Eivind Groven (1901-70) was an oddity among Norwegian composers. He spent most of his life obsessing about the best chordal structures that would carry the sonority of just intonation into the standard, tempered system of modern tuning, thus reproducing the true sound of folk music more authentically. As with most composers who aren't geniuses and who adopt a restrictive harmonic system, the results have a limited emotional range, but the music is nevertheless curiously compelling: fresh, soulful, and, well, folk-like. Think of a mixture of Vaughan Williams in his pastoral style, but with Copland's feeling for sonority and that "open air" quality to the orchestration. If you like those composers, you're sure to enjoy Groven.


The Hjalarljod Overture was previously released in a collection of Norwegian orchestral favorites, but the remaining items are receiving their first releases by a major label. Groven's First Symphony actually had its premiere in New York. Its four movements show a non-traditional slow-fast-slow-fast approach to form, and have plenty of character otherwise. Of the two remaining works, both based on Norwegian folk dances arranged in single-movement, rhapsodic form (like Bartók's Dance Suite), the first actually borrows from the symphony. Groven apparently spent a good bit of time working out solutions to his harmonization theories by reusing the same material, but the results are sufficiently different to make the outcome interesting and certainly never dull. The performances are very sincere, not to mention well recorded, and are as freshly pointed as the music itself. Curious, quirky, but ultimately very enjoyable!
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Limited orange colored vinyl LP pressing. Sightless, peerless, multi-instrumentalist, Roland's Kirk's 1967 debut for Atlantic is a monster of a live set from '65 featuring pianists Lonnie Liston Smith and Jaki Byard, bassist Major Holley and drummer Charles Crosby- all put to tape in Atlantic Studios NYC. Cut all analog.

Known as a then-young Kirk's more consistent works, 1962's We Free Kings is a solid balance of bop with complimenting soul, backed by two different rhythm sections - one including Hank Jones (piano) and Wendell Marshall (bass), and the other with Richard Wyands (piano) and Art Davis (bass) - while Charlie Persip (drums) maintains throughout. The repertoire is primarily a showcase of Kirk's skill as a composer, though his take on Bird's "Blues For Alice" is not to be missed. Verve Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging.

There is terrific atmosphere to this marvelous seasonal celebration of Praetorius works.

The Sony Vivarte box is a marvellous seasonal celebration heard through the works of the too-neglected German composer Michael Praetorius.

His polychoral ‘In dulci jubilo’ is magnificent here, and his astonishing variety takes us from the showy, echoing duets of ‘Ach mein Herre’ to the tender reverence of ‘Verleih uns Frieden’. Just occasionally the singers are overwhelmed by the busy instruments and by the acoustic (as in ‘Gelobt seist du’), but there is a terrific atmosphere to these performances.

-- Anthony Pryer, BBC Music Magazine

These quintets come from a set of six in a Madrid manuscript with an attribution to Boccherini: they are not in Boccherini’s own catalogue of his works, which doesn’t necessarily exclude their authenticity (he noted in it most of his true chamber music, though not the cello sonatas or the keyboard ones); they sound as if they date from the 1780s, and the presence of an obbligato cello part does of course imply at least some link with him. This is claimed as their world premiere recording.

They are very agreeable and on the whole deftly written pieces, but to my mind don’t quite have the ring of his style: their formal regularity, their sometimes motivic writing (the first movement of the G major work, for example), and the frequent spells of rather routine invention argue against his authorship, as does the three-movement form (he preferred, oddly, two-movement opere piccole or four-movement opere grande), the absence of minuets (a movement type he patently relished) and the presence of three very schematic variation finales (a type he avoided). The compiler of the Boccherini thematic catalogue thought that they had “formulas and turns of style which are characteristic of him”, on reading through the parts, but since he evidently didn’t notice that they were for flute, violin, viola and two cellos (as opposed to flute and string quartet) I am inclined to think the reading-through wasn’t too rigorous.

By Boccherini or not, they make pleasant listening. They don’t demand that special affection for detail or feeling for texture that the most characteristic Boccherini needs, and respond well to these direct, modern performances, neatly phrased, the dialogues gracefully executed. The first cellist, who has several flights into the upper reaches of his instrument, is very assured, and there is also the particular pleasure of Jean-Pierre Rampal’s flute playing, as urbane as ever.

-- Stanley Sadie. Gramophone [8/1998]

You can have too much of a good thing, but Mendelssohn wrote a lot of music that deserves to be better known, and if you’re a hard core Mendelssohnian or are just curious to learn what you’ve been missing, this attractively priced 11-disc set deserves your consideration. The performances of the five standard symphonies with Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic are uniformly fine: very well played, and intelligently paced. Once example that all fans of the composer will appreciate is the ideal tempo that Litton chooses for the coda of the Scottish Symphony (sound clip)–grand but fluid, so that the music never sounds as though it should have stopped a few minutes before it actually does.

The twelve string symphonies, early though they are, contain a great deal of masterful music, and the later ones are in fact quite substantial. This set is both the most complete, as well as on balance the most desirable yet recorded. You get both versions of No. 8 (with and without winds), plus the single movement No. 13, and also the scherzo from the Octet in its string orchestra arrangement (later on in the box). Lev Markiz leads the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in performances that respect the music’s classical roots without sacrificing warmth or beauty of tone. Rhythms are sharp, tempos lively, and the string ensemble consistently well balanced.

There are four discs of concertos here, including Isabelle van Keulen’s excellent original version of the famous E minor Violin Concerto (second sample). Everyone will have favorite performances of this music, or at least the more famous works, but with Markiz once again in charge of the accompaniments, these versions with chamber orchestra are all of a piece. There’s a welcome intimacy between solo(s) and orchestra that makes these recordings quite distinctive and appealing. The solo piano concertos have plenty of sparkle in Brautigam’s hands, while Roland Pöntinen and Love Derwinger play the two double piano concertos with unaffected brilliance.

Some of this music (the lesser known concertos) is not always easy to find in top-knotch performances, so even if you wind up duplicating the standard pieces, this may well be worth considering. With fabulous sonics, you really can’t go wrong at mid to budget price.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com