Bleuse/Favre/Vassilakis
(Alpha)
Berlin-based Chin’s intricate music is performed with panache in this disc of three of her orchestral works

Unsuk Chin describes her music as a conscious attempt to render in sound the visions she encounters in her dreams. This ear-catching profile album from Ensemble Intercontemporain presents three of the Korean-born, Berlin-based artist’s works: a triptych of visionary panels that flicker and swarm with kaleidoscopic colours.

It opens with Gougalon, a playful suite inspired by the travelling amateur theatres of her native country. Prepared piano and a percussion section that hums with gongs, bells, bottles and vibraslap lend a riotous jocularity to six contrasting episodes, including the lugubrious Lament of the Bald Singer, the clangorous Grinning Fortune Teller With the False Teeth and the madcap Hunt for the Quack’s Plait. First-class engineering allows the listener to savour every sonic jot and tittle.

Opéra Royal de Versailles/Angioloni
(Château de Versailles Spectacles)
Doubling as vocalist and conductor, Angiolini is joined by fine singers in this rarely recorded late work. Giacomo Nanni’s sonorous ‘Fra l’ombre e gl’orrori’ is a particular highlight

Premiered in 1732, Sosarme is a bit of a sleeper among Handel’s mature operas, with only Anthony Lewis’s 1954 recording in the current catalogue. That’s a shame, as it possesses emotional depth as well as a swag of memorable arias. Contemporary audiences gave it a warm welcome, though the composer’s last-minute attempt to avoid a diplomatic faux pas by switching settings from medieval Portugal to mythical Lydia hasn’t helped its reputation.

This lightly sprung performance from Opéra Royal de Versailles under conductor Marco Angioloni goes some way to rehabilitating the work, even if the engineered sound and edgy string tone are a little in-your-face. Rémy Brès-Feuillet is honey-toned in the title role, originally a vehicle for the great contralto castrato Senesino, with Sarah Charles suitably soubrettish as his beloved Elmira.

Royal Festival Hall, London
George Benjamin conducted this meticulously programmed and beautifully executed concert of his own Palimpsests alongside music by Scriabin, Stravinsky and Ravel

Shimmering colours, translucent textures and illuminating shafts of light were the order of the day as the London Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence George Benjamin donned his conductor’s hat, bringing his trademark rigour and precision to a meticulously programmed concert of Scriabin, Stravinsky, Ravel and Benjamin himself.

Sensuality ruled in Scriabin’s The Poem of Ecstasy, a single-movement symphonic ode to joy. Languorous strings and woodwind indulged in voluptuous foreplay, spurred on by priapic brass, only to fall back repeatedly as if momentarily sated. Benjamin exerted an impressive control over his vast forces – nine horns, no less – refining the composer’s unrestrained textures before ramping up the adrenaline for a climactic explosion of hedonistic pleasure.