As Mendelssohn's successor of the Berlin Cathedral, Nicoli composed the Mass in D major, a sacred work well worth discovering and an important contribution to 19th century church music. Consono presents several other choral works which with their varied scorings show the diversity of Nicolai's sacred compositions.

The unique blend of Stephan Winkler's music and the images of the video artist Jesko Marx results in one of the first DualDiscs on the European continent! The DualDisc, an enhancement and improvement over the DVD plus, combines both audio CD and DVD on one disc. "I consider myself successful when I manage, despite my self-criticism, to write or record music that I myself love to hear." (Stephan Winkler) The present CD contains three works in which the diverse stylistic strands of Winkler's music are brought together in a different way each. "Gullinkambi" for 11 wind instruments forms a sort of habitat in which musical "creatures" collide to generate an evolutionary formal process. "Vom Durst nach Dasein" (Of the Thirst for Existence) for viola and instrumental ensemble is devoted to "attachment to the world," with a distancing commentary in the form of a concluding speech: a text by Robert Musil transformed into music. Finally, our CD rendition of the score of "Zigzag", for six saxophones, bursts the bounds of the medium: on the DVD side of this new DualDisc, the sextet unites with images from the video artist Jesko Marx to create "Zigzag: Pi mal R Quadrat" (Zigzag: π ∙ r²)- music which has really been written for DVD.

Learning by doing: In the eighties Stefan Winter volunteered for a record company to learn autodidactically the profession as music producer. At the time a demo tape of the young Steve Coleman arrived, nobody showed any interest. During Stefan Winter's first stay in New York City (1984) he jumped at the opportunity and offered Steve Coleman a record deal. This was the hour of birth of the debut recording with the core musicians of the later named "M-Base Collective" and at the same time of the label JMT (Jazz Music Today). Right after the first record Winter started working with Greg Osby, Cassandra Wilson, Robin Eubanks, Gary Thomas, Gery Allen and many others like Kelvin Bell, Kevin Bruce Harris, Marvin "Smitty" Smith and Terri Lyne Carrington. It is historical certainty that these works were recorded mainly in the eighties, but as a listener one can hardly believe it. Each album offers a new inspiring approach to making music which is still characteristic today. Listen to the "M-Base" not to rest on tradition, but to see these artists experience as a sound basis for the future. This compilation is the second release in the Winter & Winter Jubilee Edition, celebrating the labels' 30th anniversary.

Maybe reviewers fuss too much about couplings, but in this case, with the Prelude a l'apresmidi dun faune these days extending the timings of virtually every Debussy issue, and with nearly two decades separating it from the later Jeux and La boite a joujoux, as well as it not being a ballet—oh, all right: it may have been conceived for the stage, and was choreographed (and vulgarized) by Nijinsky in 1912—surely a more enterprising choice in keeping with the theme would have been the contemporary and unjustly neglected ballet Khamma. With the standard of performance on offer here, that would indeed have formed a cherishable disc. As it happens, Tilson Thomas's Prelude is very fine: richly drawn and, compared to the recent versions from Boulez (DG) and Solti (Decca), traditionally drawn out, long-breathed and languorous. Overloud horns in the fourth bar would seem to forecast fog, not heat-haze; in other respects the balance (from EMI's Abbey Road Studio No. 1) is good, with integrated but focused solo strings, harps and antique cymbals.

"Toy-boxes are really towns in which the toys live like people" wrote Andre Helle who, in 1913, devised the scenario for La boite a joujoux (adding "or perhaps towns are just boxes in which people live like toys"). But Debussy made no attempt at meaningful symbolism; "something to amuse the children—nothing more" he said. In giving life to the wooden figures, and with its prominent role for piano, inevitably one's thoughts turn to Petrushka, far more dramatically effective, but hardly a children's story—well, not a child of 1913 anyway. Tilson Thomas is more artful than Torteher on Chandos: in the first tableau his doll dances her waltz with more look-at-me' allure and grace—Tortelier's rubato is comparatively (perhaps aptly) mechanical—and, after Punch has biffed the little soldier on the nose, an angrier captain pops his head out of the box. On the debit side, a wooden doll surely wouldn't pray as quietly as does the LSO clarinet in the following tableau after the battle (track 4, 4'45": the marking is only piano); the distant shepherd's piping in the third tableau is not really distant at all, and the flutes are too loud at the moment of embrace between the soldier and the doll at the end of the scene. Whilst I'm grumbling, Sony's notes don't include a synopsis—as entertainment, this music, unlike Jeux, is dependent on knowledge of the stage action (Chandos supply a detailed scenario). If forced to make a choice between the two, it would be Tilson Thomas; his is the more polished, confident and stylish account.

