Classical Music

Given the tremendous success of American violinist Joshua Bell, it's only natural that players across the Atlantic would want a piece of the action with similar re-creations of the semi-popular violin recitals of a century ago. British violinist Charlie Siem both achieves the requisite fireworks and somewhat reinterprets the classic formula in this pleasing collection, named for a popular song (actually called Underneath the Stars) once arranged by Fritz Kreisler. The version here is by Josef Pasternack, but Kreisler is one of the chief models for what Siem is doing here. Another is his teacher, Shlomo Mintz. Siem is a bit lacking in the sheer emotion that Kreisler (and Bell) bring to a piece like Kreisler's own La Gitana (track 8), but in more athletic pieces like the Carmen Fantasy by the underrated Jenö Hubay (track 5), and the Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 4 (arranged by Marco Jovic), he's sensational. One extra attraction here is a group of more-or-less forgotten works that Siem has resurrected; in addition to the Hubay there's Ole Bull's Saeterjentens Søndag (Solitude on the Mountain, track 2), and Elgar's exuberantly sentimental Salut d'amour, Op. 12. Another is a compositional contribution by Siem himself, Canopy (as a "bonus" track 13). It was recorded separately from the other tracks and stands apart from them artisically, but it stands about halfway between Kreisler and Philip Glass, and it's a new direction in violin virtuoso music. An enjoyable outing from a young virtuoso to watch, with suitably understated support from the Munich Radio Orchestra under Paul Goodwin.

– James Manheim, All Music Guide

American Originals is the latest release from the Cincinnati Pops conducted by John Morris Russell and features iconic American songs interpreted by a diverse array of acclaimed musical collaborators including Rosanne Cash, Dom Flemons, Over the Rhine, Joe Henry, Aoife O'Donovan and the Comet Bluegrass All-Stars. The first-ever Cincinnati Pops album to be recorded live in concert, American Originals breathes new life into the first chapter of the Great American Songbook and the music of Stephen Foster. The 94th Cincinnati Pops album includes inspiring new renditions of My Old Kentucky Home, O Susannah, Camptown Races, Aura Lee, Slumber My Darling, Hard Times, and Beautiful Dreamer, among other classic tunes. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, The fresh arrangements and unique talents who performed them set each in a new light.

The Mediterranean Sea, the cradle of many great cultures and travel route between Orient and Occident, is the point of departure of this enthralling album by the Pera Ensemble. On this release, the Pera Ensemble has dedicated itself to the Early Baroque - the period of transition from the Renaissance to the Baroque period itself. The program consists entirely of Italian music adapted together with Ottoman music. This album contains numerous world premiere recordings.

Handel, G.F.: Apollo E Dafne

An instant success, Charles Hubert Hastings Parry’s oratorio Judith premiered in Birmingham in August 1888. The work consolidated his reputation as a composer of large-scale orchestral and choral writing. With its vigorous choruses and dramatic solo roles, the work is of persistent quality. Yet somehow, the work has been largely neglected for the last century. On this release, the work is presented by the Crouch End Festival Chorus and the London Mozart Players led by William Vann. Soloists Sarah Fox, Kathryn Rudge, Toby Spence and Henry Waddington round out the recording with enthusiastic performances.

REVIEWS:

Every aspect of this performance sounds like a labour of love. Rudge’s soaring, expressive singing as Meshullemeth gives the piece its real heart, and she’s accompanied with intense sympathy by the conductor William Vann, who avoids any suggestion of bombast or sentimentality, and builds Parry’s great paragraphs so eloquently and with such assurance that you’d think he’d been conducting this music all his life.

– Gramophone

You don’t have to be Parry’s champion Prince Charles to feel a thrill as the soprano Sarah Fox rings out as Judith, the Crouch Enders exult, the tenor Toby Spence sonorously conveys the vacillating king Manasseh and Parry creates sequences of stirring clamour.

– Sunday Times (UK)

•Pianist Jura Margulis recorded the present Schubert CD on a modern grand piano equipped with the built-on “sordino pedal” extension. Around the mid-19th century, this possibility of altering and extending the sound had largely disappeared from the canon of various pedal functions, but it was retained in Vienna until the early 20th century. Composers call this function “sordino” because the sound modification is related to the mutes of the string instruments.

