Two CD set. Fritz Lehmann became conductor of the Händel Festival in Göttingen in 1934, and held numerous conducting posts, the last one in Göttingen (1946-1950). He subsequently was a teacher at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich (from 1953). a consummate conductor, he led notable performances in Oratorio, opera, and symphonic literature, ranging from the Baroque period to the 20th century. He died at age 52 of a heart attack during a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Especially noted for his Bach and Handel interpretations, he made numerous acclaimed Bach cantata recordings for DGG. He left no studio recording of the St. John Passion so we are fortunate that this live performance, with the highly experienced soloists Julius Patzak as the Evangelist and Gerard Souzay as Christ, was taped.

Francis Poulenc reportedly felt uncomfortable writing for piano and strings and had harsh things to say about both the violin and cello sonatas, remarks duly parroted by critics and biographers ever since. And yet the fact remains that they are his most ambitious, lengthiest, and emotionally complex chamber works. As so often happens in these circumstances, it's much easier to regurgitate received opinion than it is to actually listen to the music and take it on its own terms.


Alexandre Tharaud, whose superb pianism enlivened Volume I of this ongoing series, plays this music with a freshness, seriousness, and bigness of gesture that reveals its greatness at every point. In the Violin Sonata, he and his partner Graf Mourja really do make the finale a "Presto tragico" rather than a series of cartoon episodes. Similarly, the four-movement Cello Sonata, Poulenc's largest chamber work, is so strongly projected and sensitively balanced that the composer's reservations simply vanish. The Clarinet Sonata, of course, is "classic" Poulenc: Tharaud and Ronald Van Spaendonck have a ball both with its suavity and its caustic wit. When Poulenc writes "très rude" over the solo part, that's exactly what we get. The recording is extremely vivid: close up, in your face, and a bit dry--ideal for this music. Bring on Volume 3! [4/30/2000]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

REVIEW:

CPO continues to show admirable enthusiasm for issuing the works of Lehár. Der Sterngucker (The Stargazer) was issued in Spring 2003 and now along comes this performance of his first operetta. It is a recording of a large-scale radio broadcast made 25 years ago.

The work was staged as a Christmas piece at Vienna's Carl-Theater in December 1902. Despite poor initial reviews its strong cast managed to achieve a long run for the piece. Incidentally, the conductor of the première was the young composer, Zemlinsky. Der Rastelbinder travelled through Europe and reached America in 1909, but now is largely forgotten.

The plot concerns a Slovak child engagement, with children who find it difficult to get on together when grown up. A Prelude is set 12 years earlier than the main action to provide a vehicle for the audience to be given background information of the childhood betrothal. The Prelude and Acts shift the action from Slovakia to Vienna and then to a Viennese army barracks. The settings allow Lehár plenty of scope to introduce different flavours of music appropriate to the action. In this early operetta, we hear, for the first time, a slow waltz that indicates the distinctive viennese style that was to follow and become a Lehár hallmark, 'Wenn zwei sich lieben'.

Helga Papouschek and Elfie Hobarth sing confidently as Mizzi and Suza and the young tinker boy (uncredited) provides a purity of tone, naïvety and innocence. Both Heinz Zednik (the grown up tinker boy) and Adolph Dallapozza (corporal) are strong tenors, the latter having a particularly high register.

The booklet is provided in German, English and French and contains interesting background notes by Stefan Frey as well as a synopsis for the vocal numbers.

-- MusicWeb International

Night of the Four Moons [is] a typical example of [Crumb's] richly allusive style from that time, with references to Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde and Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony clothing settings of poems by Lorca... it's wonderful to hear again the late Jan DeGaetani's performance of Night of the Four Moons; nobody has sung Crumb's music of that period with more intensity or understanding than she did.

-- Andrew Clements, The Guardian [6/19/2008]
reviewing Night of the Four Moons, previously reissued as part of Bridge 9253


I love Miller's performance of these crazy piano works. He is extremely animated and theatrical amidst the formidable obstacle course that the performer faces in this work. He is called to strum the strings inside the piano, scream, whoop and holler, preparing the strings, etc. In the 4th cut on side 1, the performer is instructed: "serene, desireless, like a Nirvana-trance!" O.K. Miller makes it work. it's really fantastic. I have become quite attached to these performances to the exclusion of all others.

