Miles Davis' first classic quintet (with the leader on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor sax, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums) was formed in 1955 and is widely regarded as one of the greatest combos in jazz history. Relaxin' was the second in a series of four albums featuring the group recorded between May and October of 1956. It contains Miles' first version of "If I Were a Bell" from the play Guys and Dolls, a tune he would include in his concert repertoire until 1965. 180-GRAM COLORED BLUE VINYL - THE COMPLETE ALBUM + 2 BONUS TRACKS - Contains new specially prepared liner notes by Penguin Guide to Jazz's writer BRIAN MORTON and by Paris' prestigious JAZZ MAGAZINE. LIMITED EDITION

In 1955 Miles Davis played an all-star jam session at the Newport Jazz Festival with Thelonious Monk on piano, Gerry Mulligan on baritone sax and Zoot Sims on tenor sax. This performance immediately drew the attention of Columbia Records' George Avakian, who was so impressed that he immediately offered Davis a contract if he could form a regular band. The group he then assembled would go down in history as Davis' so-called "First Great Quintet", consisting of John Coltrane on tenor sax, Red Garland on piano, Philly Joe Jones on drums, Paul Chambers on bass and of course Miles himself on trumpet. 'Round Midnight is Miles Davis' first record for Columbia and also the first studio recording of the First Great Quintet. The recording sessions began on October 26 1955 but the album wasn't released until 1957 as Davis was still under contract at Prestige at the time. These respective sessions yielded Steamin', Workin', Cookin' and Relaxin'; albums that would go down in history as quintessential blueprints of late 1950s hard bop. The record is made up of a collection of standards and one traditional song ("Dear Old Stockholm", from the 19th century). Notably, it features what may be considered the most well-known versions of Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight" and "Bye Bye Blackbird". That Avakian made a golden signing was sufficiently clear from the start, but no one could foresee that it would be this quintet on Columbia that would go on to change the course of modern jazz forever with Kind of Blue. 'Round Midnight is available as a limited edition of 1500 individually numbered copies on crystal clear vinyl.

Artfulness disguised as simplicity – achingly beautiful.

‘Flicka’, as she is known among friends, has garnered the opera houses and concert halls around the world for four decades and her agenda is still well-filled. As a recording artist she has been prolific and appeared in opera, art-song, sacred music, operetta, Broadway musical and cross-over albums – always with glorious results. The present disc, recorded in 1978 and reissued by Arkiv with the original cover picture and Lionel Salter’s liner notes, was one of the few records with her I never bought on LP – God knows why! Now that I finally have it in my collection I feel satisfied. Mahler songs and Frederica von Stade’s voice have always seemed the ideal combination.

Her clean, slim voice is especially well suited to Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. One of her specialities in opera was the trouser role: Cherubino and Octavian. The opening lines of Wenn mein Schatz are sung with innocent, boyish tone and in Ging heut’ Morgen she is wonderfully fresh and youthful, singing the final lines touchingly with ‘naked’ tone. She can also be strong and dramatic: Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer has all the necessary intensity with desperation almost visible. Then Die zwei blauen Augen is simplicity itself. I have heard few recordings of this cycle that sound so right – and this in spite of a woman singing what is, after all, a man’s words.

The two Wunderhorn songs are just as affecting. In Rheinlegendchen she adopts that boyish tone again and sings, so to speak, with wide open eyes – a spontaneous story-teller. Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?, famously recorded in the 1930s by Elisabeth Schumann, definitely has an open-air atmosphere. Schumann was a charmer, ‘Flicka’ with rounder tone is no less charming.

The five Rückert songs are, for me, indelibly connected with Janet Baker and her late 1960s recording with Barbirolli. Baker could, like no-one else, combine simplicity and deep emotions. But Frederica von Stade’s leaner voice is equally well suited to these songs. Her sophisticated artlessness – sounds like a contradiction but is exactly what I hear; artfulness disguised as simplicity – makes Liebst du um Schönheit so achingly beautiful. She applies the same light touch on Um Mitternacht, and this doesn’t exclude interpretative depth. She has the required power for the big emotional moments, most importantly the final pages of this great song.

The final song, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, has for forty years been one of the family’s great favourites – always in Janet Baker’s reading. Other recordings have popped up and we have admired them, listened closely and in the last analysis returned to Ms Baker. I still find it the deepest-probing but Frederica von Stade’s ethereal rendering of Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel (Rückert actually wrote Weltgewimmel) has also etched itself into my store of unforgettable musical moments. A wonderful end to a memorable recording.

