Tag Archives: Linn

Dunedin Consort / Butt

Perth Concert Hall 

It is still sometimes suggested that Mozart intended his Requiem for himself, but if he had foreseen his own death, surely classical music’s definitive whizz kid would have been careful to finish it. 

What the Requiem has had to cement its place in the repertoire is Sussmayr’s contemporary completion, an advantage not enjoyed by the composer’s earlier Mass in C Minor. In 2017, however, Amsterdam University’s Clemens Kemme published new edition of the work which presented an authoritative solution to the problems of the score. The first recording of his revisions, in Berlin, has not been judged a complete success, so Dunedin Consort, with its track record of benchmark-setting discs of early choral music, and specifically a Grammy nomination for the Linn-released Requiem, has an important job to do for Mozart, a mere 240 years on from the work’s likely first and only performance in his lifetime. 

What Kemme has done, and what came across magnificently in this performance under conductor John Butt, is to look at the composers Mozart was drawing from for his own mass – Bach and Handel – as well as to the music he was writing himself around the same time. 

The two male soloists, Joshua Ellicott and Robert Davies, are really in supporting roles, with Davies stepping out from the chorus – a choir of six women and four men. The vocal ensemble presented themselves both by voice (two each of soprano 1 and 2, mezzo, tenor and bass) and as a double choir of one-voice-to-a-part, as the music required – music that not only owes a debt to the earlier composers but sometimes echoes specific works. If Mozart had a copy of Bach’s Mass in B Minor to hand, it would be no surprise at all. 

The significant arias, and more operatic music, were in the more than capable hands of Lucy Crowe and Anna Dennis, voices chosen with great care for the notes they had to sing and for the way they combined wonderfully together. Their duetting on Laudamus te was the first shiver-inducing moment of the performance, although the blend of the six women’s voices in the Gloria that preceded it had laid out that path with clarity. 

Davies had his moment, in partnership with three trombones, in Jesu Christe – Cum Sancto Spiritu, before the ensemble sequence – broken only by a demanding and demonstrative solo Et incarnatus est from Crowe – that ends the work. The Sanctus and Benedictus both end with choral Osannas that are part of Kemme’s crucial contribution, alongside the orchestration, based on what sketches Mozart left. 

In a clever piece of programming, Butt began the concert with Haydn’s Symphony No 80, from the same era and known to Mozart. It was an opportunity to tune the ears to the fabulous playing of the instrumentalists, an 18-piece Baroque band (yet to be augmented by brass, timpani and organ) producing a sound of wonderful clarity and spaciousness. The Adagio second movement was quite as lovely as the best of the singing that followed – and after the interval the Mozart singers sounded all the better for the quality of the playing behind them. 

Keith Bruce 

Portrait of Lucy Crowe by Victoria Cadisch

Morison / Martineau

CATRIONA MORISON / MALCOLM MARTINEAU

THE DARK NIGHT HAS VANISHED
Linn

In one short song – Scheideblick (Parting Glance) – the justification for Scots mezzo soprano Catriona Morison’s inclusion of six of Josephine Lang’s Lieder in her debut solo album is sealed. It’s an emotionally muted number, a sinuous melancholic setting of a single poetic verse, Lang’s melodic shaping in perfect tune with the sentiment, the simplicity of the piano writing in pianist Malcolm Martineau’s capable hands gently nuanced with harmonic ingenuity, and Morison’s delivery impeccably and movingly intoned.

To position Lang (1815-80) amid such heavyweight songwriters as Schumann, Brahms and Grieg is to give her a rightful airing, for her songs, though mostly conservative in spirit, are both artfully expressive and stylistically adventurous within the parameters of the day. Early lessons from Mendelssohn and promotional support from both Robert and Clara Schumann were supportive in Lang’s bid to make a living from composition after the premature death of her husband, the lawyer and poet Christian Reinhold Köstlin.

It’s Reinhold Köstlin’s own words that are the inspiration for another of Lang’s songs, Ob ich manchmal dein gedenke, Morison again mastering the soft embodiment of this passionate setting. In all Lang’s songs featured here in fact, mostly from the Op 10 set, there is a genuine affinity between their easeful unfolding and a mezzo voice that exudes golden richness in its lower range and ringing lustre in its uppermost tessitura. The final number, Abschied, is a gorgeous example.

