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 1. So you think nobody needs to hear another recording
of Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante defunte" ("Pavane for a Dead
Princess")? Think again. Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, with
violinist Thomas Zehetmair playing and conducting (Naive V5345),
takes you into the music in such microscopic detail that you
feel you're almost inside the instruments. The glorious playing
and luminous sound extend to Ravel's equally overplayed "Le
Tombeau de Couperin" ("Couperin's Tomb") which sounds as fresh
as when it was first performed. Another marvel is the harp
playing of Emmanuel Ceysson on Debussy's "Danses Sacree et
Profane", plus soloist Zehetmair giving his all in Ravel's "Tzigane" — inspired by Romanian and Hungarian gypsy music heard in Paris
during the composer's lifetime.
2. Missed/horrified by/ignorant of the recording of the
world's last castrato soprano, Alessandro Moreschi, made in 1902
and available for listening on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slhhg8sI6Ds)?
Fear not, the growth in interest for "historically informed
performance" not only made it necessary to bring the tuba's
precursor, the ophicleide, out of retirement, but also required
someone — and, for authenticity's sake, not female sopranos — to
tackle the music the castrati left behind. We are in the age of
the countertenor, men who have trained their falsetto to sing
powerfully and with full control right into the soprano range — as well as below it. New Zealand's David Hansen is at the top of
his game on "Rivals" (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 88883744012). The
name comes from the practice in the 18th century, the heyday of
the castrati, of casting two of them in different roles in the
same opera and letting them slug it out in song. Hansen provides
world premiere recordings of eight arias in the nine tracks
here. Five are by Leonardo Vinci, who did not have a "da"
between his first and last name but did have plenty of musical
talent. The distinctly male voice probing a range where you
expect to hear Renee Fleming may sound odd at first, but the
musicality wins the day.
3. The general take on the late Ukrainian-born pianist
Vladimir Horowitz was that, if the devil had played the piano,
he would have lost the Tchaikovsky competition to the Jewish
virtuoso from Kiev. Horowitz appeared for the first time at New
York's Carnegie Hall in 1928 at age 24, and played his last
recital there about a decade before his death in 1989. Sony has
released all of his Carnegie Hall recitals in a sumptuous
collection of 41 CDs and DVDs in a box shaped like the building
itself. To know what the fuss is about for less, there is a
two-CD highlights album, "Great Moments — Horowitz Live at
Carnegie Hall" (Sony 88883768602). It includes the prelude from
Bach's "Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C major" (BWV 564) that
rivals organ versions for sheer physical power, as well as
Horowitz's own "Variations on a Theme from Bizet's 'Carmen.'" A
rousing John Philip Sousa number, "The Stars and Stripes
Forever," may make even non-Americans stand to attention.
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 4. If Horowitz represented the pinnacle of the
19th-century piano virtuoso pioneered by Franz Liszt, then
Chinese keyboard wizard Lang Lang is the new model pianist. Lots
of ink has been spilled in the debate over whether he is just a
pyrotechnician or there is a deep musical sensibility
underneath. That debate can be continued after everyone has
heard Lang Lang and British conductor Simon Rattle at the helm
of the Berlin Philharmonic playing Prokofiev's raucous Concerto
No. 3 and Bartok's more introspective and nuanced Concerto No.
2. No one will go away from these madcap renditions without
wondering how they pulled it off — though for those who can't
believe their ears, there is a DVD of rehearsals (Sony
88883732262).
5. Everyone loves Mozart, his music supposedly makes
babies smarter in the womb and no holiday list would be complete
without him. But with so much out there, where to begin? A good
starting place for collectors and novices alike would be Mozart's
six concertos for violin, as recorded by the German-Japanese
violinist Mirijam Contzen and the Bavarian Chamber Philharmonic of
Augsburg under the baton of Reinhard Goebel (OEHMS Classics OC 862).
Mozart first trotted around Europe as a violin prodigy before he had
turned 10, and his affinity for the instrument shines through in
these youthful works. Contzen gives them her considerable all and
the playing of the ensemble is delightfully nuanced. There is enough
variety to suit all tastes, but a particular favorite is the last
movement of the Concerto in G major (KV 216), which suddenly breaks
stride for a playful interlude that sounds like a folk dance
injected in the middle of a formal rondeau. Fascinating, and makes
you wonder what more Mozart would have done had he not died at age
35.
6. Back to Ravel for a gem of a DVD from Glyndebourne's
2012 season of the composer's two short operas, "L'Heure Espagnole"
(The Spanish Hour) and "L'enfant et les sortileges" (The Child and
the Spells), both in new productions by the French director Laurent
Pelly (FRA Musica FRA008). The Spanish-influenced piece is an early
work that compares a wound-up clock mechanism to the erotic
compulsions of humans. In the second, Ravel masterfully brings to
life the French writer Colette's cracked fairytale in which a boy,
sung here by French soprano Khatouna Gadelia, throws a tantrum in
his room, breaks the crockery and tears the wallpaper. The
distressed objects come alive and taunt him. It gets very weird and
dark, like a story by Maurice Sendak or Roald Dahl, which is why
it's so good. Not to be missed: the chastened lad singing out "Mama"
at the end, and the singing trees bowing for the curtain call.
(Michael Roddy is the arts and lifestyle
editor for Reuters in Europe. The views expressed are his own)
(Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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