A swift and nimble account of Beethoven's 2nd Concerto paired with a fiery Bach D minor Concerto, showing how Gould could be far more animated live than in the studio.

The "Fourth Programme" of Sony Classical's Glenn Gould Edition contributes to the Beethoven deluge with a swift and nimble account of the Second Concerto, recorded live in Leningrad in 1957 (SMK52686). Ladislav Slovak conducts, and the coupling is a fiery Bach D minor Concerto—which is far more animated than Gould's studio version under Bernstein.

-- Gramophone [11/1993]


The [Beethoven] Second Concerto, which to my knowledge has only previously been released on Melodiya, is something very unique. Not only is the recording taken from a live concert (Gould gave up public performance in 1964), but it presents playing of consummate artistry in a work that often receives condescending attention from critics. But be warned—the orchestral playing, especially the strings, is dreadful. It is Gould's spontaneity in colouring the writing in different registers, in treating fast passages with an unmannered expressivity (where most pianists rattle off figurations)— in a word, his 'musicality'—that make this a memorable reading. There may be no real sense of peace in the Adagio, where Gould's sensuous use of piano tone is much to the fore, but the finale has an infectious humour that demonstrates how different was his playing in concert, as opposed to the recording studio.

-- Gramophone [9/1986]
reviewing the Beethoven concerto on LP, issued as part of CBS Masterworks 39036

This re-release of Herbert Howells’ Hymnus Paradisi and A Kent Yeoman’s Wooing Song forms part of the new Hickox Legacy series commemorating the life and career of that great conductor. Mestro Richard Hickox’s lifelong commitment to British music in general is well-known, as is his work with the challenging, intricate music of Howells. This disc displays extremes of Howells’ emotional language - from the intense and powerful Hymnus to the sprightly and rather flirtatious Wooing Song – communicated masterfully by Hickox and his associates.

Vincenzo Bellini is widely regarded as the last and greatest composer of bel canto opera, and his most famous operas, Norma, is one of the leading works in the genre. Even Richard Wagner said of Norma: "If we weep from emotion on hearing it, it's nothing to be ashamed of. " This release is a new production of the opera, directed by Grammy Award-nominated director of opera, theatre, and film, Kevin Newbury. Sondra Radvan stars as a captivating Norma in a performance in which the New York Times described as "powerful, elegant. " Gregory Kunde performs as Pollione. Operatraveller. com wrote of his performance: "something very special. The word 'historic' is used perhaps a little too often but tonight there really is no other adjective to describe the sensational performances offered to us by Sondra Radvanovsky and Gregory Kunde. "

Classical Music

Sebastian Fagerlund has made a name for himself primarily through his concertos and orchestral works. As demonstrated on previous recordings, his music displays a huge range of colors and an uncommon rhythmic vitality, as well as a sure feel for instrumental writing. He has nevertheless also composed a number of vocal and choral works, and in fact the first release on BIS of his music was the opera Döbeln (2010), based on a controversial figure in the war between Sweden and Russia in 1788-90. When Fagerlund received a commission for a second opera from the Finnish National Opera, he found his inspiration closer to our own time as well as to his own field. Ingmar Bergman’s 1978 chamber drama Höstsonaten (Autumn Sonata) tells of the celebrated pianist Charlotte Andergast, and how she is confronted by her daughter Eva, who accuses her of neglect and self-absorption. Bergman’s screenplay has been used as basis for numerous stage productions, but this is the first adaptation for opera. Höstsonaten was premièred at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki in 2017, with Anne Sofie von Otter as Charlotte – the role for which Ingrid Bergman was nominated to an Oscar as best actress. She is supported by a cast including Erika Sunnegårdh, Helena Juntunen and Tommi Hakala, and the chorus and orchestra of the Finnish National Opera conducted by John Storgårds.

