text:
# Purcell 7.2

1. Oct 26, 2012

### NullSpace0

1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data
A wire lies at height z=h carrying current parallel to the y-axis. A square loop, of side length b, is moving in the direction of +x with a velocity v. Find the magnitude of the emf at the moment when the center of the loop crosses the y-axis.

2. Relevant equations

3. The attempt at a solution
Would the fact that the B-field makes circle around the wires mean that flux through the loop is 0 at this moment? I need to find d(Flux)/dt, but that seems like it would be quite a complicated function! Is there a trick that keeps me from having to do that?

Otherwise, perhaps I would find the z-component of B-field, but that wouldn't involve any dependence on t... so how do I get the t into the equation so that the derivative of my expression for flux is not 0? (If there is no t in the expression, d(anything)/dt is 0...)

2. Oct 26, 2012

### TSny

Hello, NullSpace0. To be clear, the square loop lies in the xy plane according to Purcell's statement of the problem.
Yes. But, of course, that doesn't mean the emf is zero at that instant.
It's not too terrible to find the flux through the loop for arbitrary x (the x-coordinate of the center of the loop). You could then find the emf using the chain rule: $\frac{d\Phi}{dt} = \frac{d\Phi}{dx}\frac{dx}{dt}$

However, you can avoid this by using Purcell's results in section 7.3 ("A loop Moving Through a Nonuniform Magnetic Field"). In particular, can you see how Purcell's equation (6) might be applied to your problem?

#### Attached Files:

• ###### emf.jpg
File size:
51.2 KB
Views:
106
Last edited: Oct 26, 2012
3. Oct 26, 2012

### schaefera

Perhaps the second method could be applied by considering the Lorentz force on each side of the loop, and then doing the line integral of force per unit charge around the loop at the time of interest?

4. Oct 26, 2012

### NullSpace0

Schaefera and TSny-- thank you for the advice!

If I do use that second method, would I only want to consider z-components of B-field, since the other component would then lie in the plane of the loop?

5. Oct 26, 2012

### TSny

Yes!

6. Oct 26, 2012

### NullSpace0

Aha! Working all of this out, I find that Bz=(2Ib)/(cr^2) but the sign is opposite for the sides that are pointing along the wire... I don't actually care about B for the sides of the loop perpendicular to the wire because for them, F and ds will end up being perpendicular and so they come out to 0 in the line integral of force.

Thus, I get F=(2Ivbq)/(c^2*r^2), and then integrate (1/q)F.ds, I get: emf=(4Ivb^2)/(c^2*(h^2+b^2)). Does this look correct?

A friend I'm checking answers with somehow got that the b^2 on the bottom is divided by 4 while there is only a factor of 2 multiplying the numerator... not sure where that would come from!

And if I do this by finding the flux, then taking that integral's time derivative (using the chain rule) and then dividing by c as Faraday's law tells me, I get MY solution to the emf above... but with only a factor of 2 in the numerator, not the 4 I have up there.

So I have 3 very similar but slightly different solutions...

Last edited: Oct 26, 2012
7. Oct 26, 2012

### TSny

I think your friend might be right. You have a triangle with r as hypotenuse and h as one side. What is the length of the other side?

8. Oct 27, 2012

### schaefera

That should fix it all.

9. Oct 27, 2012

### NullSpace0

Yay, thanks for the help! I needed to include b/2 as the numerator when taking the z-component of the B-field, which eliminates the 4 in the numerator of the final solution and adds the b^2/4 in the bottom.

So now I should also decide which way the induced current will flow. I think that, if we look down on the square from above, it will flow counter-clockwise... but this based on the fact that as the square moves beneath the wire, flux starts by increasing in the upward direction (+z) and just at the instant it is beneath the wire, net flux is 0 meaning that it is just about to start increasing in the down direction... induced B should point in the +z which requires a counter-clockwise I(ind) but the RHR. Is this reasoning sound?

Last edited: Oct 27, 2012
10. Oct 27, 2012

### TSny

I believe that's correct (assuming the current is in the +y direction). Good!

11. Oct 27, 2012

### NullSpace0

Thank you both so much!


text:
### begriffs

Phil Freeman, the author of Purescript, explains the design of Halogen, a declarative, type-safe UI library.

### Summary

• Purescript-halogen
• a toolkit for building reactive web apps in purescript
• built on signal functions and a virtual dom
• Signals are values which change over time
• they are functors and applicatives
• The “stateful” combinator creates a new signal from an old one, adding a stateful input. It is called foldp in Elm or stepper
• for example if a signal wraps up a monoid then you can define a combine function which produces a new signal of the latest mconcat’d values
• Halogen provides a DOM templating DSL which builds a type HTML
• A user interface can be considered a Signal HTML
• when the signal changes, push the diffs to the DOM
• Halogen goes beyond such simple Signals to Signal functions, i.e. type UI input = Signal input -> Signal (HTML input)
• Signal functions do have a mathematical denotation
• The concrete representation of signal functions in Halogen
• Signal functions also have Functor and Applicative instances (slides have a diagram)
• But signal functions have some additional type class instances: Profunctor, Strong, Choice
• Signal functions also have a stateful combinator
• Explanation of the merge combinator
• Putting this all together, the signal functions and combinators combine to create graphs of data flow
• In Halogen you get a lot of composability for free, which works well when defining web components
• Components actually have a type interface: type Component m i o = SF i (HTML (m o))
• Mixins become easy inside the graph of pure functions
• Undo/redo
• Routing
• Sitemap / breadcrumbs
• How to handle
• Ajax
• External input
• Third-party code
• Canvas, SVG, WebGL

format: plain


text:
Pełnotekstowe zasoby PLDML oraz innych baz dziedzinowych są już dostępne w nowej Bibliotece Nauki.
Zapraszamy na https://bibliotekanauki.pl

PL EN

Preferencje
Język
Widoczny [Schowaj] Abstrakt
Liczba wyników
• # Artykuł - szczegóły

## Studia Mathematica

2001 | 146 | 2 | 157-176

## Maximal regularity of discrete and continuous time evolution equations

EN

### Abstrakty

EN
We consider the maximal regularity problem for the discrete time evolution equation $u_{n+1} - Tuₙ = fₙ$ for all n ∈ ℕ₀, u₀ = 0, where T is a bounded operator on a UMD space X. We characterize the discrete maximal regularity of T by two types of conditions: firstly by R-boundedness properties of the discrete time semigroup $(Tⁿ)_{n∈ℕ₀}$ and of the resolvent R(λ,T), secondly by the maximal regularity of the continuous time evolution equation u'(t) - Au(t) = f(t) for all t > 0, u(0) = 0, where A:= T - I. By recent results of Weis, this continuous maximal regularity is characterized by R-boundedness properties of the continuous time semigroup $(e^{t(T-I)})_{t≥0}$ and again of the resolvent R(λ,T).
As an important tool we prove an operator-valued Mikhlin theorem for the torus 𝕋 providing conditions on a symbol $M ∈ L_{∞}(𝕋;𝔏(X))$ such that the associated Fourier multiplier $T_{M}$ is bounded on $l_{p}(X)$.

157-176

wydano
2001

### Twórcy

autor
• Département des Mathématiques, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, 2, avenue Adolphe Chauvin, 95302 Cergy-Pontoise, France


text:
GTU Computer Engineering (Semester 4)
Mathematics 4
May 2016
Total marks: --
Total time: --
INSTRUCTIONS
(1) Assume appropriate data and state your reasons
(2) Marks are given to the right of every question
(3) Draw neat diagrams wherever necessary

Short Questions
1(a) The complex conjugate of $$\dfrac{i}{1-i}$$ is _______ .
1 M
1(b) A mapping which preserves only magnitude is known as _______ mapping.
1 M
1(c) IF z = cos θ + i sin θ then sin nθ = _______ .
1 M
1(d) The value of $$\int _c \dfrac{e^z}{(z-3)^2}dz$$ where C: |z| = 2 is _______ .
1 M
1(e) Is the set |z-1+2i| ≤ 2 domain?
1 M
1(f) Find the principal value of i(1-i).
1 M
1(g) Prove $$\lim_{z\rightarrow 1}\dfrac{iz}{3}=\dfrac{i}{3}$$ by definition.
1 M
1(h) Show that sin(log ii)=-1
1 M
1(i) Define residue
1 M
1(j) While evaluating a definite integral by trepezoidal rule, the accuracy can be increased by taking _______ number of sub-intervals
1 M
1(k) The relationship between E and is _______ .
1 M
1(l) The order of convergence in Newton - Raphson method is _______ .
1 M
1(m) Iterative formula for finding the square root of N by Newton - Raphson method is _______ .
1 M
1(n) Putting n = 1 in the Newton-cote's quadrature formula rule obtained is _______ .
1 M

2(a) Find all the roots of (1+i)2/3.
3 M
2(b) Show that f(z)=log z is analytic everywhere except at the origin.
4 M
Solve any one question from Q.2(c) & Q.2(d)
2(c) Prove that u = x2 - y2 and $$v=-\dfrac{y}{x^2+y^2}$$ are harmonic but u + iv is not regular.
7 M
2(d) Examine the nature of the function $$f(z)=\left\{\begin{matrix} \dfrac{x^3y(y-ix)}{x^6+y^2} & ,z\neq 0\\ 0 &, z=0 \end{matrix}\right.$$ in the region including the origin.
7 M

Solve any three question from Q.3(a), Q.3(b), Q.3(c) & Q.3(d), Q.3(e), Q.3(f)
3(a) Find analytic function f(z) = u + iv if v = ex (x sin y + y cos y).
3 M
3(b) Evaluate using Cauchy's integral formula $$\int _c \dfrac{3z^2+z+1}{(z^2-1)(z+3)}dz$$ where C is the circle |z|=2.
4 M
3(c) Using contour integration evaluate the real integral $$\int _0 ^{2\pi} \dfrac{\cos 3\theta}{5-4\cos \theta}.$$
7 M
3(d) If f(z)=u+iv is analytic in domain D then prove that $$\left ( \dfrac{\partial ^2}{\partial x^2}+\dfrac{\partial ^2}{\partial y^2} \right )|Re(f(z)|^2=2|f'(z)|^2$$
3 M
3(e) Determine the linear fractional transformation that maps z1 = 0, z2 = 1, z3=&infin onto w1, w2=-i, w3=1 repectively.
4 M
3(f) Expand $$f(z)=\dfrac{1}{(z+2)(z+4)}$$ valid for the region (i) |z| < 2 (ii) 2 < |z| < 4 (iii) |z| > 4
7 M

