Only now are we fully aware of the true immensity of Vivaldi’s concerto repertoire. The violin is by no means the only instrument he favored: the place of the bassoon in his work catalogue is remarkable for its size and stylistic homogeneity, as well as for his solistic treatment of an instrument previously confined to the continuo. Seven new concertos here join the twenty-six already recorded in the first four volumes of the Vivaldi Edition, an anthology Sergio Azzolini embarked on in 2009 with L’Aura Soave, and now builds on with L’Onda Armonica.

Internationally established musicians Hanna Shybayeva (piano), Utrecht String Quartet and Luis Cabrera (double bass) present on this album the rarely performed and even more rarely recorded chamber music transcriptions of Beethoven's piano concertos Nos. 3 and 4 by Vinzenz Lachner. Hanna Shybayeva started her international career at the age of eleven as a "child prodigy." She recorded for several labels, bringing out repertoire by Ravel, Prokofiev, Chopin, Takemitsu, Shostakovich, and the complete Etudes-Tableaux of Rachmaninov. Since 2008 she has been a member of the New European Ensemble, one of the most innovative, vibrant, and versatile ensembles for New Music. Since 2013 she has been a professor at the International Anton Rubinstein Music Academy in Dusseldorf and at Conservatorio Giacomo Puccini La Spezia.

The legacy of the Cypress String Quartet, which celebrated its 20th anniversary and valedictory season in 2016, is sealed by the ensemble’s final recording – the two String Sextets by Johannes Brahms in which they are joined by long-time collaborators, violist Barry Shiffman and cellist Zuill Bailey. True to form, the Cypress String Quartet applied innovation to its last recording: live in front of a studio audience at Skywalker Sound Studio. "A tender, deeply expressive interpretation" - The New York Times

Fourteen years ago, Till Brönner - one of Germany's leading trumpet soloists - won hearts with an album of favorite holiday melodies adapted for his instrument. In 2021, he returns with a new look at the music of the Christmas season in intimate arrangements for trumpet, bass, and drums.

The journey starts in Switzerland, in the canton of Thurgau, leading from Steckborn and the Bodensee to the Rhine Falls. From Styria, in Austria, comes Hochosterwitz Castle and from Bavaria Weikersheim Castle, the latter intercut with wild life from the Austrian Assling Nature Park. The tour ends amid the strangely shaped mountains of the Dolomites in Southern Tyrol, a region divided between Austria and Italy. In a remarkable way Mahler, in his symphonies and songs, has seemed to reflect the world of today in all it's bewildering variety and has now won an established place in concert repertoire. Distinguished as a conductor, his fame as a composer has grown over the years since his death. The music included here is Mahler's ymphony No. 1, nick-named Titan, not for it's massive power, but after the book by Jean Paul, a strong influence over earlier romantics and over Mahler at this stage in his career. The symphony breathes the spirit of the Austrian countryside, reflected in Mahler's songs.

To this day, Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is one of the most popular pieces of classical music in the world. But what is it about this global hit? The film charts the success of the symphony around the globe and encounters passionate amateur musicians and musical personalities. Watch as Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis works on Beethoven’s Ninth with his ensemble, MusicAeterna. Follow Chinese composer and Oscar winner Tan Dun as he creates a new composition inspired by the great Beethoven symphony. Experience the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as they play the Ninth. Visit a favela in Brazil, where Beethovens’s music helps people get off the streets. Be amazed as a choir of 10,000 in Japan sings the final chorus of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with great enthusiasm. Learn how Paul Whittaker helps make Beethoven accessible for deaf people. And find out how British DJ Gabriel Prokofiev performs a symphonic remix of Beethoven’s Ninth.

Decades before World Music became an established category, Béla Bartók was roaming the Eastern European countryside, collecting folk tunes with fellow composer Zoltan Kodaly. He snapped up songs from his native Hungary, but also toted his phonograph on tune-gathering trips to Romania, Slovakia and Turkey. He spent much of 1943 on a research fellowship at Columbia University transcribing Serbo-Croatian folk songs.