Along with Vivaldi’s ‘Seasons’ or Beethoven’s ‘Fifth’, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos belong to those works that are so well-known that we risk taking them for granted. In order to (re-)discover the special qualities that can inspire us today, in 2001 Thomas Dausgaard and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra decided to contact six contemporary composer, asking each of them to compose a companion piece to one of the concertos. Seventeen years later, in 2018, it was time to present the result, with a performance at the BBC Proms of all the works – new and old. Recorded over a period of 18 months leading up to this event, the present boxed set provides a unique opportunity to experience six very different musical minds and idioms entering into conversation with Bach: Mark-Anthony Turnage, Steven Mackey, Anders Hillborg, Olga Neuwirth, Uri Caine and Brett Dean. Bach’s concertos are remarkable in that they are all scored for different instrumental combinations, and part of the brief to the group of composers was to reflect this. In her Aello, Olga Neuwirth has for instance used several ‘instruments’ to stand in for Bach’s harpsichord, including a synthesizer, a milk frother and a typewriter. Brett Dean, on the other hand, has stayed very close to Bach’s instrumentation, but has chosen to write his work as a preparation for Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 – an Approach to Bach’s extremely tight canonic writing. In performing the twelve works the orchestra and Dausgaard are joined by leading soloists including Clare Chase, Mahan Esfahani, Håkan Hardenberger, Pekka Kuusisto and Tabea Zimmermann.

How Fair Thou Art - Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (1525/6-1594) This selection from the Palestrina's settings of The Song of Songs is interspersed by four of the composer's Marian antiphons. Once you get used to the close recording and The King's Singers' distinctive 'barbershop' sound, these performances are highly enjoyable, benefiting from the singers' diffident and yet expressive approach. Just occasionally the very close recording shows the alto voices at a disadvantage, but the singing is generally of a very high quality and the readings of these beautiful pieces is intelligent and sensuous. I take a little bit of exception to the title with it's presumably intentionally punning use of the phrase 'Biblical Passions'-the Passion has a very specific religious meaning, and it's extension to embrace the erotic underpinning of The Song of Songs makes something of a nonsense of this. It is not entirely clear what context Palestrina's Song of Songs settings were intended for, but if-as seems likely-they were for private domestic consumption, then I am sure that the earliest performances would have sounded very much like the present recording. It is interesting to hear the Marian antiphons in the same context-almost certainly written for liturgical choral presentation, they work equally well sung by reduced forces and in a smaller acoustic. Indeed without listening closely to the texts, it would be difficult to differentiate the two repertoires from one another. Early Music Review

Between 1791 and 1804, Joseph Haydn arranged some 400 traditional songs for publishers in Scotland and England. Almost all of the songs were Scottish and the most common setting was for voice and piano trio. There have been numerous recordings and performances of the arrangements by these forces, but on this disc The Poker Club Band offer their listeners something quite different. Taking its name from one of the Edinburgh clubs at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment, the ensemble consists of four early music specialists and a traditional singer. They have retained Haydn’s violin and cello, but the keyboard part has been adapted for harp and guitar following indications that the harp was commonly used for contemporary performances of Scottish traditional repertoire. The Gaelic singer James Graham, with his idiomatic Scottish timbre, and the period instruments – of which Masako Art’s single-action pedal harp from 1809 is known to have been in Scotland around the time – brings us that much closer to what a performance in an Edinburgh salon might have sounded like around 1800. The songs themselves range from the cautionary tale of a girl who married for love and now is doomed to a life of hard and dirty work on her husband’s farm (The Mucking of Geordie’s Byer) to love songs such as Oran Gaoil, with a text by Robert Burns. Providing variety, some instrumental 18th century arrangements of Haydn originals are included while the album ends with the well-known atmospheric Lament by the Scottish fiddler Niel Gow.

Ulf Wallin and Roland Pöntinen made their first duo-recording for BIS in 1991 and have released acclaimed recital albums ranging from Schumann and Liszt to Alfred Schnittke, by way of Schoenberg and Hindemith. With the present disc they bring their most recent project to a close: a recording of all the works by Johannes Brahms for violin and piano. These include not only the three well-known and -loved numbered violin sonatas, but also the Scherzo from the so-called F.A.E. Sonata and the composer’s own violin versions of the two sonatas for clarinet and piano. Wallin and Pöntinen open the present release with Sonata No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 120, composed in 1894 for clarinet and transcribed for the violin a year later. As the clarinet part extends further down than the lowest note on the violin, Brahms made considerable revisions to the clarinet part, which entailed changes in the piano part, and consequently the printing of a new piano score. This is followed by the second and third violin sonatas, in A major and D minor respectively. Both works were composed during the summer of 1886 in Thun in Switzerland and are clearly related, even though they inhabit completely different expressive worlds.

