Although he had initially declined the commission, Delius was persuaded to write the incidental music for Hassan by the actor and director Basil Dean in July 1920, for performances he was planning for His Majesty’s Theatre, London, the following year. Much of the music was drafted within a few weeks, and the score would eventually prove one of the greatest successes of Delius’s career. Dean’s plans for the project encountered significant obstacles and delays, however, and he had to commission additional music from Delius to cover the production’s complex scene changes. The London première eventually took place on 20 September 1923 and was a critical sensation.

Flecker’s play is a sinuous double-narrative that intertwines the twin stories of the lovelorn but worldly-wise Hassan, confectioner at the court of the cruel and vindictive Caliph Haroun al Rashid (called Haroun ar Rashid in Flecker’s play), and the young lovers Pervaneh and Rafi, caught up in the aftermath of a failed uprising and condemned to a terrifying and brutally protracted death. In tone and setting, Flecker’s text drew on nineteenth-century English translations of One Thousand and One Nights as well as other heavily fictionalized accounts and travel literature. Very much a product of the racial and class-based attitudes of its time, the play revels in imaginary scenes of a despotic Eastern court and its gruesomely barbaric practices.

Following their début album, Belle Époque, the Orsino Ensemble turns its attention to music from Bohemia. There is a strong tradition of Czech wind playing, and hence a wealth of great repertoire on which to draw.

Antoine Reicha was a contemporary (and friend) of Beethoven. His E flat Quintet, published in 1817, demonstrates his harmonic ingenuity and talent for idiomatic instrumental writing. Mládí, described by Janácek as ‘…a sort of memoir of youth’, was composed in 1924 in celebration of the composer’s own seventieth birthday, and the mood of the piece is optimistic throughout.

Born in Brno, Pavel Haas studied at the city’s conservatory, under Janácek – indeed Haas is widely considered to be Janácek’s greatest pupil. Composed in 1929, the Wind Quintet typifies his quirky musical imagination and affinity for instrumental timbre.

Bohuslav Martinu came from the small town of Policka, on the Czech-Moravian border, but received his early musical education in Prague, where he also played second violin in the Czech Philharmonic. A government scholarship enabled him to move to Paris in the early 1920s to study with Roussel. Martinu immersed himself in Parisian musical life, the works of Stravinsky and the Jazz scene proving two considerable influences on his own compositions. His Sextet for Wind and Piano is considered one of his most successful Jazz-inspired pieces and, although an early work, demonstrates the natural melodic style so typical of his later works.

REVIEW:

Reicha’s Quintet pairs different combinations of instruments together with delightful felicity, and the bubbly horn writing is a constant delight. It’s a well-paced reading, too, coming in at 28 minutes. The Orsino Ensemble’s performance of Janáček’s Mládi is crisp and tight and I especially appreciated Walker’s pipy and lithe piccolo playing.

The church acoustic has been well judged and there’s no sense of billowy or unfocused sound, rather a warm, uncloying well-cushioned directness. There isn’t – or, at least, I’ve not been able to find – an exact competitor to this disc so the excellence of the performances stands in the Chandos team’s favor as does the adventurous repertoire. Carping critics like me may suggest alternatives in individual works but overall this is a highly effective disc.

-- MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

The Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia was founded in 1965 by Anshel Brusilow, then concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Brusilow, who studied conducting and played under Pierre Monteux, George Szell and Eugene Ormandy, auditioned more than 1,000 musicians for the 36 full-time positions and conducted the ensemble from 1966 until 1968, when it was disbanded for want of adequate philanthropic support in the city for a second orchestra. But over the course of two-and-a-half 34-week seasons it had already performed more than 200 concerts and made six albums for RCA Victor.

Sony Classical is now issuing all these LP recordings by the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia on CD for the first time. The original LP releases were praised by High Fidelity, which called the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia “an orchestra of rare quality”. Reviewing its début release, Brahms’s D major Serenade, the US classical music magazine opined: “Brusilow could hardly have chosen a better work to show off the capabilities of his new orchestra – every first-chair woodwind and brass player has his chance to shine (and each does shine, brilliantly).” The Brahms was followed by a series of choice couplings: Tchaikovsky’s “Mozartiana” Suite with Arensky’s Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky (“Brusilow is thoroughly at home in this literature, and his players respond beautifully to his direction” – High Fidelity); symphonies by Haydn and Cherubini; a French programme of Ravel, Ibert and Françaix (“Perhaps a reflection of the Monteux influence … this record … carries true stylistic conviction in matters of phrasing, texture, and timbre” – High Fidelity); and Richard Strauss’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme as well as Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade.