As violinist James Ehnes and pianist Andrew Armstrong demonstrate on this new recording, Bartók fashioned some vibrant and colorful arrangements from his folk journeys.

Ehnes has been a familiar face in New York lately; last summer, he performed on a New York Philharmonic broadcast from Van Cortlandt Park and also made a stop for a WQXR Café Concert. He’s been busy in the recording studio too; this wraps a three-part Bartók cycle.

The three sets of folk songs on this recording illustrate how Bartók embraced the tangy exotic modes and wild irregular rhythms of the countryside, which freed him from "the tyranny of major and minor scales," as he put it. Two sets of Hungarian Folks Songs features some jaunty dialogues with the piano and some added effects – pizzicato, harmonics – to make a splash. The Romanian Folk Dances ratchet up the momentum further, particularly in the final “Polka” and the rollicking “Fast Dance.”

The sonatas offer a striking contrast but there's much to admire here too. A Bach-like grandeur underscores the unaccompanied Sonata (1944), written in the in the final months of Bartók's life for Yehudi Menuhin, and yet more traces of Hungarian folk melodies turn up in the Violin Sonata in E minor, written a half-century earlier.

-- WQXR, Album of the Week [1/20/2013]

This Myto release of Gaetano Donizetti’s repertoire staple opera ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ with its famed “mad scene” features, among others, a stellar trio of singers at or near their respective vocal primes in Renata Scotto, Alfredo Kraus and Sesto Bruscantini. + This live recording from July, 1963 finds distinguished conductor Bruno Rigacci, a musician with over 100 operas in his repertoire, directing the proceedings.

The strident conviction of Goffredo Petrassi (1904-2003) his seven postwar Concertos for Orchestra could hardly be anticipated from the fluent pastiche of his piano Partita, composed in 1926. The Baroque titles of the four movements introduce a disarming simplicity of expression, whose dominant strains are the Classicism of Mozart and Beethoven. Even the more exploratory harmonies of the Toccata (1933) are couched in an idiom of gentle introspection – a far cry from the contemporary toccatas of Bartok and Prokofiev, for example – and an escapist, playful spirit courses through the seven Inventions of 1944. Extant surveys of Petrassi’s piano music end there, whereas Andrea Molteni adds three further, attractive miniatures: a mischievous Petit Piece of 1950 and then the two movements of Oh Les Beaux Jours! (1976), which rework material from the early 1940s including an unfinished Divertimento Scarlattiano. Unexpected this may be, for all but the most devoted student of Petrassi, but Andrea Molteni brings out the most attractive and witty features of his piano writing.

Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975) was, if anything, an even keener student of Baroque music than Petrassi, and blessed with a more subversive wit: in one of his most famous works, the Quaderno Musicale di Annalibera (1951-2) he fashions a dodecaphonic sequence on Bach’s name (B.A.C.H). Twelve-tone counterpoint should be a contradiction in terms, but that would underestimate Dallapiccola’s powers of technique and invention, which create a genuine homage in the spirit of his own time. Before that, Andrea Molteni presents two further works in a haunting neoclassical vein: a ‘Canonic Sonata’ based on Paganini’s Capricci for solo violin, and a set of three ‘Episodes’ drawn from his ballet Marsia, by turns anguished and serene in mood.

REVIEW:

Petrassi and Dallapiccola were born the same year. Their earliest piano works reflect past styles and history. Petrassi’s four-movement Partita is crackling Neoclassical and the bittersweet Toccata is a theme and variations. Dallapiccola’s Sonatina Canonica leverages material from Paganini’s violin caprices. Both composers gravitated towards lean styles: Petrassi’s Invenzioni demonstrate atonal counterpoint whereas Dallapiccola jumped wholeheartedly into serialism as evidenced by the excerpts from the ballet, Marsia. The pair of short pieces in Petrassi’s Oh Les Beaux Jours! is playful and spontaneous, hinting at earlier efforts. Rarely heard, the 11-part Quaderno offers crafted miniatures reflecting serialism and canons.

