Gerald Reynolds writes: "This edition marks the first publication of the Röntgen's Sonata in C-sharp Minor (1928). I was first introduced to the work while visiting the composer's grandson Jurriaan Röntgen in Amsterdam during the summer of 2015, at which time Mr. Röntgen generously gave me a recording of the work. I was immediately taken with the piece and resolved to find the score, record and edit it with the hope of bringing it to the wider attention of pianists and piano aficionados with a new publication of it, through my relationship with Nimbus Publishing, UK. Previously, the Sonata in C-sharp minor (1928) existed in manuscript form in three versions designated as A, B (catalogue # 107/062B also with the date 14 Dec '28 in pencil on the title page) and C (catalogue # 107/062C - no date). All originals are located in the Röntgen archives at the Nederlands Muziek Instituut, Den Haag, The Netherlands."

Wilhelm Stenhammar’s Serenade is unquestionably an orchestral masterpiece, one of two that he wrote (the other being the Second Symphony), and this remains its finest recording. Järvi remade the work for DG, and very well too, with this same orchestra, but as is so often the case the second effort doesn’t quite measure up to the initial outing. In the first place, this performance includes the “Reverenza” movement that Stenhammar later deleted. It’s a charming minuet, and since it’s followed by the Canzonetta, a slow waltz, it’s easy to understand why he decided, however reluctantly, to leave it out. I’m not entirely sure it fits here as the second movement–that means a lot of slow music between the opening Overture and the Scherzo–but it’s still good to have and you can always just skip it if the result turns out to be boring in your opinion.

Second, Järvi offers the most exciting and rambunctious performance of the Scherzo yet recorded. This movement really can and should be a virtuoso extravaganza, and here it has a huge impact, assisted in no small degree by some of the best recorded sound that BIS ever managed in Gothenburg. The rich bass, wide dynamic range, and superb balances permit Järvi and his players to let it rip in thrilling fashion. Add to that a lovely, flowing Notturno and a meaty, muscular finale and the result is one of the glories of the BIS catalog. The Serenade has been lucky on disc, and has received a striking number of fine recordings, but this is the one to own to get to know the work.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

After coming to prominence as resident organist of the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Iveta Apkalna has most recently been to the Far East, where in 2018 she inaugurated Asia's largest concert organ in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. She has now recorded her new album on the organ at the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying). It is an impressive instrument: Almost 10,000 pipes in over 120 registers, located in a twin organ. On the right-hand half of the stage is the great symphonic organ, which recreates the aesthetic timbre of the French Romantic style. And on the left there is the smaller "echo organ", oriented on the German Baroque repertoire. On this new album, Iveta Apkalna has compiled a programme that unites the two organs by placing the focus on the French Romantic style and making a brief foray to the father of organ music, J.S. Bach.

Rachmaninov, considered by academics to be a late romantic, often draws on Baroque models: an eclecticism of languages. He experiences music as a memory of affection, and in few places, as here, his insatiable Faustian aspiration to 'stop the moment' reaches a similar intensity. Op. 19 breathes a sense of a return to life and the otherworldly cello calls shatter according to a principle of hallucinatory suspension which is already the Rachmaninov of the Symphonic Dances op. 45. Piano Sonata No. 2 in E-flat minor, Op. 36 had a complex gestation, culminating in a 1931 revision in which the Maestro reduced a certain 'pleasant storytelling' in the style of Liszt, moving closer to the neoclassical matrix, but 'Russian-style', of his later works. As an ideal encore, the programme also features the Danse orientale Op. 2, No. 2, the adolescent Sergei's homage to that narrative of exotic landscapes, musical scales infused with chromatic enchantments.

The one hundredth anniversary marking the death of Max Reger (1873-1916) is to be commemorated in 2016. In response to this occasion, OehmsClassics has presented and will continue to present yearly a single four-disc box set of Reger's extensive output of organ music during the years 2013-2016 in a co-production with the Bavarian Broadcasting Company (BR Klassik) in order to pay tribute to this magnificent Bavarian composer. Bernhard Buttmann, director of church music at Nürnberg's St. Sebald cathedral knows and plays the works of Reger to a degree paralleled by few contemporary organists.

