11 hours ago
If you think all orchestras sound alike, listen to this recording
Grade: B+
These are gloomy days, so here's a burst of melody and colour to cheer you up. Back in the LP era it wasn't unusual for classical recordings to be put together like a concert that you might actually want to hear: a sequence of works by different but complementary composers, offering the possibility of a happy discovery. Come for the Strauss, stay for the Reznicek – that sort of thing.
This lively new disc from the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic adopts the same principle. The unifying theme is early-20th-century eastern European nationalism – the folksong-collecting variety, not the Archduke-assassinating kind. But it's the opposite of monotonous. The Bartok is brusque and peppery alongside Kodaly's cheerful nostalgia, while Enescu's folk-fiddles flash and dart in the sunlight (the opening theme of his Romanian Rhapsody is based on a drinking song: what's not to like?). The centrepiece is the Frescoes of Piero della Francesca: a luscious, colour-saturated triptych of tone poems that might be the finest symphony Martinu never wrote.
Anyway, the Turkish players go at this music with a will – wide-eyed, occasionally splashy, but sensitive to each shift of mood and texture (and in this repertoire, there are a lot). It's marvellously translucent. Harps ripple within chords, the strings are springy and supple and the bassoons have soil under their fingernails – in all, a suitably tangy corrective to the jaded notion that all orchestras now sound alike. The Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic recently toured the UK, but I'm embarrassed to say that I'd never heard of their Italian chief conductor Carlo Tenan. If this recording is typical, he knows his stuff.
