Se vc ainda não conhece Clarice, assista o caldeirão do Huck e vai vê-la entre as dançarinas!
Muito interessante não?
Clarice Zeitel Vianna Silva
UFRJ – Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro – Rio de Janeiro – RJ
PÁTRIA MADRASTA VIL
Onde já se viu tanto excesso de falta? Abundância de inexistência... Exagero de escassez... Contraditórios?? Então aí está! O novo nome do nosso país! Não pode haver sinônimo melhor para BRASIL. Porque o Brasil nada mais é do que o excesso de falta de caráter, a abundância de inexistência de solidariedade, o exagero de escassez de responsabilidade.
O Brasil nada mais é do que uma combinação mal engendrada – e friamente sistematizada – de contradições.
Há quem diga que "dos filhos deste solo és mãe gentil.", mas eu digo que não é gentil e, muito menos, mãe. Pela definição que eu conheço de MÃE, o Brasil está mais para madrasta vil.
A minha mãe não "tapa o sol com a peneira". Não me daria, por exemplo, um lugar na universidade sem ter-me dado uma bela formação básica. E mesmo há 200 anos atrás não me aboliria da escravidão se soubesse que me restaria a liberdade apenas para morrer de fome. Porque a minha mãe não iria querer me enganar, iludir. Ela me daria um verdadeiro PACote que fosse efetivo na resolução do problema, e que contivesse educação + liberdade + igualdade. Ela sabe que de nada me adianta ter educação pela metade, ou tê-la aprisionada pela falta de oportunidade, pela falta de escolha, acorrentada pela minha voz-nada-ativa. A minha mãe sabe que eu só vou crescer se a minha educação gerar liberdade e esta, por fim, igualdade. Uma segue a outra... Sem nenhuma contradição!
É disso que o Brasil precisa: mudanças estruturais, revolucionárias, que quebrem esse sistema-esquema social montado; mudanças que não sejam hipócritas, mudanças que transformem! A mudança que nada muda é só mais uma contradição. Os governantes (às vezes) dão uns peixinhos, mas não ensinam a pescar. E a educação libertadora entra aí. O povo está tão paralisado pela ignorância
que não sabe a que tem direito. Não aprendeu o que é ser cidadão.
Porém, ainda nos falta um fator fundamental para o alcance da igualdade: nossa participação efetiva; as mudanças dentro do corpo burocrático do Estado não modificam a estrutura. As classes média e alta – tão confortavelmente situadas na pirâmide social – terão que fazer mais do que reclamar (o que só serve mesmo para aliviar nossa culpa)... Mas estão elas preparadas para isso?
Eu acredito profundamente que só uma revolução estrutural, feita de dentro pra fora e que não exclua nada nem ninguém de seus efeitos, possa acabar com a pobreza e desigualdade no Brasil.
Afinal, de que serve um governo que não administra? De que serve uma mãe que não afaga? E, finalmente, de que serve um Homem que não se posiciona? Talvez o sentido de nossa própria existência esteja ligado, justamente, a um posicionamento perante o mundo como um todo. Sem egoísmo. Cada um por todos...
Algumas perguntas, quando auto-indagadas, se tornam elucidativas. Perguntese: quero ser pobre no Brasil? Filho de uma mãe gentil ou de uma madrasta vil? Ser tratado como cidadão ou excluído? Como gente... Ou como bicho?
Apesar do texto ser uma coleção de obviedades sobre nosso país, a leitura é agradável e o objetivo de indignar mesmo o mais apático dentre os apáticos parece ter algum sucesso.
O Brasil parece-me mesmo o país do anúncio do cigarro Vilarrica nos anos 70
(Veja a seguir)
Não é demais?
Foi daí que veio a expressão: Lei de Gérson
Uma grande sacada do publicitário responsável sobre a alma nacional.
Neste momento em que o vice-presidente sai para tratar-se longe da rede assistencial de saúde pública e no qual uma ministra sangue-ruim corre para o quartel-general dos ricos-desenganados do país, o povo segue embriagado desejando um terceiro mandato para o atual presidente...
