Miscellaneous

If violinists such as Gidon Kremer, Thomas Zehetmair and Christian Tetzlaff have brought a wider technical and expressive range to the Romantic repertoire, then Vadim Gluzman and Baiba Skride might be viewed as throwbacks to the golden age of Heifetz, Kreisler and Milstein.

Not since Vadim Repin burst onto the recording scene in the 1990s with a scorching coupling of the Sibelius and Tchaikovsky concertos have I found myself so emotionally engaged by the latter on disc.

Virtuoso Tasmin Little's website is good‑looking, well laid out, and helpful if you’re new to downloading music files. You can sample its individual tracks or pieces on your computer before burning a high quality CD, and Little provides an extra 25 minutes of commentary for novices, more experienced listeners, and teachers.

It’s surprising that My Fair Lady should be a favourite musical of Mississippi’s smouldering songstress Cassandra Wilson. But then fans of the Blue Note diva have come to expect the unexpected – especially in her choice of ‘standard’ material.

In addition to ‘Wouldn’t it be Loverly’, this set includes dark blue treatments of such varied tunes as ‘Caravan’, ‘Lover Come Back to Me’ and ‘Black Orpheus’.

This disc recalls memories of a terrific band which the veteran swing-era leader Charlie Barnet took out on the road, some 40 years ago.

Tiring of his millionaire’s life back in Palm Springs, Barnet kept boredom at bay by assembling this line-up of old pros (as well as the young Randy Brecker, of course) who had a strong book of Bill Holman charts at their disposal.

In the 1930s and ’40s, cabarets featuring musicians from the ‘French Antilles’ were the height of fashion in Paris, the centre of one of the first ‘world music’ crazes – the beguine. That contemporary artists such as Kali still draw on the genre for inspiration is a testament to its enduring appeal, and the third double CD in this series shows why this rollicking, Africanised dance music was so popular.

In the 1930s, Shanghai’s Little Vienna district, the haunt of European adventurers and Russian Jewish refugees, became a melting pot for everything from Western classical music to jazz to indigenous styles. This CD is a skilful recreation of what the atmosphere must have been like, laced as it is with ships‚ street cries, and traffic sounds, and even shellfire to evoke the Sino-Japanese War.

Afro-Peruvian music has witnessed revivals ever since it was rescued by Nicomedes Santa Cruz, the first to adapt and record items from the public domain in 1959. The music’s most recent high-profile exponent is Susana Baca, who generally emphasises acoustic interpretations of this tradition.

Live from St John’s, Smith Square in London last October, Sarah Connolly presents not only an ‘exquisite hour’ but a full 75 minutes of French and German song, exquisitely articulated and accompanied, and here with the newest of new song-text translations from Richard Stokes. Connolly woos her audience with the calling-card for any and every mezzo: Haydn’s dramatic cantata, Arianna a Naxos. And every second of its nervous and emotional life – its hopes, fears and final despair – are uncovered in Connolly’s superbly observant voice and imagination.

‘The vibrant relationship between contemporary sacred British choral music and the music of the medieval era’ is what this disc sets out to celebrate, and Judith Weir’s All the Ends of the Earth, the opening selection, vividly illustrates that particular symbiosis. Quotation of Pérotin’s cantus firmus by men’s voices provides a bedrock for newly composed embellishments (altos and sopranos), freshly delivered here by the Gonville & Caius upper voices.

Not so much a biography, more a whistle-stop tour of key points in Mahler’s life. There’s quite a bit about his family background and upbringing, then he’s suddenly in his first musical job, and rises quickly to the heights of running the Vienna State Opera. Along the way, there’s his affair with the soprano Anna von Mildenburg, his marriage to Alma Schindler, and the death of his elder daughter.

In the 30 years since George Crumb’s two Makrokosmos cycles first burst into the world, these two cycles of ‘fantasy pieces after the Zodiac’ have established themselves as one of the most significant contributions to contemporary piano literature.

Every once in a while, a new voice comes along that knocks you sideways. Tango singer Cristóbal Reppeto is the owner of just such a voice. Famously described by one Uruguayan critic as sounding like he’s ‘swallowed a gramophone’, this 25-year-old Argentinean’s style really is like nobody else – instantly recognisable and addictive.

If you know only the music, you will be in for a shock from this absorbing compendium. The shock is twofold: that the vigorous, striking figure seen playing bandoneon in his final recorded studio concert should shortly be felled by a stroke, and that the creator of that searching, emotionally generous – all right, sometimes contrived and depressing – music left a legacy of intense personal exasperation. Such it ever was, perhaps, with driven artists. Over half the programme goes to Mike Dibb’s film Tango Maestro.

It is 50 years since jazz music’s most influential soloist died in the Manhattan apartment of Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter. Yet his influence remains strong on young players such as the superb British saxophonist Martin Speake. The influence is not always obvious on this album. Although Speake covers some classic Parker numbers here (such as ‘Crazeology’ and ‘My Old Flame’) his tribute to Bird comes over not so much as a recreation of the music – more a personal reflection on the great man’s work.

Arguably the greatest jazz organists of their respective generations, Joey DeFrancesco and the late Jimmy Smith team up for an intelligently produced and well programmed encounter. For sheer technical aplomb, DeFrancesco is the Marc-André Hamelin of the Hammond B3, whose fastest, densest flights of fancy never fail to swing like mad (he also flexes his considerable piano virtuosity on several tracks).

It’s difficult to know what to admire more: the dedicated, penetrating musicianship of violinist Madeleine Mitchell, or the sheer range of the pieces she has inspired. Interestingly, though, there’s little here that reflects the old modernist ethos of writing ‘against’ the instrument.

There’s no reason why BMG should have conflated excerpts from Korcia’s three previous RCA albums except to reconfirm that this French violinist has bags of charisma. Erik Levi

This wide-ranging selection of recordings demonstrates the versatility and high standards of this great Spanish mezzo. Includes the first international CD release of her Italian Baroque arias collection. George Hall

Early recordings by the great Italian lyric tenor which show him at the best period for both his voice and artistry. There’s some classic operatic arias, and his Neapolitan songs have immense style and spontaneity. George Hall

The idiosyncratic but always touching Kasarova takes the lead in this bel canto compilation. Vargas is eloquent in Capuleti, and the leading Rossini tenor of our time sings the rest. George Hall

The two parts of this DVD are self-contained – you can easily bypass the documentary if you just want to see a straight-down-the-middle performance of the Variations by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis.

It is true that no definitive version of this opera exists in Monteverdi’s hand, and that (as we are told) its ‘marathon length’ invites ‘a few cuts’, but these commonplace observations hardly prepare us for the oddness of this event.

I enjoyed this, one of Ken Russell’s more lurid bio-pics when it first came out (the director is cited as saying it’s ‘the best film I have ever made about an artist’); and it’s weathered well over 30 years, not least because of Robert Powell’s strong performance as Mahler.