Also available on Blu-ray

Giacomo Puccini
La Bohème
from the Palau de les Arts "Reina Sofía", Valencia

Directed by Riccardo Chailly
Staged by Davide Livermore

Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana
Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana
Escola Coral Veus Juntes de Quart de Poblet
Escolania de la Mare de Déu dels Desemparats

Gal James (Mimì), Aquiles Machado (Rodolfo)
Carmen Romeu (Musetta), Massimo Cavalletti (Marcello)
Gianluca Buratto (Colline), Mattia Olivieri (Schaunard)
Matteo Peirone (Benoît)

The musical notes of this Puccini masterpiece provide the starting point and foundation for a new, highly successful collaboration between Riccardo Chailly and Davide Livermore. In their interpretation, there is "no moment, no movement, that goes against the musical meaning" (R. Chailly). The result is an energetic, authentic, and atmospherically strong Bohème, "in which every sacred phrase receives its own orchestral colour, its own dynamic and its own expression." (Corriere della Sera)

Bonus Film (20 min)
“The Making of La Bohème in Valencia”
(Subtitles: Italian, English, German, French)

Picture Format DVD: NTSC 16:9 Sound Formats DVD: Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1, PCM Stereo
Region Code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: Original (Italian), English, German, French, Korean, Japanese
Running Time: 114:13 min
Number of Discs: 1

MAHLER Symphony No. 6 & • Riccardo Chailly, cond; Gewandhaus O • ACCENTUS 20268 (DVD: 86:25 + 18:28)

& Panel discussion with Riccardo Chailly and Reinhold Kubik

A Mahler Sixth in which the Andante movement comes second? And where the last movement has two hammer blows, not the three that Mahler himself included at the premiere)? Well, yes, and those are just two of the things that make Riccardo Chailly’s interpretation of this over-familiar work sound new. Another is the incredibly swift, truly scherzo-like tempo with which Chailly takes the (now) third movement, not at a pace mimicking the first, as usually happens when it comes second.

Some of the mystery is explained in the 18-minute conversation that Chailly holds in the bonus feature. The “wrong” order of the movements (Allegro energico, Andante moderato, Scherzo, and Finale: Sostenuto) is how they appeared in the conductor’s score that was actually published in March 1906. By the time a second score was published in November of the same year, the Scherzo now came second, and this is how it was premiered. In addition, the premiere had three hammer blows in the last movement, not the traditional two; that came later, too. Early in the interview Chailly admitted that he had copiously studied the scores owned by conductor Willem Mengelberg, who had known Mahler and who wrote down all sorts of things, including metronome markings (usually not in Mahler’s symphonies), that he slavishly followed for years. “But now,” Chailly says, “I am no longer such a slave to tradition.” Musicologist Reinhold Kubik of the Mahler Society mentions that when Mengelberg wrote to Alma Mahler about the order of the movements, she said that the Andante came second—and she stuck by that judgment even as late as 1957. Was she wrong? She did mention that he had conducted it that way in a city where he never played this work, but memory is a tricky thing, and the fact that she emphatically insisted that the Andante came second in letters written some 40 years apart should count for something.

Whatever your judgment of these decisions, there is no question that Chailly’s Sixth is simply mind-boggling. The first movement itself is taken at an Allegro that is certainly more energico than I’ve ever heard it before in my life. In a certain sense, this new, brisker tempo rather eliminates the feeling of jackboots marching that most other conductors bring out in it; rather, it sounds like the blind rush of a madman, interrupted by the calmer middle section.

But there is much more to Chailly’s Mahler than just faster tempos. There is a much stronger feeling of organic unity and structure in the music, a more songful legato line in each and every movement, and the playing of the Gewandhaus Orchestra is staggeringly beautiful and dramatically effective. Chailly seats the orchestra the way Mahler himself wanted it: first and second violins split left and right, cellos in the middle right behind them, other instruments spaced out so as to create the balances Mahler so carefully constructed. (Michael Gielen seated his orchestra the same way when he conducted Mahler in Cincinnati during the 1980s.) The “traditional” seating used by most orchestras, Kubik tells us, originated from that used by Leopold Stokowski when he conducted Mahler in America in the early-to-mid 20th century. And in the last movement, which runs 34 minutes, Chailly creates a world-within-a-world. His hammer blows are not just some bangy little hammer on an anvil, but a HUGE wooden mallet that looks like it needed Thor to handle it.

On the podium, Chailly presents the image of an excited schoolboy, jumping up and down, raising his arms and slicing his baton through the air like the drop of a guillotine. Perhaps it is a bit overdone, especially if you are accustomed (as I am) to watching such conductors as Kempe, Böhm, Toscanini, Gielen, and Ormandy conduct, but it doesn’t really seem like an affectation, either. Most of what he does is either in response to the music or in anticipation of how he wants the next attack or the next phrase to go. He is simply emotionally involved in each and every bar of the score, and he wants it just so. Considering the great results he gets, I can’t really find much fault with that. After all, he does ask all the principal wind players to stand up and take a bow at the end.