Como disse um barraqueiro carioca, sem troco, diante de um turista português pouco acostomado com as inflexões do léxico nacional: "...tem troco não, vai ter que levar bala!"
Chama-me a tenção como, mesmo desenganados e à beira do embarque definitivo, nenhum dos nossos homens públicos demonstra nobreza ou real compreensão do sentido da existência.
O senso de gratidão, no entanto, é lugar comum nos países desenvolvidos. Milionários voltam fortunas inteiras, mesmo ainda em vida, para escolas, universidades, hospitais ou centros de pesquisa.
Vide a fundação Bill e Melinda Gates, por exemplo.
Quando doam para hospitais, pode ser que estes passem a se chamar Memorial Fulano de Tal.
Uma justa homenagem a quem doou parte da sua produção em vida para apresentar seu nome para os que não tiveram tempo de conhecer-lhe.
Como seria bom ver isto acontecer entre nós...
Por enquanto, talvez por cruel ignorância de quem escolheu o nome, vamos nos contentando, aqui em Salvador, com o bizarro exemplo de um hospital que se chama apenas, tão e simplesmente: Memorial.
Sem um nome antes nem depois; sem benemérito; anônimo como o mérito ético desta pátria madrasta vil.
Abaixo, para não ficar só em seriedades vai uma lista dos melhores discos de 2008 pelo Times.
Um guia pelo qual me oriento frequentemente para não ficar na mão dos opinadores locais.
The 100 best records of 2008
Rock and Pop
1 Fleet Foxes: Fleet Foxes (Bella Union) Usually, when an album’s reviews has references to the Beach Boys or CSN&Y, it simply means that more than one person in the band sings at the same time. But in the case of this uplifting, timeless yet fresh debut, comparisons with the peak of West Coast pop are entirely justified.
2 Cut/Copy: In Ghost Colours (Modular) The Melbourne trio made the most haunting and beguiling electro album of the year, awash with beauty, melancholy, rapture and updated 1980s-new-wave magic. An instant classic.
3 Paul Weller: 22 Dreams (Island) The sharp-dressed man’s back catalogue is full of ups and downs, but this is very much an up: a dazzlingly eclectic album that shows Weller, at 50, can still match the thrilling inventions of his early days.
4 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! (Mute) Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, last year’s Grinderman project, and now this: a snarling, feral, self-deprecating, libidinous, hilarious work of genius. As an album, it’s extraordinary. As a 14th studio release, it’s miraculous.
5 Bon Iver: For Emma, Forever Ago (4AD) This album had the best back story of the year — man splits with girlfriend, falls ill, retires to remote log cabin to recover, hunting his own meat, chopping wood for the fire, and all the time conjuring up this unique, hauntingly lovely, multitracked folk.
6 Aidan John Moffat: I Can Hear Your Heart (Chemikal Underground) The former Arab Strapper, one of Britain’s greatest lyricists, excelled himself on this part-book, part-audio spoken-word masterpiece, which forensically examined his drink-fuelled inadequacies and self-disgust, along with the absurdities he witnesses or sets in motion.
7 Al Green: Lay It Down (Blue Note) Guests including John Legend, Anthony Hamilton, ?uestlove, the Dap-Kings horns and other neo-soul luminaries join with one of the old-school greats as he recaptures his finest form. If you love the man’s 1970s hits, you will love this too.
8 Kanye West: 808s & Heartbreak (Roc-a-Fella/Mercury) Mourning his mother, and heartbroken by a failed relationship, West forsook rap in favour of a minimalist electro approach, emerging as a singer (his voice heavily treated) who mined poignancy from the sparest of lyrical and musical sources.
9 REM: Accelerate (Warner Bros) For the first time since the departure of their drummer, Bill Berry, 11 long years ago, REM have created a really excellent album. The secret? Lose the languorous synths, turn up the guitars, rock out.
10 My Morning Jacket: Evil Urges (Rough Trade) The mutation of Jim James’s band from country-tinged guitar-rockers into genre-bending experimentalists continued apace on this superb fifth album, as prog, space-funk, acoustica and 1970s soul and soft-rock joined the blend — with wondrous results.
