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.

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.

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)

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.

Wonderland is full of magic and myth. Containing exclusively works commissioned by The King’s Singers across their 55 years, the album celebrates their trademark musical storytelling, with no shortage of comedy. György Ligeti’s six Nonsense Madrigals, each setting playful children’s poetry or extracts from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, provide a musical spine to the album, commemorating 100 years since the composer’s birth in 1923. From just over 50 years ago, the fairytale The Musicians of Bremen (1972) – set to music by the Australian composer and Master of the Queen’s Music Malcolm Williamson – sits alongside Time Piece (1972) by Paul Patterson, which tells an eccentric alternative creation story. These myth-based works have recent companions such as Judith Bingham’s extended work Tricksters (2019), which unearths what could happen if miscreants from different world mythologies could come together for the first time, and Ola Gjeilo’s A Dream within a Dream which questions the very nature of perception and reality. The album also features the legendary Japanese film and game composer Joe Hisaishi’s first ever choral work, I was there (2022), focussing on the cultural memory of tragic events such as 9/11 and the 2011 Japan Earthquake. Themes of hope and positivity, centred on the natural world, emerge in Makiko Kinoshita’s Ashita no uta (Song for tomorrow) (2020) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers’ Alive (2022).

Duarte’s Partita was completed in 1974. It’s a substantial work in four movements, using all original material. As in the Variations on a Theme of Štepan Rak he adopts a four-note motif, which may be heard forwards, backwards, inverted and stretched. Variations on an Italian Folk Song Op. 139 was written in 2000. It draws on the second movement, “Canzona”, of Duarte’s prior Suite piemontese, which was based on a combination of two tunes: Il testamento dell’avvelenato and Re Gilardin. This gentle theme is characterised by simple movements of a step or a fourth. The six variations all begin with this stepwise movement but they quickly gain individual characters. Valse lyrique (2000) is one of the three short dances Duarte wrote late in his career. The second theme, clearly derived from the first, includes some hemiolas as well as combined harmonics and natural notes. The central section features the melody in the bass. Valse en rondeau was written in 1997 for the American guitarist David Starobin. Duarte stated: “I decided to make reference to my origin as a jazz musician and to my interest in early music (the Rondeau form) and to exercise my unshakeable belief in melody.” The origin of the Variations on a Theme of Štepan Rak Op. 100 is unique. In 1984, Rak was staying with Duarte when Vladimir Mikulka performed a lunchtime concert in London. At the end of the concert, Mikulka announced that he was going to perform an unusual encore – a theme, but without variations that had yet to be written. Afterwards he announced that Rak, Koshkin and Duarte should exchange themes with each other to create six new variation works, and he presented Duarte with Rak’s theme on a piece of manuscript paper. Andres Segovia, a supreme Anglophile, married his third wife in Gibraltar (“under the British flag, on Spanish soil”), and their son was born in London. Duarte’s 3 Songs without Words for Carlos Andres were a present to the happy couple. Danza eccentrica (2000) was dedicated to the Italian guitarist Domenico Lafasciano with the note, “Here is your dance. It may not be what you expected, but it’s what I’ve written – not another ‘cloned’ rumba, tango, waltz or whatever, but something with more individual character.” The unexpected aspects include dissonant harmonies, bass notes which move in ¾ against the treble in 6/8 and sections more reminiscent of a hurdy-gurdy. The Italian guitarist Angelo Gilardino wrote to Duarte about his Fantasia and Fugue on Torre Bermeja Op. 30: “…the melodic and rhythmic feeling is of the sort to easily produce the fascination of the public”. The Torre Bermeja in question is the piano piece by Isaac Albeniz, Op. 92 No. 12. Although it carries Op. 62 (1974) on its cover, the little Prelude en arpèges was written in 1954/5 and intended as the first movement of a Harp Suite Op. 18 that was never completed.

With this program spanning nearly a century, from Komitas' Dances written in the mid-1900s to pieces by my father, Gérard Gasparian, composed in the late 1980s, I aimed to highlight both the remarkable diversity of this repertoire and its profound unity. From the minimalist draft of Yerangi to the polyphonic virtuosity of the Capriccio, from the boundless lyricism of Spartacus to the percussive savagery of the Toccata, from the melodious simplicity of the Elegy to the tense chromaticism of the Sonata, one couldn't dream of more contrasting registers. The works on this program, however, all have one thing in common that expresses the true essence of Armenian music: They’re rooted in popular tradition. The very identity of this music – and the reason I feel such a deep, emotional connection to it – lies in the fact that it draws its inspiration from the folk heritage of the Armenian people: its songs, melodies, rhythms, and dances.