-- La Folia

An important centre for iron production in 17th-century Sweden, Leufsta Bruk came into the hands of the De Geers, a Dutch family, in the 1640s. In 1730 the young Charles De Geer inherited the estate and the ironworks, and it was here that he kept his extensive collection of sheet music, including many volumes imported from Amsterdam but also works by composers based in or visiting Sweden, such as Hinrich Philip Johnsen and Conrad Friedrich Hurlebusch. Charles played the cello and the harpsichord, and it is probable that much of the music in the Leufsta collection will have been performed by members of the De Geer family themselves. The collection, now housed in the library of the University of Uppsala, thus offers fascinating insights into domestic music-making in 18th-century Sweden. This is the third album to present music from the collection, and the first to focus on vocal music. It also features the famous organ in the church belonging to the estate, built in 1728 by Johan Niclas Cahman. Ranging from Swedish chorales to French opera, the varied selection is performed by soprano Elin Rombo and members of Rebaroque, one of the leading baroque ensembles in Sweden.

This is an interesting and enterprising selection. There is no doubt that Pauline Haas is an accomplished harpist and she has chosen a programme that shows off the many-sided facets and interpretative possibilities of her instrument.

John Thomas was official harpist to Queen Victoria and was known as the Chief of the Welsh Minstrels. His doleful The Minstrel’s Adieu to His Native Land illustrates the traditional folk heritage associations with the instrument.

The Smetana Die Moldau transcription is much more impressive and one of the most successful pieces in this collection. The harp brilliantly evokes the fresh tinkling, sparkling thrills of running water through the gushing springs of the upper Moldau, its progress through rapids, and forests and plains and onto Prague. The music growing from light-hearted youth in character through to proud mature grandeur as it approaches the Capital.

The lyrical beauty of Tchaikovsky’s two pieces from The Seasons are beguilingly caught by the harp, especially so of the June Barcarolle.

Virtuoso harpist Albert Zabel, was solo harpist for the Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg. His Fantasy on themes from Faust by Charles Gounod is the most substantial piece in the programme and it allows the instrument to show off its virtuoso and dramatic/melodramatic capabilities. The Faust themes he chose seem less familiar and it would have been helpful if Pauline Haas could have elaborated her otherwise splendid, if rather colourfully effusive album notes. Ms Haas suggests that this Fantasy ‘follows the tradition of pieces written for virtuoso performance and is inspired by fashionable tunes of the period’? Whatever, here the harp sings romantically and dramatically enough and the virtuoso challenges are eagerly surmounted.

Mendelssohn’s Prelude and Fugue in E minor is a formidable work half in the Romantic tradition but also definitely in homage to the influence of Bach. The Prelude, beautifully evocatively played, ‘is often compared to a river of tears’ and the Fugue transcends tension and anger to a beatific acceptance of death. An extraordinary piece nicely, sensitively transcribed by Pauline Haas.

Finally, there is a formidable challenge for Haas; her arrangement for harp from Liszt’s piano transcription of Wagner’s Liebestodt. She successfully creates an atmosphere of calm at the beginning and serenity at the close. The emotionally intense climb to the peak of passion, is fine to start with, with plenty of sound perspective and power but, to me, it loses momentum on the way up when there is a mood-breaking sag and pause. Nevertheless this is a brave and worthy attempt.

A small moan, occasionally there is some distracting and disconcerting background noise –the soloist breathing I understand. Nevertheless this is a most interesting and enterprising collection demonstrating the undervalued capabilities of the most romantic of instruments.

– MusicWeb International (Ian Lace)

GRÉTRY Le magnifique • Ryan Brown, cond; Emiliano Gonzalez Toro ( Octave, Le Magnifique ); Elizabeth Calleo ( Clémentine ); Jeffrey Thompson ( Aldobrandin ); Karim Sulayman ( Fabio ); Marguerite Krull ( Alix ); Douglas Williams ( Laurence ); Opera Lafayette • NAXOS 8.660305 (80:00)


The operas of André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, once wildly popular, are virtually unknown today—this is the world premiere recording of this 1773 work—even though his most famous work, Richard Cœur de Lion of 1784 was still occasionally performed in the late 19th century. In order to fit the whole opera on one CD, conductor Ryan Brown and his forces chose to omit all of the spoken dialogue, which some may see as a demerit and others a plus.