Solve any three question from Q.4(a), Q.4(b), Q.4(c) & Q.4(d), Q.4(e), Q.4(f)
4(a) Find the dominant Eigen values of $$A=\begin{bmatrix} 3 & -5\\ -2 & 4 \end{bmatrix}$$ by power method.
3 M
4(b) Evaluate $$\int _0^6\dfrac{dx}{1+x^2}$$ by using (i) Trapezoidal rule (ii) Simpson's 1/3 rule taking h=1.
4 M
4(c) Prove that the transformation $$w=\dfrac{z}{1-z}$$ maps the upper half of the z-plane unto the upper half of the w-plane. What is the image of |z| = 1 under this transformation?
7 M
4(d) Solve the system of equations by Gauss-Seidal Method
10x1 + x2 + x3 = 6
x1 + 10x2 + x3 = 6
x1 + x2 + 10x3 = 6
3 M
4(e) Evaluate the integral $$\int ^1_0\dfrac{dt}{1+t}$$ by one point, two point and three point Gaussian formula.
4 M
4(f) The population of the town is given below, estimate the population of the year 1895 and 1930 using suitable interpolation
 Year , x 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 Population (in thousand) f(x) 46 66 81 93 101
7 M

Solve any three question from Q.5(a), Q.5(b), Q.5(c) & Q.5(d), Q.5(e), Q.5(f)
5(a) Find up to four decimal places the root of the equation sin x=e-x , using Newtons Rapson's Method starting with x0=0.6.
3 M
5(b) Find the negative root of x3 - 7x + 3 = 0 by bisection method up to two decimal places.
4 M
5(c) Apply improved Euler method to solve the initial value problem $$\dfrac{dy}{dx}=\log (x+y)$$ with y(1) = 2 taking h = 0.2 for x = 1.2 and x = 1.4 correct up to four decimal places.
7 M
5(d) Express the function $$\dfrac{3x^2-12x+11}{(x-1)(x-2)(x-3)}$$ as a sum of partial fraction, using Lagrange's formula.
3 M
5(e) Using Newton's divided difference formula find a polynomial and also find f(6).
 x 1 2 4 7 f(x) 10 15 67 430
4 M
5(f) Apply fourth order Runge ' Kutta Method to find y(0, 2) given $$\dfrac{dy}{dx}=x+y,$$ y(0) = 1 (Taking h = 0.1).
7 M

More question papers from Mathematics 4


text:
# What is the time breakdown for getting a rocket like the Falcon 9 or Atlas 5 ready for launch?

I've been looking everywhere for the detailed drivers for why it costs so much to launch cargo of any kind into LEO. From all the people I've talked with and the research through google, labor for getting the rocket ready to launch is the cost driver, since people cost a lot to pay per hour, and a lot of them are needed to build and inspect the rocket before launch. However, it never gives a breakdown as to where most of the man-hours go. I suspect it goes into building and inspecting the engines, since a lot of the assembly and qualification testing is not automated, but I haven't been able to find a good answer so I don't know.

What is the time breakdown for getting a rocket like the Falcon 9 ready for launch? Is most of the time spent in building the rocket, in assembling components for the engines? Or is it mostly spent inspecting and qualification testing those components/assemblies for flight?

Also, I know there are significant differences between the Falcon 9 and Atlas 5, but since data from SpaceX and ULA is hard to get, I figured I'd not pick only one rocket, since there might be next to no useful information out there.

• @user11377 - I don't think you'll get detailed cost breakdowns - aerospace companies are pretty tight lip about costs, but SpaceX's Falcon 9 cost an average of $2500 per pound compared to around$13 000 for Delta IV and Atlas V rockets. I'm guessing that most of those savings are achieved through streamlining and low overhead, as they are not reusing the boosters yet. Nov 16, 2015 at 15:38


text:
The Community for Technology Leaders
Subscribe
Issue No.12 - December (2008 vol.30)
pp: 2204-2217
Wim H. Hesselink , University of Groningen, Groningen
Jos B.T.M. Roerdink , University of Groningen, Groningen
ABSTRACT
A general algorithm for computing Euclidean skeletons of 2D and 3D data sets in linear time is presented. These skeletons are defined in terms of a new concept, called the integer medial axis (IMA) transform. We prove a number of fundamental properties of the IMA skeleton, and compare these with properties of the CMD (centers of maximal disks) skeleton. Several pruning methods for IMA skeletons are introduced (constant, linear and square-root pruning) and their properties studied. The algorithm for computing the IMA skeleton is based upon the feature transform, using a modification of a linear-time algorithm for Euclidean distance transforms. The skeletonization algorithm has a time complexity which is linear in the number of input points, and can be easily parallelized. We present experimental results for several data sets, looking at skeleton quality, memory usage and computation time, both for 2D images and 3D volumes.
INDEX TERMS
Curve, surface, solid, and object representations, Image Representation, Edge and feature detection, Feature representation, Shape, Volume visualization
CITATION
Wim H. Hesselink, Jos B.T.M. Roerdink, "Euclidean Skeletons of Digital Image and Volume Data in Linear Time by the Integer Medial Axis Transform", IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence, vol.30, no. 12, pp. 2204-2217, December 2008, doi:10.1109/TPAMI.2008.21
REFERENCES
 [1] J.L. Pfaltz and A. Rosenfeld, “Computer Representation of Planar Regions by Their Skeletons,” Comm. ACM, vol. 10, pp. 119-125, 1972. [2] A. Webb, Statistical Pattern Recognition. Ar nold, 1999. [3] J.R. Parker, Algorithms for Image Processing and Computer Vision. John Wiley & Sons, 1996. [4] S. Beucher, “Digital Skeletons in Euclidean and Geodesic Spaces,” Signal Processing, vol. 38, pp. 127-141, 1994. [5] P. Maragos and R.W. Schafer, “Morphological Skeleton Representation and Coding of Binary Images,” IEEE Trans. Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, vol. 34, pp. 1228-1244, 1986. [6] F. Meyer, “The Binary Skeleton in Three Steps,” Proc. IEEE Workshop Computer Architecture and Image Database Management, pp. 477-483, 1985. [7] J. Serra, Image Analysis and Mathematical Morphology. Academic Press, 1982. [8] H. Talbot and L. Vincent, “Euclidean Skeletons and Conditional Bisectors,” Proc. SPIE Visual Comm. and Image Processing, pp. 862-876, Nov. 1992. [9] L. Vincent, “Efficient Computation of Various Types of Skeletons,” Proc. SPIE Symp. Medical Imaging, pp. 297-311, Feb. 1991. [10] F.Y. Shih and C.C. Pu, “A Skeletonization Algorithm by Maxima Tracking on Euclidean Distance Transform,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 28, no. 3, pp. 331-341, 1995. [11] H. Blum, “A Transformation for Extracting New Descriptors of Shape,” Proc. Symp. Models for the Perception of Speech and Visual Form, W. Wathen-Dunn, ed., pp. 362-380, 1967. [12] P.E. Danielsson, “Euclidean Distance Mapping,” Computer Graphics and Image Processing, vol. 14, pp. 227-248, 1980. [13] G. Borgefors, I. Nystrom, and G.S.D. Baja, “Computing Skeletons in Three Dimensions,” Pattern Recognition, vol. 32, no. 7, pp. 1225-1236, 1999. [14] Y. Ge and J. Fitzpatrick, “On the Generation of Skeletons from Discrete Euclidean Distance Maps,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 18, pp. 1055-1066, 1996. [15] T. Hirata, “A Unified Linear-Time Algorithm for Computing Distance Maps,” Information Processing Letters, vol. 58, pp. 129-133, 1996. [16] A. Meijster, J.B.T.M. Roerdink, and W.H. Hesselink, “A General Algorithm for Computing Distance Transforms in Linear Time,” Math. Morphology and Its Applications to Image and Signal Processing, J. Goutsias, L. Vincent, and D.S. Bloomberg, eds., pp. 331-340, Kluwer Academic, 2000. [17] C.R. Maurer Jr., R. Qi, and V. Raghavan, “A Linear Time Algorithm for Computing the Euclidean Distance Transform in Arbitrary Dimensions,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 265-270, Feb. 2003. [18] C.R. Maurer Jr., V. Raghavan, and R. Qi, “A Linear Time Algorithm for Computing the Euclidean Distance Transform in Arbitrary Dimensions,” Information Processing in Medical Imaging, pp. 358-364, 2001. [19] W.H. Hesselink, M. Visser, and J.B.T.M. Roerdink, “Euclidean Skeletons of 3D Data Sets in Linear Time by the Integer Medial Axis Transform,” Math. Morphology: 40 Years On, Proc. Seventh Int'l Symp. Math. Morphology. C. Ronse, L. Najman, and E. Decencière, eds., pp. 259-268, 2005. [20] D. Attali and A. Montanvert, “Computing and Simplifying 2D and 3D Continuous Skeletons,” Computer Vision and Image Understanding, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 161-273, 1997. [21] R. Strzodka and A. Telea, “Generalized Distance Transforms and Skeletons in Graphics Hardware,” Proc. Eurographics IEEE TCVG Symp. Visualization, pp. 221-230, 2004. [22] E. Remy and E. Thiel, “Look-Up Tables for Medial Axis on Squared Euclidean Distance Transform,” Proc. Int'l Conf. Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery, pp. 224-235, 2003. [23] T.Y. Kong and A. Rosenfeld, “Digital Topology: Introduction and Survey,” Computer Vision, Graphics and Image Processing, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 357-393, 1989. [24] W.H. Hesselink, “A Linear-Time Algorithm for Euclidean Feature Transform Sets,” Information Processing Letters, vol. 102, pp. 181-186, 2007. [25] D. Coeurjolly, “$d\hbox{-}{\rm Dimensional}$ Reverse Euclidean Distance Transformation and Euclidean Medial Axis Extraction in Optimal Time,” Proc. Int'l Conf. Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery, pp.327-337, 2003. [26] M. Couprie and R. Zrour, “Discrete Bisector Function and Euclidean Skeleton,” Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery, E.Andres, G. Damiand, and P. Lienhardt, eds., pp. 216-227, Springer, 2005. [27] W. van der Kallen, “Integral Medial Axis and the Distance between Closest Points,” Regular and Chaotic Dynamics, vol. 12, no. 6, pp. 734-743, 2007. [28] R.A. Drebin, L. Carpenter, and P. Hanrahan, “Volume Rendering,” Computer Graphics (Proc. SIGGRAPH '88), vol. 22, no. 4, pp.65-74, 1988. [29] A. Telea and J.J. van Wijk, “An Augmented Fast Marching Method for Computing Skeletons and Centerlines,” Proc. Eurographics— IEEE TCVG Symp. Data Visualization, D. Ebert, P. Brunet, and I.Navazo, eds., pp. 251-ff, 2002.
FULL ARTICLE
34 ms
(Ver 2.0)

Marketing Automation Platform


text:
Symbol .. Symbol -- sequences of consecutive symbols

Synopsis

• Operator: ..
• Usage:
s .. t
• Inputs:
• s,
• t,
• Outputs:
• the sequence of consecutive symbols useful as variables in polynomial rings, from s to t, inclusive, as determined by the vars(ZZ)

Description

 i1 : x .. z o1 = (x, y, z) o1 : Sequence i2 : x .. C o2 = (x, y, z, A, B, C) o2 : Sequence


text:
## Posts Tagged ‘Johann Sebastian Bach’

### Favourites of 2017: Music

January 5, 2018

It seemed this year that I was treated to an avalanche of excellent music — much more than I could listen to with adequate attention. Of those recordings I devoted the most time to, I have selected for praise an even dozen. I proceed roughly chronologically.