John W. Duarte was born in Sheffield, England on 2 October 1919. He started playing the ukulele, but soon moved to the guitar at the age of 15. The advent of guitar phenomenon John Williams, whom Duarte taught for 18 months before the young musician’s entry into the Royal College of Music, London, gave the composer an opportunity to expand his chamber music oeuvre.

The Concertante Quartet Op.22, a substantial work in four movements. In 2021 the composer’s son, Christopher Duarte, discovered some folk songs arranged for guitar and small orchestra among his father’s manuscripts. There is no mention of these arrangements in his list of works and no correspondence relating to their creation, but from the composer’s handwriting these probably date from the mid-late 1950s and may have been written for John Williams to play with fellow RCM students.

Next Market Day, scored for piccolo, snare drum and strings, is an energetic rendering of an Irish love song which Duarte revisited several times. The Coolin of Rùm (or, The Rùm Cuillin), scored for flute, oboe and strings, is a tune from the Isle of Rùm, one of the small islands near the Isle of Skye in the Hebrides. Cuillin is the name for a range of mountains in this area and Duarte may have been alluding to the name of a previous owner of Rùm, Maclean of Duart.

Duarte began work on what became A Tudor Fancy in early 1967. Following A Tudor Fancy, a concerto in all but name. The Concierto alegre Op.101 (1986) is deliberately light in woodwind (2 flutes, one each of the rest), a trumpet, strings, but with a battery of percussion, including two vibraphones. As with A Tudor Fancy, the music proceeds in a variety of ‘conversations’, with the orchestration kept deliberately light when the guitars are playing.

If you’ve seen the Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro”, you’ve seen and heard The Orchestra Now, the exceptional ensemble that appears in the movie’s Tanglewood Music Festival scene. The Orchestra Now (TON), a New York-based graduate-level training orchestra comprised of the most vibrant young musicians from around the globe, was founded by conductor, educator and music historian Leon Botstein, whose insatiable curiosity has resulted in rescuing countless musical works from oblivion. Their first recording for AVIE, “The Lost Generation”, brings together three German-speaking composers who were contemporaries of Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg, but whose music became supressed by historical events of the 20th century.

In November 2022, TON gave the US premiere of Hugo Kauder’s Symphony No. 1, a “splendid” work that “made a splash” (New York Classical Review). The largely self-taught Moravian-born composer had a distinguished career in Vienna until he was forced to flee the Nazis and arrived in New York in 1938. The first of Kauder’s five symphonies was dedicated to Alma Mahler. Whilst his musical language is rooted in the tradition of Johannes Brahms and Gustav Mahler, he forged an individual voice with his ease and flexibility of harmonic and metrical shifts.

German-born, Austrian composer Hans Erich Apostel studied with Schoenberg and Berg. His works incorporated his mentors’ expressionism and 12-tone methods in equal measure. The Nazis deemed Apostel’s music “degenerate”, but he lived out his life in Vienna until his death in 1972. His Variations on a theme by Haydn, performed frequently in the mid-20th century, is an homage to the second movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 103, the “Drum Roll, which itself comprises variations on a theme.

Adolf Busch, one of the most celebrated violinists and chamber musicians of the 20th century, was also a prolific composer. A staunch opponent of Nazism, he left his native Germany, arriving first in Switzerland and eventually the United States in 1939. A late Romantic compositional style imbues his Variations on an Original Theme, originally for piano four hands and presented to his wife as a Christmas present in 1944. Busch’s longtime chamber music partner and son-in-law, the pianist Rudolf Serkin, frequently performed the work with his son Peter, who made this orchestration of his grandfather’s composition, in a familial labor of love.

The singing quality of string instruments ties together "SONGS FOR A NEW CENTURY," a program featuring both world premiere recordings of new music commissioned for the artists and world premiere recordings of masterpieces by Mendelssohn.

The program opens with a set of Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, beginning with the Opus 109 written by the composer for cello and piano. It continues with a set of arrangements for cello and piano, some recorded for the first time, by the 19th-century cellist Alfredo Piatti, a personal friend of Mendelssohn’s upon whose cello Jonathan Miller plays. Gabriela Lena Frank’s Operetta for violin and cello, the composer writes, expands upon Mendelssohn’s concept of the “song without words,” creating opera without words that evokes scenes and characters through singing music for the duo of violin (Lucia Lin) and cello. Scott Wheeler’s second cello sonata, Songs Without Words, was inspired by Miller’s singing cello tone. Finally, Judith Weir’s Three Chorales for cello and piano meditate on religious poetry, departing from hymn texts –– and in the third Chorale, a melody from Hildegard of Bingen –– in a triptych that evokes the human condition.