11 Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan: Sunday at Devil Dirt (V2) The only downside to this duo’s superb debut, Ballad of the Broken Seas, was the thought that such an unlikely collaboration would prove a one-off. But no: here’s another instalment of Lanegan growling and Campbell whispering through a set of songs Hank Williams would have been proud of.
12 The Killers: Day & Age (Mercury) Ignore Brandon Flowers’s protestations about superstar ambivalence: on this third album of immaculate, radio-conquering pop, the front man and his Las Vegas colleagues sound not just hungry for the next, stadium-filling stage of success, but gagging for it.
13 Little Jackie: The Stoop (S-Curve) Imani Coppola reinvents herself as the missing link between Macy Gray and Lily Allen, with a sassy mix of pop, R&B, hip-hop and smart lyrics, including the You’re So Vain complexity of “I liked you better before you knew me” and the admirable honesty of “The world should revolve around me”.
14 Sigur Ros: Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust (EMI) A blissful, devastating album from the Icelandic ambient-rockers, full of sonic sorcery and glacial expanses, and containing, in Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur, 2009’s most euphoric pop moment.
15 Elbow: The Seldom Seen Kid (Fiction) To be honest, it’s no better than their earlier albums, but — for whatever reason — this was the year when Elbow’s thoroughly human take on rock finally reached the tipping point and deservedly turned them from “criminally underrated” to “much loved”.
16 The Dears: Missiles (Dangerbird) Stripped down to just a husband-and-wife duo, the Canadians came up with their best album to date, using Pink Floyd, Radiohead and pre-Midge Ure Ultravox references as a springboard to a sublime example of ethereal indie.
17 Emiliana Torrini: Me and Armini (Rough Trade) The Icelandic singer — whose CV includes writing for Kylie — created a perky pop album that joins the dots between Björk and Nancy Sinatra.
18 Roots Manuva: Slime & Reason (Big Dada) Rodney Smith’s sixth studio album found the preacher’s son ducking and diving through alternately self-lacerating and dextrously witty wordplay, to a musical backdrop so mongrel that it defied categorisation — and was all the more absorbing and riveting for that.
19 Peter Broderick: Home (Bella Union) Best known for his work with the intriguing Danish outfit Efterklang, Broderick this year revealed himself as a songwriter of beguiling depth. Home’s layered vocals and finger-picked guitar create a quiet, yearning world that lives up to the warmth and comfort suggested by the album’s title.
20 Lindsey Buckingham: Gift of Screws (Reprise) If this were by Fleetwood Mac, people would have gone: “A classic Mac mix of soft rock and experimental excursions.” As it was by the man chiefly responsible for that mix, not the band, it was largely ignored. Mad, mad world.
New Artists
1 Laura Marling: Alas, I Cannot Swim (Virgin) Under cover of musical lightness, the teenager crept up on listeners with a nu-folk masterpiece that, amid the sing-alongs, tackled love, death and depression with startling candour.
2 The Last Shadow Puppets: The Age of the Understatement (Domino) Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner teamed up with the Rascals’ Miles Kane for a Scott Walker- and Lee Hazlewood-indebted album that brimmed with some of the sharpest, most haunting melodies of the year.
3 Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles (Different) Toronto’s Alice Glass and Ethan Fawn made a debut that sounded like an army of Space Invaders running amok on crack. It was as violent as music gets.
4 Wild Beasts: Limbo, Panto (Domino) With Hayden Thorpe’s lurid falsetto to the fore, the Leeds band concocted a sort of musical/satirical cabaret noir, heavy on melodrama, wit and weird. The most original debut of the year.
5 Eugene McGuiness: Eugene McGuinness (Domino) McGuinness made good on his promise with a record that nodded to Rufus Wainwright, Byrne, Albarn and Merritt, but triumphed on its own eccentric terms.
6 Nicole Atkins: Neptune City (Red Ink/Sony BMG) From the Jersey Shore, Atkins crooned her way into contention with an album of vocal melodrama and restraint, her voice an Orbison/Cline stunner.