***

Ars Elaboratio
Ensemble Scholastica
(ATMA, 2017)

In his short story “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, Borges imagines a writer who has become so immersed in the style and the world of Cervantes that he is able to reproduce, as an original work, a word-for-word replica of Don Quixote. This story has been brought irresistibly to mind as I’ve been listening to this truly wonderful and extraordinary recording from Ensemble Scholastica. What this all-female ensemble, based in Montreal, has done is perform newly composed elaborations of medieval plainchant in an impeccably medieval style. These elaborations include adding new monophonic material to the original, or adding additional voices, or instruments. Something like this past-meets-present concept has been done before, but usually the past and present are distinguishable to the ear as modern dissonances or cadences wander into the frame. What makes the music on Ars Elaboratio so intriguing is that there really is nothing modern to hear; for all we can tell, these could be original medieval compositions.

I can imagine someone wondering about the point of doing this. Just as with Menard and his Quixote, context matters, and a modern medieval composition has different resonances than a medieval original. Such an experiment might, for instance, be a way of poking the eye of the notion, current in music circles as elsewhere, that originality is rooted in self-expression; or, to deny the idea that history moves and we have to move with it; or, as a spiritual exercise in humility, wherein musicians enter fully into the imaginative and aesthetic world of another time and place; or, as a way of honouring the beauty and wisdom of the texts by creating music that would have pleased and delighted their medieval authors; or, simply as an expression of love for the beauty of medieval music. In the notes accompanying the recording, the ensemble states their purpose as follows:

“We wish to share with listeners the true beauty and intricacy of medieval music, in particular medieval liturgical traditions, the very roots of Western music. Our audiences thus have the chance to experience the remarkable joy and complexity of medieval spirituality and culture.”

I, for one, thank them for their efforts, which have greatly delighted me.

Here is a brief advertisement for the disc, in which one can hear excerpts:

*

Matteo da Perugia: Chansons
Tetraktys
(Olive, 2016)

The number of people whose hearts go pitter-patter at the thought of a collection of music by Matteo da Perugia ought rightly to be legion, but is in fact probably somewhat closer to minuscule. This is just one of the numerous hardships which we must bear on behalf of our beleaguered times. I remember well the first time I heard one of his pieces, at a concert by the Huelgas Ensemble in Toronto; the music was so exquisite, so expressive and beguiling, that an audible gasp escaped the audience when the final note was sung, as though we’d all been holding our breath. Matteo was writing around the year 1400 and was a practitioner of what was then, and is still now, called the ars subtilior style — the subtle art — which is one of the most delightful of the medieval artistic byways awaiting discovery by listeners whose wanderlust leads them off well-beaten trails. His compositions belong to the courtly love tradition, being primarily settings of secular love poetry. Despite his name, he worked in and around the Duomo in Milan, and all of the music we have from him survives in a single manuscript.

His music pops up now and again on early music recordings, but this is, to my knowledge, just the third recording devoted entirely to him, the earlier two being by the Huelgas Ensemble and Mala Punica, both of them superb interpreters. But Tetraktys have nothing to fear from the comparison. They have chosen to perform these pieces as vocal solos with instrumental accompaniment — not a mandatory choice, if comparisons with the other recordings are anything to go on — and much of the appeal of this recording lies in the singing of Stefanie True, a Canadian soprano who is otherwise unknown to me, but who earns high praise for the beautiful purity of her voice. Instrumental accompaniment from a trio of musicians includes medieval fiddles, harp, and organetto. The result is one of the more alluring and gorgeous discs of early music I’ve heard in a long while.

Here is a brief excerpt of the ensemble during the recording process. It gives the flavour of what they are doing, but the sound on the CD is superior to what you hear here:

*

Secret History: Josquin / Victoria
John Potter
(ECM New Series, 2017)

Years ago I drew up a list of my favourite music of the first decade of the 21st century, and near the top of the list I put a CD of music by Victoria, sung by Carlos Mena, in which the familiar intricate polyphony had been adapted for a single voice with instrumental accompaniment. I loved, and still love, everything about it — Mena’s creamy voice, the clarity of the musical texture, the limpid beauty of the vocal line. I’d never heard anything quite like it before — nor, for that matter, since.

But now this new disc from John Potter and friends revisits the same musical territory, with marvellous results once again. Potter tells us in his notes that it was a fairly common practice in the 15th and 16th centuries for sacred polyphony to be adapted into tablature for lutenists and vihuelists, and even that the music of some composers, including Josquin, survives mostly in these intabulated sources. He is here joined by three vihuelas and a viola da gamba, as well as by the soprano Anna Maria Friman (of Trio Medieval) in performances of these intabulated versions of Victoria’s Missa surge propera, a collection of motets by Josquin, a motet by Mouton and another by Victoria again, some Gregorian chant, and some preludes for vihuela by Jacob Heringman, one of the musicians.

It all sounds terrific. Once again, hearing the clarity of the vocal line pulled from what would normally be a dense polyphonic texture is a real delight, and there’s a wonderful intimacy about the whole affair, as though this sublime music were being re-imagined in one’s living room. For me, the recording as a whole doesn’t quite rise to the level of that earlier one by Carlos Mena, and this mainly because Potter, as good as he is (and, as a long-time member of the Hilliard Ensemble, he’s no slouch), simply doesn’t have the translucent voice that Mena does.

The recording was made at the famous monastery of St Gerold in Austria, long favoured by ECM’s engineers, and the sound is impeccable. It was recorded in 2011, so ECM sat on it for 6 years before releasing it. I can’t imagine why. This is my favourite recording of the year.

*

Palestrina: Missa Papae Marcelli
Odhecaton
(Arcana, 2017)

Of the making of records there is no end, and there can be few pieces of Renaissance polyphony that have been recorded more often than Palestrina’s famous Missa Papae Marcelli. One naturally wonders if it’s worth bothering to record it again. But, lo and behold, here comes Odhecaton to make us hear it again anew. This ensemble, which is new to me, has a truly wonderful way with this music: the singing is very assured, pitched low if I’m not mistaken, and it has a splendid gravitas — in happier times I could have called it masculine, and been understood to be saying something intelligible. I have listened to it with some amazement, because I’ve never heard Palestrina sung like this, with such stately grace, which we expect, and earthy texture, which we don’t. The disc also includes a number of motets and Gregorian antiphons, and it actually opens with Sicut cervus, a motet that every mother’s son knows forward and backward; yet, again, not like this. [review]

Here is the whole of the Missa:

*

Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine
La Compagnia del Madrigale, Cantica Symphonia, La Pifarescha, Giuseppe Maletto
(Glossa, 2017)

2017 was a Monteverdi anniversary year, marking his 450th birthday. My plans to devote time to him largely failed, but I was able to hear this glorious new recording of his Vespers. This is a piece for which my appreciation has gradually grown over the years; it’s a sprawling, multi-faceted work that takes time to get to know, and as yet I feel that I’ve only begun to explore its many nooks and crannies. The musicians on this disc are an ace crew who will be recognized by early music aficionados. I must say that it is nice to have Italians performing the music of their countryman, and, quite in contradiction to the sometime-stereotype of period ensembles being rather dry and thin, they bring a stirring, full-bodied sound to their interpretation. The instruments, especially, are recorded with nice bloom, blending beautifully with the voices. I’ve long been fond of William Christie’s recording of this Vespers, with French forces, for its beauty and gentle tenderness, but this shows another side of this wonderful music.

This video takes us behind the scenes at the recording sessions:

*

Bach: De Occulta Philosophia
Emma Kirkby, Carlos Mena, José Miguel Moreno
(Glossa, 1998)

Here is a disc that would appear to have been produced just for me: my favourite soprano, Emma Kirkby, and my favourite counter-tenor, Carlos Mena, joining together to sing chorales of J.S. Bach, my favourite composer, over a performance of the Chaconne, my favourite composition (or, at least, having a fair claim), in an arrangement for the lute, my favourite obsolete instrument in the guitar family! You might remember the recording the Hilliard Ensemble made some years ago, in which they, following a purported “discovery” by musicologist Helga Thoene, did the same experiment: singing chorale fragments over the Chaconne, which was, allegedly, subtextually quoting them. I confess I don’t put any great faith in these musicological claims, but it hardly matters: as musical experiments go, this one is a winner. I liked the Hilliard’s performance, but I like this one even more: the intimacy of the lute, and the purity of the two voices, is entrancing. The Chaconne, mind you, only lasts a quarter-hour. The rest of the disc is filled out with Bach’s Sonata (BWV 1001) and Partita (BWV 1004), played on the lute by José Miguel Moreno. It’s all good, but it’s the chorale-laden Chaconne that is sublime.

*

Mozart: Don Giovanni
Music Aeterna, Teodor Currentzis
(Sony, 2016)

Like everyone else, I have long been wedded to Giulini’s 1959 recording of this, the greatest opera, so much so that I’ve never felt any real desire to acquire another. But nothing in this veil of tears is perfect in every respect, and there was always a possibility, however slim, that somebody might come along and do the thing well enough, and differently enough, to give us, not so much a rival, but an alternative reading. And then along came Teodor Currentzis and his mad cadre of musicians in a bid to do just that.

