Arnold Schoenberg founded the Society for Private Musical Performances in 1918 to perform contemporary music from "Mahler to the present". Mahler had been an early supporter of Schoenberg's music, and Schoenberg repaid the favor by arranging Mahler's orchestral works for chamber ensemble and including them at the society's concerts. The colorful Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen are given a feel of great intimacy in this form, while the lighter scoring of Das Lied von der Erde has the advantage of clarifying instrumental textures, its magical effects capturing "the finite nature of earthly things".

Korngold’s breathtaking precocity is everywhere in evidence in these two chamber masterpieces. The Piano Trio was composed when he was just twelve years old but its symphonic breadth and brilliantly demanding piano writing reveal myriad tonal colors and a mischievous reinvention of conventional Viennese form. Audacious yet rooted in lyricism, the String Sextet was written almost five years later and possesses memorable themes as well as a refined, theatrical intimacy.

Spectrum Concerts Berlin is one of Germany’s most significant voices in the world of chamber music and has specialized for Naxos in the music of expatriate German/Austrian composers. Their recording of Schulhoff’s String Sextet (8.573525) was a MusicWeb International ‘Recording of the Month’ in December2016: ‘This is sometimes quite difficult music... [But] it is given a terrific performance here by a group of string players’.

Sergei Rachmaninov was one of the twentieth century’s outstanding pianists, but the large body of purely orchestral music he composed is no less an expression of his musical character. His great strength was that he managed to preserve intact a vision he had discovered very early in life. This contemporary of Schoenberg, Scriabin, Ravel and Ives was unconcerned with musical fashions and had no wish to be a pioneer. Instead, and over a period of half a century he refined and deepened a language which derived naturally from his late-nineteenth-century Russian background.

With this four-disc box set, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui present a comprehensive collection of Rachmaninov’s music for orchestra – from the Scherzo in D minor, his first surviving piece for orchestra, completed just before his fifteenth birthday to the canonical works: the Symphonies and the Symphonic Dances. The recordings were made between 2008 and 2015, with the three symphonies (previously released on separate albums) described as ‘eine formidable Gesamteinspielung’ on the website Pizzicato. But there is much more to Rachmaninov’s orchestral music besides the symphonies, and this box offers the listener opportunity to explore the young composer’s fascination with Gypsy themes (in the excerpts from the opera Aleko and Capriccio bohemien) as well as his lifelong preoccupation with death, in the form of the four notes of the Dies irae plainchant motif. This is heard again and again in Rachmaninov’s music, up until his very last work, the Symphonic Dances, where, at the very end of the third and final dance, this symbol of death is finally laid to rest.

REVIEWS:

It would be difficult to imagine a more compelling or indeed idiomatic account of the First Symphony than Shui’s...this is a first-rate set, with sound to match.

-- HiFi (UK)

Left unfinished at the death of the composer, Gustav Mahler's Tenth Symphony has exerted an enormous fascination on musicologists as well as musicians – a kind of Holy Grail of 20th-century music. Recognized as an intensely personal work, it was initially consigned to respectful oblivion, but over the years, Alma Mahler, the composer’s widow, released more and more of Mahler’s sketches for publication, and gradually it became clear that he had in fact bequeathed an entire five-movement symphony in short score (i.e. written on three or four staves). Of this, nearly half had reached the stage of a draft orchestration, while the rest contained indications of the intended instrumentation. Over the years a number of different completions or performing versions of ‘the Tenth’ have seen the light of day. One of the most often performed and recorded of these is that by Deryck Cooke. Cooke himself insisted that his edition was not a ‘completion’ of the work, but rather a functional presentation of the materials as Mahler left them. Cooke’s performing version of the symphony is the one that Osmo Vanska has chosen to use for the seventh installment in his and the Minnesota Orchestra’s Mahler series, a cycle characterized by an unusual transparency and clarity of sound as well as musical conception.

REVIEW:

From the outset, Vänskä’s handling of the opening Adagio is sublime, its long themes opening up in endless waves thanks to the clean-toned Minnesota strings and the conductor’s perfectly judged balance between purposeful progress and emotional repose. BIS’s engineering is immaculate, simultaneously spacious and detailed, and presented with convincing weight and clarity. The contrast between the pristine pianissimo strings and the moment the Adagiofinally heaves its heart into its mouth is overwhelming.

The first Scherzo is nimble and fleet of foot, Vänskä’s insistence on delicacy over grotesquery tying it neatly to the first movement. Again, incident is brought out with considerable imagination and there’s some superb solo work from the Minnesota principals. This is musical storytelling at its finest.

In Vänskä’s hands the “Purgatorio” movement is a gossamer reflection of the younger composer in the carefree days of the Fourth Symphony upon which the clouds occasionally darken. Building his argument, Vänskä urges the fourth movement second Scherzo along while ensuring plenty of contrasts. “The devil is dancing this with me; madness, seize me and destroy me,” Mahler wrote at the top of this movement, ending with, “You alone know what it means. Ah! Ah! Farewell my lyre! Farewell, farewell, farewell, farewell. Ah! Ah!”.

Linking the two final movements is a dramatic coup. The sudden impact of the muffled drum – inspired by a funeral procession that Mahler and Alma witnessed from the window of their New York hotel room – is heart-stopping, as is the following progression in which the musical spools of Mahler’s life seem to gradually unravel towards that final page where Mahler scribbled, “für dich leben! für dich sterben! Almschi!” (To live for you! To die for you! Almschi!). Over 25 unmissable minutes, Vänskä interweaves the moving with the mercurial in a riveting demonstration of musical storytelling.

As this Minnesota cycle enters the final furlong, this Tenth is a major achievement.

– Limelight (Clive Paget)

Recorded with Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ERSO), under the baton of Mihhail Gerts, Mihkel Poll's new album features the Everest of piano repertoire - Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.3 along with the Concertino by pianist's compatriot, Eduard Tubin. The release follows the album featuring Artur Lemba's Piano Concerto No.1 recorded equally with ERSO under Neeme Jarvi. This is Mihkel Poll's third album released by DUX Records. Born in 1986 in Estonia, Mihkel Poll studied at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre with Prof Ivari Ilja, recently receiving the PhD in Music, and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Prof Ronan O'Hora. He has also attended the masterclasses by prof Eliso Virsaladze at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Italy. Mihkel Poll has won several prizes in important international competitions including 1st prize at the Rina Sala Gallo International Piano Competition in Italy, 1st prize at the Tallinn International Piano Competition in Estonia and 1st prize at the Ferrol International Piano Competition in Spain.