Classical Music

Begun in 2012 with the release of Symphony No. 1, Thomas Dausgaard’s four-album traversal of the symphonies of Johannes Brahms is here brought to a close with the composer’s final work in the genre. The E minor Symphony is sometimes described as Brahms’ ‘elegiac symphony’, and has been called ‘one of the greatest orchestral works since Beethoven’. Typical for the composer is the striking degree of motivic relationships throughout the work. This includes the finale in which Brahms demonstrates his full mastery in a towering Passacaglia consisting of 30 variations and a coda. The smallish forces of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra contribute to a transparency and clarity which bring out the finer details of Brahms’ compositional web. As on previous installments, the symphony is coupled with other works by Brahms. Included on the present release is another late work, Tragic Overture, which concludes the programme. These two ‘serious’ works frame some of the most rousing and ebullient music Brahms ever wrote, namely his Hungarian Dances. Composed for piano four-hands, the 21 dances became immensely popular, and Brahms arranged three of them for orchestra himself. Having made his own orchestrations of the remaining 18 dances, Thomas Dausgaard has recorded the full set for his Brahms cycle, with the final nine dances included here.

Classical Music

Monteverdi’s sacred vocal compositions introduced the expression of powerful and personal emotions to the world of church music. While it took him a number of years to find fulfillment in his work, Monteverdi was a revered composer within his lifetime and his music is regarded as revolutionary, marking the change from the Renaissance style to that of the Baroque. This album includes some of the finest works from Monteverdi’s years as director of music at St Mark’s in Venice, published posthumously in 1650 as the ‘Messa a quattro voci et salmi.’ “Pure- and vintage- Monteverdi, starting with a Dixit Dominus and ending, grandly with a version of Beatus Vir, using material we know from the familiar one. Ideal consort singing.” (The Sunday Times) “As always with The Sixteen, we get superb tuning, balanced ensemble work and a lively pace.” (BBC Music Magazine)

During the mid-19th Century there was a debate as to who would in effect be the next Paganini. This album includes works by some of the major contenders, as well as Edson Scheid's own arrangement of Mozart's Rondo from Duo in G Major for violin and viola, KV 423. Edson Scheid has been praised for his "polished playing" (The Strad), for being "more than equipped to deal with the virtuosic challenges" (Seen and Heard International), for being "clearly gifted" (The New York Times), and "both musically and technically one of the most assured and accomplished of today's younger period violinists" (The Boston Musical Intelligencer). His performance of Strauss's song Morgen at Carnegie Hall alongside Joyce DiDonato and Il Pomo d'Oro was described as follows: "The concertmaster, Edson Scheid, proved a worthy foil as violin soloist" (The New York Times). A native of Brazil, Edson Scheid is based in New York City and frequently performs with such ensembles as Les Arts Florissants (France), Il Pomo d'Oro (Italy), the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Juilliard415, NOVUS NY, New York Baroque Incorporated, the Aston Magna Music Festival, the Clarion Orchestra, and the American Baroque Orchestra, an ensemble for which he serves as concertmaster.

The NFM Wrocław Chamber Orchestra LEOPOLDINUM brings together high-calibre musicians and has earned substantial critical and popular acclaim with its appearances at such venues as the Philharmonie and Schauspielhaus in Berlin, the Tivolis Koncertsal in Copenhagen, the Teatro Victoria Eugenia in San Sebastian as well as numerous prestigious events.

"A commanding vocal and stage presence, bass-baritone George London, heard here in his only Elias recording, leads a noteworthy quartet of vocal soloists. Conductor Christopf von Dohnányi is best-known for his near twenty-year tenure as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra. Completed in 1846 after extensive revising, Elias proved to be Mendelssohn's last completed work of this scale and scope. Newly remastered."

Classical Music

Antonio Salieri’s (1750-1825) catalog of instrumental music is not particularly extensive. +The symphonic works known from available recordings include two symphonies, several concerti, serenades and the like. +There is, also, a small body of chamber works, including those present on this disc. +Oboist Paolo Pollastri (b. 1960) has been first oboe of numerous orchestras and performs often as a soloist. +The Canadian Amati Quartet made its international debut in 2005 and indulges in a diverse repertoire.