I say “mad” partly because of the conditions under which the recording took place: Currentzis had his singers and orchestra come to the Russian hinterland, where they stayed for weeks on end, living together, eating together, performing Don Giovanni hour after hour after hour, doing experiments, taking risks, going mad. The Guardian ran a nice feature that described the highly unusual working conditions.

And I say “mad” also because of the results. Currentzis plays this score with ferocious energy; the strings slash, the brass blares, the timpani thunders. There is nothing at all genteel about it. The sound engineering is impressively vivid. The singing is fine, but for me it is the orchestral playing that is the real draw. That might seem an odd position to take on an opera recording, but we are in the realm of the odd.

I understand the argument from those who say that this is an abuse of Mozart, who wrote at a time when elegance was prized and who could out-elegance anybody when we wanted to, but, on the other hand, this is Don Giovanni! If any opera can take this idiosyncratic, unrestrained treatment, it’s this one. An iconoclastic version could never replace Giulini, but considered as a compelling alternative view of this great music, this one is a success.

Here is a ten-minute featurette on the making of this recording:

*

Mozart – Piano Concertos 20 & 27
Evgeny Kissin, Kremerata Baltica
(EMI, 2010)

I admit I’ve had a prejudice against Evgeny Kissin, whose status as a child prodigy led me to suspect that there was more of sentimentality behind his fame than solid musical achievement. But this disc was recommended to me in glowing terms, and I decided to listen mainly because of the orchestra, Kremerata Baltica, whom I have long admired. It’s a corker! These concerti are old chestnuts, and they are often played with grace and politeness, but Kissin and his band tackle them with thunderous excitement. The sound is big, the orchestra plays with sharp attacks and tight rhythms, and Kissin is terrific at the keyboard. The performance has verve and sparkle. I don’t know if this is typical of Kissin or not, but, if so, I stand corrected.

Here is Concerto No.20:

*

Wagner: Arias and Duets
Birgit Nilsson, Hans Hotter, Philharmonia Orchestra, Leopold Ludwig
(Testament, rec.1957/8)

Birgit Nilsson has a claim to being one of the great Wagnerian sopranos of the twentieth century, and Hans Hotter can make a similar claim among bass-baritones. They were both in their prime for these recordings, made in 1957/58 in glowing sound that belies their age. Nilsson, especially, is majestic; her voice gleams, like a shaft of light penetrating the gloom. The sheer beauty of it is awe-inspiring. Hotter sings with tremendous gravitas as well, and he is a superb match for her in the long Act III duet from Die Walküre. The other selections are from Wagner’s earlier operas: Elsa’s Dream from Lohengrin, a long excerpt from Der Fliegende Holländer, and a soprano solo from Tannhäuser. This same music has been previously issued on EMI; probably this Testament release has been remastered but I’ve actually listened to both and I can’t hear any substantial differences. In either case, this is one of the best Wagner recordings I’ve ever heard. [review]

Here is the opening of Die Walküre, Act III, Scene III. Hotter is Wotan and Nilsson is Brünnhilde:

*

Brahms: Piano Works
(Sony, 2017)

If, like me, you love those last, late piano pieces Brahms left us in his Op.116, 117, and 118, then I cannot recommend more highly these superb renditions by Arcadi Volodos. Volodos is a pianist I haven’t followed very closely (though I love his account of Liszt’s virtuosic transmutation of the Wedding March!). His playing is muscular, and he makes a big, well-rounded sound. You might not think that would work all that well with these elegiac masterpieces, but these are winsome performances that I have greatly enjoyed. This is elite playing, not just technically but artistically, and this is a great disc. [review]

*

Messiaen: Turangalîla-Symphonie
Steven Osborne, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Juanjo Mena
(Hyperion, 2012)

Messiaen described this gigantic musical explosion as “a song of love, a hymn to joy”, and the joyous feeling he sought to capture as “superhuman, overflowing, dazzling, and abandoned”. Perhaps no better description of the symphony is possible. It is among the biggest, boldest, most outrageous, wildest examples of musical excess in the repertoire, and, as such, not the kind of thing I would normally be drawn to, but it’s the symphony’s spirit of unadulterated, supercharged love of life that wins me over. I’ve a few recordings in my collection, but this one from the Bergen Philharmonic, with Steven Osborne handling the difficult piano part, has delighted me to no end. The orchestral sound, which is the be-all and end-all of this piece, is wonderfully alive and vivid. A ravishing sonic experience. [Audio excerpts]

*

Weinberg: Chamber Symphonies
Kremerata Baltica, Gidon Kremer
(ECM New Series, 2017)

For the past few years my year-end list of favourites has usually included something by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, and I have something this year too. Gidon Kremer has become a high-profile champion for Weinberg’s music, and in 2017 he, with Kremerata Baltica again, issued a two-disc set of Weinberg’s four chamber symphonies and the Piano Quintet. The Quintet is an early work (Op.18) that has become quite popular, having now been recorded more than any of Weinberg’s other music. Kremer and his crew give it a good hearing, and of course ECM’s sound engineering is outstanding. But for me the chamber symphonies are the real draw. They are late works (the earliest being his Op.145), and, as always with Weinberg, I feel they put me in touch with a man of great musical intelligence, overlooked for too long. Music to treasure.

***

In years past I have written twice about my favourite music of the year: first classical and then popular. This year there were pop music records that interested me from Bob Dylan, Joan Osborne, Van Morrison, Sufjan Stevens, Joe Henry, Josh Ritter, Justin Townes Earle, Taylor Swift, Lee Ann Womack, and Neil Young, and some others too, but I either didn’t get around to hearing them, or didn’t hear enough of them to form a judgement. Maybe next year.

### Easter Sunday, 2017

April 16, 2017

I got me flowers to straw thy way;
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sunne arising in the East,
Though he give light, & th’ East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many sunnes to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we misse:
There is but one, and that one ever.

– George Herbert (1633)

Happy Easter!

### Here and there

March 10, 2017

A few interesting, art-related things I’ve seen in the past few weeks:

• The Christian moral imagination of Cormac McCarthy.
• Alex Ross writes, in one of his increasingly rare non-politically-inflected columns, about Bach’s religious music.
• The wonders of digital signal processing recreate the acoustics of Hagia Sophia in a modern concert hall.
• The cultured life is “an escape from the tyranny of the present”.
• In a similar vein, Roger Scruton praises the virtue of irrelevance, with special attention to the art of music.
• Finally, a group of mad animators have brought to life Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights:

### Favourites in 2016: Classical music

December 29, 2016

If 2016’s harvest of good pop music was slim pickings, my year in classical music has yielded a bumper crop. Over the past two months or so I’ve been slowly sifting my favourites, and I’ve arrived at a list of 10 discs that I’d like to praise today.

This year I’ve decided to discuss them more or less in chronological order, so we’ll begin with medieval music and move forward. Not all of these are 2016 records, but most are of fairly recent vintage. I’ve chosen one of them as my “record of the year”, and another as a runner-up, but you’ll have to read through to find out which is which. Where possible I’ve added a link to a video or excerpt from the disc, and in some cases I’ve also added links to more detailed reviews by real music critics, like so: [Review].

***

St Hildegard: Ursula11
Psallentes
(Le Bricoleur, 2011)
55m

I’d like to begin with a collection of music by St Hildegard of Bingen. Ursula11 is the InternetAge title of the disc, a reference to the legend of St Ursula and her 11000 companions martyred by marauding Huns. St Hildegard composed an office to celebrate the feast of these martyrs. This music has been recorded before, notably by the medieval music matriarchs Anonymous 4, but that disc has always struck me as one of their least successful, and I find this performance, by the women of Psallentes, far preferable. They sing a capella, but they’ve done some interesting things with Hildegard’s monophonic compositions, for instance by layering the ecstatic flight of Hildegard’s vocal lines over more conventional recitation tones, or even by singing Hildegard’s music in canon. They have an exceptionally clear sound, light and flexible, and they keep the music, which can sometimes become lugubrious in the wrong hands, moving along at a brisk andante. The result is lovely on all counts. The one drawback, with respect to Anonymous 4’s approach, is that the earlier disc embedded Hildegard’s music within the context of sung offices (Vigil, Lauds, Vespers), whereas Psallentes simply groups the pieces by liturgical function (antiphons, then responsories, then a sequence and a hymn). It doesn’t make as much sense, but it nonetheless sounds great.

Here is a fragment of O rubor sanguinis, with a rather nice video to accompany it:

**

Johannes Ciconia worked in Italy, mostly in Rome and Padua, around the turn of the fifteenth century, and died in 1412. His music is a rather eclectic blend of genres and styles — sacred and secular, with French and Italian influences — and it can be seen today as a kind of summing up of late medieval composition, with isorhythms, canons, hockets, poly-texting, and a variety of other delightful techniques popping up.

Ciconia: Complete Works
La Morra, Diabolus in Musica
(Ricercar, 2010)
2h31m

This two-disc set includes all of Ciconia’s surviving works. The first disc consists of his secular music, and is performed by La Morra; the second is reserved for his sacred music, and is performed by (ironically) Diabolus in Musica. These are both ace ensembles, among the best in the world in this complex medieval repertoire, and it almost goes without saying that they sound terrific. There’s a suppleness and grace to the performances that comes from long familiarity. Both ensembles experiment with adding instruments to the mix — instruments are not notated on surviving manuscripts, but there’s evidence that they were used in an improvisational manner. The secular music is treated with lutes, vieles, and early keyboard instruments; the sacred music is filled out by sackbuts and a cheerfully plangent chamber organ. No full Mass setting survives — through-composed Mass settings were still a relatively new idea at the time — but we do have a number of different settings of the Gloria and Credo preserved here, and they sound wonderful.

Perhaps surprisingly, this set is actually the second of Ciconia’s complete works! The previous one, by the Huelgas Ensemble (made in the early 1980s), is presently unavailable. Bits and pieces of his music have been recorded by a few dozen ensembles, and all of his motets have been sung by Mala Punica (and everything that Mala Punica touches turns to gold; that’s a great record). I thoroughly enjoyed this set, which earns that coveted trifecta: interesting music, superb performances, great sound.

