Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra focuses on works by Perttu Haapanen (b. 1972), one of the most important and interesting Finnish composers of his generation. It includes a recently-written Flute Concerto with Yuki Koyama as soloist and conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk, and two other works conducted by Hannu Lintu: a song-cycle written for soprano Helena Juntunen and an orchestral work, Compulsion Island, written for the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Compulsion Island was written to a commission from the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and makes full use of the resources of a full-sized symphony orchestra. Haapanen creates a multi-layered and richly sonorous texture where extended instrument techniques play a significant and carefully considered role. Quiet, stagnant and expectant yet tense moments alternate with charged and punchy rhythmical passages that increase in force until the final culmination, followed by a subsiding, dreamlike and unreal epilogue. The Flute Concerto lasts about 25 minutes and is in a single movement divided into two halves featuring different materials, according to the composer. At the surface level, it comes across as a flexible and elastic structure consisting of several short sections in rapid succession, with contrasting moods either alternating or superimposed. The palette of sonorities is rich, augmented by extended instrument techniques and a number of rare sound sources such as a typewriter producing crisp rhythms and the absurd sounds of wheezing toys. Ladies’ Room for soprano and chamber orchestra was written to a commission from the Musica nova Helsinki festival. Originally written and premiered in 2007 by Helena Juntunen, it was revised by Haapanen in the following year. The texts come from a wide variety of sources: poems by conductor and mezzosoprano Jutta Seppinen, the Bible, Google, the archives of Scotland Yard and Paul Celan. Between them are four nonsense text settings that pay homage to Adolf Wolfli, an early 20th-century Swiss artist. The soprano part is highly demanding due to its wide range of vocal techniques which make Ladies’ Room a vocal virtuoso work where the virtuoso component is an integral part of the content.

Today, the name of Arnold Mendelssohn scarcely ranks as a footnote in most musical textbooks; however, he played a seminal role in the revival of German church music. His love of polyphony, combined with his characteristic warm, late Romantic harmonic language imbues Mendelssohn's scores with a sense of otherworldly timelessness.

V 14: MUSICA CLAROMONTANA

Mohammed Fairouz has rapidly become one of the most highly regarded composers of his generation, receiving wide acclaim for works such as Native Informant and his Symphony No. 4 "In the Shadow of No Towers". Setting texts from ancient times to World War II, the songs on this new album represent a decade of writing for the human voice. Refugee Blues addresses powerful social issues while sensual celebrations of being human and alive are explored in After the Revels. The theme of loss is also compellingly expressed in the intense, distilled narrative of No Orpheus, a portrait of departed family members, and Edgar Allan Poe's last completed poem, the hauntingly mournful Annabel Lee.

Frederick II, King of Prussia, was a gifted musician who built up a court orchestra noted both for its quality and its size. Great musicians such as Graun, Quantz and C.P.E. Bach were members and contributed hugely to its standing. A patron of the fine arts, Frederick was a highly accomplished flautist whose works, performed in small private concerts, show a remarkable range of forms and expressive effects with slow movements offering long-breathed arcs of melody. The pieces by Alessandro De Marchi, conceived in the spirit of improvisation, provide a revealing impression of contemporary performance practice. This new release of Frederick the Great’s flute sonatas relates to the450th anniversary of the Staatskapelle Berlin, first established as the Royal Prussian Court Orchestra by the monarch. Claudia Stein became first flute of the orchestra at the age of 23. She recorded Weinberg’s Flute Concertos for Naxos in 2019 (8.573931), which received 5 stars from Pizzicato: ‘Stein plays them absolutely ravishingly, with a touch of melancholy.’

The LaSalle Quartet was active from 1946-88; however, it's influence goes far beyond that. Violinist Walter Levine is still a vital, much sought out authority for string players. From their founding, the Quartet was devoted to the late 19th and 20th c repertoire. The works of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern were a significant part, as were the quartets of Schoenberg's teacher, Alexander Zemlinsky. This CD of studio recordings from 1965, 1968 and 1977 draws Zemlinsky together with Haydn and Brahms - a bold program for an ensemble specializing in modern to include some "early music".

