: Anna Prohaska, Pat. Kopatchinskaja, Ellinor d'Melon, RTE Orch/Martín, Clare College CH/Graham Ross and Montreal SO/Rafael Payare.
Abstract statement, or central chapter in a musical autobiography? Peter Quantrill sifts the recorded legacy for answers to one of Mahler's popular but most enigmatic pieces
There are some wilfully odd things said about the Fifth even by its interpreters. Mehta called it Mahler's Eroica (why? Because it has a funeral march and a happy ending?). Much emphasis is placed on its 'purity' of discourse as though this would make it a better or nobler symphonic statement. According to Bruno Walter, 'nothing in my talks [with Mahler], not a single note of the work, suggests that any intrinsic [extrinsic?] thought or emotion entered into its composition'.
This month we review: Lucile Richardot, Stéphane Degout, Anne de Fornel, et AL, Los Angeles PO/Gustavo Dudamel, Veronika Eberle, LSO/Rattle and WDR SO/Łukasz Borowicz.
Fauré Mark 2? Absolutely not, says Peter Quantrill, as he unravels the mysteries and contradictions surrounding this devotional work, and surveys its history on record
In 1941 the Vichy government of wartime France commissioned pieces from a wide range of composers as part of a nationalist cultural revival. Duruflé was 39 at the time and known more as an organist, not least because he withheld and revised far more music than he published, though in 1936 Paul Paray had conducted the premiere of three orchestral Dances which masterfully synthesise Debussyan impressionism and Ravellian shades of light.
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