CD Reviews

Though it embraces three works and spans nearly half a century of Rodion Shchedrin’s output, the bulk of this welcome new release is devoted to the composer’s fourth opera, The Enchanted Wanderer. Premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 2002, this ‘opera for the concert stage’ – mainly slow and meditative, and more about narrative than drama – has found natural advocates at the Mariinsky, for Valery Gergiev and his forces instinctively feel how deeply rooted it is in Russian tradition.

With this disc, Freddy Kempf shoots straight into the top ten of Prokofiev interpreters. His Third Concerto has personality to match Martha Argerich, William Kapell, Evgeny Kissin and indeed the composer in his own recording. And what a true partnership it is, too, with Andrew Litton and the ever-waxing Bergen Philharmonic, reflected in an ideal recorded balance.

These are superlative performances of these extremely familiar works, though it isn’t easy to say exactly why they are so fine. They are not wildly idiosyncratic. Till Fellner, a pianist I have admired in everything that I have heard him do, in concert or on record, is not in the least a showman or someone with a strongly projected personality, yet in collaboration with the inspiring Kent Nagano he has achieved something remarkable.

The leading light of Hungarian folk music, Márta Sebestyén, is best known for her haunting contribution to the soundtrack of The English Patient. She’s been somewhat off the radar in recent years, but this new disc of Carpathian folk and religious songs is a welcome return to her cherished roots.

The austere, all-acoustic arrangements feature just two other musicians, who expertly frame Sebestyén’s gorgeous, ornamented vocals with breathy, rustic flutes, earthy bagpipes, and ethereal, silvery strings.