Joseph Haydn's The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour on the Cross is one of the most unusual and remarkable compositions of the classical period. Performed here by the brilliant Callino Quartet, the piece exists in four different versions and the edition for string quartet, which has a particular purity and intimacy, is the form in which the music is most often heard today. Suffused with profound sorrow and grief but also with strength and hope. The Seven Last Words is a work so deeply moving and contemplative that it has impassioned listeners in all its forms for over 200 years and was considered by the composer himself to be one of his greatest masterpieces. The Callino Quartet was formed at the West Cork Chamber Music Festival in 1999 and has been delighting audiences ever since with its fresh, enthusiastic interpretations and engaging programmes. The versatility of the quartet has enabled it to cultivate a diverse and challenging repertoire with a thoughtful and historically informed approach to the classical quartet literature as well as develop close collaborations. The quartet has worked with numerous contemporary composers and has received many awards including prizes at the Borciani and Tromp international string quartet competitions. The group has performed in many of the world's best concert halls including Wigmore Hall and Carnegie Hall.

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REVIEWS:

I have listened to this over and over, each time finding it more evocative of how the music sounds in my head. If you want to replace whatever quartet version you already own, this is the time to do it.

– Fanfare

If the quartet version of the Seven Last Words convinces you, this recording certainly offers a perspective worth hearing.

– Gramophone

MCTEE Circuits. 1 Symphony No. 1 “Ballet for Orchestra 2.” Einstein’s Dream 1. Double Play 3 • Leonard Slatkin, cond; Detroit SO • NAXOS 8.559765 (66:43) Live: Detroit 1 2/9–11/2012; 2 5/17–19/2012; 3 6/1–4/2010

My first contact with Cindy McTee’s music was a recording of the wind ensemble transcription of Circuits by the Cincinnati College-Conservatory Wind Symphony. In fact, all previous experience with McTee’s music has been in the wind ensemble medium, including three movements of the Symphony No. 1 under the title Ballet for Band . There is a wind ensemble recording of Double Play , as well, which I had not heard until now. It says a lot about the difficulties of getting new music recorded by orchestras that McTee’s larger ensemble music, almost always written for the orchestra first, has been much more available to collectors in wind band arrangements. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she was, from 1984 to 2011, on the music faculty of the University of North Texas at Denton, the current academic home of band music-recording phenomenon Eugene Migliaro Corporon. He must have found her technically challenging, elegantly crafted, imaginative, often playful, and always vibrant music irresistible. (She claims, incidentally, to have acquired the compositional playfulness from Krzysztof Penderecki during the year she studied with him at the Cracow Academy of Music. That is as surprising a piece of information as I can remember picking up from an artist biography.)

In any case, it seems fitting, given the large amount of play her orchestral music has gotten, that the first CD of these works is being conducted by Leonard Slatkin. This is not because he has been her husband since 2011, but because Slatkin, a noted proponent of quality American music with audience appeal, has been an advocate of McTee’s music for so much longer. In fact, he was instrumental in arranging the commission of her Symphony No. 1 for the National Symphony Orchestra in 2002. That work is the central composition in this Detroit Symphony program, and is in several ways emblematic of the McTee style. It is, to begin with, music motivated by dance and movement, driven by an emphasis on rhythms, often motoric, with unexpected disruptions and syncopations to keep it impetuous. Not surprisingly, it keeps the percussion section very busy. It is music of high contrasts: in those rhythms, and in sonorities, and in its use of tonality. And lastly, each of the four named movements—“On with the Dance,” “Till a Silence Fell,” “Light Fantastic,” and “Where Time Plays the Fiddle”—is inspired by characteristics of one or more well-known works by other composers: the opening motif of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, a melody from Penderecki’s Polish Requiem , Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Ravel’s La valse , and Stravinsky’s Le sacre du printemps . Those who know the Ballet for Band will note the elegiac second movement not included in the band version: an Adagio derived from an earlier Agnus Dei for organ, with which she eulogizes the victims of 9/11. All this, with some occasional jazz references to boot, McTee transforms into a unified, highly original, exceptionally moving 30-minute work.