After appearing on a quartet of very different BIS releases, ranging from early baroque arias to orchestral songs by Alban Berg and Mahler’s ‘Resurrection Symphony’, the British soprano Ruby Hughes has devised a song recital, together with her regular Lieder partner Joseph Middleton. The process began in 2018 when the two gave the world première of Helen Grime’s Bright Travellers, a set of five poems charting the interior and exterior worlds of pregnancy and motherhood. Ruby Hughes soon set about planning a programme which would converge with Grime’s music and the themes of new life and of love in all its aspects. The recital is bookended by two song cycles by Gustav Mahler which explore love, grief, loss and reconciliation through quite different lenses. In the opening cycle we experience Mahler as solitary wayfarer and hear of unrequited love. In Kindertotenlieder, the second cycle, the poet Friedrich Rückert pours out his pain as a grieving father in songs about the beauty and innocence of children. Completing the programme is Charles Ives – described by Ruby Hughes as Mahler’s ‘musical kindred spirit’ – with a selection of love songs, prayers and lullabies.

In the spring of 2020, the Covid pandemic caused turmoil in the concert diaries of most musicians, including the conductor Andrew Litton and his wife Katharina Kang Litton, principal violist of New York City Ballet. To find an outlet for their musical expression they began to explore the repertoire for viola and piano together. Having played the sonatas by Brahms they came across the music by two other Viennese composers, Brahms’ near-contemporary Robert Fuchs and his student Egon Kornauth. Fuchs – who the less-than-effusive Brahms called ‘a splendid musician’ – had a long and distinguished career at the Vienna Conservatory where his other students included such composers as Mahler, Wolf, Sibelius, Zemlinsky and Korngold. That the sonatas recorded here were composed around the same time as Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet can be hard to believe – as is the fact that Fuchs’s Phantasiestücke (composed in his 80th and final year) was contemporary with Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 1. But if they are not in any way pioneering, all three works are beautifully achieved: formally both strong and flexible, with a subtle, deeply-felt emotional coloring of their own. The Litton Duo close the recital with a piece that has a personal significance for the two – an arrangement of the Korean folk song Arirang which they received as a wedding present from Stephen Hough.

Steeped in the rich heritage of Persian music, young composer/multi-instrumentalist Hafez Nazeri strikes out on a bold new path to create Untold, a fusion of musical languages with a spiritual quest at its heart. Nazeri draws on classical traditions of both Iran and the West, seamlessly adding jazz and other world cultures to the mix.This new music, played by the Rumi Symphony Project and such guest artists as the legendary percussionist Zakir Hussain, Grammy®-winning drummer Glen Velez, and his father, iconic singer Shahram Nazeri, places Hafez Nazeri at the epicenter of the important new voices on the global stage. The Western classical tradition plays a part, in the deeply meditative contributions of cellist Matt Haimovitz and Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center violist Paul Neubauer. Untold is a multi-layered and illuminating experience, taking the listener from the center of stillness to a dancing, joyous state within the space of a few tracks.

Jussi Björling (1911-60), the great Swedish tenor who was to meet his tragic and untimely end only a year after this performance, is in his usual splendid form – captured in superb sound – on the stage of the Metroploitan Opera in NYC in this performance of Charles Gounod’s Faust in the title role. Joined on stage by soprano Elisabeth Söderström as Maguerite and Cesare Siepi as Mephistopheles, this magical performance is led from the pit by American conductor and Julliard School stalwart, Jean Morel (1903-75).