The New Year´s Eve Concert 1988 was one of the last concerts that Herbert von Karajan gave with the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin. For this concert he invited the 17 year old Evgeny Kissin to his debut with the orchestra. After the concert the press did raving reviews about Kissin´s musicality and technical skills and he proves till today that he is one of the best pianists of our time. The New Year´s Concert from the Golden Hall of the Musikverein Vienna with the Wiener Philharmoniker is always one of the best-selling classical albums each year. In 1987 Herbert von Karajan conducted his only performance of the New Year´s Concert performing famous pieces from Johann Strauss I, Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss. As soloist in one piece you can hear the legendary soprano Kathleen Battle.

Friedrich Gulda: Piano Recital (Schwetzinger Festspiele Edit

This collection of Gabriel Fauré’s mélodies is the first recording to be conceived for a bass voice. It juxtaposes some of the composer’s best-loved songs with some of his lesser-known works. This recital program draws out connections of poets and poetic themes, some of which restore the composer’s own original groupings. This is also the first recording to be based on the new Peters Edition, which eliminates countless errors in older publications. The young American bass Jared Schwartz received the 2013 ‘People’s Choice’ Award in the American Traditions Vocal Competition.

REVIEW:

There are a total of 25 songs on this disc and each of them has been recorded with care and affection for the music of this wonderful French songwriter. Schwartz’s excellent new recording on Toccata gives us pristine sound; it is a recording that should be in the collection of everyone who loves French song.

-- Fanfare

Shortlisted for the Gramophone Awards! Rusalka returns to Madrid “on an overwhelming level that will leave its mark”. (El Español) Mesmerizing soprano Asmik Grigorian, “already one of the most outstanding sopranos of her generation“ (Online Merker) stars with a “voice, at its zenith of maturity“ (El Pais) in the title role of Christoph Loy’s timeless and evocative staging of Dvorak’s tragic take on the Little Mermaid fable. Especially „the direction of dancers and extras in the second act is a virtuoso performance by Loy and his choreographer.“ (El Pais) “Musically, this Rusalka is of immense quality, no doubt due to the spectacular work of Ivor Bolton.“ (El Español)

The Avalon String Quartet, “a remarkably fine ensemble” (The Strad), makes its Cedille Records debut with an irresistible and richly varied program of captivating works by Claude Debussy, Benjamin Britten, Osvaldo Golijov, and rising American composer Stacy Garrop. The ensemble presents the world-premiere recording of Garrop’s String Quartet No. 4: Illuminations, a tantalizing, Pictures at an Exhibition-style tour of spectacular illustrations from an ornate medieval manuscript. Debussy’s lush, exotic String Quartet in G minor unfolds through iridescent quasi-orchestral textures. Golijov’s lyrical, deeply moving Tenebrae (Latin for “shadows”), written for the Kronos Quartet, pays tender tribute to the earth, depicted in its remote celestial beauty, haunted by undertones of human discord. Britten’s youthful, energetic Three Divertimenti and Alla Marcia are alluring, rarely recorded studies in inventiveness and perpetual motion.

The Avalon is quartet-in-residence at the Northern Illinois University School of Music. “…an ensemble that invites you — ears, mind, and spirit — into its music.” (Chicago Tribune)

REVIEW:

The folks at Cedille seem to have mastered the art of putting together classical music collections that make good musical sense. Debussy’s String Quartet is, of course, standard fare, and it usually appears in tandem with the Ravel and something else French. Not here. Instead, we have two Britten rarities, the entertaining Three Divertimenti and the lone Alla Marcia (the first of the Divertimenti is also a march, so you can see the logic), a self-described “Pictures at an Exhibition” type piece by Stacy Garrop, and a moving conclusion in the form of Osvaldo Golijov’s single-movement Tenebrae. The entire program provides consistently interesting and entertaining continuous listening, and the sonics are drop-dead gorgeous.

So, for that matter, is the playing of the Avalon String Quartet. The group’s corporate sonority is warm and mellow, but with just a touch of “rosin” in the tone. They attack rhythmic moments such as the scherzo of the Debussy, the Burlesque and the marches in the Britten pieces, and Garrop’s musically impossibly named “Mouth of Hell” with plenty of guts and precision, but no unpleasant hardness in the tone. The slow music is simply luminous. I am not generally a fan of pseudo-religious programmatic stuff such as Garrop offers here, but it’s awfully well done, and the booklet provides well-produced, full-color reproductions of the illustrations from the late medieval Book of Hours that Garrop took as her inspiration. They are exquisite, as is much of Garrop’s writing more generally.

Here, in short, is another excellent program that chamber music fans looking to venture off the beaten path will surely relish.