Double Play (2009–10), the most recent work on this release, is another Slatkin commission, this for the Detroit Symphony. Indeed, this recording is from the premiere performances. “Unquestioned Answer,” the first movement, is a witty rethinking of Ives’s Unanswered Question , using the same device of an initially serene backdrop interrupted by a contrasting repeated theme. Instead of trumpet, the theme is played by various groups of instruments, and unlike Ives’s unvaried theme, McTee’s—derived from Ives’s—is transformed at each repetition. The last variation, for wood blocks and cowbells, leads into the second movement, “Tempus Fugit,” which truly seems to flee at light speed, after the moments of indecision while the ticking clocks get synchronized. Reminding one commentator of big band jazz of the Hermann/Kenton variety and inspired by a theme by Slatkin, it is hugely entertaining.

So is her most popular work, Circuits , written in 1990: a high-energy romp in which the title describes a stimulus not so much electronic as fractal. It is McTee’s closest brush with minimalism on this CD, but there is nothing hypnotic or reflective here. That comes in Einstein’s Dream (2004), which incorporates electronics and brooding introspection in a remarkable collage of wildly contrasting styles. If this can be taken as a conjecture of what it might have been like to be inside the great physicist’s head, then one finds order in the Baroque ensemble, deep intellectual questing in the Romantic violin—based again on Ives’s trumpet theme in The Unanswered Question —and the most marvelous, and sometimes fantastic, images floating among them. The intent is quite serious, of course, as each of the seven continuous sections reflects on some aspect of Einstein’s thoughts and works, art, and science. It is the work to which I returned most often, reveling in its depth and uncommon beauties.

So, this CD is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. The work of orchestra and conductor in these performances is exemplary, something that I have not always felt when hearing recent recordings from this source. The engineering is superb. I can think of no better way to come to know the work of this fascinating composer. Highly recommended.

FANFARE: Ronald E. Grames

"From 1970 to 2008, the Viennese Alban Berg Quartet was one of the most successful string quartets in the world. Their playing influenced an entire generation of subsequent quartets. The reason for their worldwide success lay both in their outstanding virtuosity and their unerring ability to perform live with the same precision and exactitude of a studio recording. A further highlight from the Schwetzingen SWR Festival concert series Unique interpretations of two extraordinary works"

These are the first-ever recordings of music composed by Jos� (Pepito) Arriola, whose works are virtually unknown. Born in Betanzos in the northern Spanish region of Galicia in 1895, Arriola was a celebrated child prodigy known at the time as a 'Galician Mozart', who dazzled audiences across Europe and American with his piano-playing. Most of Arriola's work was lost when his home in Berlin was destroyed during the Second World War. The manuscripts for the three concertos and two song-cycles presented here were discovered just a few years ago, and mysteriously vanished almost as soon as they had been photocopied for dissemination. They were composed in the final decade of Arriola's life: in 1946 he settled in Barcelona, where he lived quietly until his death in 1954. Arriola's music belongs to the second golden age of Spanish music, that of Alb�niz, Granados, Turina and Falla (and, a little later, Joaqu�n Rodrigo), flavoured by nationalism and the rich Spanish folk tradition, along with a verismo that concerned itself with the ordinary people of Spain and their suffering (as mirrored in Carmen, or Candela in El amor brujo). Yet in common with other post-Romantic composers, Arriola sought out a world of vanished beauty, experimenting with color, texture, unusual tonal combinations and harmony full of color, sensuality and emotion. As a student in Leipzig, Arriola had been taught by Richard Strauss, and his teacher's influence may be heard to positive effect in both the soaring vocal lines of the Tres textos cervantinos and the transplanted Classical idiom of the Horn Concerto. The piano-writing in the Concertino and Divertimento concertante is more compact and Stravinskian, while two songs from the cycle of Seis poes�as de Antonio Machado disclose yet another, more impassioned facet of Arriola's style.

Surging with epic emotions, Royal Mezzo showcases mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore in symphonic portraits of commanding characters from legend, literature, and mythology. (Cedille)

In succession to the Tudors, the flourishing court culture of the Stuart royal dynasty fostered one of the greatest periods in the history of British music. Director and organist Andrew Arthur unites his forces in this compelling program of works by three composers who flourished in the Jacobean period – Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Weelkes and Thomas Tomkins – around the theme of the Word of God. The choral items on this album exemplify a rhetorically-aware sense of what it means to sound the Word enriched with music in order to teach, move and delight.

