This is really fun. Hubert Headley (1906-95) is a composer in the tradition of Gershwin, Still, Gillis, and Moross--that is, stylish, pop-influenced ('30s and '40s), and well-crafted. Howard Hanson and Pierre Monteux had nice things to say about the colorful and extremely enjoyable California Suite, and during the 1940s it enjoyed a measure of popularity. Similarly, the concertos are brilliantly scored and full of good ideas. Both are single-movement works lasting a mere 11 and 15 minutes, respectively. The First Symphony (1946) requires a mere 13 minutes, and it's likewise colorful and cogent. Certainly there is no reason why this music should not become popular again; likely it faded from view because Headley essentially gave up symphonic composition after the 1940s in favor of large-scale choral music, but then so much good tonal music vanished after the "serial interruption" that began in the 1950s. The performances here are consistently exciting, with Anna Bogolyubova a confident soloist in the two concertos, and Dmitry Yablonsky leading an orchestra that sounds like it's having a remarkably good time. You will too.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

There's certainly a niche for a budget series devoted to Dvorák's oeuvre for violin and piano. The violinist here, Qian Zhou, at first might not seem a familiar name, but many will remember her participation in the TV documentary featuring the late Isaac Stern's visit to China, "From Mao to Mozart", which has been broadcast by networks throughout the world. The American pianist Edmund Battersby accompanies Zhou with praiseworthy skill and sensitivity. Their program begins with a honeyed and alluring account of the lovely F minor Romance. It's good for a change to hear it played with keyboard accompaniment rather than in the orchestral edition as a makeweight filler on discs with the A minor concerto.


The Sonata in F has been surprisingly neglected on CD, making this impressive reading doubly welcome. But the two Supraphon recordings by Josef Suk are in a class apart in many ways, for Suk has one of the most personal, distinctive, and instantly recognizable tones around, and he plays this music with forceful insight and complete lack of self-aggrandizing rhetoric. Zhou and Battersby play with tremendous fire and energy (try them in the sizzling finale of Op. 57 for example), and also get plenty of punch and drama where it's needed, as in the big development section of the first movement of the F major sonata. But I wonder if anyone ever played the Four Romantic Pieces more bewitchingly than Itzhak Perlman and Samuel Sanders on their EMI recording, which also includes the Sonatina in G Op. 100. In both works, Perlman's masterful technique and matchless skill in vocalizing and inflecting his sound lends something special to his performances. Zhou hasn't the same skills--at least not yet--but plays with fine technical command and considerable feel for the music. Hopefully, these artists can retain such a consistently high level of musicianship in the next volume of this continuing cycle.
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com

In December 2006, Gramophone Magazine named Dutch pianist Ralph van Raat “one to watch.” Now, with his second recording for Naxos, van Raat tackles one of the most important works of the modern piano literature: Frederic Rzewski’s fiendishly difficult set of 36 piano variations, The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

The People United Will Never Be Defeated! was written in only two months on a commission from American pianist Ursula Oppens, after Rzewski met Chilean composer Sergio Ortega. Three months before Salvador Allende’s death, Ortega heard a street-singer shout El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido!, which made him think immediately of a tune to accompany these words. A day later, the pop group Quilapayun played the melody. Since then, the tune has become an impassioned international symbol against any form of dictatorship. It was no surprise that Ortega and the politically leftist Rzewski greatly impressed and inspired each other when they met in Italy a few years later, resulting in Rzewski’s vision of this emblematic song.

One of the striking elements of this variation work is its length; the composition is a marathon for both the listener and for the performer. The extensive duration of its 36 variations is symbolic of the human struggle for change. Any struggle feels long, with many hurdles obstructing the final goal. The variations themselves all symbolize the different phases and aspects of a struggle: this readily explains the huge array of compositional styles that Rzewski has used, from angry, highly-energized modernism, via melancholic references to blues, calculated dense polyphony and nostalgic folk-music to written-out free jazz passages. Rzewski incorporates contemporary piano effects in some variations, which he charges with an unusual dramatic meaning (for example, the sound of a slammed piano lid in Variation 11, reminds one of a gunshot). Throughout all variations the intervals of Ortega’s theme are always present, whether they are used as a twelve-tone row or as a basis for a fugal passage.

Also featured on this recording is the popular Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, which was written in 1979 as part of the set North American Ballads. The basis for this work is an existing song bearing the same name, which cotton-mill workers used to sing while working.

Eric Moe is an alchemist of expressive extremes, from what he calls 'beautiful quiet music' to 'the rough, raucous stuff'. His exquisitely controlled music distils rare eloquence, grace, force and beauty from the incongruous elements of pop, rock, jazz.