This CD production duplicates the cast that Brown used when he gave the modern world premiere of the opera at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater in February 2011, reviewed by Charles T. Downey in Ionarts. Interestingly, the descriptions of the singers in that review virtually matched my own reaction, particularly the description of soprano Elizabeth Calleo as having “some lovely high notes but an overall vocal production that was tight in the jaw…and sounded a little shallow at the top,” but overall this cast is good.


The plot is a typically silly “rescue” opera mixed up with the usual love triangle. Put as simply as possible, the dashing young Octave, known as “Le Magnifique,” has just rescued the wealthy merchant Horace and his servant Laurence from the slave market where they mysteriously appeared. Meanwhile Horace’s daughter, Clémentine, is being wooed towards marriage by her tutor, Aldobrandin, while Alix, Clémentine’s servant and confidante, has rushed into the street having spotted Laurence (who is also her husband) marching with the slaves. Le Magnifique offers his best racing horse as a free gift to Aldobrandin if he is allowed 15 minutes alone with Clémentine, which the latter agrees to. Clémentine tacitly agrees to marry him, and in the course of time, of course, it is revealed that Aldobrandin and his servant Fabio actually kidnapped Horace and Laurence and sold them into slavery nine years ago. Reunions occur, Aldobrandin is dismissed, and Octave/Magnifique gets the girl.


What makes this opera interesting, however, is the music. Stuck stylistically somewhere between the baroque and classical styles, Le Magnifique has some very innovative and interesting moments, such as the slow march of the slaves which acts as the overture, a splendid duet for Clémentine and Aldobrandin, and a wonderful comic aria for Fabio, who sings of the glories of the horse Octave has promised his master. In fact, there ensues a trio for Octave, Fabio, and Aldobrandin—all of whom, incidentally, are tenors—singing for four minutes of how they’re going to go out and have a look at that horse! (All I could think of at that moment was Mr. Ed. ) By and large, Le Magnifique ’s style is that of a comic opera but, as I say, the style is very forward-looking. It much closer resembles Nicolai’s Merry Wives of Windsor than it does Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail. I was particularly struck by the musical invention in his extended act II finale, which lasts an astounding 17:22. Not until Mozart wrote the act I finale to Le nozze di Figaro did a composer, particularly in a comic opera, write something even more involved and complex.


All the singers have excellent voices, bright yet full (save Calleo whose voice is not bright on top but constricted). Sulayman has a rather over-bright and somewhat unsteady tenor, but since Fabio is a comic-comprimario role, Sulayman does a good enough job. In fact, his rendering of the “horse aria” is absolutely delightful. Brown conducts with a light, deft hand: He evidently understands the French galante style very well. Despite her slight vocal deficiencies, Calleo is called on to drop an octave into what would be her contralto range in her aria “Quelle contrainte!” Both the first and second acts end with an ensemble for the three tenors (I’m a little surprised that Plácido Domingo never dug this up for his Three Tenors concerts), and here one can discern the tonal difference between their three voices. This recording is an unexpected delight, and I commend both Ryan Brown for his superb musical direction and the foresight of Naxos to record this. Bravo, one and all!


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

1715: The famed Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari constructs what will become one of his most legendary violins. Among its first owners is Giuseppe Tartini, he of the "Devil's Trill" sonata.

c. 1817: The violin is bequeathed to Polish virtuoso violinist Karol Lipinski who inspired many works for the instrument.

2008: After passing through many countries and collections, the "Lipinski" Strad arrives in the hands of Frank Almond, through an anonymous donor.

2013: Frank Almond releases "A Violin's Life", an album that traces the provenance of the "Lipinski" Strad, with music by Schumann, Tartini, Julius Rontgen, and Lipinski himself.