Perhaps Debussy was attracted to the idea of a children's ballet in 1913 to cleanse himself from the sins of Nijinsky's staging of his Prelude and Jeux (May 1912 and 1913 respectively). While enthusiastically welcoming Simon Rattle's Jeux (EMI), CH noted that the music's free-born invention was "sacrificed a little in favour of a richer romanticism". It could be argued, too, that Haitink (Philips) achieves his unrivalled clarity and delicacy at the expense of a degree of passion. I happen to feel that both, more successfully than Tilson Thomas, and in their quite different ways, achieve a special fantasy, and that contrejour lighting which Debussy was aiming at in his orchestration to oversimplify, it's a question of ensuring equal prominence for the woodwind. The LSO strings are unsteady in their opening four-bar chord (unusually played here as two plus two), but there's a line of accumulating energy from the main theme at fig. 51 (12'29") through to the climax at fig. 71 (16'23") which is less easy to feel in Rattle's and Haitink's accounts. With a slightly faster basic tempo this Jeux bears out Tilson Thomas's judgement, as he himself put it in GRAMOPHONE in February 1991, in knowing "what to hold on to and what to throw away".

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

The well-known “classical” exception to the canon of ten Wagner works that can be performed on the Green Hill goes back to the master himself: it is of course Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. The most famous recording of one of the rare Bayreuth performances of the symphony is of the legendary concert that reopened the Bayreuth Festival after the war, in 1951, with Wilhelm Furtwangler on the rostrum. That recording was released for the first time, officially and uncut, by Orfeo in association with the Bayreuth Festival in 2008 (C754081). In 1954, Furtwangler conducted the Ninth a second time (ORFEO C851121). Much less well-known and issued here for the first time in a live recording is a performance conducted by Karl Böhm in 1963 to mark the 150th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth and the 80th anniversary of his death. Here we witness the emergence of a new musical generation.

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REVIEW:

While a distinct improvement on previous exhumations which have done the rounds, Orfeo's excellent new transfer from a Bavarian Radio source only serves to clarify how much Gundula Janowitz dominated her colleagues on this occasion, though they were all more seasoned Bayreuth performers. A significant release from an historical point of view.

– Gramophone

Track Listing
1. Well You Needn't
2. These Foolish Things
3. Star Eyes
4. Somewhere Over the Rainbow
5. Pent-up House
6. Blues in the Closet

Personnel: Chet Baker (trumpet); Bobby Jaspar (tenor saxophone, flute); Amadeo Tommasi (piano); Rene Thomas (guitar); Benoit Quersin (bass); Daniel Humair (drums).

Recorded in 1962. Includes liner notes by Ira Gitler.

Digitally remastered by Joe Lopes and Jay Newland (September 1991, BMG Recording Studios, New York, New York).

This is part of the Bluebird Records Masters of Jazz series.

Chet Baker's good looks and somewhat halting delivery made him seem the James Dean of jazz. However, behind the youthful charm and celebrity image of his early years, he was a musician who transcended such sub-genres as "bebop" or "cool." In fact, SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW is testament to the fact that Baker's musical output can't be easily pigeonholed.

On this 1962 release, we hear the legendary trumpeter on uptempo versions of "Blues in the Closet," the little-known but cleverly penned Oscar Pettiford tune, and an inventive version of Thelonious Monk's "Well You Needn't," where Baker slowly builds his solo until he explodes into a deluge of ascending and descending chromatic flourishes. Although Baker was much more than just a ballad player, intimate versions of "These Foolish Things" and the title track, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" add an air of dreaminess to one of Baker's most distinctive albums of the '60s.

This unusual album shows the contemporary trombone in a rich variety of guises – dramatic, lyrical, flirtatious, solemn, capricious and many more – in four recent concertante pieces for trombone and symphonic wind band, demonstrating the striking versatility of the instrument. It’s an international undertaking, too: the soloist is English, the band and conductor American, and the composers American, Danish, Dutch and English, all four writing in a language that is direct and immediate. Brett Baker is viewed internationally as a leading brass performer and educator. One of the most often recorded brass soloists, he is passionate about encouraging composers to write pioneering new repertoire. Brett is Programme Leader for Musical Arts at the University of Salford. He continues to be an ambassador for Michael Rath Brass Instruments and is Principal Trombone of the Black Dyke Band. He is Festival Director of both the Singapore and Thailand Low Brass Festivals and is a Past President of the British Trombone Society.

This new release from Chandos' early music label, Chaconne, focuses on Buxtehude's seven cantatas, collectively known as Membra Jesu nostri. These are among Buxtehude's best-known works, and perfectly exemplify the seventeenth-century preference for musical structures that are broadly symmetrical, but subtly varied in detail. Each of the seven cantatas has roughly the same shape: Biblical passages are set for the whole ensemble and enclose stanzas from the mediaeval poem Rhythmica oratio, which are set as arias for reduced vocal forces and interspersed with instrumental ritornelli.