Based on the true story of two teenage lovers the Holocaust tore apart forever, the dramatic song cycle for a Look or a Touch casts long-awaited light on the fate of gay Germans in the Holocaust. By noted young American opera composer Jake Heggie.

No matter how well we think we know the music of a specific composer, we are consistently surprised when something from the darker recesses of their output appears on a concert program or a compact disc. Beethoven left a small but significant quantity of wind chamber music. Small but significant. Is that a contradiction in terms? Under some circumstances it might be, but in the case of Beethoven, the answer is a resounding “Nyet!” The fact is, Beethoven’s Sextet, op. 71 (scored for clarinets, horns, and bassoons), and the Octet, op. 103 (which adds a pair of oboes to the makeup of the Sextet), have earned a place of honor in the wind ensemble repertoire. So has the brief but lovely Rondino, WoO 25, which is scored for the same forces. There are less familiar works as well, including three duets for clarinet and bassoon, and the music for double reed trio on this recording.

Among the musicians that Beethoven encountered in the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire were the oboists Johann Wendt, Georg Triebensee, and his son, Josef. Tradition indicates that Beethoven’s Trio, op. 87, was inspired by similar works penned by Wendt and indeed, he wrote several such works for himself and Triebensee père et fil. The existence of more than a fistful of such seemingly oddly scored works is an indicator of the popularity of the genre at the time. Both the trio and the Mozart variations appear to date from the late 1790s and there is speculation that the variations were the original finale to the lengthier and more complex trio. Beethoven virtually abandoned wind chamber music after the turn of the 18th century, but works such as the trios recorded here and other music from his early years were instrumental—pardon the pun—in developing his treatment of the orchestral winds.

The Beethoven works owe their contemporary success to the composer’s ability to write for a group of winds that is somewhat analogous to a string configuration of two violins and viola or a vocal ensemble of two sopranos and an alto. There is no true bass instrument; the underpinning is assigned to the English horn, as is some of the melodic work. The Trio, op. 87, is full of the confidence of youth, almost bordering on braggadocio, but Beethoven’s sure footed treatment of the material and the way in which he dispenses it to the performers herald some of the great things to come. The set of variations on “La ci darem la mano” is among my favorites in the wind chamber music repertoire. It offers daunting challenges, both technical and expressive, and much contrast in style throughout its nine-minute run. All of the performers are put through their paces, especially the English horn in the second variation and the first oboist in the fifth. Melodic lines are tossed back and forth with the ease one would expect from Beethoven, and a delightful scherzo-like section dovetails into a quasi Andante variation on the theme, which concludes the work.

Beethoven’s circle of friends in Vienna included the brothers Paul and Anton Wranitzky. The youngest of the pair, Anton, was a much-respected composer, conductor, and concert manager. He studied with the best (Mozart, Albrechtsberger, and Haydn) and was so highly thought of that he went on to become leader of the Imperial Court Orchestra and of the orchestra at the Theater an der Wien. Undoubtedly Wranitzky worked with Wendt and Josef Triebensee at some point and either favored them with this trio gratis, or wrote it on commission from them. The trio could almost be termed a symphony for two oboes and English horn, for all of the elements are there, a fully-developed sonata-form first movement, a sunny and uncomplicated andante with a pleasant set of variations, the traditional minuet, and a buffo rondo finale in which all three protagonists chatter away like so many village gossips. These are relaxed, genial, and well-articulated readings that must be as much fun to play as they are to listen to. Textures are pellucid, clearly defined, and blended with masterly expertise. The sense of give-and-take between these three people is exceptional and the replications of old instruments project a unique and pungent tone that lacks the nasal quality found in their modern counterparts. Sadly, there is one problem. These three outstanding American wind-players have no collective name. I like Prevailing Winds. What about you?

Michael Carter, FANFARE

TOLEDO AND CÓRDOBA



The Places
Our visit to Spain centres on the old capital of Castile, Toledo, historically famous for its steel and swords, the home of the great painter known as El Greco. There are views of Córdoba, with its relics of Moorish occupation and a brief glimpse of the windmills on the plains of La Mancha, buildings Don Quixote once mistook for giants.


The Music
The music of Spain held an exotic attraction for composers from other countries. The French composer Lalo was of remote Spanish origin himself, and his Symphonie espagnole, written for the great Spanish violinist Pablo Sarasate, evokes the spirit of the country. Sarasate himself is represented here by a gypsy piece, Zigeunerweisen, and the versatile and prolific French composer Saint-Saëns, who also dedicated a number of works to Sarasate, by his Spanish Havanaise.


Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Dolby Digital / DTS Surround
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 52 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

Umberto Giordano
MARCELLA

Marcella – Serena Daolio
Giorgio – Danilo Formaggia
Drasco – Pierluigi Dilengite
Clara – Natalizia Carone
Raimonda – Angelica Girardi
Eliana – Mara D'Antini
Lea – Maria Rosa Rondinelli
Vernier – Marcello Rosiello
Barthélemy – Giovanni Coletta
Flament – Graziano De Pace

Slovak Chamber Choir
Orchestra Internazionale d'Italia
Manlio Benzi, conductor

Alessio Pizzech, stage director

Filmed at the Palazzo Ducale, Martina Franca, Italy, on 4-6 August 2007 as part of the 33rd Festival of the Valle d'Itria, Italy

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Surround 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, Italian
Running time: 67 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

This second Naxos Dvorák violin and piano disc presents--in arrangements both by Dvorák and others--works that for the most part were originally composed for alternate media. Among the more interesting are Fritz Kreisler's Slavonic Dances transcriptions (Nos. 2, 10, and 16), played with energy and imagination by Qian Zhou and Edmund Battersby. The duo especially excels in the final Op. 72 dance, wonderfully projecting the music's winsome mood. Dvorák's Humoresque, Mazurek, and Songs my mother taught me are all instantly recognizable favorites, while the Ballad in D minor and Capriccio are the only two works in this collection originally composed for violin/piano duo. The Nocturne in B major is a high point of the disc, although this engrossing arrangement cannot compete with the radiant beauty of the string orchestra original. Naxos' recording sets the performers at a comfortable distance, creating an ideal balance between violin and piano. --Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

"Felix Mendelssohn's surviving output for violin and piano comprises three sonatas, written between 1820 and 1838, thus spanning the mature phase of the composer's creative life, and a handful of shorter apprentice pieces. They're all elegantly constructed and tuneful works that you'd think might have attracted a wider following on disc and in the recital room. Instead, Mendelssohn's violin triptych is seriously under-represented on CD, and most of the short pieces haven't been recorded at all, so this budget newcomer is long overdue. The performers, violinist Nicholas Milton, concertmaster of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, and the Icelandic pianist Margrét Grímsdóttir, give strong, positive readings of these works on this nicely engineered Naxos issue. The student works, composed between 1819 and 1821, are basically composition exercises produced for Mendelssohn's teacher, Carl Friedrich Zelter; but so were the miraculous String Symphonies, and these violin pieces are scarcely of lesser quality, with the two Fugues (in D minor and C minor) reflecting the young Mendelssohn's extraordinary skills as a contrapuntist. The Nomos Duo gives competent performances of these slighter offerings, and delivers tersely argued, forthright readings of the three mature sonatas."

--Michael Jameson

The scenes shown all breathe an air of peace and tranquility. Starting with an evening landscape in Bohemia we move to a lake in the Tyrol to the Museo Vela with it's gesso figures Bavarian craftsmen fashioning glass and the Corniche near Cannes in the South of France. Other scenes include the ancient Chapel of St Sixtus at Eygalieres the Church of St Jakob at Tramin night in Madrid and a nocturnal view of Seville the whole culminating in the great Basilica of St Mark in Venice.

The Places
The Canton of Ticino (German Tessin) is the only Swiss canton to have Italian as its official language. It is bounded on three sides by Italy and boasts spectacular mountain scenery, with waterfalls, rivers and lakes. The capital of the canton is now Bellinzona, but was earlier shared with Locarno and Lugano. A feature of the landscape lies in the great lakes that are within its territory, including part of Lago Maggiore, into which the Ticino and Maggia flow.

The Music
Robert Schumann was born in 1810 in Saxony, studied in Leipzig, lived in Dresden and, in 1850 moved to Düsseldorf as director of music to the city. He died in 1856, after a severe mental breakdown, from which he never recovered. In 1840, in spite of the objections of her father, he married the young pianist Clara Wieck, daughter of his former teacher. It was particularly after this marriage that he turned his attention to larger scale compositions, of which his Piano Concerto is an example, inspired by his wife. The other work heard here, the Intermezzi, Op. 4, dates from an earlier period, devoted in particular to the composition of shorter piano pieces, when a career as a pianist still seemed possible for him.

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: PCM Stereo
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 51 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

The Places - the scenes shown are of the Benedictine Abbey and Church at Einsiedeln, in the Swiss canton of Schwyz. The monastery, in origin dating from the 10th century, was largely rebuilt in the 18th century to designs by Caspar Moosbrugger of Vorarlberg, a former lay brother in the community, and has long been an important centre of pilgrimage to the shrine of the Black Madonna, now in a black marble chapel built in the early 19th century. The impressive interior of the church contains frescos by Cosmas Damian Asam and stucco work by his brother Egid Quirin Asam. The Music - the tour is accompanied by the third and fourth of the four Orchestral Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach and a Concerto for oboe, violin and continuo by Antonio Vivaldi.