The recording is first class and the LPO play like gods under Andrew Davis’s watchful direction. There are no song texts in the booklet, which is a pity, but they are easily available on the internet.

-- Göran Forsling, MusicWeb International [6/2011]

Marking their third collaboration, violinist Tasmin Little with conductor Sir Andrew Davis are acclaimed for their nuanced understanding of the concertos of Elgar and Moeran and here demonstrate the deep connection to British music with works by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Haydn Wood, and Frederick Delius. With the BBC Philharmonic.

Review:

Besides the stellar quality of Little's playing (as ever, warmly engaging and technically bombproof), Sir Andrew Davis and the BBC Philharmonic provide accompaniments in a special class. The slow movements of Wood's Concerto opens with a long theme for the principal horn, delivered here with spellbinding loveliness.

– BBC Music Magazine

David Oistrakh and Igor Oistrakh perform in this 1961 recording of the Bach. Sir Colin Davis conducts the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra with Yehudi Menuhin and Kirill Kondrashin in these works by Bach, Mozart, and Brahms recorded in 1961 and 1963.

If you can be disconcerted, I suppose it should be possible, linguistically speaking (and how else?), to be concerted. Brahms, in this sense, and taken in large doses such as are offered on these two records, is really just about the most concerted composer I know. The withering of the grass that is flesh, the "Menschenhass", the indifference of the gods to human life though it meets with disasters "like water dashed from crag to crag": in short, the worst that the Bible and the classics of his own language can throw at him, he surveys without flinching and transmutes into the goodness of finely structured, beautifully orchestrated music, eminently human yet capable of sublimity, never merely complacent but also (as it seems to me) very rarely disconcerted.

Sir Colin Davis's way with him strengthens such reactions. In the Schicksalslied his is the most serene account of Elysium and of the compatibility of Elysian security and earthly turbulence. Conductors as different from each other as Blomstedt (Decca) and Sinopoli (DG) are alike in their apparent conviction that what has to be done with this piece is to split it asunder, expose the chasm between its two worlds. Blomstedt's approach is probably philosophical, Sinopoli's dramatic, but they both go for the black and the white of it: Blomstedt takes 'Elysium' slowly and 'Earth' brutally fast and loud. Sinopoli moves in more doubtful fashion in the empyrean but then with demonic drive in the depiction of harried humanity. Davis forces nothing: he encourages neither lethargy nor wildness. Musically, his performance makes perfectly good sense of the return to calm, and all the argument about whether it constitutes an intentionally acquiescent 'happy ending' seems rather wide of the mark: musically the piece is a unity, and Davis's reading, like Brahms's composition, is thoroughly 'concerted'.

The soloist for the Alto Rhapsody is Nathalie Stutzmann, not entirely steady in her opening phrases but then deep-toned, and unusual in lightening the upper note in "der Falk der Liebe". [These performances] are gentle, both as recordings and interpretations. A bonus is the inclusion of the attractive and rarely heard Marienlieder of 1859: seven carol-like a cappella pieces, showing, among other things, the fine blend and sensitive shading of the Bavarian choir.

-- Gramophone [5/1993]

Sir Andrew Davis is among the most distinguished interpreters of British music today and here turns to the works of Sir Arnold Bax. With the inclusion of the Phantasy for Viola and Orchestra, this album marks the completion of Chandos’s long project to record Bax’s complete orchestral music over time.

Born in 1883 into a wealthy family in London, Arnold Bax began a love affair with Ireland as a young man. He moved there in 1911 and his Four Orchestral Pieces from 1912 – 13 are deeply influenced by the landscape of the countryside near his Dublin home. The first three are better known in revised versions, from 1928, as Three Pieces for Small Orchestra. Here ‘The Dance of Wild Irravel’ joins the other three movements for the premiere recording of the four Pieces as Bax originally conceived and orchestrated them.

The Phantasy for Viola and Orchestra from 1920 was inspired by the strong feelings with which Bax responded to the Irish political turmoil at the time, underlined by his use of the Sinn Fein Marching Song (later the Irish national anthem) at its climax. Bax is celebrated for his melodic invention and this passionately lyrical score must be one of the finest examples of his gift. Here the soloist is Philip Dukes, described by The Times as ‘Great Britain’s most outstanding viola player’.