- ClassicsToday.com (10/10)

The choice of works on this amply filled album, as well as the performances are the result of Lorenda Ramou’s research into the artistic environment of Nikos Skalkottas, in Berlin (1921–33) and in Athens (1933–49). The programme is organized as a triptych, focusing on three distinctive compositional styles. First, all surviving Berlin works for piano solo are presented in chronological order, showing how the young composer was reacting to the new and exciting jazz/dance music, but also to the people around him and to events in the musical world of Berlin in the 1920s. This is followed by Suites Nos 2, 3 and 4, a group of mature works composed at the beginning of World War II (1940–41). Closing the release, finally, is the dance suite The Gnomes, probably composed in 1939 and one of a group of piano scores for ballets with Greek subjects. Lorenda Ramou has previously released ‘The Land and the Sea of Greece’ – an album of precisely such scores by Skalkottas – which earned her praise from the reviewer in Gramophone: ‘Her playing is full of verve and alive to the delicacy of Skalkottas’s writing.’

R. STRAUSS Violin Sonata, Op. 18. RESPIGHI Violin Sonata in b. Six Pieces: Melodia; Valse caressante; Serenata • Tasmin Little (vn); Piers Lane (pn) • CHANDOS 10749 (65:50)

Violinist Tasmin Little has amassed a very respectable discography on a number of different labels, though of late, she seems to have settled in as one of Chandos’s house artists. Her recent recording of Delius’s Violin Concerto received an urgent recommendation from me in 35:4, so I really looked forward to receiving her latest release of these two late romantic sonatas.


On the surface, Richard Strauss and Respighi may not seem to have a lot in common, but their respective violin sonatas have been paired on disc before, notably by Kyung-Wha Chung and Krystian Zimerman for Deutsche Grammophon and by Frank Almond and William Wolfram for Avie. Strauss composed his sonata in 1887 at the age of 23. It’s an inspired outpouring of youth hardly recognizable as music by the composer that Strauss would become. Respighi’s B-Minor Sonata—an earlier sonata in D Minor dates from the composer’s teens—was written in 1917, exactly 30 years later than Strauss’s sonata, by a more mature composer of 38.


Strauss’s sonata will no doubt be permanently associated with Heifetz, not because he championed it and twice recorded it, but because of his callous and stubborn determination to perform the piece in 1953 before an Israeli audience that still considered Strauss a Nazi collaborator and whose emotions were still raw from the Holocaust. That little stunt nearly cost Heifetz his career when an assailant attacked him outside his hotel, striking his right arm with an iron bar. While I don’t condone the death threats and violence against him, I understand the intensity of feelings that were aroused. Heifetz had no one to blame but himself for his own arrogance and intractable insensitivity. He canceled his last concert and departed Israel post haste, not to return there again until 1970.


The shame of it all is that Strauss’s sonata was written half a century before Hitler rose to power, and the piece is a passionate and deeply touching reflection of the late 19th-century German musical culture in which Strauss came of age. Unsurprisingly, Liszt and Wagner, both recently dead, appear as frequent ghosts throughout the sonata’s pages, but another guest one meets, less frequently perhaps but still very much alive when Strauss wrote the piece, is Brahms.


Respighi is not an easy composer to categorize. Some see him, as they see Strauss, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, and Sibelius as manifestations of a resistant strain of late romanticism that persisted well into the 20th century, while others have referred to Respighi as an Impressionist. I think one could support either view. There’s no question but that Respighi’s sonata is the more modern of the two works on the disc, at least in terms of its approach to harmony and tonality, but it remains an essentially romantic work in its gestural language—i.e., in its sweeping vistas and appeal to the emotions, both public and private.


The last time I reviewed a recording of Strauss’s violin sonata was in 32:3. That Atma CD also contained violin and piano works by Elgar and Ravel in performances by Jonathan Crow and Paul Stewart which I called “a desideratum of indescribably beautiful music matched by indescribably beautiful playing.” Pardon the pun, but Tasmin Little brings more than a little of Crow’s eloquent and elegant playing to the Strauss, but I would also have to say that in some of the sonata’s more technically taxing passages, she can sound ever so slightly flustered; and while the notes never actually get away from her, one senses she’s making an effort to stay on top of them. Next to Crow’s Strauss, another performance I’ve long liked is that by Dmitri Sitkovetsky on Virgin Classics. He has the technical chops to pull it off smoothly, but I don’t find him quite as emotionally engaged as either Crow or Little. Whatever the reason, Respighi’s sonata seems to suit Little a little better, both technically and temperamentally. Her performance of the piece is lithe and fully responsive to the score’s rapidly shifting moods and colors. In my opinion, it easily outclasses Tanja Becker-Bender on Hyperion, whose reading I find somewhat flighty and rudderless.


