Summer treats provide something for everyone

John Foulds (1880-1939) was quite a chap. This Englishman came up with music that ran from "anything-Strauss-can-write-I-can-write-lusher" to visionary vocal concertos, in which the soprano soloist is expected to cope with 22-note microtonal scales from classical Indian music.

A new Warner Classics release reveals the fantastical world of Foulds, with conductor Sakari Oramo ably marshalling the combined forces of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the city's Youth Chorus. Three Mantras reveal what we might have been in for if he had completed his Sanskrit opera Avatara but Foulds was equally immersed in the Great Western Tradition. Apotheosis, a music-poem for violin and orchestra, is a moving tribute to the great Joseph Joachim and receives a spellbinding performance from young British violinist Daniel Hope.

* John Foulds (Warner Classics 25646)

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Austrian pianist Stefan Vladar achieves a better bonding with Brahms than he did with Chopin when he made his Harmonia Mundi debut last year. This, his second album, focuses on Brahms' last four sets of Klavierstucke. These 20 pieces are some of the last works the composer wrote and the title of Guido Fischer's booklet essay, "The Bittersweet Melancholy of Johannes Brahms", catches the mood of Vladar's recording.

The composer wanted these miniatures to be intense experiences - "every bar, every note," Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann, "must sound like a ritardando, as if one wished to suck melancholy out of them" - and Vladar achieves just this. So much so with the three Intermezzi of Opus 118 that the pounding, primal Rhapsody which concludes the set is as thrilling a Finale as The Great Gate of Kiev is for Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. Above all, this album poses the question of why these pieces are relegated to encore status on the concert stage when they work so brilliantly as collections.

* Brahms, Klavierstucke (Harmonia Mundi HMC 901844, through Ode Records)

 

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Time seems to stand still when the four women of Anonymous 4 sing the music and relate the visions of Hildegard von Bingen in their latest release, The Origin of Fire. This CD will be the quartet's last, having spent the past 18 years converting thousands to the contemplative joys of their peerless chanting and polyphony.

Fire also comes across as a powerful testament to the pen of the 12th-century Abbess whose life and music have been a major inspiration for women composers and musicians over the past few decades. Highlights include the dramatically charged poetry of The Fire of Creation and the cool clarity of the two-part singing, when the import of Hildegard's first vision is revealed.

* Anonymous 4, The Origin of Fire (Harmonia Mundi HMU 907327, through Ode records)

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The latest CD in Waiteata Press' burgeoning catalogue of local music presents works by seven emerging composers, from seasoned 30-somethings such as Philip Brownlee, Jeroen Speak and Michael Norris, to younger voices such as Chris Watson, Ewan Clark, Chris Gendall and Dylan Lardelli.

Last year, Lardelli was one of the Auckland Philharmonia's Resident Composers and the measured grace of his Eidolon for solo cello provides an enticing introduction to the Waiteata CD. There's not a dull second in this album's 74 minutes and the range of music is simply prodigious.

Michael Norris' Honk! for saxophone quartet (with movements such as Honky-Tonk and Go the whole Honk!) gives the four players of SAXCESS ample licence for lusty humour and spot-on musicianship while, later in the disc, his in tempo di guerra, in tempo di tristezza, lovingly played by Indonesian pianist Ananda Sukarlan, is an immensely moving response to the tragedy of the 2002 Bali bombings.

* The Waiteata Collection of New Zealand Music, Volume VII (Emerging Composers) (WTA 007, $15 from Waiteata Music Press: waiteata-music@vuw.ac.nz or from SOUNZ, PO Box 10042, Wellington)

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Bassoonist Laurence Perkins sure can strut his stuff on his new Hyperion album, The Playful Pachyderm. In this delightful collection of lollipops, the highly facetious (Ganglberger's concert polka My Teddybear) is balanced by Gaelic wistful when the plaintive Scottish folksong Mist-covered mountains enlists Catriona McKay on clarsach harp.

Elgar's 1910 Romance may be familiar to some but I'm sure that Fucik's polka, The Old Grumbler, will surprise those who know Fucik only for his Entry of the Gladiators. Hitchcock buffs will appreciate Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette (the signature tune for Hitch's 50s TV series) and, if you're an inveterate bassoon buff, you will chortle to the music hall insinuations and vaudeville corn of a song by J. Quenton Ashlyn, which offers tribute to the instrument.

All this is treated by the soloist and the New London Orchestra under Ronald Corpe with the same seriousness as if they were launching a new performing edition of Mozart. A nice touch.

* The Playful Pachyderm (Hyperion CDA 67453, through Ode Records)

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With all the major symphonic scores accounted for, the sixth and final instalment of the Naxos Collected Orchestral Works of Samuel Barber comes up with some fascinating works, and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, under Marin Alsop, do them proud and proudly.

The most substantial piece, clocking in at 14 minutes, is the Capricorn Concerto, a deviously witty piece of spiced-up Baroque.

And there's more where that came from in Barber's Mutations from Bach, with Alsop ensuring that the brass players catch just the right degree of sombre and sonorous.

From Barber's final year is an elegiac Canzonetta for Oboe and Strings, all that was completed of a projected concerto for the instrument, with a fine soloist in Stephane Rancourt.

On the upbeat side, there is brittle fun to be had in A Hand of Bridge, a nine-minute mini-opera in which two couples bitch, dream and then bitch some more around a card table, wittily handled by an uncredited quartet of young British singers, including that exemplary baritone Roderick Williams.

* Barber, Capricorn Concerto (Naxos 8.559135)