Here Diabolus in Musica performs Gloria Spiritus Et Alme:

**

An intriguing development in the world of early music this year was the launch of ORA, a British ensemble consisting of a select set of eminent early music choristers. They have commissioned an extensive set of new compositions from contemporary composers, each of which is to relate in some way to a renaissance masterpiece. This is a splendid idea that comes close to fulfilling a fantasy of mine (which is that I might somehow be magically endowed with compositional talent, which talent I would apply in just this way). Apparently they plan to issue ten recordings over the next five years pairing these originals with their modern “reflections”, and 2016 saw the release of the first two.

Upheld by Stillness
ORA
(Harmonia Mundi, 2016)
1h18m

Volume 1 is entitled Upheld by Stillness and circles, broadly speaking, around the music of William Byrd. We get his setting of Psalm 137, Quomodo cantabimus? alongside the samely-psalmed motet by Philippe de Monte that inspired it (Super flumina Babylonis), and we hear his masterful Ave verum corpus, but the centerpiece is the Mass for Five Voices. The disc is then filled out with six new compositions: Roxanna Panufnik contributes a Kyrie after Byrd, Roderick Williams (the baritone) writes Ave Verum Corpus Reimagined, an extended meditation, with elaboration, on Byrd’s original, and Charlotte Bray gives us a marvellous Agnus Dei. Each of these hews fairly closely to Byrd’s model, both in text and texture, but the others on the disc are more loosely affiliated. Alexander d’Etrange’s Show Me, Dear Christe, for instance, combines parts of the Credo with excerpts from Byrd’s will and Donne’s poem. As one would expect, the quality of these modern “reflections” varies, and some of them I don’t much care for, but it’s still an excellent initiative, especially when the singing is this accomplished and the sound this pristine. [Review] [Review]

Alas! The second volume in the series, entitled Refuge from the Flames, fails in my mind to live up to the promise of the first. Subtitled “Miserere and the Savonarola Legacy”, it explores music inspired by or somehow related to the Florentine preacher, and is centered on William Byrd’s Infelix ego, which sets a text written by Savonarola on the eve of his execution. Also included are some Italian secular songs, a few short motets, and two large-scale versions of the Miserere, one the famous setting by Allegri (although in an edited version that hasn’t been recorded before) and the other by James MacMillan. The second (and only other) modern piece on this disc is another setting of Infelix ego (after Byrd), this time by the talented young Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds. So the music is great; it’s the singing that disappointed me. Technically it is above reproach, but there’s something missing. It sounds beautiful, yes, but somehow inert. I really wanted to like it. Alas!

Here is a promotional video for the choir:

**

Scattered Ashes
Magnificat
(Linn, 2016)
1h24m

But if we were a little disappointed by that particular foray into the Miserere and the Savonarola legacy, comfort is at hand in the form of Scattered Ashes: Josquin’s Miserere and the Savonarola Legacy, a curiously similarly conceived record from Philip Cave and Magnificat. Actually, despite the near identical titles the music is mostly different. Magnificat build their program around the expansive (17 min) setting of the Miserere by Josquin Desprez, which is given a dazzling performance, and fill it out with a variety of other 16th-century masterpieces, including another Miserere from Jean Lheretier and two settings of Tristitia obsedit me by Le Jeune and Clemens non Papa (the same two as on ORA’s record). The Savonaralan aspect of the program enters in two settings of the eve-of-execution testament Infelix Ego by Byrd and Lassus. The program is filled out with pieces by Palestrina and Gombert.

I’ve praised Magnificat before for the superb quality of their singing, and I’m happy to do so again: they have a tremendously rich sound, especially in the lower voices, which give them a wonderfully dark sonority, like aural velvet, smooth and luxurious. The soaring soprano lines pierce through this texture like shafts of white light. It’s gorgeous, and they sing with an intensity that was missing from ORA. [Review]

Here the choir sings Gombert’s In te Domine speravi:

**

Jones: Missa spes nostra
Blue Heron
(Blue Heron, 2015)
1h5m

The American ensemble Blue Heron has been engaged in a long-term project to perform music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, a set of manuscripts copied c.1540 that preserve a number of works of pre-Reformation English polyphony that were otherwise destroyed by reformers. The manuscripts have been damaged and, in some cases, lost, so these performances are supported by a behind-the-scenes scholarly effort (by Nick Sandon) to reconstruct missing parts. The disc I’m discussing here is the fourth in a projected set of five.

The centerpiece is a Mass by Robert Jones, Missa spes nostra, here given its world-premiere recording, and what a premiere! It’s a large-scale work, the four polyphonic sections of the Mass Ordinary being each about 10 minutes in duration. (English composers of this period generally did not set the Kyrie polyphonically, and Blue Heron sing an aptly chosen Sarum plainchant one.) The Mass is book-ended in front by Ludford’s Ave cujus conceptio, another rarity that, to my knowledge, has been recorded only once before, and in back by an ambitious (18 min) Stabat mater by Robert Hunt, a work that survives only in the Peterhouse manuscripts and, again, has not been recorded before. So a big part of the draw here is the repertoire, which is “new” and, what will not surprise you if you’ve any familiarity with pre-Henrician English polyphony, breathtakingly beautiful, with long, lyrical melodic lines, soaring upper voices, and judicious control of texture to provide structure to these expansively conceived compositions. It’s therefore a nice bonus to find that the performances are as good as they are. The choir, of about a dozen voices, is a good size for these pieces. The sound is not big (and some considerable part of the music is scored for fewer than four parts), but it is precise and clean. I love this music.

Here the ensemble sings the Credo from Robert Jones’ Missa spes nostra:

**

Let’s move on now to baroque music.

Bach: French Suites
Murray Perahia
(DG, 2016)
1h31m

If you want to put me in a good mood, use the words “Bach”, “Murray”, and “Perahia” in the same sentence. Twenty years ago, when I was taking my first tentative steps into the world of classical music, among the first recordings I bought were Perahia’s then-new English Suites. They delighted and dazzled me then, as they delight and dazzle me now, and those records have an enduring special place in my heart. A few years afterward he made a recording of the Goldberg Variations, which to this day is my favourite of that great work.

This year he gave us the French Suites. I’ve had a somewhat difficult relationship with these pieces; of all Bach’s keyboard works, they are probably my least favourite. I’m not sure why this is so. (It’s not because they are particularly “French”, because they’re not.) I find they don’t sing the way Bach’s music usually does, and the counterpoint often feels angular to me, as if it can’t quite generate momentum. I don’t know. I’ve never warmed to them.

Well, I’m here to report that when Murray Perahia plays them they sound pretty wonderful. I’d like very much to put into words just what it is about his playing that can transmute (comparative) lead into gold, but I don’t know that I can. There are a hundred pianists who can play this music to the highest standards of technical perfection, and Perahia is one of them, but, to my ears, few who can infuse the music with that indefinable, elusive quality that makes it sing.

This is my runner-up for favourite record of the year. [Review]

Here is a video of Perahia playing the Courante from French Suite No.5:

**

Bach: Motets
St Jacobs Kammarkör, REbaroque
(Proprius, 2015)
1h18m

When people think of Bach’s choral music, they tend to think of the Passion settings and the cantatas, but his motets are great, life-giving music. The technical challenges they pose are formidable, requiring a choir that is quick on its feet, well-balanced, and capable of delivering long, laughing melismas without ceasing to sound joyful. They have been recorded many times, and I have a dozen or so performances in my collection, but this year I was impressed by this disc from St Jacobs Kammarkör, a Swedish choir I’d never heard of before (but which is evidently very accomplished), with orchestral support from REbaroque. Too often Bach’s motets can sound wooly, with too much vibrato obscuring the rapid-fire counterpoint, or ragged in tone, but not here: the performance are tight, confident, and effervescent. There were one of two moments I noticed where a high staccato note had an element of squeak in it, rather than being nicely rounded, but these were rare, and overall the impression left by St Jacobs Kammarkör is one of happy excellence. The instruments add a welcome bit of colour without obscuring the choral textures. The recorded sound is clear, with little resonance but still nice space around the sound.

**

Beethoven: Symphonies 5 & 7
Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra
Manfred Honeck
(Reference, 2015)
1h11m

There are so many recordings of these symphonies that it seems folly to keep making them. This might seem especially true of the present disc, which goes toe-to-toe with Carlos Kleiber’s famous 1975 record, which has long been regarded not just as a reference recording for these two symphonies, but as one of the greatest orchestral recordings ever made. But every so often the habit of revisiting these warhorses of the repertoire turns up just the right combination of musical instincts and recorded sound, and this disc from Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is one such case. The music sounds just as it should, but more so: the pacing is excellent, the playing is tight and expressive, and the sound is big and punchy. Even the final pages of No.5, which can sound laboriously comical in the wrong hands as the cadence resists resolution again and again, come across with tremendous crackle and excitement. I’m not going to claim that it unseats Kleiber, because it doesn’t, but it is an extremely good recording of these great pieces, well worth seeking out.

Here is a brief promotional video for the record, with excerpts:

**

Schubert: Winterreise
Jon Vickers, Geoffrey Parsons
(EMI, 1985?)
1h20m

I tend to avoid recordings in which opera singers descend from the stage to sing parlour-room art-songs, just as I avoid (or would avoid, if occasion arose) elephants in tutus. In Schubert’s lieder, and especially in this beloved song cycle, my preferences run to lieder specialists — Fischer-Dieskau, Bostridge, Goerne — whose voices are calibrated to an intimate scale.

Now, there is no more operatic an opera singer than Jon Vickers; he is Tristan, Otello, and Peter Grimes. In the realm of big voices there is none bigger. Therefore it was with considerable skepticism that I gave this 30-year old recording of Winterreise a spin, just to see how badly it had turned out. Greatly to my surprise, I loved it. Yes, the voice is big, but he reins it in, and yes, the nuances that other singers give us are sometimes lost, but this is a remarkably intense performance. Vickers has such a commanding presence, that even when he’s dialed his power way down he still grips my attention. Anyone who has heard his Peter Grimes knows that he can inhabit a desperate, wild-eyed man with terrifying credibility, and he brings something of that same character — much subtler, as befits the scale — to Schubert’s protagonist. It’s very much worth hearing.

Here is a thoughtful old review of the disc from the New York Times, and here is Vickers singing “Frühlingstraum”:

**

Flitting lightly over the bulk of the Romantic period, we alight on a branch of early modernism.