January 2014: Following a concert, walking towards his car, Frank Almond is tasered by an assailant and the "Lipinski" Strad is stolen. An FBI pursuit results in the recovery of the "Lipinski" Strad a few weeks later. International media coverage goes viral, including international TV coverage, a feature in Vanity Fair, NPR, BBC, and much more.

May 2016: Frank Almond releases "A Violin's Life, Vol. 2", featuring more music associated with the "Lipinski" Strad, including works by Beethoven, Amanda Maier-Rontgen, and Eduard Tubin, poised to create another classic release.

The "Lipinski" Strad lives on.

This year, we celebrate the thirty-year conducting career of Neeme Järvi with Chandos records, as well as the conductor’s own seventy-fifth birthday. Chandos marks the occasion with this two-disc set of highlights, featuring a varied selection of concert hall rarities and core classics, along with some popular showpieces and examples of Järvi’s championing of Estonian and American music. Gramophone said of his recently concluded Halvorsen series, “Järvis finds in the music a drama and pathos that might come as a revelation even to the composer.”

On this transatlantic album, three American composers born during the first half of the last century rub shoulders with two young musicians from Eastern Europe. A member of the BBC New Generation Artists scheme, the violinist Aleksey Semenenko first met the pianist Artem Belogurov at the Stolyarsky Special Music School in Odessa at an early age. Even if their individual careers have taken to different parts of the world, the two still perform together whenever possible, and here they present three sonatas. Of the composers, the best-known is André Previn who composed his Violin Sonata No. 2 in 2011 for Anne-Sophie Mutter. An improvisatory spirit permeates the work which is in three movements with the markings Joyous, Desolate and Brilliant. Tony Schemmer and Paul Gay are both based in the Boston area and share a background in which jazz and classical genres merge. This is reflected in their sonatas, composed in the 1980s and here appearing on disc for the first time.

REVIEWS:

My tastes in repertoire generally stop with the mid-20th century and I don’t take an active interest in contemporary work. Perhaps that very fact indicates why I responded so favorably to Crossroads: American Violin Sonatas, for here are three composers—two of them still living—who continue the craftsmanship, seriousness of purpose, and tonal communicativeness of the best mid-20th-century American music. These sonatas offer no Postmodern spoofery, nor avant-garde aural assaults. All three composers deftly mix popular elements with their classical technique yet in a way that is integral and natural.

The performances of the Ukrainian musicians are faultless and idiomatic, as is the recorded sound. This delightful disc afforded some new discoveries for me and comes strongly recommended.

-- Fanfare

Semenenko and his duo partner present premiere recordings of jazz-influenced sonatas written in the 1980s. The Schemmer is a particularly joyful discovery.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Hymns are a living link with the past, yet they still find freshness and relevance in the twenty- first century. Saint Thomas Aquinas comments that 'hymns are the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice' and this explains neatly the vital place that hymnody has enjoyed throughout the ages, and continues to do so today. Praise my soul celebrates this glorious tradition of hymnody and showcases some of the hymns heard in Jesus College Chapel in their own regular pattern of choral services. Some of these, including Drop, drop, slow tears and Glory to thee, my God, this night have been sung regularly for hundreds of years. Others such as All my hope on God is founded or Christ Triumphant have become classics over the last half-century. The Choir of Jesus College Cambridge return to disc on Signum with their seventh release, and their first under choral director Richard Pinel.

BEETHOVEN Piano Trio in Bb, op. 97, “Archduke.” SCHUBERT Piano Trio in Bb, op. 99 • Tr di Trieste • INSTITUTO DISCOGRAFICO ITALIANO 6678, mono (69:52)


These recordings are taken from radio air checks in Cologne on March 12, 1958 (Schubert) and September 23, 1959 (Beethoven). I do not believe these are the same performances by this long-lived, estimable ensemble that can be heard in Deutsche Grammophon’s five-disc compilation of the Trio di Trieste’s complete recordings, but I wouldn’t swear to it since I don’t own that set.


