First published in the Guardian on 25 September, 2015

Nielsen/Sibelius: Violin Concertos etc
Skride/Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra/Rouvali (Orfeo)

It’s handy for the music industry that Sibelius and Nielsen share an anniversary (both 150 this year). The two Scandinavian post-romantics can be neatly paired on one sparse, pine-forested postcard, but what’s so enticing about this recording from the excellent Latvian violinist Baiba Skride — besides her gorgeously rugged sound and straight-up, natural delivery — is that she clinches the distinct voice of each composer. Her Sibelius spins a silvery chill before sweeping headlong into brooding, furrowed-browed melodies. She navigates the storms of the Nielsen less smoothly but then it’s a rougher piece, and exactly right that her attack is skittish, vulnerable and ballsy in quick succession. Her Adagio is simultaneously luminous and intensely sad — so beautiful that I had to listen to that movement on repeat. The Tempere orchestra sounds clean, supple and boisterous under its young chief conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali; he, meanwhile, is the latest sit-up-and-listen talent to emerge from the great Finnish conducting tradition.

First published in the Guardian on 25 September, 2015

Halffter: Homo electricus
Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid/Encinar (Stradivarius)

Cristobal Halffter, born in Madrid in 1930, is an electro-acoustician of the old school, just a couple years the junior of pioneers like Boulez and Stockhausen. He lived in Spain throughout the Franco regime and his music burns with the desire for non-violence and human rights. Meanwhile he kept up connections with the European avant-garde and the three works on this disc (Variaciones sobre la resonancia de un grito, Planto por las victimas de la violencia and Lineas y puntos) were all commissioned in the 1960s-1970s by the Donaueschingen Festival, vanguard of sharp-edged modernism. Nowadays Halffter’s techniques might only interest those particularly keen on vintage live electronics, but the sense of fear, repression and yearning for freedom in this music still resonates. The Madrid orchestras’ playing under Jose Ramon Encinar is impressive: mournful low clarinets, searching violins, restive flutes and punchy brass vie for space and are repeatedly thwarted by the dense, jagged din of the whole ensemble. Not the easiest listen.

First published in the Guardian on 25 September, 2015

Gesualdo/Dean/Tuur
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir/Tallin Chamber Orchestra/Kaljuste (ECM)

Gesualdo was the composer-prince who had a thing for self-torture, who murdered his wife and her lover one dark night in Naples, whose music inhabits the wildest chromatic reaches of the 16th century. No wonder the juiciest bad guy in classical music has sparked the imagination of so many composers since. This aptly angst-filled album conducted by Tonu Kaljuste includes stylish string arrangements of Gesualdo vocal music plus related works by Brett Dean and Erkki-Sven Tuur. We get the spicy opening chords of Gesualdo’s madrigal Moro lasso twice: first a transcription by Kaljuste, full of fine-sculpted space and slow-shifting contours, then Dean’s Carlo, an intensely atmospheric work from 2007 that opens with straight Gesualdo then implodes into a murky throng of whispering voices and tormented strings. The Estonians capture the dark psyche without overdoing it; most chilling is how they evoke glassy loneliness in hushed moments. Tuur’s Psalmody is the other big work on the disc, but at 20 minutes of jaunty neo-baroque minimalism it isn’t half as interesting.