Buxtehude's Membra Jesu nostri takes the form of a sequence of seven meditations on the crucified body of Jesus, beginning with the feet ('Ad pedes'), followed by the knees ('Ad genua'), the hands ('Ad manus'), the side ('Ad latus'), the breast ('Ad pectus'), the heart ('Ad cor'), and the face ('Ad faciem'). As such, the work is written from the perspective of a penitent kneeling at the foot of the cross and gradually extending his gaze upwards, meditating on each part of the body in turn. The keys chosen for the cantatas seem to have added symbolic meaning. As the gaze rises, they move from flats to sharps, from C minor to E minor, before finally returning to the opening key to produce a beautifully unified cycle. On this release the cantata cycle is complemented by Matthias Weckmann's Kommet her zu mir alle, a setting of the words from St Matthew's Gospel (11: 28 - 30), in which the composer gives the words of Jesus to a virtuoso bass singer with an impressive range of nearly two octaves, a part here performed by Peter Harvey, and provides him with an accompaniment of two violins, three bass viols, and continuo.

The works on this disc are performed by an excellent ensemble of early music specialists. As exclusive artists, The Purcell Quartet is today popularizing the cantatas of Buxtehude in concerts and recordings involving a fabulous quartet of soloists - Emma Kirkby,Michael Chance, Charles Daniels, and Peter Harvey - to which, for the occasion, the group is joined by the soprano Elin Monahan Thomas. The Quartet has also recorded a huge range of music exclusively for Chandos, including works by Purcell, Corelli, Lawes, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Weckmann, Buxtehude, Leclair, Schütz, Couperin, and Biber, to outstanding critical and public acclaim. The early music specialists Fretwork, the viol ensemble, also performs on this recording.

This recording, explain the liner notes, attempts to give the listener an authentic version of what the 13th-century listener heard in a church when this anonymous play was performed, and it succeeds with panache. The combination of Gregorian chant, declamations, and vocal solos, accompanied by lute and instrumental solos, is performed by the Mittelalter-Ensemble der Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with great fervor.
What is especially unexpected and exciting to the listener is that the songs are punctuated by exclamations, cries, and laughter. For example, "Lazarus, amicus noster dormit" starts out with a solo melody on a shawm (or a similar wind instrument), which is then picked up vocally in a repetitive, almost magical fashion, with an echo-laden crescendo. The overlay of sound is mysterious and very evocative. After a soft baritone solo, the melody is recapitulated. Then there is a sudden shriek--it is quite dramatic--and the number finishes. At this point it would have been wonderful to have a libretto of sorts to be able to follow the words closely.
This artistic reconstruction of the Carmina Burana makes more serious chant music available to the listener.

An eminently stylish performance, filled with joy from the first ray of light to the final thanks to the Lord, ranking with the best of period-instrument Creations.

Is there any other work that so consistently inspires its performers as Haydn’s The Creation? One hears performances by amateurs that sparkle with truth, and every professional one seems glorious. This recording is studded with little-known performer names, but that is no handicap. This is a happy, cosy Creation, a conception that might raise some eyebrows; it triumphs because it is spectacularly well performed. Thomas Hengelbrock, music director of the Vienna Volksoper, created the Balthasar-Neumann Choir in 1991 and the Ensemble in 1995, choosing performers with whom he had already enjoyed working. Their repertoire stretches from Monteverdi to the 21st century, but they sound as if they were created just to play and sing Haydn’s masterpiece. The chorus is 8/7/7/6, strings are 6/5/4/4/2 (double basses). This strikes me as just the right size, enabling a balance of power with clarity. The deep, gutsy opening chord of “Chaos” leaves no doubt that the ensemble has enough punch; attacks are Toscanini-crisp, winds are brightly colored, climaxes thunder with clamorous trumpets and hard-struck drums. The chorus is superb.

Soprano Simone Kermes is quite wonderful, her soft, warm tones making Haydn’s high coloratura sound easy and natural, while never stepping out of character or resorting to exaggeration. Her pitch is secure and reliable, her phrasing delightful, her embellishments a joy. She immediately joins my short list of favorite sopranos. In my recall, only Barbara Bonney has sung such a superb Gabriel. Bass Johannes Mannov is in the same league, his ringing voice immensely appealing, his singing impeccable; a single shaky entrance keeps him from perfection. Tenor Steve Davislim is merely excellent. This trio of happy, relaxed seraphim is angelic indeed. Adam and Eve are also fine, if not quite so heavenly. A beautiful, subtly played fortepiano supports the recitatives.

In short, this is an eminently stylish performance, filled with joy from the first ray of light to the final thanks to the Lord. Tempos are never rushed, and the 99-minute total assures that nothing ever drags. The recording is exceptionally natural, sweet and focused during quiet moments and opening up nicely for the climaxes. This ranks with the best of period-instrument Creations.

-- James H. North, FANFARE [3/2004]