"Operetta," "Three Chorales," and "Cello Sonata #2: Songs Without Words" were commissioned by Jonathan Miller and Diane Fassino for the Boston Artists Ensemble.

The inspiration for Hugo Distler’s gem of a Christmas narrative can be found in the German-language protestant sacred music of the early baroque era, especially the music of Heinrich Schütz. Drawing on Schütz’s example, Distler composed his Christmas story exclusively for vocalists – soloists and a 4-8-voiced ensemble – in what is, in Distler’s own words, described as an “Oratorium mit kammermusikalishem Charakter." We also hear parts of the beautiful choral Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, which appears seven times during the course of the narrative. – every time in a new harmonic colour. The story of Hugo Distler’s life is a tragic one. Born in Nuremburg in 1908, he would go on to teach at the School for Church Music in Spandau before being appointed professor of church music in Stuttgart in 1940. Distler, who was a deeply religious man, has been recognized as a forerunner of the New German Church Music, an important musical movement which developed in the 1930s. The Nazis stigmatized Distler’s compositions as “degenerate art”, and when he received his conscription papers, he took his life. Sadly, Distler’s music is seldom performed outside of Germany even to this day. Hailed by Gramophone as “a choir worth listening to for their beautiful singing, which can deliver performances of pure, natural eloquence,” the 16 voices of the award-winning vocal ensemble Concert Clemens, founded by conductor Carsten Seyer-Hansen in 1997, has established itself as one of the leading vocal ensembles in Scandinavia. Their stylistic versatility has been seen in numerous collaborations exploring the connections between jazz and classical music as well as note-perfect interpretations of standard repertoire. The evangelist, tenor Adam Riis, is one of Denmark’s leading voices. Recorded in the DXD format by the Danish “Wizard of Sound”, Preben Iwan, in the resonant sonics of Skt. Markus Kirken, Århus.

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.

Following her lyrical and witty complete recording of Mozart’s Keyboard Sonatas, issued by naïve in March 2023, Yeol Eum Son invites Svetlin Roussev to join her in enfolding himself in the enticingly subtle harmonic intricacies of Germanic post- Romanticism.

For their second recital as a duo, the Bulgarian violinist and the Korean pianist follow the course taken by works written over a period of slightly more than half a century by composers or famous performers upon whom Richard Wagner exercised crucial influence. They take on almost every genre – cinema, opera, chamber music, transcription – treating it in the lyrical, large-scale manner of the Bayreuth master. During their unexpected, fascinating journey, Svetlin Roussev and Yeol Eum Son chart a variety of pathways, from Waxman to Strauss.

So many different worlds! To begin, two figures who made their indelible mark on the music written for Hollywood. Of German-Polish origins, in 1946 Franz Waxman (Rebecca, Sunset Boulevard, A Place in the Sun, Prince Valiant) wrote, at Jascha Heifetz’s request, a paraphrase on themes from Wagner’s Tristan et Isolde, actually an adaptation of a section of the score he composed for the film Humoresque (Warner Brothers, 1947). In summary, a manifesto in music of an impossible love – to which, at the end of the disc, an extremely rare transcription one of the better known Wesendonck-Lieder, credited to the great virtuoso Leopold Auer, forms a response.

The programme continues with Erich Wolfgang Korngold, a child prodigy in Vienna during the 1910s. The famed Mariettas Lied – the best-known moment in his opera Die tote Stadt – and the sublime nocturne from his incidental music for Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (the Scene in the Garden) remain as much moments of lyric intensity as truly cinematographic, deliciously intoxicating love scenes. But lovers also know how to frolic, and if already in Korngold they readily do so, the three more light-hearted pieces by Fritz Kreisler will place them in everyday, commonplace scenarios, where laughing reigns.

The keystone of the programme is unarguably the magnificent Sonata for Violin and Piano that Richard Strauss composed in 1887. He was 23 years old, and still heavily influenced by Schumann and Brahms, even Grieg. Svetlin Roussev and Yeol Eum Son make its case with radiant commitment, sensitive to the spirit stirring in the young Richard, then already in love with the soprano Pauline de Ahna, who would become his wife.