Morison and Martineau open this disc with Grieg’s Sechs Lieder and the springlike optimism of Gruss. The relative transparency of these songs, emphasised by their folkish charm, lead satisfyingly into the deeper realms of a Brahms selection that is introduced by the sultry questioning of Dein blaues Auge, and which lingers low until the final muscular exuberance of Meine Liebe ist grün 

Schumann’s Op 90 songs open in martial mode with Lied Eines Schmiedes, immediately countered by the sweet affection of Meine Rose. Morison negotiates the ensuing mood swings with honest and persuasive versatility, concluding on a sublime note with the rippling acceptance of Requiem, but not before releasing those gripping outbursts of passion at its heart.

This release comes at a significant time for Morison, given the enforced emphasis during these Covid months on her concert repertoire. She has the voice for it, and the musicality, and the proof is here.
Ken Walton

Maxwell Quartet : Haydn / Scots Trad.

Linn 

Listen to just the first two chords on this new Linn release by the Maxwell Quartet and you might be forgiven for thinking a good old Scottish ceilidh was about to spring into action. But these “gathering notes” are not the typical call-to-attention we associate with a traditional reel or jig, they are heralding the first of Haydn’s Op 74 string quartets, the spinal column of this cheerful new album featuring all three of the 1793 set.

How fortuitous is that primitive cadential opening to No 1, when the other side to this Classical offering is an interspersion of Scots folk music? The Maxwell’s have made a thing of mixing in their own arrangements of the latter in their live concerts. This Caledonian sprinkling is just as refreshing and invigorating in the recorded context.

But let’s start with the triptych of Haydn quartets, the Op 74 set, that fully complements the three Op 71s featured on the Maxwell’s Linn debut disc a couple of years ago, which also contains Scots fiddle tune arrangements. Both Haydn sets resulted from his first highly-successful London trip of 1791, where his experience of dedicated chamber music concerts (as opposed to the more restrained drawing room practices of his native Austria) elicited a spring-like creative response from the sexagenarian composer.

The Maxwells capture that buoyancy in all three works. The first C major quartet’s unquenchable exuberance, delivered with an enlivening grainy tonal edge, is tempered by moments of deep thinking, even probing darkness, such as the psychologically offsetting key shift that establishes the opening Allegro’s more plangent development. 

The second F major quartet has its own mysteries to fathom, its subtler nuances to shape, not so much in the two straightforward central movements as in the outermost ones, the boisterous finale in particular applying Mozartian trickery through mischievous structural and harmonic surprises, as if Haydn was honouring his recently deceased compatriot. The opening bars of the final G minor “Rider” quartet, the best known of the set, conjures up an enigmatic spirit more akin to – or rather preemptive of – Beethoven, which the Maxwells latch onto craftily, setting a high bar for a truly exhilarating performance.

Against all that are the Scots numbers, beautiful and wholesome arrangements by the ensemble itself, from the gracious father-son “classicism” of Niel and Nathaniel Gow (the latter’s melting air, Coilsfield House, raptly arranged), to the gorgeously lilting Fear a’ Bhàta, a frisky Shetland jig Da Full Rigged Ship and haunting swagger of The Burning of the Piper’s Hut, anonymous and thought to date back to the Highland Clearances. 

The magic of this album is the way these two musical traditions knit so effectively together. Haydn never visited Scotland (although he did arrange Burns’ songs for the 18th century Edinburgh publisher George Thomson) but if he had his music would have had Enlightenment Scotland dancing in the streets.
Ken Walton

EIF & Linn forge Digital Partnership

An exciting new partnership between East Renfrewshire-based Linn Records and the Edinburgh International Festival is launched this week with the release of three new recordings featuring landmark performances from the 2020 Festival’s reshaped digital music programme.

The recordings were conceived by the EIF to counter Covid restrictions, which saw opera, orchestral and chamber music performances from various Edinburgh venues screened online to a remote Festival audience. Key to that initiative was the engagement by EIF of Linn’s award-winning senior producer Philip Hobbs to oversee much of the sound production.

This week’s trio of releases include: the world premiere recording of Klaus Simon’s reduced orchestration of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra under its musical director Thomas Sondergard; Scottish Opera’s compelling film version of Menotti’s television opera The Telephone with soprano Soraya Mafi and baritone Jonathan McGovern as protagonists Lucy and Ben; and a compendium of highlights from the Chamber Music Series recorded at The Hub, featuring such classical stars as pianist Steven Osborne, mezzo-soprano Catriona Morison, tenor Mark Padmore, soprano Andrea Baker and the Elias Quartet.

Andrew Moore, the Festival’s head of music, welcomed the joint initiative. “I’m delighted that we are to bring highlights of our reshaped digital 2020 Edinburgh International Festival programme to music lovers through this new partnership with Linn Records”. 

