Midlands Classical Music Making

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CDs Ysaÿe:  Sonatas for Solo Violin, Roman Simovic (LSO Live CD & SACD)  ★★★★★ T he Belgian violinist and composer  Eugène Ysaÿe  (1858-1931) was nicknamed “The King of the Violin” for his amazing  virtuoso  technique and  refinement  as a chamber musician and founder of the lauded Quatuor Ysaÿe. He composed too but none of his eight concertos were published in his lifetime. He  wrote  one undoubted masterpiece,  a set of  Six Sonatas for Solo Violin of 1924 inspired by hearing the great Joseph Szigeti play Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas. Ysaÿe’ s set pays homage to them but he never indulges in pastiche and mock-baroque,   and uses the musical language of his own time. He does allow himself a moment of whimsy in the opening of Sonata No.2 which has a direct quote from the Prelude of Bach’s Partita in E minor, as if the soloist were overheard practising before be...

                               MY FAIR LADY                                                           CHANDOS CHSA 5358(2) This, the latest in John Wilson’s exhilarating sequence of totally complete musicals with the Sinfonia of London, is another absolute joy, though with one minor caveat. We have here every scrap of material created by Lerner and Loewe, My Fair Lady’s creators, and that provides the only tiny problem. Shows in public presentation often cut segues and links, sometimes just for reasons of timing. These of course don’t apply in CD recordings, but s...

  DAVID TAYLOE and DYLAN PEREZ Red House, Aldeburgh (August 1) A recital of English song, accompanied on Benjamin Britten’s own piano in the library of his Red House, so full of resonances, promised a mouthwatering experience, and in many respects it was. But Britten himself proved only a fleeting presence in this hour-long programme promoted by Summer at Snape 2025. Had we heard more of him it might have enlivened a somewhat samey atmosphere created by many of the offerings. The emerging young American tenor David Tayloe has an attractive voice, creamy and appealing, and in the opening three Purcell items, realisations by Britten and Thomas Ades, he displayed an appropriate alto-like timbre. “Hark the Ech’ing Air” was a mite too hectic in its delivery, but pianist Dylan Perez brought crisp, harpsichord-like articulation to Britten’s accompaniment. Then began a lengthy sequence overladen with the melancholy which pervades so much song-writing by English composers of the fir...