Beyond Wagner, this highly original album above all celebrates that moment of falling in love when, overwhelmed, the heart quivers, to the point of being transformed.

By the time of the ‘Ottocento’ (19th century), opera was the dominant force in Italian musical culture, with bel canto composers such as Rossini and Donizetti creating a public appetite for opera that eclipsed achievements by Italy’s musical sons in other genres. Some of these composers who focused their energies instead on instrumental music, swimming against the operatic tide, remained in their native land, while others found a home (or were forced to find one) abroad.

Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909) is one who stayed. A gifted pianist, he bypassed the operatic path and wrote music with a kind of fluent synthesis of Italian lyricism and German, dialectic approach to form that reached an early peak in his Cello Sonata of 1880. Yet Martucci, as a teacher of composition in Bologna and then Naples, urged the teenaged Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) to study abroad.

Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) is among the few composers in this set whose entire career centered in Italy, and he wrote a substantial body of instrumental music.

Before the war and eventual exile, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) succeeded in reinventing an essentially Romantic model (of both form and harmony) for his own time with his Cello Sonata Op. 50 of 1928.

From seven years earlier, Ildebrando Pizzetti’s Sonata of 1921 is a more gloomy, even tortured affair. The Cello Sonata of Francesco Cilea (1866-1950), while unmistakably cast as an ‘operatic’ work from its opening solo, features a protagonist scarcely burdened by the existential angst to be found in comparable works from northern Europe.

Like Cilea, Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (1876–1948) is known for his operas but unlike Cilea’s cello sonata, Wolf-Ferrari’s Op. 30 dates from the final three years of his life and belongs to a mature output of instrumental music.

Virtuoso cellists Alfredo Piatti (1822-1901) produced many trifles and showpieces to display his artistry to his adoring public in London. He was most proud of the set of six sonatas included in this set. In 1844 he made his first appearance in the English capital and soon settled there, playing both as a soloist and in one of the first celebrity string quartets.

The Cello Sonata by Mario Pilati (1903-1938) is another product of the fast-moving 1920s, formed in a Romantic tradition but inflected – like the music of Casella, Pizzetti, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco – by contemporary trends in impressionism and futurism.

From the next generation of composers, the Cello Sonata composed in 1948 by Eliodoro Sollim (1926-2000) fluently incorporates the kind of modal harmonies and cross-rhythms adopted by the likes of Bartók and Janáček from the folk traditions of their own cultures.

For his third album for Chandos, the saxophonist Marco Albonetti turns to the rich tradition of film music from his native Italy. Marco writes: ‘Film music has been described as the defining new genre of classical music in the twentieth century. It engages both the ear and the heart of an audience. The masterpieces composed by two Italian film composers in particular, Nino Rota and Ennio Morricone, embody the cultural identity of most Italians and they have become recognised and loved by audiences around the world. The film themes on this album capture the magical combination of romance, melancholy, friendship, and violence. The notes vibrate with such passion that the compositions continue to engage the listener, bringing the work of these great Italian composers to life wherever and whenever it is performed.

Film music is meant to be an accompaniment to the action on screen. However, the music of the great Italian composers is so powerful and enduring that these melodies can stand on their own merit, transporting us to another time and place, evoking memories of past experiences or introducing us to new worlds, places which we can only see in our imagination. This album is a tribute to the Italian spirit, to my spirit, expressed through a musical journey: it offers Postcards from Italy.’

Celebrating the sesquicentenary of Charles Ives’ birth, New England-based pianist and Ives scholar nonpareil Donald Berman releases a recording of the composer’s “Concord Sonata” using his own newly prepared edition which reveals fresh insights into the iconic work. Berman’s immersion into Ives’ sound world began under the tutelage of pianist John Kirkpatrick who gave the New York premiere of the “Concord Sonata” in 1939. Throughout many years of study and reflection, Berman discovered numerous notes and alterations that Ives made within the Concord’s manuscript pages, each one “a step toward realising his vision for a three-dimensional auditory experience.” Berman concluded that the first movement of the Concord, as Ives imagined it, is quite different than today’s commonly accepted version; his new edition includes two pages worth of material, masterfully recorded here for the first time.

The album opens with the elegiac “The St. Gaudens (Black March)”, referring to the eponymous sculpture in the Boston Common that depicts the Massachusetts 54th, the first Union army regiment of African American soldiers, that is known widely in its orchestral version as the first movement of Ives’ Three Places in New England.