Each of us, I suppose, can point to particular corners of the repertoire that, though they be little frequented, have a particular personal fascination. For me one such corner is the choral music of Stravinsky. Everyone loves the Symphony of Psalms, but beyond that masterpiece I believe this music is not very well known, and that is a shame, because it is quite marvellous in its own peculiar way. It is notable that the great bulk of it — if we can speak of ‘bulk’ in this sleek and slender context — is sacred music, a reflection largely of Stravinsky’s own devotion. (Here is a good overview.) This year I made a special effort to get to know this music better, and today I’ll highlight three particularly good records that, between them, cover most of the principal sacred choral pieces that he composed.

Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms
Collegium Vocale Gent
Royal Flemish Philharmonic
Philippe Herreweghe
(Pentatone, 2010)
50m

First up is a disc from Collegium Vocale Gent and the Royal Flemish Philharmonic, under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe. These musicians we usually associate with period-practice baroque, and especially with Bach’s choral music, of which they are exemplary interpreters. To hear them sing Stravinsky might therefore seem an odd fit, but in fact the opposite is true: their ability to produce a clear, cool sound, sans vibrato, with pin-point tuning serves Stravinsky’s music extremely well. (Stravinsky’s own recordings of this music, as well as those of his protege Robert Craft, are generally plagued by exactly the problems Herreweghe et al. avoid: wobbly tuning, ragged ensemble, and ugly tone.) The programme on the disc is a well-conceived one: we get the brief Monumentum pro Gesualdo, a late-period instrumental piece that serves as prelude; then his neo-classical Mass, written “out of personal necessity” in the 1940s; then, as something of a novelty, Stravinsky’s orchestral arrangement of Bach’s Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel Hoch (BWV 769), which is as delicious as you are imagining; and, finally, the mighty Symphony of Psalms. All of it is extremely well done, with the prime attraction probably being the Mass, which sounds splendid. Competition is fierce when it comes to the Symphony of Psalms, and this recording doesn’t displace my favourite (Pierre Boulez), but it’s nonetheless outstanding.

Stravinsky: Threni
Collegium Vocale Gent
Royal Flemish Philharmonic
Philippe Herreweghe
(Phi, 2016)
47m

Next is another disc from the same forces (from 2016, whereas the one just discussed was from 2010). In this case the focus falls on Stravinsky’s thorny late masterpieces, especially Threni, an adaptation of the Lamentations of Jeremiah which had been set by so many Renaissance composers, and Requiem Canticles, Stravinsky’s last completed work, and the one which was performed at his own funeral. Starting in the 1950s, his arch-nemesis Schoenberg safely six-feet under, Stravinsky began to explore the possibilities of serialism, and these two works belong to that period. They are extremely difficult to sing, and, according to taste, nearly as hard to hear. Threni, in particular, has the character of a musical hair-shirt, even though Stravinsky has taken some pains to mitigate the most extreme ill effects of the serial regimen. (For instance, the liner notes point out that in one duet section the two soloists sing simultaneous but differing versions of the tone row, but in such a way that they always form a consonance.) This piece leans heavily on vocal soloists, so heavily that the few other recordings of the piece I have heard pretty much crushed them to dust; Herreweghe has chosen a brave and able group, including the wonderful bass Florian Boesch, and they find the music in this music, which is high praise. The Requiem Canticles, setting a selection of texts from the Latin Requiem, is also serial, but more approachable, and the choir delivers a performance that bests any other that I have heard. The clean, dispassionate tone allows the strange beauty of this music to stand out clearly. The programme is bookended by two shorter pieces. At the beginning we get The Dove Descending Breaks the Air, a fearsome setting of T.S. Eliot that, I laughed to learn, was Stravinsky’s contribution to the Cambridge Hymnal and intended for singing at school assemblies. It’s a wonderful piece, but good grief. And, finally, the disc closes with Da Pacem Domine, a truly lovely little piece, very much in communion with the great stream of Russian sacred music, that falls even more gently on the ear given the terrors through which we have just passed.

Stravinsky: Sacred Choral Works
Netherlands Chamber Choir
Schoenberg Ensemble
Reinbert de Leeuw
(Philips, 1999)
1h

Finally, the best of the bunch is an older recording, from 1999, featuring the Netherlands Chamber Choir and Schoenberg Ensemble, under the direction of Reinbert de Leeuw. It includes some of the same music already discussed (in particular, the Mass and The Dove Descending Breaks the Air), but the principal work is the Cantata, composed in the early 1950s for unusual forces: soprano and tenor soloists, female chorus, and a smattering of instruments (flute, oboe, cor anglais, and cello). It is constructed around the Middle English Lyke-Wake Dirge. Again, this is challenging music for both performers and audience, and I’ve heard it sound pretty wretched. In this performance the chorus is good, as is the soprano soloist (Rosemary Hardy), but the coup de grâce is that Ian Bostridge is the tenor. His lean, agile voice is absolutely perfect for the part, and he sings the heck out of it. It’s fantastic. The disc is rounded out by a variety of shorter works, including the Introitus (in memoriam T.S. Eliot)), the Ave Maria, and a few others. The glory of this disc, apart from Ian Bostridge’s solo turn, is the choral sound, which is lush, smooth, and vibrant, with considerably more body than we get from Collegium Vocale Gent. It’s a nice alternative, and is especially well suited to the generally more amiable music programmed on this disc.

What is missing from these discs? Chiefly the Canticum Sacrum. If you know of a good recording of that piece, I’d love to hear about it. In the meantime, these three give a superb overview of Stravinsky’s sacred music.

Here is a full performance of Threni, from the second disc above:

**

Weinberg: Solo Violin Sonatas
Linus Roth
(Challenge, 2016)
1h15m

For the past few years the music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg has appeared consistently on my list of annual favourites. He is a wonderful composer, largely unknown outside Russia until the last decade or so (largely for political reasons, for as a Polish Jew the Soviets had little motive to champion his music to the West). The “Weinberg renaissance” continues, with quite a few record companies joining the fray: violin sonatas, symphonies, string quartets, an opera, ballet scores, flute sonatas, and his cello concerto were all issued in the past year or so.

Of those that I have heard, my favourite is this set of the three sonatas for solo violin, played by Linus Roth. Roth has been something of champion for Weinberg in recent years, having previously played the violin concerto and all five violin sonatas (with piano). His are not the first recordings of these fearsomely difficult pieces — Gidon Kremer recorded the third (Op.126) a couple of years ago, and the other two have been played by Yuri Kalnits on a set of recordings for Toccata Classics — but this is the first time they’ve been pulled together on one disc.

Like the best of Weinberg’s music, these pieces are intense and intelligent. Writing for a single instrument leaves a composer nowhere to hide; he has to bring his best to it. The music spins out rapidly, with lightning quick changes in tempo, dynamics, and musical ideas. The technical challenges must be considerable; sometimes it seems incredible that all the music is coming from just one instrument. (There is lots of double-stopping, and maybe some higher-stopping too.) This is by no means music to relax to; it asks for all of the listener’s attention, and it practically sparks when it is played. But, as always with Weinberg, it is really music, through and through, top to bottom. It doesn’t sing the way Bach’s solo violin music does, but it argues, laments, harangues, and delights in no small measure.

On this recording the three sonatas, each of which runs about 20-30 minutes, are separated by transcriptions (for violin and piano) of Shostakovich’s Three Fantastic Dances. These provide a welcome change of texture to refresh the palette, and are a nice homage to the friendship the two composers shared. In short: fantastic music, beautifully played, and thoughtfully programmed.

**

Part: The Deer’s Cry
Vox Clamantis
(ECM New, 2016)
1h02m

In 2012 my favourite record of the year was Filia Sion, a collection of mostly monophonic chant sung by an Estonian ensemble called Vox Clamantis. That record impressed me with its unusually sensitive ensemble singing and the spirit of “restful poise” that seemed to permeate the performances, and, as I can now report, the bloom is not off the rose: I return to that album regularly and with great enjoyment, and I have been waiting in expectation to hear what Vox Clamantis would do next.

They returned this year with The Deer’s Cry, devoted entirely to the music of their countryman Arvo Pärt. Like chant, Pärt’s music calls for a delicacy of touch, an attentiveness, and a solemnity of manner that would seem to play to Vox Clamantis’ strengths. Suffice to say that those strengths are everywhere in evidence on this record: the singing is faultless, the interpretations are rapt, and the effect on the listener is one of a quiet and gentle intensity. This is ideal Pärt singing. I was not surprised, though I was delighted, to see that Pärt himself participated in the recording sessions, which took place in Tallinn’s Church of the Transfiguration.

The disc opens with “The Deer’s Cry”, a setting of the text more commonly known as St Patrick’s Breastplate (“Christ before me, Christ behind me, etc.”), and includes a number of Pärt’s best known compositions, including “Da Pacem Domine”, “Summa”, and the extended Gospel setting “And One of the Pharisees”. But there is unfamiliar music here too which has been recorded rarely, such as revised versions of “Virgencita” (written to honour Our Lady of Guadalupe) and “Alleluia-Tropus”. There are also two first-time recordings: “Drei Hirtenkinder aus Fátima” (in honour of Our Lady of Fatima) and “Habitare Fratres” (a newly composed piece that was written for and premiered by Vox Clamantis). The disc closes with one of Pärt’s greatest masterpieces, the “Prayer After the Canon”, the concluding section of his mighty Kanon Pokajanen; it is a piece that I can hardly hear without my eyes brimming with tears.

In short, this is a superb overview of Part’s small- and mid-scale choral writing, focusing especially on fairly recent compositions, and sung to an exemplary standard. There are one or two cases in which there is another recording which I would prefer to this one — for instance, the Hilliard Ensemble’s treatment of “And One of the Pharisees” has yet to be surpassed — but all things considered this goes onto my shortlist of favourite Pärt recordings, and is my favourite record of 2016.

Here is a promotional video with pictures and videos from the recording sessions, and here the ensemble sings Alleluia-Tropus:

**

Part: Kanon Pokajanen
Cappella Amsterdam
Daniel Reuss
(Harmonia Mundi, 2016)
1h

The other great Pärt recording this year is from Cappella Amsterdam, led by Daniel Reuss, who sing the entirety of Kanon Pokajanen. For almost 20 years the reference recording for this great piece has been the one by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, who premiered it and recorded it in the presence of the composer. It’s a hugely ambitious composition, immensely powerful in effect, and it’s been a matter of some puzzlement to me that more choirs haven’t tackled it. Well, Cappella Amsterdam finally has, and they’ve done it very well. The singing is sensitive and expressive, delicate when it needs to be and full of roaring power when appropriate. The sound is even somewhat better than that enjoyed by the Estonians, which was always a bit recessed. It’s too early to say which of these recordings I’m ultimately going to enjoy more, but certainly this new one has earned a place at the table.

