Music and Recording Reviews

Bryce Dessner, David Chalmin: Electric Fields
Barbara Hannigan, soprano; Katia and Marielle Labèque, pianos; David Chalmin, synths and electronics
Alpha 980 (reviewed as 24/96 WAV). 2025. David Chalmin, prod.; Chalmin and Guido Tichelman, engs.
Performance ****
Sonics ****½

What is this? That question is reasonable to ask after hearing Alpha's new concept album, Electric Fields. The plans for this recording began with the Labèque sisters. They teamed up with the ever-adventurous soprano Barbara Hannigan and composer/performer David Chalmin, who combined spiritual texts by Barbara Strozzi, Hildegard von Bingen, and Francesca Caccini with music by Bryce Dessner and Chalmin himself. The album contains nine tracks that infuse medieval and baroque sensibilities with meditative, electronically enhanced New Age sonics. The result will sound familiar to lovers of medieval, Renaissance, and baroque harmonies as well as to aficionados of New Age ambience.

Hannigan, who is known for championing the music of Berg and Messiaen, miraculously transforms her instrument into one appropriate for medieval plainchant. It's stunning to discover how much she can sound like a classic early-music soprano. She sometimes overdubs high-flying sounds and phrases around the dominant vocal line. Together with Chalmin's space-age electronics, these are as much from another time as they are out of this world.

I was quite taken by the two-part reframing of Strozzi's "Che Si Può Fare?" (What Can Be Done?). It begins with an almost nine-minute improvisation by Hannigan, Katia Labèque, and Chalmin with multiple loops and overdubs. There's a lot to savor, including a section that borders on madwoman melodramatics. The second half, Chalmin's arrangement of the Strozzi composition, gives the Labèque sisters ample opportunities to shine.

Though some may find this music anodyne, audio show exhibitors capable of creating a serene demo environment could effortlessly transport visitors by playing Electric Fields.—Jason Victor Serinus

John Field: Complete Nocturnes
Alice Sara Ott, piano
Deutsche Grammophon 0028948662388 (CD, reviewed as 24/192 WAV). 2025. Christopher Tarnow, prod.; Emil Berliner Studios, eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ***½

There's such a comfortable, at-home feel to John Field's 18 nocturnes that the second time I played his first one, "No. 1 in E-Flat Major," it felt like a reunion with a long-lost friend. These nocturnes and many that followed are built around some of the loveliest, most graceful and uncomplicated melodies you may ever encounter.

Chopin is often credited with popularizing the nocturne, but John Field (1782–1837), an Irish composer and pianist, published his first nocturnes in 1814, when Chopin was only 4 years old. Tutored by Muzio Clementi in London, Field had composed his first three keyboard sonatas by the time he was 20. That same year, in 1802, he and Clementi visited St. Petersburg. Clementi left after six months, but Field chose Russia as his base while traveling all over Europe to give concerts. Sadly, his life was marked by illness, including cancer, and a gradual loss of popularity back home on the British Isles, where he visited occasionally. He died from pneumonia in Moscow at age 54.

None of Field's sorrows made it into his nocturnes. Possessing both warmth and an overarching lyrical quality, they lack the heart-tugging sentimentality and angst that distinguish many of Chopin's more romantic works. Yet there is a fundamental, songful integrity to the Irishman's work that all but guarantees that this recording will restore his nocturnes to the repertoire of many other concert pianists.

Meanwhile, German-Japanese concert pianist Alice Sara Ott's performances are ideal for Field's music. Everything is neat, tidy, flowing, and in place; her carefully judged rubati are so perfectly crafted that you may hardly notice them. Nonetheless, by recording's end, you'll likely have been transported by the unforced joy of her art.—Jason Victor Serinus

Mahler: Symphony No.3
Catriona Morison, mezzo-soprano; Prague Philharmonic Choir and Pueri gaudentes; Czech Philharmonic Orchestra/Semyon Bychkov
Pristine Classical PTC5187363 (CD). 2025. Holger Urbach, prod.; Stephan Reh, eng.
Performance ***½
Sonics ****

The best moments of Bychkov's Third are very good, but it takes a while to get there. The discursive first movement steps forthrightly but squarely, but not until the development do we hear the necessary urgency. Like almost everyone else except Horenstein, Bychkov attempts to heighten the final climax, but his setup seems particularly clunky and ham-handed.

In the delicate, pointed Menuetto, the strings surge nicely into climaxes and Bychkov attentively shapes the violins' increasingly embellished returns. Marked accents underscore the third movement's Russian-Jewish lilt; the judiciously paced posthorn episodes suspend time without stopping it dead (a problem, alas, in the classic Horenstein account).

Catriona Morison lacks alto depth but sings clearly and expressively; her firm, compact instrument turns easily through the top. The oboe portamentos in the Nietzsche song are heavy; the layering of women's and children's choruses in the fifth movement makes a fine spatial effect.

Pianissimo be damned, the finale begins too quietly; the tamped-down sonority doesn't hold the ear's attention, nor does it set up a contrast with the higher, lighter passage that follows. Once the textures begin to fill out, however, Bychkov impeccably balances the music's simple cantabile, wistfulness, and aching lyricism. His flowing tempo, while allowing the needed space, projects the movement as a series of broad paragraphs, so it doesn't go adrift. After the ominous climax, the return to the opening mood doesn't quite settle in; the resolution, conversely, is fulfilling.

The sound is fine, and so is the playing, with especially pure woodwinds. The high violins thin out in some turbulent passages.—Stephen Francis Vasta

Stravinsky: Pulcinella; Le baiser de la fée—Divertimento
K.-M. Murphy: Curiosity, Genius, and the Search for Petula Clark
Isabel Leonard, mezzo-soprano; Paul Appleby, tenor; Derek Welton, bass-baritone; Toronto Symphony Orchestra/Gustavo Gimeno
Harmonia Mundi 905384 (CD). 2025. Karel Bruggeman, prod.; Jacob Steingart, asst. eng.; John Newton, bal. eng.
Performance ****½
Sonics ****½

Le baiser de la fée is Stravinsky's tribute to Tchaikovsky, inspired by that composer's small piano pieces; the Divertimento includes most of the familiar tunes. The upper strings start the Sinfonia with a lovely, clear sheen; answering woodwinds, crisply punctuated with pizzicatos, are warm and expressive. The Danses suisses galumph pleasantly against smoother, harmonically unstable episodes, with a suave merry-go-round waltz later on. The Scherzo's oboe is plaintive; the expansive textures of the Pas de deux could be actual Tchaikovsky.

Pulcinella, based on music attributed (mostly incorrectly) to Pergolesi, channels a Baroque aesthetic into Neoclassicism—note the skeletal wind chords that conclude track 11. The more dissonant moments don't last long: Twice, driving Sacre-like chords give way to pleasant scurrying. The dance forms (two Sicilianas, for example) are mostly not tagged as such; there's a gently solemn Gavotta in the home stretch, while the Tarantella is hardly Baroque. Isabel Leonard, who takes the lead in the one unison trio, produces lovely rich tones. Derek Welton's bass-baritone sounds flexible and resonant; Paul Appleby's tenor is stiff rather than fluid.

Kelly-Marie Murphy's commissioned piece takes in new-music clichés—bell-like accents, oddball woodwind sounds, angular fragments—but adds distinctive writing: brass pyramids, a Bartókian orchestral bustle, an unsettled string chorale. What has any of it to do with Petula Clark?

The Toronto Symphony is in fine fettle these days, rendering especially Pulcinella with bright, perky sounds. Except for a bit of glare at the climax of the Sinfonia, the sonics are all right.—Stephen Francis Vasta