It was a long-standing wish to combine all 18 albums recorded by Benjamin Schmid into one release because they yield an impressive mirror of this unique violinist’s concert activities. The desire was given new impetus by the two magnificent new albums Benjamin Schmid approved for release by OehmsClassics on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday in 2018. The prize-winning recordings of this set, covering almost five centuries, explain why Benjamin Schmid has been perceived by the music public not just as ‘the specialist’ in one individual field. Benjamin Schmid, a native of Vienna, has won a number of awards including the 1992 Carl Flesch Competition in London, where he also won the Mozart, Beethoven and audience prizes. Since then he has been a guest soloist in the world’s most renowned concert halls with prestigious orchestras. His soloistic quality, the range of his repertoire, and especially his improvisatory abilities in jazz make him a violinist with a unique profile.

Set contents in addition to individually listed works:

DISC 2: My favourite Paganini (Works by Paganini & others, arr. by F. Kreisler, etc)

DISC 3: Bach:Reflected (Improvisations on J. S. Bach)

DISC 7: Hommage à Grappelli

DISC 12: Fritz Kreisler - Originals and Adaptations for Jazz-Trio

DISC 20: Pièces de concert (Works of Bazzini, Saint-Saëns, Paganini, and more)

The Billy Collins Suite comprises intimate chamber settings for eleven Collins poems, some sung, others narrated. (Cedille)

Purity of Sound and Perfect Craftsmanship Marked Anton Webern's Journey from His Intensely Expressive Early Songs Through to the New Perspectives Cultivated in His Opp. 23 and 25 Settings. Webern 'Rehabilitated the Power of Sound' and in So Doing Broke New Ground in the Bagatelles for String Quartet and in the String Quartet, Op. 28. This Recording, Completing Mr. Craft's Second Webern Cycle, Is Rounded Off with the Powerful Cantata, Op. 29 and Webern's 1923 Arrangement of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony, Op. 9. Throughout His Career, Robert Craft (B. 1923) Has Conducted Symphonic, Orchestral, Operatic and Large Ensemble Performances, Including World Premiere Works By Leading 20th C. Composers. His Many Recordings of Music By Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern Recordings for the Naxos Label Have Received Critical Acclaim, Up to and Including Grammy Award Nominations.

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".

These are the first-ever recordings of music composed by José (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 Albéniz, Granados, Turina and Falla (and, a little later, Joaquín 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 poesías de Antonio Machado disclose yet another, more impassioned facet of Arriola's style.

Following the announcement by Tasmin Little of her intended retirement from the concert platform, we wanted to create an album that would stand as both a tribute to, and celebration of, her outstanding career as a performer. What better way to do so than ask her to select her own, personal favorites from her recorded career? An exclusive Chandos artist since 2010, Tasmin has made a series of recordings that have proved a cornerstone of the Chandos schedules for a decade, and feature a range of composers and styles of quite breath-taking variety. The first album concentrates on concerti, and features both Walton’s and Britten’s concertos with Edward Gardner, along with the slow movement of her award-winning Elgar recording with Sir Andrew Davis. The second features works from Vivaldi though to Shostakovich via Brahms, and includes (among many other gems) her recording of Vaughan Williams’s iconic The Lark Ascending. It also celebrates Tasmin’s recital partnerships with three outstanding pianists: Piers Lane, Martin Roscoe, and John Lenehan. As she writes in her booklet note: ‘I am very happy that this final, double-album set should reflect so many aspects of me as a musician; and I remain full of gratitude for the tremendous opportunities I have been given to play and record with the greatest musicians of today. I hope you all enjoy this final release.’

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

This new release from pianist Barry Douglas is the sixth and final volume in his exploration of Brahms’s output for solo piano. BBC Music writes of this series, “Douglas’s tone is a deep velvet cushion, the legatos full of affection and the rhythms galvanized with great energy.” This unique collection of works shows Brahms not only as a composer, but also an arranger, pedagogue, historian, virtuoso, and pianist. Barry Douglas hails from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has won numerous awards all over the globe, including an appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and the gold medal in the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

REVIEW:

Douglas’s hefty, full-bodied sound, built from the bottom up, befits the mellow power of Brahms’s sound world. In the dark E flat minor Op 118 Intermezzo, most pianists focus attention on the right-hand melody and treat the rumbling left-hand lines as muted filigree. Douglas, however, does almost the exact opposite, and the effect is revelatory.

