Widely regarded as one of China's leading composers, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Zhou Long writes music that is consistently compelling. The Rhyme of Taigu revives the spirit of Chinese court music from the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), drawing on traditional percussion instruments. Symphony 'Humen 1839', co-composed with Chen Yi, vividly commemorates the public burning of over 1000 tons of opium, an event that was to lead to the First Opium War between Great Britain and China. All three works, written in the first decade of the 21st c., receive here their world premiere recordings. Conducting the New Zealand Symphony is the young, fast rising Singapore-born, Russian and American trained Darrell Ang, who has gained widespread attention for his compelling podium authority and authoritative readings of the core symphonic repertoire - especially the great masterpieces by French and Russian composers, in addition to being one of the foremost interpreters of contemporary Asian symphonic music.

Gordon Chin is one of Taiwan’s leading composers, and increasingly honored by commissions and performances from major ensembles in North America, Asia and Europe. Featuring an array of exotic Chinese percussion instruments, Symphony No. 3 ‘Taiwan’ is a dramatically powerful work cast in three movements that explore his native country’s turbulent history. Specific literary quotations from Shakespeare, Blaise Pascal and Samuel Johnson elucidate the expressive moods of the three-movement Cello Concerto No. 1.

With worldwide acclaim and numerous awards, Xu Shuya is one of the leading composers to emerge from the Chinese 'New Wave'. His fascination with his Chinese heritage is eloquently expressed in pieces such as Insolation, inspired by the heroic myth of Kaufu Chasing the Sun, and Yun, which unites the famous 'Purple Bamboo Melody' with symphonic textures and gestures. Cristal au Soleil Couchant expresses the intensity of light and colours at sundown, while Echos du Vieux Champ conjures nostalgic memories of the composer's homeland. Shaped by spiritual concepts and the Tibetan landscape, Nirvana evokes the 'bittersweet pleasure' of 'faint distant melodies, like tunes from heaven'.

Joaquin Turina' songs are little-known today, but not only was he part of an important and influential group of early twentieth-century Spanish composers such as Albeniz, Falla and Granados, he possessed a beautiful and individual compositional style.

Karol Szymanowski' Stabat Mater, set to a Polish translation of the medieval poem, makes extensive use of traditional Polish musical ideas. His setting of the Veni Creator was composed for the opening of the Warsaw Academy of Music, of which he was t.

One of the most important composers of opera and sacred music between Mozart and Rossini, and Donizetti' teacher, Johann Simon Mayr also composed several major oratorios, including David and the Marriage of Tobias. Like Haydn' more famous Il Rito.

If you’re into the guitar, then you’ll lap up every minute.

"Born in Florence, Castelnuovo-Tedesco studied with Pizzetti and was helped in his early career by Alfredo Casella. He met Segovia in 1932 and this inspired him to write his 1st Guitar Concerto, subsequently he wrote nearly 100 works for the instrument. He left Italy in 1939, just before the outbreak of war, and found himself, through the good offices of Jascha Heifetz, for whom he had written his 2nd Violin Concerto in 1931, in Hollywood with a contract from Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer where, over the next fifteen years he wrote over 200 scores. He was also an influential teacher and among his pupils are Jerry Goldsmith, Louis Ballard and John Williams. Castelnuovo-Tedesco is probably best remembered today for his guitar music, especially that 1st Concerto, which has received many recordings, the solo guitar music and a handful of Shakespeare overtures.

The Sonatina Canonica is a pleasant miniature, which fills the time. It’s delightful but without depth. But what else would you want from such a piece? After a short time you don’t really notice that you’re listening to canonic writing, and the mind can simply enjoy the interplay between the instruments.

Les Guitares Bien Tempérées is a much more serious work, by which I mean that it is not light in the way that the Sonatina is light. These pieces are not primarily for entertainment, but there is much music here which is truly enjoyable. I would never have thought that it was possible to get so much variety from two guitars. Castelnuovo-Tedesco fills his pieces with every emotion imaginable, from pathos to, almost, belly laugh (is that an emotion?) There are light and breezy pieces, serious inventions, dance type pieces - very holiday advertisement time - and all this wide variety of invention adds up to a very satisfying and pleasurable whole."

-- Bob Briggs, MusicWeb International

While Max Reger's A minor String Trio and D minor Piano Quartet offer little in the way of truly memorable tunes, their restless harmonic density consistently holds your attention and keeps you guessing. The Aperto players favor the musical equivalent of broad-brush strokes in the Trio by way of frequent dynamic swells and emphatic inflections of phrase. This creates a diverse and intensified tonal palette that wonderfully suits the slow movement's overcast mood and spacious time scale, as well as emphasizing the Allegro con moto finale's frequently unpredictable modulations. Yet the latter movement benefits more from the Manheimmer Quartet members' lighter, suppler bow work and greater expressive economy. Similarly, the Aperto's slower, earthier Scherzo significantly differs from the Mannheimer's brisk, conversational interpretation.