So often, for me, watching a conductor perform an orchestral concert is a bit like watching paint dry, unless you are a really big fan of conductor X and you want to study the way he moves on the podium, but in this case I found myself completely caught up in watching Chailly and the orchestra because they’re so deeply into what they are doing. In the trailer on this disc for his video of the Fourth Symphony, Chailly mentions that both he and the Gewandhaus Orchestra musicians have come to an understanding of how to best play Mahler: They get involved but always remain in control. “If you let Mahler control you,” he warns, “you’re heading for trouble.” In addition to all this, the high-resolution digital sound is as spectacular as Chailly’s interpretation, capturing the slightest rustle of harp strings and the sound of stays on the oboe with astounding clarity.

Looking at the trailers, there are also DVDs out of Chailly conducting the Second, Fourth, and Eighth Symphonies. The snippets I’ve heard of all of them sound amazing. I recommend looking for all of them, and also awaiting the rest of the series.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Note: This Blu-ray Disc is only playable on Blu-ray Disc players and not compatible with standard DVD players.

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Also available on standard DVD

Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Orchestra
Soloists: Magdalena Kožená and Christian Gerhaher

Gustav Mahler: Adagio from Symphony No. 10
Twelve Songs from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn"

“Boulez’s Mahler has surely gained a degree of intensity over the years. Rather than sacrificing his legendary intellectual rigor, he has wedded it to a profound visceral understanding of this music.” -- WCLV classical FM

In celebration of the 150th anniversary of Mahler’s birth and just one month short of his own 85th birthday, composer-conductor Pierre Boulez marked his forty-five-year collaboration with the Cleveland Orchestra by directing this very special Mahler-only concert at Ohio’s splendid Severance Hall. Following the Adagio from the unfinished Tenth Symphony, he presented Twelve Songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn with soloists Magdalena Kožená and Christian Gerhaher, both much-sought-after opera and concert singers on the world’s leading stages.

Bonus:
- Interview with Pierre Boulez

Picture format: 1080i Full-HD
Sound format: PCM Stereo / DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Running time: 88 mins
No. of Discs: 1 (BD 25)

R E V I E W:

The performances heard on this video are identical to the program released on CD by DG and reviewed by me in Fanfare 34:4. It therefore behooves me to suggest that the only reason to acquire the video is the dramatic difference in the respective sound productions.

The beautiful interior of Severance Hall, with its Art Deco accents, makes a very pleasant backdrop indeed. In contrast to the CD, the program starts with the Adagio from the 10th Symphony. The performance, a very good one, is greatly improved in its surround-sound version, especially on Blu-ray. It must be said, though, that watching Boulez with his minimal gestures and dour expression is not terribly exciting.

The occasional clever use of split screen provides a discrete frame each for the singer’s and conductor’s faces, though in this case the contrast between the animated vocalists and the stone face of the conductor is somewhat unnerving. As I wrote in my review of the CD, this is not my ideal version of this program, though Magdalena Kožená can hold her own with the best of the competition. Christian Gerhaher is a fine baritone but is not as dramatically convincing and lacks the heft of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau or Thomas Hampson, two of my preferences for the male voice. Of the two singers, Kožená is more fun to watch, too, as her facial expressions bring character to her songs.

The bonus interview program provides Boulez’s thoughts on Mahler’s music and the specific program performed in Cleveland, his observations on the orchestra and its hall, the future of classical music, and some personal observations. The questions appear written on the screen (typos and all), and then Boulez is shown answering. The interview can be heard in English, German, and French. Also included (from the Severance Hall stage) is a short tribute to the conductor on his 85 birthday with Franz Welser-Möst and the management of the Cleveland Orchesta, which includes an audience-particapatory sing-along.

FANFARE: Christopher Abbot

• Hungarian violinist of Orsolya Korcsolán presents three “Gold” composers, a project she's always desired to see come to fruition. • The Rubin Goldmark work, “Plaintive Air”, is a world premier recording. • Audiences around the world have been captivated since her debut in New York's Paul Hall by her technical command, warm sound combine and elegant stage presence. In addition to performing and presenting lectures, Ms. Korcsolán's also completing her PhD at the Budapest University of Jewish Studies.

This new release is the third installment in the successful ongoing Mahler cycle by Adam Fischer and the Duesseldorfer Symphoniker. Adam Fischer writes in his booklet notes: “I am delighted to perform and record the complete symphonies of Gustav Mahler with the Dusseldorfer Symphoniker. The result, we hope, should be something special: a rendition that stems from an active collaboration in which we mutually inspire one another. This should not be “my” Mahler, but “our” Mahler… Gustav Mahler premiered his First Symphony at the age of 29. For personal reasons I feel a close bond with that 29-year-old Musical Director of the Hungarian State Opera. 120 years later, I was named General Music Director of the same opera house. We both hastily abandoned the institution after 2 ½ years. I would still like to relate a personal reminiscence of one of the performances of “my” First Symphony. The First Symphony was the first occasion I ever heard music by Mahler live on stage: in Vienna when I was nineteen years old, and the experience marked me for life.”