7 Lightspeed Champion: Falling off the Lavender Bridge (Domino) The former Test Icicle Dev Hynes retreated from the hype and tore songs from his chest, with melodies that could never mask the torment of their birth.
8 Ladyhawke: Ladyhawke (Island) The New Zealander Pip Brown first made electro-pop waves with her brilliant Paris Is Burning single. Its irresistible chorus gave only a hint of how packed with the things this superb debut would be.
9 Noah and the Whale: Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down (Mercury) Charlie Fink and co’s debut looked death, decay and self-doubt in the face, emerging with a chill in its heart but, musically, a lethally contrasting spring in its step.
10 The week that was: The Week That Was (Memphis Industries) Field Music’s Peter Brewis threw out his TV, immersed himself in Paul Auster and came up with a musical thriller, all choppy guitars and prog textures.
Dan Cairns
Left-field
1 One More Grain: Isle of Grain (White Heat) Daniel Patrick Quinn’s bored northern bingo-caller vocals drizzle bird’s-eye views of broken Britain over krautrock rhythms, incongruous jazz-fusion trumpet and post-punk guitar scree.
2 Matana Roberts: The Chicago Project (Central Control International) Matana Roberts blows ecstatic saxophone as hard as Albert Ayler, but carries tunes soulful enough to sell experimental jazz noise to sceptics.
3 Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh: Helena Espvall and Masaki Batoh (Drag City) Espvall’s droning cello meets Batoh’s acid-blues guitar in a pervasive fog of Swedish folk and Japanese psychedelia.
4 John Edwards: Volume (PSI) John Edwards traverses the neck of his double bass in fearless free-jazz improvisations, using silence, space, sudden motions and sustained undulations.
5 Dick Gaughan: Gaughan Live! at the Trades Club (Greentrax) The Scottish folk singer and guitarist distils four decades of passion into a timeless selection, alternating a lightness of touch with smouldering, righteous fury.
6 Robert Forster: The Evangelist (Tag) The fearsomely fey former Go-Between’s first release since the death of his long-term songwriting partner, Grant McLennan, typifies his apparently effortless talent, with drawled poetry and low-slung guitars.
7 Martin Hayes/Dennis Cahill: Welcome Here Again (Green Linnet) Hayes rescues the fiddle tunes of his native Co Clare from clichéd arrangements and off-the-peg sentimentality, imbuing them with vast emotional depths and moments of considered stillness.
8 The Advisory Circle: Other Channels (Ghost Box) The electronica of 1970s public-information films and weird children’s TV conjures a forgotten suburban nightmare of prescription tranquillisers, coffee mornings, treacherous ponds and imminent nuclear war.
9 NICK PYNN Afterplanesman (Roundhill) Pynn gave his micro-suite of miniature art-folk curios a push this year. Sampled vocals and self-made instruments range across cultural, geographical and temporal boundaries to delightful effect.
10 WILD BILLY CHILDISH AND THE MUSICIANS OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE Thatcher’s Children (Damaged Goods) Chatham’s venerable garage-rock fundamentalists cock a 1976-style snook at Noughties values and continue to summon instant punk classics from the Thames estuary at will.
Stewart Lee
World
1 The Garifuna Women's Project: Umalali (Cumbancha) Ivan Duran burrows into Central America’s Afro-Latin tradition in this survey of a community that flourishes on the margins.
2 Buika: Niña de Fuego (Warner) The charismatic flamenco-meets-jazz diva gets better all the time. Javier Limon’s sumptuous production work is even more assured and varied this time around.
3 Wasis Diop: Judu Bek (Wrasse) A hint of Serge Gainsbourg and a Leonard Cohen adaptation from the Senegalese singer, a brooding weaver of dreams.
4 Otis Taylor: Recapturing the Banjo (Telarc) The trance guitarist’s excavation of early African-American music receives rousing studio support from the likes of Keb’ Mo’ and Corey Harris.
5 Melingo: Maldito Tango (Mañana) A Buenos Aires Tom Waits? The eccentric singer adds his bewitching Paolo Conte growl to defiantly off-the-wall numbers.
