Nicole Car / Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra / Andrea Molino THE KISS

This is a timely release from ABC Classics. The Australian soprano Nicole Car made her Royal Opera debut last autumn, as a touching Micaëla before starring as Tatyana. Both roles feature on this cannily programmed disc – a mixture of well-loved classics and a few specialities. Essentially a calling card, it demonstrates Car’s ability in rarer Russian and Czech repertoire, the extract from Smetana’s The Kiss lending the disc its title.

She begins the disc boldly, with Marguerite’s Jewel Song – just the sort of repertoire one associates with her compatriot Dame Joan Sutherland, but Car’s is a lighter instrument. She possesses a lovely lyric soprano, not a glamorous sound, but full of dewy freshness, nowhere more so than in Mimì’s aria, where the voice has a rosy bloom. Her Mimì is very much the ‘girl next door’ and she ends with a charming final line. Micaëla has a similar innocence. Her Thaïs shows promise, although the raw final note on the optional high D on ‘éternellement’ should have been retaken.

While the role of Leonora in Il trovatore would seem on the heavy side for Car at present, she is aided in ‘Tacea la notte placida’ by conductor Andrea Molino, who takes the aria quite swiftly. The cabaletta sparkles. Car discovers darker colours in Amelia’s ‘Come in quest’ora bruna’ from Simon Boccanegra, although it’s a bit of a trudge, the seabirds wheeling rather deliberately along Genoa’s coastline.

Tatyana’s Letter Scene is packed with emotion and meaning in something approaching a signature role. Among the rarities, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Servilia is a delight, although it’s a shame the aria from Tchaikovsky’s The Oprichnik is relegated to the download version of the album only. (Gramophone)

Víkingur Ólafsson PHILIP GLASS Piano Works

Deutsche Grammophon is delighted to announce the signing of an exclusive agreement with Víkingur Ólafsson and looks forward to collaborating with the  Icelandic pianist on a range of innovative recording projects.

Ólafsson has recently finished making his first album for the yellow label at Reykjavík’s iconic Harpa concert hall. Christian Badzura, Executive Producer, Deutsche Grammophon Artists & Repertoire, says, “Víkingur is an exceptional pianist and curator. His performance, choices of repertoire and visions for recorded sound are a fresh breeze in the classical music world. Be it Scarlatti, Rameau, Bach or Glass, Víkingur’s interpretations sound timeless.”

Described by The New York Times as a “splendid pianist” and by Piano News as an “immense talent”, Ólafsson is much sought-after by international conductors, orchestras and artists as both a chamber and concert musician. Now 32, he graduated in 2008 from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Robert McDonald, and has since released three albums on Dirrindí, the label he set up in 2009. Last year he contributed two solo piano pieces and the Valse des fleurs for piano four hands to Deutsche Grammophon’s 30-CD Stravinsky Complete Edition. Ólafsson is also Artistic Director of the annual Reykjavík Midsummer Music festival, which he founded in 2012, and last year took over from Martin Fröst as curator of Sweden’s Vinterfest.

“Víkingur is already very well-known in his native Iceland, where he’s been named ‘Musician of the Year’ four times. He brings a new Nordic sensibility to the classical repertoire, making him an exceedingly good choice as artistic director and curator of major music festivals”, notes Dr Clemens Trautmann, President of Deutsche Grammophon. “At DG, we’ve known for a while that Iceland is a hot-spring of top-notch musical creativity and Víkingur is one of its leading figures. Now we look forward to bringing his immense musical talent in classical as well as new repertoire to the attention of a worldwide audience.”

Ólafsson has commissioned and premiered, to date, five new piano concertos from different young composers, and has collaborated on diverse musical projects with a broad range of artists and musicians. These include conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy and Rafael Payare, as well as his compatriot Björk and composers Mark Simpson and Philip Glass.

The latter is the sole focus of Ólafsson’s latest recording project. Philip Glass: Piano Works will be released by Deutsche Grammophon in late January to coincide with the composer’s 80th birthday. The pianist’s fascination with reinterpreting the Piano Etudes grew as he toured and performed the works with Glass himself. “On the surface, they seem to be filled with repetitions. But the more one plays and thinks about them, the more their narratives seem to travel along in a spiral,” he explains. “My approach to each of the etudes is to enable the listener to create his or her own personal space of reflection. A partnership with Deutsche Grammophon, home of so many legendary pianists, will ensure my music reaches the ears of many more of those listeners. So of course I am honoured and excited to join DG.” (Deutsche Grammophon)

Maurizio Pollini CHOPIN Late Works Opp. 59 - 64

Chopin has remained one of the staples of Maurizio Pollini’s career both on record and in the concert hall for more than half a century. Since completing his recordings of most of the major works (only the mazurkas were not covered comprehensively), his most recent Chopin discs have returned to parts of that repertory to explore it chronologically. After collections devoted to works with opus numbers in the 20s and 30s, the latest focuses on the last pieces from Opp 59 to 64. There’s the Barcarolle and the Polonaise-Fantaisie, together with six mazurkas, two nocturnes and three waltzes, and the unfinished F minor Mazurka Op 68 no 3 added as an epilogue.