Elgar: Enigma Variations

Zoltán Kodály’s later years were dominated by a series of choral works but his early reputation centered upon chamber music, notably two string quartets, a Cello Sonata (8.553160) and the two masterpieces heard on this recording. The Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7 combines Classical form with folk influence, while the Sonata for Solo Cello, Op. 8, with its expanded harmonies and tone colours, is one of the greatest solo cello works since Bach’s Cello Suites. György Ligeti continued the Hungarian lineage with his Sonata for Solo Cello, a succinct but pivotal work in his compositional development. Gabriel Schwabe has established himself among the leading cellists of his generation. He is a laureate of numerous national and international competitions, including the Grand Prix Emanuel Feuermann and the Concours Rostropovich in Paris. In 2009, he won the prestigious Pierre Fournier Award in London. He is a regular guest at festivals such as the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, the Kronberg Academy Festival and the Amsterdam Biennale, and has performed with artists including Isabelle Faust, Christian Tetzlaff, Lars Vogt, Kirill Gerstein and Jonathan Gilad.

REVIEWS:

Schwabe’s magnificent interpretation of Kodaly’s Solo Sonata op. 8, another of the masterpieces of the cello repertoire, is declamatorily expressive and no less excellent for its polished sound. A perfect intonation and a lot of refinement as well as wonderful dynamic and colour nuances make up the richness of Schwabe’s playing.

With this CD, Schwabe has definitely given further proof of his mastery. Highly recommended!

-- Pizzicato

The tonal palette here is expanded by the inclusion of Kodály’s Duo for Violin and Cello, in which Schwabe’s musicianship is matched by that of Hellen Weiss…This is also important music and—in the hands of such players—essential listening.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

In his day, Johan Halvorsen was one of Norway's most talented violinists and an internationally renowned conductor and composer. With its beautifully lyrical themes and Norwegian character including Hardanger fiddle effects, his Violin Concerto was described by contemporary critics as "an outstanding work" and performed to great acclaim in 1909. It was considered lost, only to be rediscovered in 2015 in the archive of its original soloist. With its equally confident opening and symphonic proportions, Nielsen's Violin Concerto combines emotive power with a delightfully pastoral character, while Johan Svendsen's spontaneously inventive and melodic Romance has become one of his best-loved works.

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REVIEW:

This release really deserves wide attention, for it contains something rather rare: the world's recorded premiere of a major lost violin concerto, that being Johan Halvorsen's 1909 Violin Concerto, Op. 28. The work sounds less like Grieg than like a Norwegian version of Josef Suk, with strong folklore elements.

It's joined with Carl Nielsen's Violin Concerto, a work matching the Halvorsen well with its mix of dance rhythms and serious virtuosity. Svendsen's Romance is a tuneful interlude that likewise deserves a revival.

A highly enjoyable release, and a must for lovers of Scandinavian music.

– All Music Guide (James Manheim)

Over the course of musical history, the Prelude developed from a short, semi-improvised introduction to a larger scale work into a work of art in its own right. Champion of Minimal Music Jeroen van Veen writes about his preludes: “composed in a major and minor keys in the order of Chopin’s Preludes the basic idea was to see if I would limit myself to just a few chords and techniques if I could create different works.” The booklet contains informative liner notes by the composer, himself.

Superheroes!, the latest release from John Morris Russell and the Cincinnati Pops, showcases some of Hollywood’s grandest musical scores from recent blockbusters, such as The Avengers, The Dark Knight, Iron Man 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, Thor, Spider-Man, and Captain America: The First Avenger, and also features themes from television classics including “The Adventures of Superman,” “Wonder Woman,” “The Incredible Hulk,” “Batman,” “Super Friends,” and more. This action-packed collection, with a special appearance by actor Adam West (“Batman,” 1960s), pays tribute to the heroes of our imagination and celebrates the wonderful creativity of Hollywood’s most accomplished and acclaimed composers. Also includes the world premiere of The Launch (Conduktor’s Theme).