The orchestra also premièred and recorded a new sacred choral work by Richard Yardumian, the Philadelphia-based composer championed by Eugene Ormandy. Come, Creator Spirit for mezzo-soprano, chorus (or congregation) and orchestra was the first mass setting by an established American composer in the English vernacular following the Vatican Council’s 1963 decision. The work was lauded for its integrity, spiritual fervor, and power to communicate the essence of devotion in all its nuances from praise to supplication.

This is the first of two volumes of George Walker’s complete piano works, both featuring performances by Alexandre Dossin. The three sonatas heard here offer compelling contrasts. Sonata No. 1 (rev. 1991) is his longest and utilises folk tunes, No. 2 is darker and unified by tonal relationships, while No. 3 (rev. 1996) displays contrapuntal mastery and translucent elements. The album opens with the serene and majestic Prelude and Caprice, while both Spatials and Spektra are atonal. Bauble is heard in a world premiere recording.

REVIEW:

Judging by the compositions on this album, his piano music is communicative, colorful, expressive and, above all, characteristic. As a student of Rudolf Serkin, he was himself an outstanding pianist with an impressive career in Europe and the United States. This may have been conducive to his talent as a composer. 

Pianist Alexandre Dossin shows himself to be an accomplished interpreter, making Walker’s tonal language his own with his flexible and sensitive playing.

-- Pizzicato

What would singing be without words? When you combine wonderful poetry with exquisite music, the result is magical. In a rare break from the sacred collections they are famed for, this album from The Sixteen features a whole program of secular music devoted to English partsongs. From Stanford’s cycle of Eight Partsongs based on the sparing yet infectious poetry of Mary Elizabeth Coleridge to Bridges’ lyrically descriptive writing in Finzi’s Seven Poems of Robert Bridges and Imogen Holst’s six idyllic partsongs Welcome Joy and Welcome Sorrow using verses by John Keats, each setting captures the mood of the poem brilliantly.

The central thread linking all the works featured in this recording is their assimilation of various elements of Jewish music, whether directly stemming from Chassidic folk traditions, or relating to material directly associated with religious worship. Each composer responds to this music in different ways, attempting in varying degrees to integrate it within the structural conventions of a Western European musical mainstream. By doing so, the music projects a multitude of emotions and feelings.

“There is not enough music which highlights and celebrates the diverse background of composers and the fact that this album focuses on Jewish musical traditions makes it a hugely important progression in how the classical music industry is moving into a more culturally representative industry.” -- Jocelyn Lightfoot, Managing Director of the LCO

After many acclaimed releases on BIS, most recently ‘Sounds and Sweet Airs – A Shakespeare Songbook’ (BIS-2653), Carolyn Sampson’s latest recital with Joseph Middleton lives up to its name: it is an eloquent testimony to the English soprano’s love of her art. This programme artfully blends well-known and lesser-known lieder by German and Austrian masters such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf with French songs by Gounod, Poulenc and Franck, as well as works by Anglo-Saxon composers such as Hubert Parry, Samuel Barber and Ivor Gurney. Female composers are not forgotten, with rarely-performed songs by Rita Strohl based on slightly risqué poems by Pierre Louÿs, music by Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Kaija Saariaho – who has recently passed away – and Deborah Pritchard, whose song presented here was composed especially for Sampson. And while Leonard Bernstein’s comically cheeky song ‘I hate music’, appears to be a call not to let music take itself too seriously, Errollyn Wallen’s ‘Peace on Earth’, which concludes the album, invokes calm and encourages us to find peace, a message that seems more relevant today than ever.