A 2019 New York Times Gift Guide Selection

This is the second release ever of Henzes famous Oratorio, after the release of the general rehearsal for the world's first premiere from 1968 by Deutsche Grammophon. Excellent sound technique, first class singers and orchestra (conducted by none other than Peter Eötvös) as well as a booklet containing detailed liner notes and the libretto contribute in making this album a very important testimony about the music of the 20th century. Henze wrote the Oratorio as a Requiem for Che Guevara and set it to a text by Ernst Schnabel. It tells the story of the French frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the west coast of Africa in 1816, immortalized in the painting of the same name by Theodore Gericault. The work employs a large orchestra, a speaker, a soprano, a baritone, and choruses. In the course of a performance, the chorus members move from left side of the stage, “the Side of the Living,” to the right side, “the Side of the Dead.”

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REVIEWS:

Looking for that special something for that special someone this holiday?

Flowers? Those die.

Jewelry? Too bougie.

A day at the spa? Namaste!

An hour-long modernist requiem on the death of Che Guevara featuring a head of snakes, sung/spoken/sprechtimme’d IN GERMAN? Dear, you are so generous. I cannot possibly repay the kindness.

– New York Times 2019 Gift Guide

Anyone who wants to know Henze or know him better would be well-served and enlivened by this one. And it would be a valuable addition to the confirmed Henze fan's library. Recommended.

– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

ALEXANDER AFANASYEVICH SPENDIAROV (SPENDIARIAN) was a student of Rimsky-Korsakov and a close friend of Glazunov who wrote that he was a 'musician with an impeccable, widely versatile technique'. Spendiarov's music combines Russian and Armenian elements and is saturated in folkloric influence - and he vitally enriched the expressive range of Armenian music as a composer, pedagogue and champion of his contemporaries. His piano works, both for solo instrument and for chamber forces, show the range of his gifts, not least his romances and lullabies, and range across his entire compositional life. Spendiarov's songs, heard here in piano transcriptions by Villy Sargsyan, perfectly preserve the unique timbres and textures of these works. MIKAEL AYRAPETYAN is a pianist, composer and producer. He is also the founder and artistic director of the music project Secrets of Armenia, which aims to increase international awareness of Armenian classical music, and actively organizes concerts featuring Armenian music in venues around the world, for which he is producer, artistic director and pianist. Born in 1984 in Yerevan, Armenia, he studied at the Moscow Tchaikovsky State Conservatory, and continues to uphold the performing traditions of the Russian piano school, of which Konstantin Igumnov, Samuel Feinberg and Lev Oborin are luminaries. His repertoire ranges from the Baroque to the contemporary and includes rarely performed works by Armenian composers. His recording of Eduard Bagdasarian's piano and violin music [GP664] earned a five-star rating from International Piano, and his album of Haro Stepanian's 24 Preludes [GP760] was praised as a "discovery" by both Classica and Piano News.

With this new album the award-winning Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava is turning its attention to the music of Alexander Grechaninov (1864–1956), one of the masters of Russian liturgic music. Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigil is a fitting continuation to the choir’s albums of sacred music by Sergey Rachmaninov and Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Together with the two latter names, Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigil, completed in 1912, belongs to the central repertoire of Russian liturgic music. Unlike the Vigils by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky, Grechaninov’s work was written primarily for concert use. Grechaninov’s All-Night Vigilis a bright, optimistic work full of light. Grechaninov used old traditional Slavic chants as the basis of this work and selected the uplifting, solemnly glorious chants to emphasize the character of joy, exultation and jubilance.

The Latvian Radio Choir (LRC) ranks among the top professional chamber choirs in Europe and its refined taste for musical material, fineness of expression and vocal of unbelievably immense compass have charted it as a noted brand on the world map. The repertoire of LRC ranges from the Renaissance music to the most sophisticated scores by modern composers; and it could be described as a sound laboratory –the singers explore their skills by turning to the mysteries of traditional singing, as well as to the art of quartertone and overtone singing and other sound production techniques.

REVIEW:

While there is no mistaking the urgency of the composer’s calls for mercy in his ‘Great Doxology’, or the joy unleashed in the final hymn to the “Victorious Leader”, the overall tone of the work is gentle, soothing, and altogether loving. As the composer told us, his aim was “to create a harmonic dress for our simple church songs”. For Slavic fire and brimstone, then, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

The Latvian Radio is one of the world’s finest choirs and sounds it here. Informative notes, texts, and an English translation round out an offering that any choral aficionado would be proud to claim.