By 1927 Bax’s style was changing and the opening of the Overture, Elegy and Rondo is reminiscent of a classical concerto, suggesting a leaning towards then-fashionable neoclassicism. The long, dreamy melody of the middle section and brilliant, colourful orchestration, however, are unmistakable hallmarks of Bax’s individual voice. - Chandos

Reviews

“… Dukes is a sterling advocate of this unjustly neglected work [Phantasy] – the haunting cor anglais solo recalls the shepherd’s lament in Wagner’s Tristan – while Davis proves passionate in the impressionistic Four Orchestral Pieces and the powerful, dark Overture, Elegy and Rondo.” - Hugh Canning, The Sunday Times, Culture magazine, London – [September 14, 2014]

“All three of these rarely heard works come from the first half of Bax’s career as a composer. The earliest is the lightweight but charming set of Four orchestral Pieces from 1914, recorded here for the first time … The latest is the far more substantial Overture, Elegy and Rondo … Through stylistically the two works have their differences … both works reveal the same sure-footed handling of the orchestra, which these carefully manicured performances under conductor Andrew Davis show off beautifully…” - Andrew Clements, The Guardian, [August 29, 2014]

Sir Andrew Davis continues to champion the lesser-known works of Sir Arthur Bliss with this coupling of The Enchantress, Mary of Magdala and Meditations on a theme by John Blow. Dame Sarah Connolly and James Platt are the soloists, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The three distinctive works by Sir Arthur Bliss (1891 – 1975) on this recording span his sixties and early seventies, from 1951 onwards, the year of his sixtieth birthday, during which he composed The Enchantress for Kathleen Ferrier.

The BBC Symphony Chorus was founded in 1928 and its early appearances included the UK premieres of Bartók’s Cantata profana, Stravinsky’s Perséphone, and Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. Each year it appears regularly with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre, as well as performing at the BBC Proms, frequently at the iconic First and Last Nights. It maintains an undiminished commitment to new music, performing a wide range of challenging repertoire, often with the BBC SO, most of which is broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

REVIEW:

Here are three contrasting works of Bliss’ later years. The two vocal pieces set Greek pastoral poetry and words from St John’s Gospel. The theme in question is Psalm 23, The Lord is my Shepherd. The programming of these three pieces makes for a satisfying experience, highlighting the inventiveness and flexibility of Bliss, still an underappreciated composer.

-- Lark Reviews

GOOSSENS Kaleidoscope. Tam O’Shanter. Three Greek Dances. Concert Piece 1. Four Conceits. Variations on “Cadet Rouselle.” Two Nature Poems. Don Juan de Mañara: Intermezzo • Andrew Davis, cond; Melbourne SO; 1 Jeff Crellin (ob, Eh); 1 Marshall Maguire (hp); 1 Alannah Guthrie-Jones (hp) • CHANDOS 5119 (SACD: 74:16)


Chandos’s Goossens series began promisingly under Richard Hickox with a recording of the First Symphony and Phantasy Concerto for piano and orchestra, but stalled after the conductor’s unexpected death in November 2008. Andrew Davis has since taken over as the company’s house conductor of English music. Having given us fine recordings of Delius, Elgar, and Holst, he now turns his attention to Goossens in this second volume of the series. Unlike the first it concentrates on shorter pieces.


Eugene Goossens (1893-1962) came from a musical family; both his father and grandfather were conductors. He studied composition with Stanford, and as a conductor was mentored by Beecham. (Later he himself was mentor to Richard Bonynge.) Young Eugene played violin in Beecham’s Queens Hall Orchestra during the years of the First World War, and may well have been a part of that orchestra when they premiered Holst’s Planets in 1918. Certainly Goossens’s orchestral finesse recalls Holst’s masterpiece in respect of clarity and sonority. The short tone poem Tam O’Shanter is the earliest orchestral work in this collection: Vigorous and deftly scored, it predates Malcolm Arnold’s better-known overture of the same name by 36 years. The sprightly children’s suite Kaleidoscope (so reminiscent of the work of another composer/conductor, Gabriel Pierné) and the Four Conceits were originally written for piano in 1918 and orchestrated much later. The Three Greek Dances , the Nature Poems , the Variations on the French folk song “Cadet Rousselle,” and the Intermezzo from his opera Don Juan de Mañara all date from the decade 1927-1938 when Goossens was a resident conductor in America, first with the Eastman Orchestra, then from 1931 on as successor to Fritz Reiner in Cincinnati. The composer’s handling of orchestral forces is even more assured here. The effects he achieves in the second of the Nature Poems (entitled “Bacchanal”) are so striking it is hard to imagine this work started life as a piano piece. (In this, he recalls another major influence: Maurice Ravel.) Interestingly, the folk-song variations are one of those collaborative hybrids that turn up every so often in 20th-century music. Orchestrated by Goossens, who composed the finale, the piece also contains variations by Arnold Bax, Frank Bridge, and John Ireland.


