Classical
Large and perfectly proportioned
by Ian Dando
Christopher Blake: Symphony – The Islands and other works. NZSO. Atoll ACD403
AN NZSO COMMISSION LAUNCHED several years ago, Blake’s one symphony is a sure-footed blockbuster built to last.
Charles Brasch’s Three Sonnets (printed on the CD sleeve) are the catalyst for the work’s restless and dark mood. But Blake reacts to mood only. Basically, it’s a traditional abstract symphony in three movements with standard thematic development. Yet its dissonance, cluster chords and stretching of tonality in its powerful shaping towards climaxes give it a postwar modern ambience.
The 43-minute timescale is vast, which suits Blake – he’s a natural expansive thinker. In the central slow movement – the most approachable – two simple ideas take nine minutes to work through. In the spacious opening movement, inchoate shapes gradually morph into clear-cut melodies. That’s the sort of space Blake needs to develop his ideas exhaustively with cogency and imagination. There’s not a bar I’d chop or alter; all is perfectly proportioned.
The other three works, short tone poems of eight to 12 minutes each, are effective but haven’t the same eloquence. They seem short-winded, as though Blake needs more elbow room. It’s the epic Islands Symphony that dominates in what I’d rate as one of the most strongly written large-scale evocations of New Zealand landscape since Lilburn’s Second Symphony of 1951.
Brass Aotearoa. National Youth Brass Band of New Zealand. Conductor Nigel Weeks. MMT2049
NEW ZEALAND COMPOSERS dominate here with four works written in the last two years. Gareth Farr expands band resource with log drums in Waipiro, and Maori conch shells in Tawhirimatea; the former shows a new side of Farr as an economical symphonic thinker, doing a lot with a little by developing one motif with great imagination.
Ross Harris’s Bremner Aria is the other plum. Its flowing melodic lines for trombone soloist build up strong emotional intensity. Behold the Narrows from the Hill shows natural flair for melody and band scoring from young Timaru writer Dwayne Bloomfield, but he makes the mistake of following the storyline of a book too slavishly by depicting 12 episodes. It fragments his 12-minute work into short-winded mosaics.
Two British works complete the menu – Hespe’s dated The Three Musketeers (1952) and Sparke’s very English-sounding Land of the Long White Cloud Aotearoa. Its bravura writing displays the remarkable technical aplomb of this young band, who are all under 23.
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 3. Prokofiev Piano Concerto No 3. Pianist Mikhail Pletnev with Russian National Orchestra. Conductor Mstislav Rostropovich DGG471 576-2
THE OBESE AND OVERSTATED Rachmaninov versus the flesh and bone of the athletic Prokofiev: strange bed-fellows, yet both popular works.
Approach to the two slow movements says all. In the Rachmaninov, Rostropovich fattens out the phrases in the long tune with unadulterated schmalz befitting a work dripping with calories. In the Prokofiev, he captures the mockery behind the elegant smile of the slow movement’s opening tune. Pletnev’s crisp toccata playing strikes the heart of the Prokofiev outer movements. He cuts through the elephantine chordal writing in the Rachmaninov cleanly. A totally safe recommendation.
Bonbons for Organ 2. Atoll ACD603
LEITWEIGHTS, OBVIOUSLY. But Martin Setchell never patronises them: he’s an outstanding organist and impeccable stylist on the colourful Rieger organ in Christchurch’s Town Hall. Once past the laboured humour in Spicer’s overlength Kiwi Fireworks, there’s much to please light listeners – Setchell’s happy-go-lucky Popular Song from Walton’s Façade, his vivid colouring in Sibelius’s Finlandia, a bittersweet Satie Gymnopedie No 1, an aptly heavy plod through Saint-Saens’s Elephant via the 32-foot pedal stop, and an energetic Sousa Liberty Bell March to spoil Monty Python fans. This CD is the perfect timid person’s introduction to pipe organ.
Tango Song and Dance. DG471 500-2
THIS EGO TRIP for André Previn and his new wife Anne-Sophie Mutter (with gossip-column sleeve interview) has a confused identity between high and middlebrow. Highbrows will fast-track to the final item – Fauré’s lyrically rich Violin Sonata No 1, showing Mutter as the great violinist she is, in close accord with pianist Lambert Orkis. The rest are lightweight miniatures with the feisty Mutter playing over-hyped renditions of three Brahms Hungarian Dances, arrangements from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and some sentimental Kreisler junk. Previn’s new Tango Song and Dance, written for Mutter, won’t last. It’s Sunday-afternoon writing.
Bach: Violin Partitas 1 and 3, Sonata No 2. Ilya Gringolts, violin. DG474 235-2
EXPECT A BUMPY RIDE. The 21-year-old Russian’s rhythmic energy is so hyperactive that he distorts the baroque dances of the two Partitas into frantic and jagged lines, and even the tone of his Stradivarius violin distorts in some of his over-accented notes. A less aggressive approach would have brought out the essential beauty of Bach’s harmonic flow more prominently. But this subtlety is swept aside in performances that are simply too hard-driven.