6 Omara Portuondo/Maria Bethania: Omara Portuondo e Maria Bethania (Discmedi) The greatest Cuban singer of our times finds common ground with one of Brazil’s most serene vocalists.
7 Rokia Traore: Tchamantché (Nonesuch) A wash of understated electric guitars brings a contemporary sheen to the Malian singer’s mesmerising soundscapes.
8 Various Artists: The Complete Motown Singles, Vol 9: 1969 (Motown/Hip O-Select/Universal) Ah, the days when soul music had soul. A multidisc celebration of the Motor City’s heyday, from Marvin to the ill-fated Shorty Long.
9 Mariza: Terra (EMI) The fado queen stylishly incorporates a touch of jazz and Cape Verde’s version of saudade.
10 Buena Vista Social Club: At Carnegie Hall (World Circuit) While Gonzalez, Ferrer and Segundo may no longer be with us, we finally get to savour that famous 1990s date in Manhattan.
Clive Davis
Jazz1 The Neil Cowley Trio: Loud Louder Stop (Cake) “Jazz for people who don’t like jazz” was my reaction when I first heard the British band hammer its way through some infuriatingly catchy tunes. Cowley is an engagingly witty band leader who grabs music back from the conservatories.
2 Esperanza Spalding: Esperanza (Heads Up) A bassist who makes her instrument sing, the young American virtuoso effortlessly straddles bop, funk and Latin soul.
3 Melody Gardot: Worrisome Heart (Universal) A star in the making. There are lots of Norah Jones soundalikes out there, but this Philly singer-songwriter’s take on the jazz-blues tradition is in a class of its own.
4 Jonas Knutsson & Johan Norberg: Skaren: Norrland III (ACT) A beguiling journey through Sweden’s wooded hinterlands, as the saxophonist and guitarist explore folk melodies with the all-girl a cappella group Kraja.
5 Howard Alden & Ken Peplowski: Howard Alden & Ken Peplowski’s Pow-Wow (Arbors) Two of the most cultured members of the retro movement deliver nimble guitar-and-reeds duets, from Duke Ellington to Bud Powell.
6 Various Artists: Miles from India (Times Square) The producer Bob Belden takes Miles Davis’s fusion one step further, in a mix-and-match collaboration between Indian musicians and a contingent of jazz heavyweights.
7 Patricia Barber: The Cole Porter Mix (Blue Note) Fresh from her triumphant reworking of Ovid, no less, the Chicago singer-pianist turns her attention to the suavest tunesmith of them all.
8 The Bennie Maupin Quartet: Early Reflections (Cryptogramophone) The reeds player who helped to define the Headhunters era turns distinctly mystical on an introspective acoustic session.
9 Evan Christopher: Django à la Créole (Lejazzetal) The soulful clarinettist Evan Christopher channels the gypsy legend with the help of the guitarists Dave Blenkhorn and Dave Kelbie.
10 Nina Simone: To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story (Sony/BMG) Narrowly pipping the 50th-anniversary edition of Kind of Blue for the prize of best reissue, this lavish compilation charts the career of another true nonconformist.
Clive Davis
Classical1 Mozart: Symphonies Nos 38-41 (Linn) Two outstanding sets of late Mozart symphonies appeared in 2008 — this one, and Claudio Abbado with his Bolognese Orchestra Mozart (DG) — but it is Mackerras and the SCO who triumph in the finest accounts of the Prague, E flat, G minor and Jupiter ever recorded.
2 Bach: Sacred Arias & Cantatas (Virgin) David Daniels’s ethereal yet sensual countertenor has never sounded more persuasive than in these great arias from the B minor Mass, the great Passions and the cantata Ich habe Genug. Sublime.
3 Schubert: Lieder (Harmonia Mundi) Bernarda Fink’s unmannered singing of great Schubert songs is the art that conceals art — her light, lyric mezzo sounds rich and sumptuous, and her pianist, Gerold Huber, accords sympathetically with her interpretative aims.
