The South African soprano Golda Schultz gained an prompt following after her look on the Final Night time of the Proms within the lockdown-truncated 2020 season. Regardless of the oddness of the occasion, she dealt with it joyfully and graciously. Her new album with pianist Jonathan Ware, This Be Her Verse (Alpha Classics), confirms her versatility and musical intelligence. The recital consists of songs by 5 feminine composers, from the romantics Emilie Mayer (1812-1883) and Clara Schumann (1819-1896), to the mid-century adventurers, Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) and Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) to the current: the South African composer-pianist Kathleen Tagg (b. 1977). Schultz and Ware rise to the problem of each fashion, from Mayer’s pressing Der Erlkönig to Clarke’s wistful Down by the Salley Gardens. The album’s title is from a brand new track cycle by Tagg, to texts by Lila Palmer. Commissioned by Schultz, they’re deft, upbeat, sharp and true, a celebration of the one mattress and clear sheets.
Chromatic and disturbing, Alexander Scriabin’s single-movement Piano Sonata No 9 Op 68 (1913) quickly acquired the nickname “Black Mass”. (He didn’t object, having already named his seventh sonata “White Mass”.) The American pianist Orion Weiss has included this mesmerising work in Arc I (First Hand Data), the primary of three albums referring to the prelude and aftermath of the primary and second world wars. The opening work is Granados’s formidable Goyescas Op 11 (1911). Weiss makes gentle of those six fiercely troublesome actions about love and dying, constructed on scraps of concepts formed into complicated and poetic materials. In distinction, Janáček’s Within the Mists (1912), a cycle of 4 quick items, is spare and compact, inward wanting, steeped in people melody, unpredictable. “Extra like entries in a wild diary than character items”, as Weiss writes. The Scriabin, with its feral threats and spectres, concludes this wealthy and thought-provoking album. Arc II, now keenly awaited, guarantees Ravel, Shostakovich and Brahms.