Hobbs, who last month added a prestigious Prise de Son from French classical music magazine Diapason to his long list of industry awards, and was recently named as the first ever visiting professor of recording at the Royal Academy of Music, acknowledged the potential of this new venture. “The result is some wonderful performances which will stand as significant contributions to the recorded catalogue for years to come.”

All three recordings will be released on Friday 18 December via key download and streaming platforms, and in Studio Master from www.LinnRecords.com

French Award for Scots Producer

Philip Hobbs, chief producer at leading Scots recording label Linn Records, has received the prestigious Prise de Son (Sound Recording) Award from the French classical music journal Diapason. 

The magazine described Hobbs, who has over thirty years’ experience in the industry, as an “exceptional” talent, whose professionalism consistently meets the very highest standards in sound recording. In particular, it cited January’s Linn release of JS Bach: The Well-Tempered Consort 1, performed by the viol consort Phantasm, adding that “the assiduous care he [Hobbs] takes in his work gives the appearance of great simplicity”.

This is the second major award in as many years for the Glasgow-based producer. In 2019, his work for Linn on the third of Robin Ticciati’s French repertoire series with the Deutsche Symphony Orchestra earned him a coveted Trophée from French broadcaster Radio Classique for Best Sound Recording of the Year.

Hobbs’ notable expertise has been put to wider use during the current Covid pandemic, producing many digital concerts for the Edinburgh International Festival, Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Royal Scottish National Orchestra. 

Back in April, the RSNO also featured among Diapason winners, its album of Chopin Piano Concertos with soloist Benjamin Grosvenor and principal guest conductor Elim Chan netting a distinguished Diapason d’Or. The RSNO previously appeared in the French awards list under its former music director Stephane Deneve.

RSNO / Macdonald


Wilson: Symphonies Nos 2 & 5
(Linn)

Following on from their excellent recorded coupling of Thomas Wilson’s Third and Fourth Symphonies on the Linn label, conductor Rory Macdonald and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra now turn their attention to the Second and Fifth. 

This effectively completes the series, given that Wilson, who died in 2001 aged 73, withdrew his First Symphony after only its second performance in 1960, unconvinced of its worth. As a result – and unless there are plans to release the discarded score for performance – these two symphonies, written 33 years apart, are effectively bookends to Wilson’s symphonic output.

Wilson was a trendsetter in the functional sense. His decision to base his career in Glasgow – whereas, previously, Scots composers seeking career opportunities felt compelled to go to London – paved the way for future generations of Scots-based creatives, from the likes of Eddie McGuire and William Sweeney to such younger luminaries as James MacMillan and Stuart MacRae. 

Musically, he was of his generation, a style that wrestled with the conflicting questions posed by the postwar European avant-gardists, and a craftsmanship capable of shaping the answers in his own fashion. We hear harmonic dissonance and melodic austerity enclosed within vigorous rhythmic structuring and a fundamental reliance on tonality. Bartok comes to mind, as does Walton, but with a personal twist.

The Second Symphony, premiered in 1965, is a confident and characterful assertion of that ambivalence. Its clear-minded structure – a three-movement format that opens in brooding darkness but with immediate clear and convincing intent – embraces intellect and emotion in equal measure. The powering inevitability of a substantial opening movement not without its tender cameos; the mutable agitation of the central movement; the pugnacious Walton-inspired urgency of the finale: all are addressed with clear-minded singularity by Macdonald, begging the question, why is this work not performed more often?

The Fifth Symphony grew out of material from an earlier 1980s work, Mosaics, written for the then chamber ensemble offshoot of the RSNO, Cantilena. It’s not surprising, therefore, to find this symphony scored for economic forces. It was premiered in 1998 by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra under Joseph Swensen.

Set out as one subdivided movement, the musical signature is not worlds removed from the Second Symphony. But there is a self-satisfying reassurance in Wilson’s musical discourse that, besides reflecting the quiet, experienced confidence of the older mind, adds eloquence and composure to a voice that still harbours capricious thoughts. 

The symphony opens and closes in shadowy tones, more pensive than threatening, between which the narrative ricochets from introvert retrospection to outward glee. And with such lucid, uncluttered instrumentation the opportunity is not lost in this crisp, thoughtful performance to savour the riches of Wilson’s intricate scoring and the unpretentious profundity of his expressive voice.

It’s wonderful that the RSNO has created this tangible legacy. As so often happens, it takes time beyond a composer’s death for honest and objective reappraisal to be possible. On this evidence Wilson’s symphonies surely deserve an afterlife, and not just on disc.
Ken Walton