In the listening room: Pape, Kleiber, Bax, Lindberg, and cantatas galore

November 17, 7:28 PMSF Classical Music ExaminerScott Foglesong

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Today a few of the current items on my listening shelf, some recent recordings, some dating back a ways.

René Pape: Gods, Kings & Demons, with Sebastian Weigle conducting the Staatskapelle Dresden, on Deutsche Grammophon.

Boy, talk about a class act. I totally lost it over René Pape when I heard him as Pogner in the Levine/Met production of Meistersinger; hearing him subsequently as Sarastro in the Salzburg Magic Flute only increases my admiration for this prince of basses. You add the burnished glow of the Dresden orchestra — that "old gold" sound handed down from generation to generation — and you've got a vocal disc fit for a king.

Pape's choice of repertory is appropriate not only to his voice type but also stands testament to his fine musicianship; he gives us three different takes on Faust's Mephistopheles (Gounod, Boito, and Berlioz), then follows it up with King Philip's great scene from Verdi's Don Carlo and a lovely moment from Les Contes d'Hoffman. Two Wagnerian scenes — from Rheingold (as Wotan) and Tristan und Isolde (as King Marke) are then followed by two separate arias from the seldom-heard Demon by Anton Rubinstein. (Judging from these two selections, I say let's get Demon back on the boards fast.) A passionate moment from Dvorak's Rusalka is followed by the death of Boris Godunov (Mussorgsky, of course), bringing this generous collection to a close.

Get it from ArkivMusic, or in mp3/320 format (download) from Deutsche Grammophon.

Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic: Beethoven Symphonies 5 & 7, on Deutsche Grammophon.

This one's a quasi-oldie (from the mid-1970s) which I've heard on and off for the last three decades but recently got down to give it a really careful listening. I remain stunned by both performances, rightly considered gramophone masterpieces. This time around I noticed the majestic quality of the finale in the Fifth, as well as the hellbent tempo of the finale in the Seventh, always threatening an ensemble disaster that never materializes. The Andante of the Seventh has never seemed so compelling to me (Kleiber understood that it is not a 'slow' movement), and the clear, subtly raspy sound of the Vienna Philharmonic is succinctly captured.

Get it from ArkivMusic, or in mp3/320 format (download) from Deutsche Grammophon.

Arnold Bax: Orchestral Works (Bryden Thomson conducting the London Philharmonic) and Tone Poems (Vernon Handley conducting the BBC Philharmonic), all on Chandos.

I've been on a bit of a Bax kick lately, not for any noticeably serious reason; it's just my pleasure at the moment. Bax wrote a lot of marvelously enjoyable music, in particular in regards to lush and imaginative orchestration. I can't say that this ongoing project is inbuing me with any elevated opinion of Bax; he has the most astonishing tendency to veer into glitziness and even downright tackiness on occasion, nor does he present a conspicuously personal idiom. But it's good stuff, and lots of fun. The two orchestral series covering his music (from Thomson and Handley) are all well-played and immaculately recorded.

Magnus Lindberg: Sculpture, Campana in aria, Concerto for Orchestra, with Sakari Oramo conducting the Finnish Radio Symphony, on Ondine.

Cold climate, warm hearts: the Finns confirm that the future of concert music is as promising as our intentions. They've said Make it so, and by golly they're making it so. I'm an enthusiastic fan of this album's composer and conductor (both of whom gave us a memorable week at the San Francisco Symphony last season.) On this disc, the Concerto for Orchestra nearly overwhelms with its lush beauty and downright inexorable sense of pacing. I don't get goosebumps very often when listening to contemporary music but this one can leave you gasping; Lindberg's harmonic imagination (yes, he writes harmony) is potent, his orchestral skills spellbinding.

Get it from ArkivMusic, or in AAC/256 format (download) from iTunes, or in mp3/320 format (download) from ClassicsOnline.

John Eliot Gardiner, English Baroque Soloists, Monteverdi Choir: Bach Cantata Pilgrimage Volumes 5 and 17, from Soli Deo Gloria.

Gardiner's yearlong (2000) pilgrimage performed all of Bach's church cantatas on the feast days for which they were written, in various churches throughout Europe and America. The project was recorded in full, although the original record label (Deutsche Grammophon) declined to release the entire set. Not one to be defeated by a mere record company, Gardiner formed his own record label (Soli Deo Gloria) and has been putting out the Bach series, in addtion to some other very interesting fare (such as the Brahms symphonies.)

Given that these are live recordings, we may expect some inconsistency — singers, acoustics, weather, temperament and mood, all change on a day-to-day basis, after all. The overall performance standard is exemplary, and the music itself — the heart-core of Bach's creation — belongs to the ages.

Of these two recent additions to the series, I've particularly enjoyed Volume 17's cantatas for New Year's Day and the Sunday after New Year's. The cantatas are upbeat, as you would expect, filled with optimism and light, performed at the (extremely reverberant!) Gethsemanekirche in Berlin. For those who hunt around for these handsomely-designed recordings in the CD stores, be advised that you may purchase the entire series on subscription.