– Gramophone

John Rutter, Britain’s most successful contemporary choral composer, has written most of his sacred music to commission, and for use in church services. Composed for his first American tour, Gloria was also his first great international success, combining an ethereal quality with moments of exhilaration. Two other popular works are also represented: Pie Jesu from the Requiem, and This is the Day, composed for the wedding of HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011. John Rutter’s music is eclectic and shows influences of the French and English choral traditions of the early 20th century as well as influences from light music and American classic songwriting. Almost every choral anthem and hymn has an orchestral accompaniment in a more colourful form in addition to the standard organ or piano accompaniment. This new release coincides with the composer’s 75th birthday in24 September 2020 – a perfect moment to celebrate one of Britain’s most successful and internationally well-known composers of choral music.

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REVIEWS:

Rutter’s particular brand of polyphony, bright and optimistic yet surprisingly dense, offers many possibilities, and it is likely that even listeners not particularly enamored of Rutter will appreciate the artistry here. The lion’s share of that artistry comes from the Black Dyke Band, the preeminent member of the shrinking group of British brass bands. There are plenty of popular Rutter pieces here, including This Is the Day, composed for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011. The Black Dyke Band ends with a collaboration on Rutter’s first big hit, the Gloria (1974), deploying the ideal Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus.

– AllMusicGuide.com (James Manheim)

Two musical pillars of Christmas in the UK are John Rutter and Salvation Army silver bands. While, with one exception, there are neither John Rutter carols here nor a Salvation Army silver band, we do have a disc devoted to the music of Rutter most of which is performed by one of Britain’s most famous (and finest) bands in arrangements by Luc Vertommen. And, as such, it seems to ooze Christmas, even there is only one item—What Sweeter Music—which has a direct Christmas connection.

The Black Dyke Band under their conductor, Nicholas Childs, plays everything with supreme polish and sensitivity, and exudes a silky smooth warmth and affection. Of particular beauty is their take on The Lord Bless You and Keep You, which has such a velvety softness that it seems almost to breathe with a human voice. Also exuding a truly almost vocal style of delivery is the delightfully creamy cornet of Richard Marshall, in the Pie Jesu. I am not so sure otherwise about this arrangement, with a tinkling glockenspiel adding a slight whiff of the fairground. Indeed, on the whole, Luc Vertommen’s arrangements have a slightly over-orchestrated feel, with his version of All Things Bright and Beautiful really far too fussy and action-packed to match the simple beauty of Rutter’s original. I suspect that without a band of such superlative control to play them, these arrangements would not work anything like as effectively as they do. However, they do work magnificently in this context, and while they hardly stretch the band and have, inevitably, a certain samey quality, the luxury of the playing ensures that the novelty of Rutter on brass never wears too thin. The one exception is Distant Land (A Prayer for Freedom) which takes on a decidedly Copland-esque feel in this instrumental-only arrangement.

Scored for choir, organ, brass and percussion, the Gloria of 1974 is so strongly redolent of Walton that it is sometimes difficult to spot anything distinctive in the music, especially given this performance in which Darius Battiwala is so keen to convey the mood of celebration and festivity that the moments of repose are largely swept away by the sheer exuberance of the music-making. One senses that the church in which this recording was made was possibly a little too small to accommodate such musical enthusiasm, and certainly the men of the Sheffield Philharmonic Choir seem to have pretty much tired themselves out by the time we reach the final Amen. But what the choral singing lacks in polish, is more than amply compensated for by the sheer joie-de-vivre of the performance and the sparkling majesty of the Black Dyke Band.

– MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

2006 Grammy nominee for Best Classical Crossover Album.

The orchestra relishes Delius’s contrasts.