Close-up engineering underlines the big D minor Piano Quartet's symphonic dimensions, as well as creating a kind of aural fatigue that allows little textural variety. Moreover, the ensemble's frequent ritards at cadences (in addition to those that Reger indicates) impedes the outer movements' flow. This does not take anything away from each musician's obvious mastery, to say nothing of the physical and psychic stamina needed to get through any major Reger opus all in one piece. As such, Reger fans will welcome a chance to sample, and perhaps savor, these fascinating, seldom-heard works.

--Jed Distler, ClassisToday.com

BRIDGE Piano Trios: No. 1, “Phantasie”; No. 2. Miniatures: Set 1; Set 2; Set 3 • Ashley Wass (pn); Jack Liebeck (vn); Alexander Chaushian (vc) • NAXOS 8.570792 (72:47)


The half-hour Bridge Second Trio (1929) is one of the best things he ever wrote, some of the very strongest British chamber music of its time, along with Bridge’s own last two quartets. The opening is unforgettably bleak, and a ripe expressionist drama unfolds. It is not as “advanced” as the music Webern and Schoenberg were writing 20 years earlier, yet at the same time it almost prefigures Shostakovich. Sound here is very good, and the playing has great commitment, concentration, and fleetness of foot. But the very stiff competition includes a live 1963 version with Britten, Menuhin, and Gendron, as well as a fine, cheap Helios disc.


Compared to the Trio No. 2, the rest of the CD offers salon music. The “Phantasie” Trio is much like the other Cobbett Prize-winning pieces by various composers, and it sounds faded to my ears, though these players give it everything. The Miniatures are slight character studies in late-19th century style, but they may be the disc’s main selling point for Bridge collectors. The Dussek Trio’s 1995 version is good, but these Naxos players make a strong case for the Miniatures , and the sound is better. This performance of the Second Trio won’t disappoint you either, if you get the Naxos disc for the other repertoire; though if you already have the Lyrita or Helios recordings, rest easy. If you have no Bridge Second Trio, do get the Britten version on BBC, even if you buy none of the other CDs. The new disc is highly recommended to admirers of the composer—two different composers, really, early and late, as this CD vividly demonstrates.


FANFARE: Paul Ingram

BRAHMS Viola Sonatas: op. 78 (trans. Csaba Erdélyi); op. 120/1; op. 120/2 • Roberto Diaz (va); Jeremy Denk (pn) • NAXOS 8.570827 (70:55)


To twist an old saw two ways: Familiarity breeds contempt of the unfamiliar; familiarity breeds comfort. The familiar G-Major piano and violin sonata was transcribed by contemporary violist Csaba Erdélyi for piano and viola, and was transposed to D in keeping with Brahms’s transposition to D for his piano and cello version of this sonata. Erdélyi reasoned that if it works for violin and for cello, then why not in between—for viola. To my ears, this music thus altered by Erdélyi flattens its appeal, ironically by adding a sharp. The problem is the lowered-by-a-fourth pitch, which relegates too much of the piano sound to the “bass-ment,” especially in the Adagio. The viola sonorities are also dulled. The conclusion of the Adagio suffers most where the beauty of the rising and falling piano figure is sharply diminished by the key shift down to B? from the original E?. Here, Erdélyi sharpens the pain, fittingly by deleting a flat. I have not heard Brahms’s cello version, and I might not like that either. ArkivMusic does not list Brahms’s cello transcription separately, but I did find a few cellists listed who have recorded it.


The clarinet is the focal instrument in Brahms’s last four chamber works: the A-Minor Trio (op. 114), the B-Minor Quintet (op. 115), and the two op. 120 sonatas. Clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld was the dedicatee of these four pieces. Brahms recognized that the viola could substitute for the clarinet in the two sonatas, therefore he published the sonatas for clarinet or viola. The clarinet version seems to have been rooted in tradition, but the viola version has recently taken a firm hold, especially with the growth of recorded music. Currently, ArkivMusic lists about 60 clarinet versions and close to 40 viola versions.


Now I confess my secret conversion. After growing up with the clarinet versions and, without ever listening, disdaining the viola versions, when I first heard the viola versions a few years ago, I became a convert (my “con-version”). The viola sound in these sonatas is much more satisfying to me than that of the clarinet, although I love both versions. With that prejudice on the table (or on the page, or on the screen), the opus 120 performances by these two artists are excellent in every respect. As to phrasing, dynamics, tone coloring, tempos—whatever qualities I can muster—these are performances that belong in everyone’s collection.