-- WFMU
reviewing Makrokosmos Vol 2 on LP

MAHLER Das Lied von der Erde • Hans Graf, cond; Jane Henschel (mez); Gregory Kunde (tenor); Houston SO • NAXOS 8.572498 (62:46) Live: Houston 11/19–22/2009


Just as I noted with some dismay the relative dearth of recordings of the original version of Das Lied for full orchestra ( Fanfare 35:4), this new CD arrives from Naxos. It’s also encouraging to see an American orchestra and its music director featured on a major label, since new recordings of orchestras in the U.S. increasingly originate from in-house labels like SFS Media and CSO Resound (though the lack of the former necessitated the latter).


Any performance of Das Lied lives or dies by its soloists, and taste in voices is a particularly individual foible. I’ve found that I have no tolerance for the type of ripe, chocolate-thick mezzo or contralto common to many recordings (and that, alas, includes such greats as Maureen Forrester and Kathleen Ferrier). Given those constraints, I find this performance to be one of the best I’ve heard.


Gregory Kunde is described in the bio included in the notes as a bel canto singer, but he proves more than adequate in the Heldentenor demands of “Der Trinklied” (hard to fake in a live concert recording). His sensitivity to the text, however, may be his strongest quality; the reiterations of “dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod” are each sung with a slight diminuendo and a touch of melancholy that are truly heartfelt. His lyrical side is heard to salubrious effect in “Von der Jugend,” while the two styles combine to make “Der Trunkene” a rousing, tipsy delight.


Jane Henschel, the voice of Maria Aegyptiaca for Eliahu Inbal, Simon Rattle, and Bertrand DeBilly in their respective recordings of Mahler’s Eighth, is a fine Mahler interpreter. Her performance of “Der Abschied” will stand up to most of the competition, but I am also taken with her handling of the fast section describing the handsome youths in “Von der Schönheit”: In a manner approaching Sprechstimme , she navigates the treacherous waters with aplomb, then immediately regains the more stately composure of the rest of the narrative. In “Der Einsame” she combines melancholy and resignation with quiet effectiveness.


Hans Graf accompanies with sensitivity and well-gauged tempos that neither drag nor rush; he allows Henschel the breathing room in “Von der Schönheit” while charging “Der Trinklied” with the kind of momentum needed to convey the angst of the narrator. The Houston Symphony plays as to the manner born. I haven’t heard too much Mahler from this source, but on the strength of this recording, I’d like to hear more. The sound production is another sterling effort by Michael Fine, placing the soloists front and center without undue spotlighting, and revealing plenty of inner voice detailing from the orchestra. Altogether, this is a real bargain at reduced price (texts and translation are available on the Naxos website). Highly recommended.


FANFARE: Christopher Abbot


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Time was when Naxos recordings of core repertoire would be considered cheap and cheerful, but hardly designed to compete with the best in the catalogue. That has long since changed, with a growing number of discs that, while still sold at the super-budget price point, are every bit as desirable as established or more expensive performances. Certainly, Antoni Wit’s Mahler Eight must be at or near the top of the list of recommendations for that work, proof that great Mahler recordings don’t all emanate from Vienna, Berlin or Lucerne.
 
The Houston Symphony Orchestra and their Linz-born music director Hans Graf are both unfamiliar to me, as are the soloists, but as I’ve already hinted that’s hardly an issue where this label is concerned. Indeed, listening to a number of more illustrious recordings in preparation for this review I was reminded of just how difficult it is to alight on an ideal – or near ideal – version of this elusive score. Either the mezzo isn’t up to the sustained demands of that long goodbye or the tenor is overstretched by Mahler’s taxing tessitura; and even if the soloists are up to snuff, the articulation and pacing of the music itself may be problematic. And then there’s the recording quality which, while not the key issue, plays an important part in one’s perception of – and response to - this multi-hued score.
 
Of my selected comparisons two – Raymond Leppard on BBC Radio Classics 9120 and Bernard Haitink on Philips 468 182-2 – feature the limpid tones of Dame Janet Baker. The clarity and directness of her vocal style is always pleasing, and while I don’t share Tony Duggan’s out-and-out enthusiasm for Baker/Leppard and the Alfreda Hodgson/Jascha Horenstein version on BBC Legends 4042-2, I like them rather more than my colleague Marc Bridle does. In particular, Baker’s Der Abschied with Leppard – recorded at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1977 – has a high goose-bump count, and while she sings with characteristic commitment for Haitink she lacks the intensity of feeling that makes the Leppard disc so memorable.
 