It is a delight to welcome performances of two of Delius’s American-inspired works by forces from Florida, where Delius lived from 1892 to 1895. Although Sea Drift, a setting of a poem by Whitman, is overtly about an American subject, the music is more universal than specifically American. While the initial drafts of Appalachia were made in Paris the year after Delius left Florida - Marco Polo, Naxos’s sister label, once had a recording (8.220452) of this earlier version in their catalogues under the title of American Rhapsody - the work was very substantially expanded to the form we have it here some eight years later, long after Delius had returned to Europe.

I first heard Sea Drift in the original Beecham recording issued on a limited edition Delius Society release of four 78s (now on Naxos) - I still have them. Beecham’s account of the score remains a marvel of sympathetic identification with the spirits of both Whitman and Delius. Unfortunately all of his recordings - and there are a good many of them, from studio and live broadcasts, not all currently available - are in mono. This is a score which absolutely demands the atmosphere of stereophonic sound. Similarly Beecham never recorded Appalachia in stereo, and his last (mono) LP (reissued by Sony) suffered from a baritone who had seemingly been chosen for his ability to sing Danish for the coupled recording of the Arabesque rather than any ability to sing sympathetically in English for the closing ‘negro spiritual’ section of Appalachia. One cannot possibly accuse Leon Williams of sounding un-American, but the tone of his voice is nevertheless rather English and rather too polite. He is not helped by the rather close proximity of the microphone, which brings him closer than the rest of the performers rather than blending him into the whole. Bryn Terfel, in his Chandos recording of Sea Drift with Richard Hickox (coupled with the Songs of Sunset and Songs of Farewell), digs far more deeply into the meaning of the words than Williams does here. The emotion of the latter is too generalised, and his voice lacks the light and shade of Terfel or John Shirley-Quirk on Hickox’s earlier Decca recording.

Appalachia fares rather better in this reading. The orchestra relishes the contrasts in Delius’s set of variations, with a nicely winsome touch in passages such as the waltz variation at 19.57; Beecham allowed a very gusty breath of the ballroom to intrude here. Earlier they are beautifully atmospheric in the passage from 17.01 which recalls Delius’s Florida opera The magic fountain. The chorus is nicely distanced in their brief interjections in the earlier variations, and come into their own with the own variation at 27.50, when they appear to move closer. Unfortunately the close microphone placement given to Williams at 31.52 serves only to emphasise how precisely English is his diction, and the choir are now very far forward indeed, which brings a sense of stridency which is entirely foreign to the Delius idiom. The passage at 33.28 sounds uncomfortably like the closing titles for a Hollywood Western - not at all the area of America that Delius had in mind.

This Naxos disc duplicates exactly the contents of one of Richard Hickox’s earliest recordings of British music, issued originally on an Argo LP in 1980, with Shirley-Quirk at the peak of his form in the baritone solos, which is certainly a reading which deserves to be in any Delius collection - it remains available from Arkiv Music . The Naxos recording is more immediate in general sound than the analogue Hickox, but the latter has plenty of atmosphere and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra - many of whose members must have played this music under Beecham - respond with affection to Hickox’s somewhat slower tempos. Indeed Sanderling could sometimes be accused of hurrying, as at the baritone entry at 2.58 where the soloist sounds a bit hustled. It is important to keep Delius’s music moving, not allowing it to stagnate, but the flow can be maintained without undue haste; Sanderling shaves nearly four minutes off Hickox’s speeds in his earlier recording, almost a fifth of the whole duration of a fairly short work. Beecham, even with the constraint of 78 sides, was slower than this, and Delius always expressed his conviction that this conductor understood his music better than anyone else.

It is always a suspicion that when one knows a particular performance well one might be allowing nostalgia to colour reactions to a performance. To test this I played the recording of Sea Drift to a friend of mine who, although he knew and loved the poem, did not previously know the music at all. He like me vastly preferred Hickox, observing that although that performance was noticeably slower, it at the same time had a sense of purposeful motion that Sanderling lacked. He also actually preferred the more integrated sound of the older recording.

Naxos’s cover photograph by Giorgio Fochesato is particularly beautiful and appropriate, and the booklet commendably includes the complete texts of both works. The orchestra and chorus both perform superbly; it is nice to hear a really big choir sing this music - 137 singers are listed - as Delius would have expected in his earlier performances. They maintain pitch even in the most exposed passages of Sea Drift.

-- Paul Corfield Godfrey, MusicWeb International