By no means attempt to second-guess the Russian-German pianist Igor Levit. Love and dying are the dual flames of his new double album. Contrasting with the polychromatic presentation of final 12 months’s On DSCH, his new Tristan (Sony) has monochrome sobriety. The unifying theme is the Tristan legend made well-known by Wagner and explored by others, in homage and inspiration.
As you would possibly count on, Levit’s decisions are daring, one disc largely occupied by Hans Werner Henze’s six-movement Tristan (1974). This uncared for work, stuffed with allusion and tender sensuality, is written for piano, digital tapes and orchestra, right here the Leipzig Gewandhaus performed by Franz Welser-Möst. Bridging the Henze with Wagner’s prelude to Tristan und Isolde (arr. Zoltán Kocsis), Levit shines gentle on the dissonant enigma that's the Adagio from Mahler’s tenth symphony, within the transcription by Ronald Stevenson. Liszt’s Transcendental Etude No 11, “Harmonies du soir”, with its rippling, harp-like left hand and song-like right-hand chords, bursts into radiance then subsides to a shadowy, tranquil ending, the disc’s good finale.
Look out, too, for Levit’s e book, coming quickly, with Florian Zinnecker: Home Live performance (Polity), primarily based on the lockdown live shows Levit performed from his Berlin flat, profitable an avid viewers all over the world.
As artist-in-residence of the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the American composer John Adams (b 1947)has labored carefully with this orchestra and its conductor Paavo Järvi, serving to them put together his music. The consequence, known as merely John Adams (Alpha Classics),options 4 contrasting works: Slonimsky’s Earbox(1995), pulsating and vivid, written for the opening of Manchester’s Bridgewater Corridor; My Father Knew Charles Ives (2003), the poignant triptych evoking Adams’s New England marching-band childhood; Tromba Lontana (1986), a brief, noisy fanfare; and Lollapalooza (1995), explosive and rhythmic, written as a fortieth birthday current for Simon Rattle, first carried out by the Metropolis of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This brief compendium is a perfect place to begin for any listener eager to pattern this prolific composer’s wealthy orchestral vocabulary.
Or tune in right now, Sunday 18 September, 10pm UK time, to observe Adams’s newest opera, Antony and Cleopatra, in a livestream (£23.50) from San Francisco Opera, the place it was premiered earlier this month.
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