It’s easy to understand why Pollini should have been drawn back to these late pieces, with their harmonic daring and structural subtleties. He gives a fascinating account of the Barcarolle, austere and detached, but also intensely focused, though the Polonaise-Fantaisie, one of Chopin’s supreme achievements, disappoints; there’s none of the rhythmic drive Pollini once brought to it, as if now he is too wrapped up in its formal innovations. For all its passing beauties, there’s a sense throughout the disc that he’s more concerned with what he is still discovering in the music than in communicating to a larger audience; it often tells us more about him than it does about Chopin. (The Guardian)

Julie Boulianne ALMA OPPRESSA

Apart from occasional trips back to her native Quebec for opera and recital dates, mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne conducts her career primarily in Europe.

And what a career it is: In December she made her role debut as Donna Elvira ("the highlight of the evening") in Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris; in September she made her debut at Toulouse's Théâtre du Capitole in one of the title roles in Berlioz's Béatrice et Bénédict (one reviewer astutely praised her distinctively rich timbre). Coming up in 2017, she stars in Opéra de Limoges's production of Rossini's La Cenerentola, and in May, audiences in Quebec City can hear her sing Rosina in Opéra de Québec's Barber of Seville.

Boulianne does make time in her opera schedule for regular concerts with Montreal harpsichordist Luc Beauséjour, with whom she has developed a remarkable complicity. Alma oppressa, due out Jan. 27 on Analekta Records, evolved from one such concert, part of Beauséjour's popular Clavecin en concert series in Old Montreal. It took place in June at the Chapelle Notre-Dame de Bonsecours and the musicians hit the studio (actually, a church in Beloeil, Que.) in the following weeks to record it for posterity.

If this is starting to sound familiar, it's because Boulianne, Beauséjour and company earned a Juno nomination for 2014's Handel & Porpora, produced under nearly identical circumstances, and their new album is in many respects its sequel.

Simply put, Alma oppressa is a tremendous accomplishment. The opening title track, a bravura aria from Vivaldi's La fida ninfa, shows Boulianne to be in command of a wide vocal range with breath support to sustain long, thrilling lines of coloratura. By way of contrast, track 2 (a Vivaldi aria from the pastiche Andromeda liberata) is a languorous duet with the solo baroque violin of Chantale Rémillard — an opportunity to luxuriate in Boulianne's creamy timbre, unforced vocal production and tasteful phrasing.

The Handel selections are just as convincing: "Cara speme" from Giulio Cesare, with its spare continuo accompaniment, is chamber music at its expressive best; the sudden pianissimo in the ritornello of the familiar "Laschia ch'io pianga" gave us chills; and if there's a better recording of Tirinto's aria, "Se potessero i sospir' miei" from Imeneo, we honestly don't think we could handle it.

When they're not backing the soloist, Beauséjour and the musicians of Clavecin en Concert punctuate the program with instrumental suites, which are more than mere interludes among the arias. These musicians enjoy making music together, and it shows. (CBC Music)

Emmanuelle Bertrand CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS Cello Concerto No. 1 - Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3

‘That’s it done at last, this blasted sonata! Will it please or not? That is the question.’ So wrote Saint-Saëns, not without humour, of his second ‘quadruped’ for cello and piano. He adored the cello, as is shown by much more than the famous Swan. He wrote three sonatas for it, but unfortunately the last two movements of the Third Sonata have been lost and what is left survives only in manuscript. Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel play it here with emotion and total respect. The Concerto also included here is today one of the ‘musts’ of the concertante repertory for cello.

GAVIN BRYARS Vita Nova

Vita Nova includes four pieces by Bryars in which ECM appeared to be, at least partially, attempting to cash in on the new age-y vogue of the early '90s for the sort of quasi-medieval music made relatively popular by assorted singing monks, Arvo Pärt, and the Hilliard Ensemble with Jan Garbarek. Indeed, that latter group is on hand here to perform "Glorious Hill," and the results are as blandly attractive as the listener might guess given the following recipe: Take a mushily mystical text (in Latin), set to vaguely medieval sounding music, and spice with a dash of chromaticism and a pinch of minimalism. It's all handsomely produced and sung but terribly precious and overly palatable. How far Bryars had come from the rich reality of the tramp singing "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" in his masterpiece from the '70s. Unfortunately, the remainder of the disc also fails to deliver much more than prettiness. The longest composition, "Four Elements," falls into the same gauzily impressionistic, rudderless rut of much of his '90s work, and the introduction of David James, the same countertenor used in "Incipit Vita Nova," seems tacked on just to fit in with the ostensible "medieval" feel of the album. The same applies to the use of a recorder on the final piece, "Sub Rosa." That work, however, does contain glimmers of the unique beauty and clarity of Bryars' earlier work as found on Hommages. But those instances are far too meager to be able to recommend this recording to anyone but listeners attempting to slowly crawl their way out of the new age morass.

(Brian Olewnick)

GAVIN BRYARS The Fifth Century

The music of English composer Gavin Bryars has long managed the distinction of being both “accessible and defiantly personal” (The New York Times). A deep yet unsentimental emotional resonance and a patient, contemplative view of time – whether relating to harmonic rhythm or human experience – are complementary characteristics that run through his instrumental, vocal and theatrical catalog like a red thread, the composer inspired by disparate spirits from Wagner and Satie to Cage and Silvestrov. The ECM New Series released multiple recordings of Bryars’ music in the 1980s and early ’90s, including the classic albums After the Requiem and Vita Nova. The first full ECM album from Bryars in decades is The Fifth Century, which includes the seven-part title work: a slowly evolving – yet immediately involving – setting of words by 17th-century English mystic Thomas Traherne, performed by the mixed choir of The Crossing with saxophone quartet PRISM. The album also features Two Love Songs, luminous a cappella settings of Petrarch for the women of The Crossing. (ECM Records)