KEY POINTS:
A few months back, the Cincinnati press posted warnings about Paavo Jarvi's new recording of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. While blowing out your speakers might always be a risk with this composer, the danger to watch out for was "musically induced hyperactivity of the lachrymal glands".
In other words, have the tissues handy for when Tchaikovsky wrenches at the heartstrings.
In fact, the CD renders such fears unnecessary.
The Estonian conductor draws the purest of emotion from potentially tear-drenched pages. The handling of the first movement's second theme is exemplary, especially with the Cincinnati musicians' clean, clear woodwind playing.
The strings sigh sumptuously in the finale and Jarvi ensures we feel the weight and import of every phrase.
Telarc technology has clothed a superlative performance in every sonic shade imaginable, the bonus being a Romeo and Juliet overture, with climaxes that may make you solicitous for those speakers.
Also on Telarc, Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra's Britannia takes us through an enterprising selection of British music. Framed by athletic Elgar (two no-nonsense Pomp and Circumstance marches) are works by Britten, Peter Maxwell Davies, Mark-Anthony Turnage and James MacMillan.
In fact, this is a popular concert Atlanta audiences enjoyed earlier this year and a fine example of the programmer's art.
They like their humour in Georgia. Peter Maxwell Davies' An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise is a Proms-style picture from life, with boozy wedding guests and bagpipes welcoming the morning; MacMillan's Britannia has Ivesian fun with traditional tunes, reeling through its opening pages to duck calls and Elgarian snippets to some rumbustious fun with Liliburlero.
Turnage's Three Screaming Popes is a dazzling musical take on the painter Francis Bacon warping a papal triptych by Velasquez. If you were impressed by Turnage's From the Wreckage in the NZSO's last concert, then this intensely colourful canvas is the perfect follow-up.
Britten's Sinfonia da Requiem also has connections with the local concert hall, as the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra will be playing it in a week's time. Listening to Runnicles' shivery death dance in its second movement makes me impatient for next Thursday.
* Tchaikovsky, Symphony no 6 (Telarc 80681)
* Britannia (Telarc 80677)
both through Elite
