BERNARD HERRMANN: MOBY DICK and SINFONIETTA, Richard Edgar-Wilson (tenor), David Wilson-Johnson (baritone), Danish National Choir and Symphony 
Orchestra, Michael Schønwandt (conductor) (Chandos/Ode). Hermann (1911-75) is best known for scoring films by directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut. His most famous score, Psycho, had its origins in the Sinfonietta of 1936, and here, as in the contemporaneous cantata Moby Dick, the influence of Schoenbergian expressionism predominates. But it is deserving praise to say that in the intense, vivid cantata it is Schoenberg’s pupil Alban Berg whom Hermann rivals as a musical dramatist. Wilson-Johnson stands out as a compellingly energised Ahab in this quality recording.
VIVALDI: CONCERTOS FOR STRINGS, Arte dei Suonatori (BIS/Ode). A concerto without soloists sounds contradictory, but in its early life the boundaries between concerto, sinfonia and sonata were blurred, and Vivaldi, in his 50 or so ripieno concertos, kept the old form alive. The 10 such works recorded here are rich in Vivaldian invention, and this Polish early-instrument band give them a polished performance with a big sound – bigger perhaps than one really wants to hear.
GLORIOUS PERCUSSION and IN TEMPUS PRAESENS: CONCERTOS BY SOFIA GUBAIDULINA, Glorious Percussion, Vadim Gluzman (violin), Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Jonathan Nott (conductor) (BIS/Ode). Although sharing the spiritual aesthetic of other East European post-minimalists like Arvo Pärt and Giya Kancheli, Gubaidulina’s musical language owes much more to Western postwar modernism, not least in its exploration of timbre and explosive dissonance. Texture predominates over pulse in Glorious Percussion, the premiere recording of her percussion concerto with an eponymous band of soloists (five players and more instruments than you can throw a mallet at). In tempus praesens, with which it is paired, is her second violin concerto.
BERLIOZ: LES NUITS D’ÉTÉ and HAROLD EN ITALIE, Anne Sofie Von Otter (mezzo-soprano), Antoine Tamestit (viola), Les Musiciens du Louvre-Grenoble, Marc Minkowski (conductor) (Naive/Ode). Minkowski’s period instrument orchestra brings clarity and bite to Berlioz’s Byron-inspired second symphony, Harold in Italy. In the song cycle Summer Nights, Von Otter’s performance does much the same but not to such good effect, at least compared with her 1995 recording with James Levine. An attractive package nonetheless.
BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS, Fretwork (Harmonia Mundi/Ode). Bach’s harpsichord variations arranged for the six instruments of the world’s leading viol consort veers between the sublime and the slightly unsettling; more than slightly in the variations Fretwork’s Richard Boothby has transposed down an octave to give the tenors a fair go. But the unique tone of the viol in music as sophisticated as this is a taste to savour. I am determined fully to acquire it.