Jeremy Denk is a pianist of growing reputation, having appeared as soloist with several major orchestras throughout the world. Roberto Diaz is a noted violist. Formerly principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he is now president and CEO of the Curtis Institute of Music. Their contribution to the Brahms opus 120 sonatas is most welcome.


FANFARE: Burton Rothleder

As soon as I saw Bizet: Complete Piano Music listed as a new release on the Naxos website, I realized that I had never before even thought of Georges Bizet in relation to piano compositions or piano music. I listened to the album for the first time with trepidation. Was there a reason his piano works had evaded popularity for so long? Was there a reason that quick checks of the internet revealed only two recorded piano recitals of Bizet prior to this one, neither offering the “complete” works?

Not all of this music is especially memorable, and none of it is profound. But one can safely slot Bizet into the tradition of Moszkowski, Paderewski, Mendelssohn, Gottschalk and others as a composer of admirable, charming little salon miniatures which, one imagines, gave amateurs of the day considerable pleasure and provided the composers with respectable calling-cards at evening parties. Even in this field, I would not credit Bizet with the originality some of those other composers exhibited in their works for piano.

Julia Severus has carefully and cleverly programmed her two discs here. Each begins with lighter fare, progresses through a smart alternation of serious and slight, and ends with one of the L’Arlésienne suites, arranged for piano by the composer. The two nocturnes on CD 1 are reminiscent more of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words than anything by Chopin, and I prefer the lovely cantabile F major to the less-inspired example in D. There are several waltzes bathed in the perfume of the salons of Paris. The C major waltz really is a clever delight with some surprises in store, although the “Grand valse de concert” does not have a main tune nearly as hummable as Moszkowski’s work by the same title. The three Esquisses include a “Ronde turque” which impressed me as sounding quite a lot more authentically Turkish than almost any other western piece bearing that title.

The most dramatic work on CD 1 is Variations chromatiques, the chromatic passages of which serve up high drama and empty virtuosity in equal measure before the piece turns into a rather pedestrian, wandering “happy romantic” piece near the middle. An ominous ending, consciously imitative of Beethoven, barely manages to save it. The four Preludes are refreshing and nicely varied in mood, although they add up to just three minutes’ worth of music. The two Caprices are rather longer and I actually found the first quite interesting in its spicy blend of minor mode, sly attitude and stealthy rhythms. Again, think of Moszkowski, or perhaps even of a Chopin mazurka. Both Caprices sound as if they are just waiting to be orchestrated; by contrast, the first L’Arlésienne suite has been de-orchestrated here, and the beginning of the introduction does sound rather naked. In fact, it sounds like a fugue subject waiting to be put into counterpoint. The rest of the suite goes better; indeed, the minuet and carillons are quite successful as piano pieces.

The second CD opens with the longest work in the set: Chants du Rhin, a series of tone-pictures with titles like “Les rêves” which lasts for a little over twenty minutes. Even this work manages to be cutesy; “La bohémienne” is like a Chopin waltz composed by an inebriate. I think Julia Severus takes the opening movement a bit too quickly, but the others are better - “Les confidences” in particular is a well-voiced song begging for words. The most striking moment of the Magasin des familles comes near the end of the “Méditation réligieuse,” when Bizet caps off the piece with some unexpected, indeed totally out of place, fortissimo chords. Better is the second L’Arlésienne suite, which succeeds as a piano piece all the way through, especially the dance episode in the middle of the Pastorale and the dazzling passagework in the center of the final Farandole.

A few miniatures fill out the remainder of the set, all of them from essentially the same “songs without words” mold. The only Venetian characteristic I can detect in “Venise” is its melancholy mood, something like (one might say, creatively) a city reflecting that its best centuries are behind it. A “Romance sans paroles” is rather sans interest. The surprisingly Latin American “Marine” hints that Julia Severus would probably be a great performer of samba, ragtime and composers like Gershwin and Ernesto Nazareth.

I was surprised to realize that Bizet had even written piano music, so this set counts as a pleasant discovery. That some of the works, particularly the waltz in C, nocturne in F, “Marine”, and a few excerpts from L’Arlésienne, are actually very good makes this an even better surprise. Julia Severus is reliable and sensitive to the music’s lyricism and supplies her own well-written liner-notes, and the recorded sound is warm and close. This piano music is generally not too special - in fact none of it is “special” except maybe the sudden Brazilian turn of “Marine” - but all of it is, at a minimum, rather pretty, and “rather pretty” is a good thing to be. If you are fond of rather pretty piano music, here are two discs full of it waiting to be heard.

– Brian Reinhart, MusicWeb International

Ildebrando Pizzetti was hailed in 1921 by the Musical Times as 'doubtless the greatest musician in Italy today'. Composed in 1918-19, the powerful Violin Sonata opens with a turbulent evocation of war and continues with a prayer for the innocent be.