4 Britten: Piano Concerto, Diversions, Young Apollo (Hyperion) Steven Osborne’s compendium of all three of Britten’s concerted works for piano and orchestra, with the BBC Scottish SO under Ilan Volkov, is a brilliantly planned programme, thrillingly executed.
5 Lully: Psyché (CPO) The wellspring of the Lully revival has been Paris, but this dazzling account of the opera comes from the Boston Early Music Festival, conducted by Stephen Stubbs and Paul O’Dette, with Carolyn Sampson and Karina Gauvin.
6 Songs my mother taught me: Magdalena Kozena (DG) Kozena is in her element with a recital of Czech songs by Dvorak, Janacek, Martinu and the less familiar Rösler, Novak, Schulhoff and Eben. Superb music, fabulously sung.
7 JS Bach: Partitas 2-4 (Sony) Murray Perahia has come late to Bach on record, but he is one of the most convincing advocates of this great music on the modern piano. His sarabandes are balm to the ear and his gigues delight.
8 Vivaldi: Amor Profano (Archiv) Simone Kermes is a staggering vocal virtuoso in this thrilling selection of opera arias with Andrea Marcon’s Venice Baroque Orchestra. The tempestuous Agitata da due venti — a Bartoli speciality — takes the breath away.
9 Bizet: Carmen, L’Arlésienne (Naïve) To hear this popular, even hackneyed, music revealed afresh by Marc Minkowski’s Musiciens du Louvre has been one of the most exciting record events of the year, whetting the appetite for their complete Carmen.
10 Ravel, Debussy, Faure: String Quartets (Virgin) The three great French quartets in supremely idiomatic performances by the young Quatuor Ebène — one of the year’s most notable debuts.
11 Jonas Kaufmann: Romantic Arias (Decca) The dashing German tenor shows his versatility in popular Italian and French arias, and in his native repertoire: thrilling as Gounod’s and Berlioz’s Faust, and in the Prize Song from Meistersinger.
12 Shostakovich: Cello Concertos Nos 1 & 2 (Orfeo) The young Daniel Müller-Schott couples these two very different concertos in masterly performances with the Bavarian Radio SO under Yakov Kreizberg.
13 Stephen Hough: A Mozart Album (Hyperion) An ingenious piece of programming by the British pianist, juxtaposing echt Mozart with music “tributes” by Liszt, Cramer and Hough (after Poulenc) himself.
14 Verdi: Requiem (Hänssler) Starry soloists, three thrilling choirs and spectacular sound make this tremendous Verdi Requiem from Cologne’s WDR SO under Semyon Bychkov something special.
15 Britten: Owen Wingrave (Chandos) The late Richard Hickox was a Britten conductor second to none (including the composer). He even managed to ignite sparks in this late, damp-squibby television opera, with a fine cast.
16 Haydn: The Creation (Archiv) Haydn’s great oratorio has a long performing tradition in English, but recordings are rare. Paul McCreesh’s passionate advocacy, with high-carat soloists and his wonderful Gabrieli forces, is inspirational.
17 Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (ROH Heritage) Three live Meistersinger discs have come my way this year, but I choose Bernard Haitink over Goodall and Böhm for his humanity and the priceless memento of Gösta Winbergh’s golden Stolzing.
18 Susan Graham: Un Frisson français (Onyx) Graham’s “bouquet” of French song, spanning 100 years, from Gounod to Messiaen, is one of the most delicious surprises of the year — chocolate truffles for the ears.
19 Schoenberg, Sibelius: Violin Concertos (DG) Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto has a forbidding reputation, but with this sumptuously played account, Hilary Hahn and the Swedish Radio SO bring it into the mainstream. The Sibelius is glorious, too.
20 Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius (Hallé Live) Mark Elder and a fine team of soloists — Paul Groves, Alice Coote, Bryn Terfel — maintain the Hallé’s Elgar tradition in this splendid account.
Hugh Canning
Contemporary1 Peter Maxwell Davies: Ave Maris Stella (Metier) One of Davies’s most profound and luminous works, inspired by Beethoven’s late quartets as well as plainsong. Fiercely difficult to play, it comes over here with ease and brilliance.
