Liverpool Arts: Classical Column 190712

Preview

RLPO Summer Pops Season

RECENTLY at the Wigmore Hall, a mezzo-soprano ended her recital by singing as an encore of the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow – there was not a dry eye in the house. It is very right and proper that those wonderful Broadway and Hollywood songs of the last century increasingly find their place alongside the great masters of song like Schubert and Schumann.

The best of them are being recognised as an important genre in their own right. Kim Crisswell joins John Wilson and the RLPO on Saturday night to celebrate Hollywood’s leading ladies with many of the songs made famous by Judy Garland, Deanna Durbin, Lena Horne and more.

Orchestral music is not forgotten as Wilson includes amongst other things, The Carousel Waltz, which to my mind stands alongside Strauss as one of the finest of its kind. There is a preview of some of the programme tomorrow night when Crisswell, Wilson and the RLPO entertain the crowds at the Pierhead and they will also hear Thunder and Lightening Polka, Crown Imperial and Candide Overture.

It’s all part of a general letting down of the hair, before the Orchestra has a summer break, climaxing on Sunday evening with soprano Elizabeth Watts and Carl Davis presenting popular classics from concert hall and opera house, including Puccini, Mozart, Stars and Stripes for Ever and the Last Night of the Proms routine. Four weeks of relaxation follows for the band before the London Prom on August 23.

Reviews

Neeme Jarvi conducts Saint-Saens (Chandos), Saint Saens Organ Works (Hyperion)

AFTER their glittering release of the music of Debussy, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra follows up with Neeme Jarvi conducting a programme of that under-estimated composer, Camille Saint-Saens.

Omphale’s Spinning Wheel, Danse Macabre and the Danse Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah are joined by six lesser known but attractive pieces in spectacular recorded sound from Chandos. The composer lived too long and was considered out of date when he died in 1921 but he is due for a revival. Hyperion adds to the argument by releasing Volume 3 of his organ music played by Andrew-John Smith on the composer’s own organ at the Madeleine, Paris. Three Breton songs are quite delightful and, in tackling the Fantasie for mechanical Aeolian organ, the organist admits that he has managed to play most of the notes in this first recording. The composer did not expect it to be played by human hand, just on the machine but the Madeleine instrument having no bells, Adrian Bending steps in to add chimes. The programme is completed with three of his pieces for religious ritual and a delightful Sarabande.