**

That was more than 10 records, but my target was 10 and I got close. A very good year!

### Favourites of 2014: Classical music

January 8, 2015

I had a good and rewarding year of listening. Much of my time was devoted to a few listening projects: for the Strauss anniversary year I listened to a big chunk of his operas (some of which I wrote about), and I listened chronologically to the symphonies and string quartets of both Shostakovich and Mieczyslaw Weinberg. In the cracks between these slabs, I enjoyed quite a few new, and new-ish, releases. Of those, the following were my favourites:

Transeamus
The Hilliard Ensemble
(ECM New Series, 2014)

In December 2014 the Hilliard Ensemble gave their final concert, finally hanging up their tuning forks after 40 years of exquisite music-making. Though they long since parted ways with their founder, Paul Hillier, and though the membership of the four-man ensemble has changed over the years — countertenor David James being the only original member still singing — they sustained a remarkably consistent sound and sensibility, and few, if any, vocal ensembles could match their technical excellence and artistic adventurousness. Their work has been important to me personally. I had the privilege of hearing them live on two occasions, one of which (a performance of Arvo Part’s Miserere) I count among the great concert-going experiences of my life, and my music collection is littered with dozens of their recordings, many of which I hold close to my heart. I am sad to see them go.

The Hilliard Ensemble has had two principal artistic faces: they are specialists in medieval and renaissance polyphony, and the bulk of their recorded legacy has been devoted to exploring that music, but they are also well-known for commissioning and championing the work of contemporary composers, most especially that of Arvo Part. On Transeamus, said to be their final recording, they return to their roots with a collection of carols from late medieval England. Some of the finest pre-Reformation English composers are represented, including William Cornysh and John Plummer, but most of these pieces are anonymous. The performances are excellent and frequently superb; I might prefer a little more swing in a jaunty carol like “Thomas Gemma Cantuariae” (Paul Hillier’s earlier recording with Theatre of Voices is my touchstone here), but hearing the Hilliards singing “Ecce quod natura” or Sheryngham’s marvellous “Ah, Gentle Jesu” makes clear why they have been ranked with the world’s great vocal ensembles. I miss them already.

[Info] [Review]

*

Bach: Partitas
Igor Levit
(Sony, 2014)

These days it can sometimes seem that the major classical labels do little more than reissue recordings from their glory days, or, when they do issue new recordings, their roster of artists seems to have been chosen based more on consideration of shapely figures than of artistic excellence. But then along comes a pianist like Igor Levit to undermine all such gloomy ruminations. Still in his 20s, he made his recording debut last year with a much praised recording of the late Beethoven piano sonatas, and this year he followed it with this set of Bach’s six partitas (BWV 525-30). These pieces don’t get as much attention as the Goldberg Variations or the Well-Tempered Clavier, much less Beethoven’s late sonatas, but Levit opens them up in a way that I have never heard before. As usual it is hard to put one’s finger on just what sets one pianist apart from another, especially at elite levels where technically proficiency is assured, but nonetheless Levit’s playing has a special quality: muscular, poised, self-effacing, but yet somehow intensely inward-looking and contemplative. I find him mesmerizing, and heartily recommend this superb recording.

*

Ludford: Missa Inclina cor meum
Blue Heron, Scott Metcalfe
(Blue Heron, 2013)

Blue Heron is an American choir that is engaged on a long-term project to record music from the Peterhouse Partbooks, one of the relatively few sources of pre-Reformation English polyphony to have escaped the bonfires of the reformers. This is the third volume in the series, and it is a jewel. Polyphony in England in the fifteenth-century was clearly part of the same tradition as continental polyphony, but it was just as clearly an offshoot with its own distinctive qualities: there is a harmonic sweetness to the music, and the long, soaring soprano lines give the music an ecstatic quality that exceeds what one would typically have encountered on the continent. And this is music written on an ambitious scale: Nicholas Ludford’s Missa Inclina cor meum takes nearly 40 minutes just to present the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei, and John Mason’s motet Ave fuit prima salus is 20 minutes long. I wish that I knew more about the context within which this music was originally written and performed. In any case, this is the first time these pieces have been recorded, and it has been worth the wait.

[Info]

*

Morales: Christmas Motets
Weser-Renaissance Bremen, Manfred Cordes
(CPO, 2013)

A couple of years ago I praised a recording by Weser-Renaissance Bremen of Josquin’s music during my annual round-up, and here I am again with this disc of Christmas-themed music by Cristóbal de Morales. Morales was an important composer in sixteenth-century Spain, holding appointments in Avila and Toledo. He is probably best known today for his sublime setting of Parci mihi, Domine (made (relatively) famous by the Hilliard Ensemble in their collaboration with Jan Garbarek), but he was a prolific composer of masses, motets, and the like. This recording, with Manfred Cordes leading the choir, gathers together a set of motets on Christmas themes, ranging from settings of standard Christmas texts (O magnum mysterium, Puer natus est nobis) to pieces in honour of the Blessed Virgin (Sancta et immaculata virginitas, Salve nos stella maris). Some of the pieces are not directly associated with Christmas (Salve regina, for example), and others are actually more closely associated with other feasts (Missus est Gabriel, for instance, with the Annunciation). It must be said that the singing on this disc is spectacularly good. The pieces don’t pose any particularly dire technical challenges, but they do call for clarity, balance, and beauty of tone, and at these this choir is impeccable. As I said of their earlier Josquin recording, the sound has a burnished quality, as if glowing from within, and the recorded sound is immediate without being too close. It’s the single best recording of Morales’ music that I know of.

*

Guardian Angel
Rachel Podger
(Channel, 2013)

I suppose it is possible that the prospect of 80 minutes of unaccompanied baroque violin playing might set some people on edge, but when the bow is wielded by Rachel Podger there is no need for concern. She plays a variety of early baroque pieces which might have been — though whether they were in fact, I do not know — models for Bach’s more famous contributions to the repertoire. Two sonatas by Giuseppi Tartini (not his most commonly heard “Devil’s Trill” sonata), one by Johann Georg Pisendel, and a few short pieces by Nicola Matteis were all new to me. Podger also includes a transcription for violin of one of Bach’s flute sonatas which, though it might be an odd choice from a programmatic point of view, is nonetheless wonderful to hear. The disc closes with a performance of Biber’s stunning Passacaglia (from his Rosary Sonatas), the piece which was arguably the pinnacle of solo violin music until Bach’s own Chaconne came along. Podger is one of the world’s greatest baroque musicians, and she plays like an angel. For what it’s worth, this disc won the recital award at last year’s BBC Music Magazine awards.

*

Invocation
Herbert Schuch
(Naive, 2014)

A few excellent piano recitals came my way this year but I kept returning to this one, which features music inspired by the sound of bells. There are several pieces of French modernism with explicit bell-resonances — Ravel’s La vallée des cloches, Messiaen’s Cloches d’angoisse et larmes d’adieu and a piece inspired by it, Tristan Murail’s Cloches d’adieu, et un sourire… — but for me the chief attractions are the pieces by Liszt and Bach. Schuch plays selections from Liszt’s Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, including a moving performance of his glorious Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude, but the recital as a whole is held together by transcriptions of several of Bach’s beautiful chorales, played quietly and with great devotion. The overall feeling of the disc is one of meditative stillness, hushed and attentive. The sound is a bit distant for my liking, and the recording level is a bit low, but the playing and the choice of repertoire more than make up for it.

Here is a promotional video for the disc:

*

The Soviet Experience
Pacifica Quartet
(Cedille, 2011-14)

Over the past few years the Pacifica Quartet has recorded a complete cycle of Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets; the fourth and final volume appeared this year. The competition in this repertoire is tough: the famous (but incomplete) recordings by the Borodin Quartet are always in the back of one’s mind, and I have also long treasured the cycle by the Emerson String Quartet. But this new set deserves to be considered alongside those ones. The Pacifica Quartet plays with all the muscle and acerbity that one could wish for, really digging into the scores to bring out their nervous energy. The ensemble playing is immaculate, and the recorded sound is as clean as a whistle. It’s a superb collection of what is, almost certainly, the greatest chamber music of the twentieth century.

And, as if that were not enough, each of the volumes in the set has been programmed with an additional quartet by one of Shostakovich’s contemporaries: Miaskovsky, Prokofiev, Weinberg, and Schnittke. Whether this broadening of focus is really enough to warrant the “The Soviet Experience” title under which the series has been proceeding is debatable, but the supplementary quartets do give one an opportunity to compare what Shostakovich was doing with what else was happening in Russian music at the time. And, as good as these other quartets are, it must be said that they renew one’s appreciation for just how colossally good Shostakovich was.

[Info] [Review] [Listen to samples]

***

Honourable mention:

Dvorak: Stabat Mater
Collegium Vocale Gent, Royal Flemish Philharmonic, Philippe Herreweghe
(Phi, 2013)
[Info][Promo video][Listen to samples]

$\;$

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Magnificat, Philip Cave
(Linn, 2012)
[Info][Review][Listen to samples]

$\;$

$\;$

Josquin: Missa Ave Maris Stella
Cappella Pratensis
(Challenge, 2014)
[Info][Listen to samples]

$\;$

$\;$

Schubert: Lieder
Ian Bostridge, Julius Drake
(Wigmore Hall, 2014)
[Info][Review][Listen to samples]

$\;$

$\;$

Bach: Transcriptions
Ensemble Contraste
(La Dolce Vita, 2013)
[Info][Review][Listen to samples]

$\;$

$\;$

Weinberg: Symphony No.10; Chamber Music
Kremerata Baltica, Gidon Kremer
(ECM New Series, 2014)
[Info][Review]

### Goldberg Variations: Aria

July 28, 2014

Bach died on this day in 1750. Here is Daniel Barenboim playing the Aria from the Goldberg Variations. A few years ago, when we had an old piano in the house, I spent a good deal of time trying to learn to play the opening bars of this piece. I never did get very far.

