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Record Reviews

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Extract

  • Macmillan's ‘Triduum’ Stephen Johnson

  • John McCabe: Quartets and Piano Music Michael Oliver

  • Recent Finnissy discs Jonathan Cross

  • Barry Guy Mark Cromar

  • John Adams Peter Quinn

  • Schnittke Ronald Weitzman

  • Kancheli andTerteryan Edward McKeon

  • Radulescu's Piano Concerto Mark Taylor

  • An Anglo-Celtic Miscellany Calum MacDonald

  • Boulez's ‘Repons’ John Warnaby

  • Brian, Foulds, Pott Martin Anderson

Type
Record Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

page 48 note 1 See review in Tempo 184. Since then, Polyansky's marvellous interpretation of the Concerto for Mixed Choir has become readily available on CHAN 9332.

page 49 note 2 Kaljuste was involved in an early concert performance of Schnittke's Requiem (which in Soviet days could only be heard as an invisible ‘backdrop’ to a stage production of Schiller's Don Carlos- i.e. a choir behind the scenes singing the Catholic mass). ECM has chosen to give Schnittke's cycle the title Psalms of Repentance, perhaps wanting to twin it up with Part's wholly different Canon of Repentance(see review in Tempo 206).

page 50 note 3 For instance, Schnittke made substantial changes to his Sixth Symphony after the Moscow premiere, when Rostropovich conducted the work in the USA. After Schnittke suffered his third massive stroke in June 1994 and was robbed of the power of speech, Rostropovich conveyed the composer's detailed changes, including cuts, to Hans-Ulrich Duffek of the publishing firm Sikorski, prior to the printing of the score. In the case of Rozhdestvensky, however, we must take careful note that Schnittke was deeply distressed with his conductor friend's first edited effort on the Ninth Symphony. After the composer heard a tape of the Moscow premiere, in the early summer of 1998, shortly before his last illness, he forbade further performances of that version. The matter of the unfinished Schnittke ‘Ninth’ remains unresolved.

page 51 note 1 Ivashkin, Alexander, ‘The Paradox of Russian Non-Liberty’ (The Musical Quarterly, Vol.76 no.4, pp.543566 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 51 note 2 In this instance the duduk is a duct flute, rather than the traditional cylindrical wooden oboe. Terteryan's Third Symphony also features two zumas, a double-reed oboe-like instrument. The use of traditional instruments (as here) and ancient languages (as in the Sixth Symphony) was attacked under Soviet rule as music of the Republics was supposed to follow the model of traditional Orientalism left by such composers as The Five, Gilère, and Ippolitov-lvanov. Terteryan's use of these was therefore both a rejection of the violence done to his native culture and a spiritual enterprise to find his musical self in Armenia's cultural genes. See Marina Frolova-Walker, ‘“Nationalist in Form, Socialist in Content”. Musical Nation-Building in the Soviet Republics’ ( Journal of the American Musiwlogical Society 1998, vol.51, no.2 pp.331371)CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

page 53 note * James Clapperton's championing of the recent Piano Sonatas is a lone honourable exception.

page 53 note † Musique spectmle has in any case, of course, a locus classicus, if not in fact its fons ct orito, in Stitnmtmg.

page 54 note 1 Radiant Mastery have also recorded de Peyer in classical repertoire and in two well-filled recitals of miniatures, under the heading ‘De Peyer Delights’. Collection One (GDP 1001) includes pieces by Benjamin, Finzi, Malcolm Arnold and Joseph Horowitz as well as Milhaud, Tailleferre, Lutoslawski and Szalowski; Collection Two (GDP 1002) includes Warlock, Alan Richardson, Arnold Cooke, Satie and Leo Wèiner.

page 55 note 2 One is reproduced among the illustration to Graham Parlett's new A Catalogue of the Works of Sir Arnold Bax(OUP, 1999, £60.00), which see for compositional details, history, the wording of the dedication and other matters. Many years have passed since Mr Parlett published his first brief, tentative, typescript Bax catalogue through Lewis Foreman's Triad Press; it's a pleasure to welcome its sumptuously-produced successor, which finally provides Bax's output with the kind of detailed documentation and commentary already enjoyed by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Delius and Walton but relatively few other British composers. Full of illuminating and entertaining detail, packed with relevant quotations from letters and other sources, this is primarily a chronological listing of no fewer than 386 numbered items — though opinions will be divided on whether revised versions (and Bax was a frequent reviser) should always have been dignified by a new work-number and placed under the year of revision, rather than listed in proximity to the original forms. Perhaps only fellow-cataloguers can truly appreciate the patient years of original scholarship which lie behind such a production, likely to be the authoritative Bax list, notwithstanding new discoveries, well into the next millennium.

page 56 note 3 But see Purser's, John brief assessment in Scotland's Music (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1992), pp.251–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 56 note 4 The label's initials stand for Alain Van Kerckhoven Editeur, Brussels: they may not have a UK distributor.

page 58 note 1 See Tempo No. 197, July 1996, pages 32–33.

page 58 note 2 This has not been included in the 3–49sc collection entitled ‘25 Years Experimentalstudio Freiburg’ on Col Legno WWE 20025. Nevertheless, there is almost certainly a recording of the original Donaueschingen performance of Répons, and it is a pity it has not so far been made commercially available.

page 58 note 3 See notes to DG 457 605–2.

page 58 note 4 Anthèmes, version for solo violin, computer and six loudspeakers, 1991–1997, available as part of Donaueschingen Musik Tage, 1997, Col Legno WWE CD, 20026.