2 George Benjamin: Into the Little Hill (Nimbus) Benjamin’s first opera is a mere 37 minutes, with only two singers, who take all the roles in this allegorical adaptation of the Pied Piper story.
3 Schoenberg: Complete String Quartets (United Archives) Passionate, intelligent performances from 1950 to 1952 by the original Juilliard String members.
4 Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated! (Naxos) This magnificent piece, in a direct line from Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Diabellis, is a socialist statement with the opulence of Goyescas.
5 Alexander Goehr: Little Symphony, String Quartet No 2, Piano Trio (Lyrita) The belated CD release of Lyrita recordings means one can enjoy again these performances of works by a composer at the peak of early maturity.
6 Kaija Saariaho: Notes on Light, Orion, Mirage (Ondine) Extremely refined yet bold orchestral texture, densely radiant continuums of sound, are Saariaho’s stock in trade, epitomised here.
7 Hans Werner Henze: Symphonies Nos 7 and 8 (Wergo) Perhaps the most enjoyable of Henze’s 10 symphonies, the Seventh marking his return to classicism after the agitprop of Symphony No 6.
8 Roger Redgate, James Clarke: Works for Piano (Deutschlandfunk) Both these composers fit into the relentlessly avant-garde tradition of which the pianist Nicolas Hodges is a seasoned exponent. Clarke uses stark repetition, but in an anti-minimalist way.
9 Peter Maxwell Davies: Naxos Quartets Nos 9 and 10 (Naxos) The last of 10 quartets commissioned by the label. The Ninth is dedicated to a former lord mayor of Manchester, Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, who wrote a treatise on the “magic squares” beloved of the composer.
10 Colin Matthews: Five Works (NMC) These 1980s pieces include the Divertimento for Double String Quartet, from the Divertimenti Ensemble, and String Quartet No 2.
Paul Driver
Classical reissues1 Wagner: Der fliegende Holländer (Testament) Klemperer’s elemental live performance of the original 1843 Dresden score is even more intense than his studio recording, and has the bonus of James King’s Erik to match Theo Adam’s powerful Dutchman and Anja Silja’s thrilling Senta.
2 Purcell: Fantasias for the Viols (Alia Vox) These audacious pieces by the 20-year-old “English Orpheus” give delight in Hespèrion XX’s assured performances.
3 Gluck: Alceste (ROH Heritage) The 1981 Covent Garden production is blessed by two great Gluck interpreters, Janet Baker and Charles Mackerras, who, with Robert Tear’s fine Admète, know how to release the true Gluckian fire.
4 BRUCKNER: Symphony No 8 (LPO) From the same year comes this passionate account of the mighty Eighth. Tennstedt’s reading combines careful attention to formal architecture, dynamics and phrasing with pulsating life.
5 Alfred Brendel (Brilliant Classics) This 35-CD set unites the recordings Brendel made for Vox, Turnabout and Vanguard, which established his reputation, in the 1950s, as an interpreter not only of Beethoven, Mozart and Schubert, but of Liszt and Schoenberg.
6 The Comediant Harmonists (Documents) The masterly vocal group that reigned supreme in Germany until Goebbels banned it lives again in these four discs of parodies, instrument mimicry (every sound from muted trumpet to plucked strings) and popular songs.
7 Brahms: Symphony No 1, Double Concerto (Dynamic) Monumental and deeply expressive, Furtwängler’s live Brahms 1 with the Concertgebouw (1950) is one to treasure, as is this incisive account of the Double Concerto with Boskovsky, Brabec and the Vienna Philharmonic.
8 David Oistrakh (Brilliant Classics) The centenary of the birth of the violinist many rate as the finest of all is celebrated in a 20-CD set of live performances, including chamber music and concertos.
9 Lionel Tertis (Biddulph) The father of the viola in the complete pre-electric recordings he made for Vocalion between 1919 and 1924.
10 Verdi: La Forza del destino (Naxos Historical) Verdi’s oft-abused opera receives unusually full measure in EMI’s 1954 studio recording under Serafin. The cast, if less than ideal, boasts Callas’s incomparable Leonora.
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