The performers write: ‘Selecting the repertoire for our album Path to the Moon, we wanted to explore a number of possibilities for binding together a programme. To place different works alongside one another is a wonderful way of bringing out new and unusual qualities in each piece. William T. Horton’s fantastic image The Path to the Moon immediately inspired a flurry of ideas, including works on the subjects of both night and the moon, as well as pieces which invoke the exploratory nature of humankind’s voyage to the moon. Britten wrote his Sonata for Cello and Piano only two years after the first object made by humans had touched the surface of the moon, in 1959. Humans throughout history and from all cultures have been drawn to and taken inspiration from the moon and we have tried to reflect this in our eclectic choice of song repertoire: from Toru Takemitsu to Nina Simone and from Lili Boulanger to Florence Price. As we hope you will hear on this album, Walker’s Cello Sonata rings with echoes of the sound-worlds of blues and jazz and is infused with a beautiful lyricism. We really believe that Walker’s Cello Sonata deserves to become a staple of the chamber music repertoire and are absolutely thrilled to offer you a recording of it in the context of our own exploration of a path to the moon.’

Franco Alfano possessed an innate melodic facility combined with a talent for unexpected timbres. From the neo-Classical Divertimento to the noirish post-war Nenia, the lightness of touch of Amour… Amour… to the impressionistic Una danza and luxuriously orchestrated Suite romantica, each work reveals a different aspect of this multifaceted composer. This release of world premiere recordings features the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano conducted by Giuseppe Grazioli who makes his Naxos début.

REVIEW:

Franco Alfano (1875–1954) remains a marginal figure in musical life despite a fair degree of coverage in record catalogs. Yet he is a thoroughly original composer, one who possessed an innate melodic gift combined with a talent for unexpected timbres, as can be heard in the lavishly orchestrated Suite romantica. The half-hour work is heard on this album in a very colorful and expressive, excellently performed interpretation.

With Una danza, completely different colors are expressed and one may hear an influence of Debussy. This is followed by Nenia, a somewhat melancholy solo piece for accordion, sensitively played by Davide Vendramin, which finds its counterpart in the Aria of the Divertimento, even if the outer movements are very lively and playful.

The program, pleasing and excellently played, ends with the Waltz Amour… Amour…, originally composed for piano in 1901 and orchestrated in 1928.

-- Pizzicato

For the first time with naïve, the counter-tenor Andreas Scholl joins the Accademia Bizantina and Alessandro Tampieri to present a Neapolitan programme, centred on the Virgin Mary.

Andreas Scholl and the Accademia Bizantina have for several decades enjoyed a successful musical partnership, encompassing the whole Baroque repertoire. As usual, this new album together includes both renowned and less well-known vocal and instrumental pieces. The figure of Mary, which has inspired a huge repertoire, both sacred and profane, runs through this Easter programme of exquisite affliction, virtuosic for both voice and orchestra. “Neapolitan music has a unique melodic vein and a great capacity to communicate emotion profoundly," says Alessandro Tampieri.

Thus, Vivaldi’s iconic Stabat Mater, which the German counter-tenor has enjoyed singing for many years, is placed alongside lesser-known airs from oratorios by Nicola Porpora and Leonardo Vinci, which had the character of the Virgin sung by a castrato. “I endeavour to place humanity before gender," says Andreas Scholl, “and I interpret the role of Mary with the greatest sincerity, without the slightest notion of 'travesty’. Love, despair and pain transcend the notion of gender."

We also find a Salve Regina by Pasquale Anfossi, requiring a particularly participative orchestra, a sonata by Angelo Ragazzi and a violin concerto by Pergolesi, both strongly echoing Pergolesi’s famous Stabat Mater. The solo violin parts are played by Alessandro Tampieri, first violin of the Italian ensemble, who conducts here from his instrument in the purest tradition of the Baroque orchestra.

This second volume of George Walker's piano music joins its predecessor on Naxos 8.559916 (April 2024), together forming a unique complete piano works edition. On this new release, Steinway Artist Alexandre Dossin performs the cyclical Fourth Piano Sonata, which alternates between sections of virtuoso muscularity and lyrical repose, and the Piano Concerto, which integrates expansive Classical forms with inspiration derived from songs by Duke Ellington, something also cleverly hidden in Guido's Hand. The album closes with Walker's passionate Fifth Piano Sonata.

REVIEW:

Dossin makes much of the alternately moody and energetic first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 4. His ability to grasp the long line of Walker’s music is a really big factor in one’s enjoyment of his performances. The pianist's ability to use “space” in his interpretations makes these performances fascinating and ultimately rewarding.