The longest work here is the three-movement Concert Piece for oboe, two harps, and orchestra, lasting just under 22 minutes. It dates from 1957, a year after Goossens had returned to London in disgrace following a sex and pornography scandal in Australia. It could be that he wrote this work for his highly respected siblings Leon (oboist), Sidonie and Marie (harpists) in order to help salvage his reputation. The piece is mellow, especially in the Delian slow movement, and is notable for introducing quotations from other composers, such as Debussy and Richard Strauss in the finale. Shades of Berio’s Sinfonia.


Covering approximately 40 years, the program on this disc displays Goossens’s strengths: exquisite craftsmanship—especially in scoring—piquant but not ‘difficult’ harmony, and economy. What he lacks compared to several of his peers is a distinctive melodic profile, but that does not prevent an appreciation of this adroitly realized music. Three of these works have appeared in a three-CD set from ABC Australia, conducted by Vernon Handley with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra ( Tam O’Shanter and the Concert Piece ) and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra ( Kaleidoscope ). Handley is livelier than Davis. Concert Piece in particular sounds like a stronger work in his hands. However, the magnificent Chandos sound trumps the perfectly acceptable 17-year-old Australian recordings. The Davis disc is in a class of its own in terms of sonics, and his excellent soloists Crellin, Maguire, and Guthrie-Jones in Concert Piece seem better attuned to 20th-century English style. (I can only report on the Chandos disc in regular stereo.) While the first release in this series contained works of greater significance, this follow-up is fully enjoyable in its own right. The Second Symphony should be next up.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

“ ... [Davis] on fine form here with the Bergen Philharmonic. The opening to the Corsaire holds no terrors for them ... The lesser-known overtures reveal their virtues well. Davis, abetted by an excellent recording, responds vividly to Berlioz’s pioneering orchestral textures...” - John Warrack – International Record Review – February 2013

-----

The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Andrew Davis here perform seven dazzling orchestral overtures by Hector Berlioz, a composer who excelled in blending literary and musical elements into highly energetic and personal creations.

The overtures are widely varied in mood, as are the operas from which they were drawn. Berlioz wrote his first large-scale instrumental composition, the Overture to Les Francs-juges, in 1826, the year in which he enrolled at the Paris Conservatoire. Even though the opera itself was never performed, Berlioz remained proudly affectionate of the overture, which was played all over Germany and Holland in its early days. His second opera, Benvenuto Cellini, followed in 1838; its music gave rise both to the opera’s overture and to the concert overture Le Carnaval romain which depicts its subject in brilliant colour through breathtakingly vibrant orchestration.

The comic opera Béatrice et Bénédict took its inspiration from Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing. The overture draws on an intense solo scene for Béatrice and adds elements of the cheerful banter that make up the story of the title characters’ playful courtship.

When Berlioz visited the Hungarian capital Pest in 1846, it was suggested to him that one way of winning the hearts of the audiences there would be to make an arrangement of the beloved Rákóczy March, which up until that point had been known only as a piano piece. Berlioz agreed, and on the very night before he left for Pest, he put together his own orchestral version of the piece. It was a resounding success when performed at his first concert, to the extent that Berlioz promptly included it in the large work on which he was working at the time: La Damnation de Faust.

Le Roi Lear, Le Corsaire, and Waverley have one thing in common: all are independent concert pieces that have been given the title overture as in many respects they do resemble opera overtures – but none is in actual fact connected to an opera. The composer here took his inspiration from literary works. Le Roi Lear, for instance, is a remarkable tone portrait of Shakespeare’s deranged king, full of energy and anger, while Le Corsaire may be loosely based on Byron’s The Corsair. Berlioz based Waverley on a novel of the same name by Sir Walter Scott, and the score bears a quotation in English: ‘Dreams of love and Lady’s charms, give place to honour and to arms.’ The contrast expressed so well in this simple quotation is equally evident in the music itself. Here the ‘dreams of love’ unfold in a long cello melody, which is repeated with richer orchestrations, before leading into the vigorous musical depiction of ‘honour and arms’. - Chandos

At age 22, Mozart wrote two concertos on commission from Ferdinand DeJean, a wealthy Dutchman. One of those was the Flute Concerto, K313, arguably one of the finest flute concerto ever written. This release features that piece, along with two other concertos performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony. The 1981 recording of the Flute Concerto K. 313 with Slovenian soloist Irena Grafenauer is one of the few recordings with the great Günter Wand on the conductor’s podium. Oboe soloist François Leleux is featured in a 2001 recording of Mozart’s Oboe Concerto accompanied by “his” orchestra, in which he held the position of principal oboist until 2005, with Sir Colin Davis, the long-standing Chief Conductor of the orchestra.