Overall, this has to be rated a very fine effort, and not just by Little, but also by Piers Lane who partners her most excellently on the piano, and by Chandos, which provides its usual deep and vivid sound. This may not be the absolute best Strauss out there, but it’s definitely among the very best of the Respighis, and the extra three encores from Respighi’s Six Pieces for Violin and Piano make for a most enriching program. Easily recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

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Chandos have prided themselves on having a deep and long-term available back catalogue. Though distantly separated in time the present CD can be seen as an adjunct to two of the grand Chandos series of the 1980s and 1990s. The first was the Respighi orchestral music edition built around the Edward Downes BBCPO symphonies and concertos but supplemented by earlier discs conducted by Geoffrey Simon - still truly splendid - and later ones from Hickox and Noseda. The Downes and Simon discs would shine anew if issued in a box or boxes. The second comprised the half dozen discs they issued in the 1980s golden days of Järvi conducting the then SNO in the major orchestral works of Richard Strauss.

These two violin and piano works have previously appeared - although separately - on Chandos. There were in fact two CDs of the Strauss Sonata – one from Lydia Mordkovitch and the other from Sasha Rozhdestvensky. It comes as no surprise that the Respighi was also recorded by Mordkovitch. She contributed so much to the label that I have every reason to expect that, one of these days, there will be a complete Mordkovitch Chandos Edition. It’s certainly deserved – at least as much as a Takako Nishizaki edition for Naxos.

Little and Lane’s Strauss Sonata is flooded with melodic light and surges and muses with all the eruptive and serenading romance of the same composer’s Don Juan. Both Tasmin Little and Piers Lane are obviously up for it and flatter the 1887 Strauss with a most inward reading which makes it appear a greater work than perhaps it is. The stormy romance of the outer movements of the 1917 Respighi Sonata is emphasised by the utterly peaceful and romantically centred Sargasso calm of the Andante second movement. It stands head and shoulders above the other sonata movements on this disc, masterfully treading that febrile line between poetry and self-conscious sentimentality. Both Little and Lane have every right to be proud of their achievement here. Speaking of that mood we have three movements from the salon-destined and designed Sei Pezzi. I lament that the other three Kreislerian movements were not included – there was space. A puzzling and regretted omission.

With thanks to Chandos for commissioning a liner-note from the inspired Jessica Duchen. Such a fine writer and one whose Korngold book (Phaidon Press) has been unjustly eclipsed by the ‘major definitive biography’. The Duchen is much more than a valid alternative. Indeed, Korngold is a far from irrelevant comparison in the company of the two composers so nobly represented on this disc.

– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

His parents, Italian immigrants to Brazil, named Radamés Gnattali after the male lead in Verdi’s Aida, and his mother began to teach him the piano at the age of six. But even though he did become a highly skilled pianist, performing Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto in B flat at Rio de Janeiro’s Teatro Municipal at the age of 23, it was as a composer (and arranger) of music of a distinctly Brazilian cast that he would make his name. Gnattali developed an individual style, which today might be called cross-over, by infusing inflexions of popular music into a classical framework, over a fluid harmonic technique. Jaunty rhythms and striking melodic lines appear in a wholly uncontrived manner: they formed his everyday working material, as an arranger of popular music for record companies and radio stations. When composing concert music Gnattali usually did so for musicians that he collaborated with in popular music, such as the guitarist Laurindo Almeida, as well as for himself. A large production includes works for a great variety of scorings, but for this disc Franz and Débora Halász have chosen to present chamber and solo works for guitar and piano, inviting the cellist Wen-Sinn Yang to join in for the composer's Sonata for guitar and cello. As reflected in some of the titles, Brazilian dance forms (samba, batuque, choro) play an important role in this music, which for a long time was disregarded by a musical establishment suspicious of its great fluency and popular appeal; music which in every bar expresses the soul of Brazil – Alma brasileira.

Classical Music

•Malcolm Williamson (1931–2003), Master of the Queen’s Music from 1975-2003, was the first non-Britain to hold the post since its creation in the 17th century. A gifted pianist, organist and prolific composer, his music naturally includes a substantial number of organ works. His writing for organ is strikingly powerful in its originality and its eclectic mix of styles, ranging from lyrical introspection to fiery virtuosity. Two of the works on this CD are receiving their first recordings.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensembles: Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Chorus. Conductor: Peter Breiner.