— Art Music Lounge

A surprising and refreshing journey which explores the confines of the repertoire for saxophone and piano, Walking the Dog unites two formidable virtuosos of the contemporary classical scene, the Austrian Andreas Mader and the German Joseph Moog.

Walking the Dog is a multifaceted work, an authentic melting-pot, a surprising witness to the richness of the international musical scene at the beginning of the 20th century. One would then encounter styles as diverse as the mambo, the merengue, the habanera, or the samba, or even fusions of these seemingly separate genres.

Andreas Mader and Joseph Moog open their recital with Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in the inspiring version of the Japanese Jun Nagao. Under their sensitive and incisive fingers, it becomes the spirit of Jazz itself, sparkling and fresh. The Suite of seven pieces adapted from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet pursues it in a trenchant and caustic way: the saxophone, part soprano part tenor, displays all its colours.

This programme also pays tribute to France – a well-deserved homage to the country where Adolf Sax fathered such a great family of instruments. Some works are iconic, such as Debussy's Rhapsody (in a new and impressive version by the saxophonist), Milhaud's Scaramouche, some less known, like the Two Pieces by Lili Boulanger, and we have a genuine rarity, the Five Exotic Dances, a brilliant and exciting suite of miniature compositions from 1961 by Jean Francaix. Andreas Mader and Joseph Moog conclude their journey by a return to the origins – New York – by giving us the little Promenade, under the title "Walking the Dog", that Gershwin composed for the film Shall We Dance with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

This is an absolutely thrilling album which arouses both curiosity and senses, a true revelation from this surprising duo. It is impossible to resist Andreas Mader's voluptuous saxophone interlocked into the golden piano playing of Joseph Moog.

Known more widely as a composer of operas, Franco Alfano also composed a body of chamber music including the three string quartets heard here in world premiere recordings.

String Quartet No. 1 in D major was composed during the First World War between 1914 and 1918. The String Quartet No. 2 in C major In Tre Tempi Collegati, composed in 1925–26, is a smaller scale work than the first, and mostly much more tonal in harmonic structure. The String Quartet No. 3 in G minor was written in 1945 and premiered in Rome on 28 November 1947.

The Quartet comprises violinists Elmira Darvarova and Mary Ann Mumm, violist Craig Mumm and cellist Samuel Magill. The same ensemble can also be heard on the acclaimed Naxos album of Alfano’s Violin Sonata and Piano Quintet (8.572753). Alfano's Cello Sonata and Concerto for Violin, Cello and Piano can be heard on 8.570928.

REVIEW:

The first two quartets date from a period that reached from the Great War to the mid-1920s. The opening of the String Quartet No. 1 is a Vivacissimo but the word stands feebly in the face of the torrid, angular tumult that is the first movement. An implacably melodious and fluently flowing Calmo was written as a memorial to his son who died while serving in the Italian military. It is followed by a Largo-Allegro Deciso. The first particle of this movement is a short extension of the mood of its predecessor but soon says a dry-eyed farewell with writing that is, at first, long on a tungsten determination. This is clearly relished by these four players. The music ends with a noble determination that seems to speak of a will to hold it together.

The tonality of the String Quartet No. 2 is placed under less stress than the First Quartet although it is by no means facile listening. It feels inventive. The second movement is marked ‘like a children’s song’. It is a delicate Thumbelina dance of a blossom. The final ‘danse villageoise’ accelerates all the way through.

The 1940s dealt blows to Alfano: much of his music was destroyed in the bombing of Turin and his wife died in 1943. It comes as little surprise that the writing of the first movement of the Third Quartet pierces a path into melancholy. Misty-eyed happiness is recalled but clearly it is not to be experienced again. Joy of a sort is grasped in the next movement, tipping over into the melodic complexity of the powerful Allegro finale. Alfano’s final String Quartet had a Rome premiere in 1947.

The CD’s notes could hardly be more needful – and incidentally meeting that need – when the music is otherwise unknown to all but a few. They are by the disc’s cellist, Samuel Magill. The performances are wondrously fervent, hot-house products. The sound is at your throat, heated and upon you with tiger-like ferocity.

-- MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)