Its style falls a good distance from the historical niceties of our modern era’s historically informed performance standards, but yet it still lands squarely in the most enjoyable listen category. Sir Colin Davis is near the beginning of his brilliant career to come when this Glyndebourne Festival live 1960 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte was staged. He leads a cast including Richard Lewis, Pilar Lorengar, Heather Harper, Geraint Evans and Hungarian bass Mihaly Szekely as Sarastro, whose formidable presence on opera house stages had been overwhelming audiences since the 1920s.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Reviews:

It’s very fitting that during the four-year period when we continue to commemorate the centenary of World War I there should be a new and long overdue recording of Morning Heroes. Sir Arthur Bliss volunteered for the army in August 1914 and he served with distinction in the trenches in war-time France. He was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and in 1918 he was gassed at Cambrai. All this, and the carnage he witnessed all around him, made an ineradicable impression on him. However the most grievous blow was the loss of his younger brother, Kennard, who was killed in action on 28 September 1916 at Thiepval; he was just 24. After the war was over Bliss returned to France to find his brother’s grave but this pilgrimage failed to lay Kennard's ghost. In his notes for the earlier recording of Morning Heroes by Sir Charles Groves, Felix Aprahamian writes that Bliss began to suffer from nightmares in 1928; these must have been a manifestation of the psychological effects of the war. Finally, the opportunity came to commemorate his brother with a commission for a major choral work for the 1930 Norwich Festival. The result was Morning Heroes, scored for orator, chorus and orchestra. Bliss himself conducted the first performance. The score is dedicated ‘To the memory of my brother Francis Kennard Bliss and all other comrades killed in battle.’

Morning Heroes is an ambitious score and its construction is rather unusual in that two of its five movements are for orator with orchestra – though, as we shall see, the accompaniment in the second spoken movement is sparse indeed. A choral finale follows the second spoken section; together these two sections constitute the fifth movement. In the centre of the work are three movements for chorus and orchestra. Bliss assembled an anthology of texts; his sources include Homer’s epic Greek poem, The Iliad; Whitman’s Drum Taps; the eighth century Chinese poet, Li Tai Po; and poems by two twentieth century poets, Wilfred Owen and Robert Nichols.

Bliss’s scoring – if we can call it that – is astonishingly original and imaginative here. There is virtually no accompaniment to the orator’s recitation save for timpani rumbling ominously in the background like distant, menacing guns. Only once – at “Exposed!” – do the drums play loudly and that’s terrifying. What a masterstroke it is for Bliss to reintroduce the orchestra as the orator recites Owens last line, “Why speak they not of comrades that went under?” The woodwind play melancholy, lilting material from the first movement and the effect is very moving. The chorus then sing Robert Nichols’ Dawn on the Somme. The music begins quietly, almost like a hymn, but gradually the intensity increases as Nichols’ ‘morning heroes’ are saluted. If this music sounds like a glorification of heroism then who better than Bliss to write in this vein? After all he had been through he was surely entitled to celebrate heroism. Yet the work ends on a subdued, pensive note and that too feels eminently right.

Morning Heroes is a work of great stature and I find it very moving indeed. There’s no doubt at all that this new Davis recording is now a clear first choice for this fine score.

The “filler” is interesting – and relevant. Bliss wrote Hymn to Apollo in 1926 in gratitude to Pierre Monteux for his early championship of A Colour Symphony. Indeed, it was Monteux who gave the first performance, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It seems that very early on Bliss was dissatisfied with the work but he didn’t get round to revising it until 1964. Sir Andrew offers the original version of the score, recording it for the first time.

This is a splendid disc. The performance standard is extremely high and Ralph Couzens’ engineering is excellent. Similarly excellent are the notes by Andrew Burn. Bliss devotees should acquire this as a matter of urgency and other collectors are strongly urged to hear this eloquent musical commemoration of the fallen of World War I. On this evidence Sir Andrew Davis appears to be a doughty champion of Bliss. I hope he may record more of his music in the future: might we hope, at last, for a modern recording of The Beatitudes?

– MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

This new recording is a revelation for its clarity (notably of the composer's vivid orchestral palette and imaginative choral writing), coherence and sheer emotional intensity.

– Gramophone

Sir Andrew Davis's performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus surpasses Sir Charles Groves's fine 1974 EMI Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra account with urgent tempos, choral singing of full tone and incisive attack, eloquent orchestral playing, and an excellent, open recording.

– BBC Music Magazine