The Trio di Trieste was one of the 20th century’s longest-surviving piano trios, and one that has often been compared to the Serkin-Busch and Cortot-Thibaud-Casals Trios. The comparison is more apt, I think, to the latter than it is to the former, for these are readings of a fairly Romantic persuasion, with tempos, dynamics, and phrasing undergoing frequent adjustments to fit the mood of the moment. Within that interpretive paradigm, however, it has to be said that the playing of Renato Zanettovich, Lebero Lana, and Dario De Rosa is of a beguiling beauty that simply silences any criticism of the ensemble’s stylistic approach.


My only regret is that I never got to see and hear the Trio di Trieste perform live—though I suppose these air checks are the next closest thing to it—for whatever one might point to that the players don’t do right in terms of observing the absolute letter of the scores, one cannot cite a single thing they do wrong in terms of intuiting the music’s spirit and emotional core. These performances simply transcend any mundane considerations as they ascend into the realm of the sublime. For a glimpse of the starry firmament Beethoven reveals to us, listen to the hushed, almost trembling awe the players convey in the closing measures of the “Archduke” Trio’s great Andante . It will make you want to fall to your knees in wonderment. This is the performance of this movement I have sought my entire life, and finally I have found it. All else, as the sage said, is mere commentary.


In closing, let me just say that the sound of these recordings is so good it’s not even necessary to qualify it with an excuse about their source. If I were not writing this review for the regular composer section of the magazine, I could easily see submitting it as an entry to the Classical Hall of Fame. Is further recommendation needed?

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

Drawing on the adventures of Byron’s Childe Harold and the composer’s own Italian experiences as a Prix de Rome winner, Harold en Italie was intended for the great violinist Paganini who, having initially rejected the work, later repented, giving it his highest praise. + The brilliant concert overtures Benvenuto Cellini and Le carnaval romain are among Berlioz’s most popular works. + Quickly taken up by several celebrated violinists of the time, the elegant Rêverie et Caprice is his only work for solo violin and orchestra. + Leonard Slatkin’s Lyon recording of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique (8.572886) has been acclaimed as “quite simply one of the best on disc” by MusicWeb International.

Remember Soyeon Kate Lee’s 2008 Zankel Hall recital, where she appeared in a concert gown constructed from 6000 recycled grape juice containers? Not surprisingly her outfit got more press than her actual music making, but the fact is that Lee is a splendid pianist who doesn’t need gimmicks. Her first appearance in Naxos’ complete Liszt piano music cycle attests to this.

Lee’s shapely and sonorous handling of the thick pianistic hurdles throughout Liszt’s transcription of the Sarabande and Chaconne from Handel’s Singspiel Almira holds interest in terms of technique and stamina, although the music is deadly dull. By contrast, Liszt’s paraphrase based on Gounod’s Hymne a Sainte Cecile thoroughly improves upon the original composition, where Lee’s contouring of the multi-thematic textural layers proves more pliable and forward moving than in Leslie Howard’s comparatively square (though no less sensitive) rendition.

So far as Liszt’s transcription from Joachim Raff’s forgotten opera König Alfred, Lee does not differentiate the opening Andante finale’s foreground and background material with Leslie Howard’s variety, yet she’s more animated and energetic in the subsequent Marsch. Lee also plays the Gounod transcriptions from Romeo et Juliette and La reine de Saba with a lovely lyrical sensitivity. The better known Valse from Gounod’s Faust paraphrase features scrupulous and crisply dispatched fingerwork, but the interpretation is a bit cut and dried, falling short of Jean-Yves Thibaudet’s glittery panache or the dynamic and rhythmic heft of Earl Wild and Egon Petri. However, she takes the opening section of Liszt’s transcription of Spohr’s Die Rose Romanze at a faster clip and with more vocally oriented phrasing than in Howard’s slower, more static traversal, heightening the music’s rich harmonic invention in the process. Annotations and engineering are first rate. In all, a strong entry in Naxos’ ongoing Liszt series.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com