### Happy birthday, J.S. Bach

March 31, 2014

It’s Bach’s birthday, and, turning the tables, he has kindly offered us a gift. Here is the “Dona nobis pacem” section that concludes the Mass in B Minor:

That’s Jordi Savall on the podium, leading La Capella Reial de Catalunya.

### Goldbergs, with commentary

January 14, 2014

In this short video Jeremy Denk talks us through one or two of the Goldberg variations. It’s an engaging little illustration of the simultaneous playfulness and formal structure of Bach’s music. I’d like to see more of this sort of thing.

### Favourites of 2013: Classical music

January 8, 2014

My music listening this year was anchored by a few large listening projects: I marked the anniversary years of Verdi, Wagner, and Britten by dedicating a good deal of time to hearing their major works again — or, in some cases, for the first time. Given the composers involved, much of this music was opera, and I tried when possible to watch performances of their operas on DVD. I’ve written about some of that music in the consistently unpopular “Great moments in opera” series that I’ve been running (and a few more anniversary-related instalments will trickle out over the next month or two).

I had planned a bunch of other focused listening projects for the year too — Beethoven’s symphonies, Shostakovich’s symphonies and string quartets, Schubert’s piano sonatas — but I didn’t get to them. They are bumped to 2014.

In the meantime, I’d like to share notes on a few of the best recordings I heard for the first time this year. In most cases these are new or new-ish recordings, but not in all. The predominance of vocal music reflects my interests. The ordering of this list is capricious.

Weinberg: Complete Violin Sonatas
Linus Roth, Jose Gallardo
(Challenge, 2013)

For the last few years music of Mieczyslaw Weinberg has figured in my year-end accolades, and the same is true this year. This three-disc set is the first complete recorded set of Weinberg’s music for violin and piano, and what a treasure it is! Weinberg wrote six very substantial violin sonatas that exhibit the same musical intelligence and emotional heft that I have admired in his string quartets. As I said of the quartets, this music is “music all the way down”: no pedantry, no gimmicks, no self-conscious preoccupation with the music or its manner of composition — just good, smart, heart-felt music that is full of variety and endlessly interesting. I am happy to see Weinberg’s star rising higher on the strength of recordings like this one. Move over, Prokofiev.

Here is a brief video with musical excerpts and interviews with the musicians:

Elgar: The Apostles
Halle Orchestra, Sir Mark Elder
(Halle, 2012)

This recording of Elgar’s oratorio about the life of Christ, from the calling of the apostles to the Ascension, won BBC Music Magazine’s “Recording of the Year”; there may have been some Anglo-centric prejudice informing that decision, but this is a terrific performance of a piece that hasn’t been very well served on record (and which, I suspect, might not finally be top-shelf music). The great fear with Elgar is that amateur British choral societies are going to get their hands on him, serving up bloated and sentimental renditions of his music before the potluck. It is amazing to hear this music sung as crisply and clearly as it is here, with a cool glow and as much dramatic emphasis as the music can bear without buckling. The singing is really tremendous, especially in the choral sections, and the sound is as clear and vivid as one could hope for. This recording has made me reconsider the merits of this piece, and made the reconsideration a pleasure. [Listen to excerpts]

Wagner
Jonas Kaufmann
Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin, Donald Runnicles

(Decca, 2013)

Jonas Kaufmann, who glowers from the front cover of this CD, is considered one of the leading tenors in the opera world today, and he really is prodigiously gifted: a magnificent voice that rings from top to bottom, great power, and keen dramatic instincts. It is this last that has most impressed me on this disc of Wagner extracts. For all that Wagner was undoubtedly a great composer, it has nevertheless often seemed to me that his genius was principally manifest in his orchestral writing, and that his vocal lines were largely meandering eddies floating atop the surging currents, lacking dramatic shape and melodic interest in themselves. I won’t say that this recording has changed my opinion about his melodic gifts, but it has certainly made me reconsider my assessment of the dramatic shape of his writing. Never before have I heard Wagner sung in a way that brought out the taut dramatic energy, the sheer poise and responsiveness of the part as much as Kaufmann does. He has helped me to hear Wagner with new appreciation, and that is enough to get this recording onto this list.

Libera Nos: The Cry of the Oppressed
Contrapunctus, Owen Rees
(Signum, 2013)

The programme on this CD is a well-conceived one, gathering together a number of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century choral works on the themes of oppression and liberation by English and Portuguese composers. English Catholics in this period suffered persecution by the authorities, and Portugal was under the domination of the Spanish monarchy. Composers turned to these (mostly) liturgical texts to express their prayers for deliverance with a degree of personal feeling that is rare in public ecclesiastical music. The music is breathtakingly beautiful, of course, and the singing on this recording is very distinguished. Contrapunctus is a British choir formed in 2010; this is their first recording. They are a small ensemble of about ten voices, men and women, and they sing with astounding clarity and beauty; I don’t hear any problems anywhere. The multi-layered harmonic and rhythmic complexity of these pieces comes across sounding effortless (which it certainly is not) and, what is more important for this particular programme, there is nothing impersonal about the singing: it has a plaintive, striving quality that suits these pieces very well. Top shelf. [Listen to excerpts]

Ockeghem: Missa Mi-Mi
Cappella Pratensis, Rebecca Stewart
(Ricercar, 1999)

It was a year or two ago that I discovered the Dutch ensemble Cappella Pratensis. I liked them well enough to go searching through their back catalogue, and in this recording of Johannes Ockeghem’s Missa Mi-Mi I found a real gem. This Mass is one of Ockeghem’s most frequently recorded, and I have heard it many times, but never with this degree of translucence and calm repose. I tend to bristle at the common view that the music of this period is “relaxing” or “peaceful”, as though these frequently very difficult, intricate, and rigourously structured compositions were merely a kind of soporific. Yet in this case there would be something to that rough characterization, for this ensemble finds in this music a spaciousness and gentleness that lifts the eyes and touches the heart in a quite special way. The music breathes in long, slow rhythms, unhurried, as though content, at each moment, simply to be an expression of praise and a profusion of beauty. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard Ockeghem sung in this way before; I don’t know that I ever will again. The Mass is presented in a quasi-liturgical context, embedded within the Propers for the Mass of Holy Thursday, and the programme ends with Ockeghem’s magnificent motet Intemerata Dei mater.

Here is the Kyrie of the Missa Mi-Mi:

Bach: Cantatas, Vol.55
Bach Collegium Japan, Masaaki Suzuki
(BIS, 2013)

This disc is on this list not so much for its own merits — although it is exceptionally good — but for what it represents: the completion of Masaaki Suzuki and Bach Collegium Japan’s twenty-years-long project to record all of Bach’s surviving cantatas. Should I be ashamed to admit that I have collected all fifty-five volumes? Maybe so, but think of all the beer I didn’t buy. Japan might not be the country we think of first when we think of Bach (quite wrongly, perhaps), but the proof is in the pudding: the performances on this disc and across the whole set have been consistently excellent. Suzuki’s approach to the music is “historically informed”, which means in practice that the choir is small and lithe, the textures light, and the rhythms sprightly. It’s Bach played and sung just the way I like it. Here is the Bach Collegium Japan performing one of the cantatas on this final disc. Bravo!

Whitacre: Sainte-Chapelle
Tallis Scholars
(Gimell, 2013)

Eric Whitacre is one of the more successful young composers working today. As far as I know, he writes mostly choral music, in an accessible idiom within the reach of amateur choirs, and quite a few recordings of his music are now available. He was commissioned by the Tallis Scholars to write a piece to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their founding, and he came up with Sainte-Chapelle, a piece which imagines the stained-glass angels in that beautiful church singing the Sanctus. The piece was premiered early in 2013 and recorded shortly thereafter. It must be said that it is a gorgeous piece, growing in energy and luminosity as it goes. I had never before heard the Tallis Scholars sing anything other than Renaissance polyphony, but Whitacre’s writing respects their area of specialization, growing out a plainchant melody just as so many Renaissance pieces do. I’ve played this recording so frequently this year that I cannot but include it on this year-end list.

***

Honourable mentions:

Ludford: Missa Regnum mundi
Blue Heron
(Blue Heron, 2012)
[Watch] [Listen]

$\;$

$\;$

Schubert: Nacht und Traume
Matthias Goerne, Alexander Schmalcz
(Harmonia Mundi, 2011)
[Listen]

$\;$

$\;$

Howells: Requiem
Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge; Stephen Layton
(Hyperion, 2012)
[Watch] [Listen]

$\;$

$\;$

Yoffe: Song of Songs
Rosamunde Quartett, Hilliard Ensemble
(ECM New Series, 2011)
[Listen]

$\;$

$\;$

Victoria: Officium Defunctorum
Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe
(Phi, 2013)
[Listen]

$\;$

$\;$

Mahler: Symphony No.2 “Resurrection”
Philharmonia Orchestra, Benjamin Zander
(Linn, 2013)
[Listen]

$\;$

Bremer Barock Consort, Manfred Cordes
(CPO, 2007)

### Happy Birthday, Glenn Gould

September 25, 2012

Glenn Gould was born this day in 1932, which means that we are marking (what would have been) his 80th birthday. Gould is one of the few truly great musicians to have come from my country. He was a fascinating man, a complex man, with a winsome, if eccentric, manner, who had the gift of playing the piano like a — well, like both an angel and a fiend. Not everyone liked his playing, of course, but no-one could ignore it.

Gould is especially associated with Toronto, the city in which I live, and for those who know where to look the place is haunted by him still. His piano sits just outside the performance hall in the CBC building downtown — the hall itself is called the “Glenn Gould Studio”, for that matter. I remember walking one day, a few years ago, in the Beaches neighbourhood and being surprised by a commemorative plaque in the front yard of one of the houses noting that it had been Gould’s house. My wife went into labour with our first child while we were eating in a diner which was a favourite of Gould’s.

As a pianist, he played almost everything, from Gibbons to Webern, but of course he is especially known for his way with Johann Sebastian Bach. I will not claim to be especially enamoured of his Bach playing; he is not the pianist I go to first when I go to Bach; yet I cannot deny that when I do hear him playing this music, it is an absorbing and fascinating experience.

And so: happy birthday, Mr. Gould. Here is a film of him, as a fairly young man, playing the Contrapunctus IV from The Art of Fugue:

(I do not know what is going on with the piano in this film. It is clearly a piano, but it has a jangly quality that is reminiscent of a harpsichord. A prepared piano?)