-- American Record Guide

‘Why has this intense, brilliantly orchestrated, claustrophobically gripping masterpiece been so neglected since its 1977 premiere?’ asked Richard Morrison in The Times of the concert performance in the Barbican that preceded this recording.

Miss Julie is Alwyn’s last large-scale work, written in 1973-76. Alwyn set his own libretto, based on Strindberg’s 1888 play of the same title. The naturalistic drama and lifelike characters of that play appealed to Alwyn from an early age – in fact, he previously attempted to compose an opera on Miss Julie in the 1950s. That attempt failed because of differences with his then-librettist, Christopher Hassall. Alwyn believed that in opera, the action should be self-explanatory, arias should serve a dramatic purpose (as opposed to sheer vocal display), characters should sing to each other and not to the audience, ensembles should be minimized and the text should be set to vocal lines that reflect natural speech patterns. These views were distilled over his extensive career as a film composer, which taught him that music could do more than establish characterization, suggest mood, and heighten atmosphere: in some cases it could also communicate the unspoken thoughts of an onscreen character even when these were at odds with what he or she was presenting visually.

Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra support an outstanding cast featuring Anna Patalong in the title role in this acclaimed revival of Alwyn’s neglected masterpiece.

REVIEW:

Alwyn’s orchestral writing is always characterful, his vocal lines are unfailingly singable. Though his richly coloured writing reveals a whole range of 20th-century influences – Strauss, Janácek, and Ravel especially – it’s the world of Puccini that’s most strongly evoked at the work’s dramatic flashpoints. Anna Patalong as Julie nailed her character’s dangerously unhinged brittleness from the start. Benedict Nelson as Jean, the valet with whom she is so desperate to run away, sings the role with tremendous verve.

– The Guardian (UK)

A unique pairing on record of 20th-century clarinet concertos, full of musical laughter and mischief. As principal clarinet of the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana based in Lugano, Paolo Beltramini may be seen on many films of the orchestra in action such as a beautifully shaded set of the Brahms symphonies filmed by Sony and conducted by Markus Poschner. Beltramini shines in Brahms's slow movements with many solos of doleful and consoling ease. For this album, his debut on Brilliant Classics, he leaves his chair and stands out front for two clarinet concertos which have enjoyed strikingly different fortunes. The Nielsen is a classic of the genre, probably the best-known and most-played example from the last century, abounding in Nielsen's zany humor and rebellious temperament. This four-movement work opens conventionally enough with a cheeky little melody soon taken on a gentle flight of fancy by the soloist, but it's clear, as so often with this composer, that danger and even catastrophe lurk around the corner. Nielsen intended as a portrait of a leading Danish clarinetist of his time, Aage Oxenvad, who was reportedly 'somewhat choleric in temperament, irascible but warm at heart.' The concerto, it was said by those who knew him, captured the very soul of Oxenvad. Outside his native France, the reputation of Jean Francaix has not flourished like that of Nielsen, especially since his death in 1997. Francaix was a fluent musician to a fault, born and brought up within a deeply musical family unlike Nielsen, and blessed with a ready way with melody. In 1968 he wrote this four-movement concerto and dedicated it to the bassoonist and conductor Fernand Oubradous; the first soloist was one of his students, Jacques Lancelot. Francaix admitted (not without pride) that the concerto was 'a kind of aerobatics display for the ear, complete with loops, wing-turns and nose-dives which are fairly terrifying for the soloist' - and indeed both works here stretch the technique of any clarinetist to the limit.

Schumann: Symphonies Nos. 1-4

This by now and long-legendary 1953 live recording of Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore features a cast, conductor and orchestra that makes it difficult to imagine better. Led by Maria Callas and Carlo Tagliabue as Leonora and Count di Luna, the cast also features Ebe Stignani, Gino Penno and Giuseppe Modesti, among others. The legendary conductor Antonino Votto, often partnered with Ms. Callas, in this period, leads the Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala, Milan, in this gripping, ever-popular operatic drama.