Kathleen Ferrier for Bruno Walter (Decca 466 576-2) and Christa Ludwig for Otto Klemperer (EMI 5 66892 2) are her main rivals, although Ferrier’s artless, somewhat old-fashioned, delivery doesn’t appeal to me. Heresy, I know, but I’ve often wondered whether Walter’s link to Mahler and Ferrier’s early death have given this recording a lustre it doesn’t always deserve. And among more recent recordings Cornelia Kallisch sounds warm but all-too-often uninvolved on Michael Gielen’s otherwise admirable version (Hänssler 93.269). Of the men, John Mitchinson – for Horenstein and Leppard – struggles with Mahler’s near-falsetto writing, while Haitink’s James King – placed quite far back - is rather more secure, if a little too generalised for my tastes. Walter’s tenor, Julius Patzak, is full-bodied but a trifle staid, heldentenor Siegfried Jerusalem and the agile Fritz Wunderlich – for Gielen and Klemperer respectively – both fresh and virile.
 
How does the Houston recording fare in this mixed company? In Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde Gregory Kunde sounds pleasing enough, although his voice is less appealing under pressure; at first I felt the orchestra was rather backwardly balanced, but it suits the intimate scale of this performance. The real revelation, though, is Graf, whose reading of the score is very impressive indeed, becoming more insightful as the piece unfolds. He can’t quite match Klemperer for sheer amplitude and nuance, but he does find an astonishing lucidity that works especially well in the trembling loveliness of ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’.
 
In that song mezzo Jane Henschel sings most hauntingly of the loneliness and the transience of life, her delivery discreet but always subtly inflected. In many ways she is the antithesis of Baker, who sometimes strives a little too hard for effect, notably in her recording for Haitink. And while Henschel doesn’t efface memories of Ludwig here, I was captivated by her glowing, unforced response to Bethge’s texts, notably Von der Schönheit. I particularly liked her honeyed lower registers, but again it’s Graf’s lightness of touch and natural rhythms that beguile the mind and ear.
 
Kunde may be overstretched as the drunkard but his delivery has a youthful charm that’s entirely apt; that said, Jerusalem and Wunderlich negotiate those treacherous vocal lines with aplomb, their innig moments more finely calibrated. In terms of sonics the Naxos disc may not be as weighty or tactile as Gielen’s, or as atmospheric as Leppard’s, but at least it isn’t as rough and ready as Horenstein’s. As for the much-lauded Philips sound for Haitink, it isn’t nearly as refulgent as I remember it. The EMI recording for Klemperer is big and bold and, in its GROC version at least, hardly shows its age at all.
 
And despite initial caveats about the Naxos soundstage I have to say the convulsive gong shudder at the start of Der Abschied is just electrifying, ushering in half-an-hour of sublime music and even more sublime singing. For me, Ludwig is sans pareil here, a perfect match for Klemperer’s stoicism, but I can assure you Henschel is just as commanding of mood and line. This is an abendrot like no other, the trembling air suffused with the scents of loveliness and decay. The Houstonians really do capture the evanescence of this music very well indeed; as for Graf, he maintains a sensible and steady pulse throughout, achieving a rare blend of poise and penetration as well. Thankfully the audience is very quiet, and there’s no applause at the end to break this deep, deep spell.
 
Is there an ideal recording of Das Lied von der Erde? Probably not, but as the talents of this newcomer are so prodigious and its faults so minor I’d say this one comes pretty close.
 
-- Dan Morgan, MusicWeb International

Jazz tenor saxophonist Bob Graf was an admired player on the modern jazz scene of St. Louis in the 50s. He was a friend to trumpeter Clark Terry, also from St. Louis, and they were both members of Count Basie's small group formed in 1948. Graf joined Woody Herman's band and recorded for Capitol in 1950 and MGM in '51. He also recorded with Chet Baker's big band for Pacific Jazz in '56 and has solos on several tunes. This 1958 recording was the first modern jazz LP to be issued on the Delmar label (later to become Delmark). Quintet date with 5 songs including "Four", "Dear Old Stockholm", "Street of Dreams", "Bernie's Tune" and "Funky Ride".