Aaron Copland wrote his rarely-heard ballet Hear Ye! Hear Ye! for Ruth Page, the dancer and choreographer who was to become the Grande Dame of American ballet. Its scenario is a murder in a nightclub and the ensuing trial in a Chicago courtroom. Copland infused the score with the spirit of his jazz-influenced pieces, controversially distorting part of the National Anthem, and infiltrating music from some of his earlier works. In complete contrast, Appalachian Spring is his most famous work, a true American masterpiece founded on transfigured dance tunes and song melodies.

In that same year - the last before the opening of the new "Great" Festspielhaus - Leonard Bernstein came as a guest with the New York Philharmonic, of which he was chief conductor. Thus one of the most impressive musical personalities of the age arrived together with one of the American orchestras richest in tradition. Bernstein's own work The Age of Anxiety, his Second Symphony for Piano and Orchestra (with Seymour Lipkin as piano soloist, negotiating agilely a musical language that ranged from Romanticism to jazz), impressed the public as much as did Dmitri Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, in which Bernstein realized brilliantly its grandiose climaxes and plumbed its musical depths.

In 1906, Nathan “Tossy” Spivakovsky was born in Odessa. A child prodigy, with his elder brother Jascha, a pianist, they toured Europe as the Spivakovsky Duo. At only 18, Spivakovsky was spotted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, and he became the youngest concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic. In 1940, Spivakovsky emigrated to the U.S and made his New York debut at Town Hall. Two years later he became concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski. Obviously he was one of the top violinists of the Twentieth Century. Since childhood, Spivakovsky had a special interest in the way Bach repertoire for solo violin should be played. Although most violinists arpeggiate chords, Spivakovsky had become convinced early on that this was not what Bach intended. Upon realizing that Bach wanted certain chords in his solo violin works played without arpeggiation, he wrote an article entitled "Polyphony in Bach’s Works for solo Violin," published in 1967 in The Music Review, Vol. 28, No. 4., in which he provided the evidence for Bach’s preference. He later acquired a curved Vega Bach Bow from Knud Vestergaard, of Denmark, which enabled him to perform with increased ease, sonority and smoothness of tone. The New York Times, describing Spivakovsky's performance of the Bach on April 1, 1963, wrote: "Tossy Spivakovsky demonstrated again his impressive artistry, and his use of the curved bow gave his performances unusual interest. ... The violinist's use of the curved bow had its most persuasive results in the great Chaconne." This set contains a distinctive performance: Spivakovsky’s interpretation of the Bach Chaconne using the VEGA BACH-Bow had never been released or available on record until now. We are therefore pleased to present here a brilliant live broadcast by Radio Stockholm from 1969. His playing is simply magnificent and attests to Spivakovsky’s genius as a magical new dimension is added to Bach’s violin music.

REVIEW:

Nielsen was a high energy composer, perfectly suited to a “muscle” orchestra like the New York Philharmonic. Listening to these two performance we are reminded how the world of classical recordings has been taken over by orchestras of the second rank–professionally adequate, ambitious, able to fund their own recording programs and often to get released on major labels, but singularly lacking in the sort of corporate virtuosity and ensemble balances at all dynamic levels so tellingly in evidence here. If you like your Nielsen big, bold, and gutsy, then this is the cycle you need to own.

This doesn’t mean that Gilbert and his players are in any way crude. The opening of the Fifth Symphony emerges with gossamer delicacy, and the solo wind playing is as sensitive as one could wish. But the hostile snare drum entrance carries real menace, while the movement’s adagio second half, beautifully spun out by the strings, features the best percussion cadenza since Horenstein, leading to an absolutely apocalyptic climax. Similarly, Gilbert brings thrilling energy to the start of the second movement. The ensuing quick fugue isn’t as swift as some, but the orchestra’s weight of tone, its attention to detail, makes the music unusually vicious, while the race to the closing bars has seldom sounded more exhilarating.

The Sixth Symphony can come off as sort of a bitter, denatured coda to the previous five. Again, without minimizing the work’s etherial moments and often stark instrumental textures, Gilbert and the orchestral put the meat back on the music’s bony skeleton. The climax of the first movement is really terrifying, the Humoresque vividly grotesque. In the Adagio “Proposta seria,” the strings dig into their parts with painful intensity, leaving a finale in which Gilbert ensures that each variation has its own vivid character. The wacky waltz, even in it’s ghostly early stages, seethes with a latent energy that makes sense of the violent eruptions from the brass and bass drum that rip it apart shortly afterwards.

One textural note: these performances seem not to be using the latest Critical Edition of the symphonies–you can tell from the fact that the loud timpani triplets are still present towards the end of the finale’s opening section, to cite one example. This is not a wrong decision; the Critical Edition took an excessively dogmatic view in its efforts to present Nielsen’s first thoughts, eliminating revisions based on the practical realities of performance, even if these were accepted–whether tacitly or explicitly–by the composer. Nielsen was never faced with a situation like Bruckner’s, in which a crew of well-meaning but misguided supporters altered and manifestly falsified the basic text. Additions and modification to his scores were limited mostly to small but sometimes telling details, such as the additional timpani part just mentioned.

The excellent live sonics add to the tactile immediacy of the performances. If the foregoing sounds as though this team saved their best for last, well, I would say that they did. One quibble though: the booklet notes, by Jens Cornelius, are surprisingly poor. He seems to think that the snare drummer in the Fifth Symphony is a timpanist, and his language is both pretentious and stilted. Normally I wouldn’t care or mention it, save for the fact that it seems so odd and uncharacteristic. Never mind, it’s the music that matters, and about that there can be no question whatsoever. This is fantastic.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

A live performance of Rilke Songs with the same performers was the winner of a 2008 Grammy for "Best Vocal Recording" (BRIDGE9178). The present never-before issued studio version of the songs, was recorded in 2005. Also on this disc is the premiere recording of Lieberson's Piano Quintet, played by Serkin and the Orion String Quartet, the dedicatees of this work.

Some of Boulez's finest Berlioz performances are gathered together in this very welcome compendium. Symphonie fantastique is given a terrifyingly formidable performance.

Pierre Boulez first mounted the concert podium in the late 1950s in order to do justice do his own challenging works, but before long he had garnered the reputation of a peerless interpreter of 20th-century music tout court. Then in 1967 the modernist Boulez took the musical by surprise by turning to that arch-Romantic Hector Berlioz, conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in the Symphonie fantastique and Lélio, the little-known work he intended as its sequel. The result was every bit as stimulating as one might have expected from this great musical provocateur. “For Boulez,” opined Gramophone’s original reviewer, “the [Fantastique] is a sinister mental experience, not merely the drug-crazed torment of the program but something colder and still more frightening.” More recently, a New York Times critic wrote: “This is a performance true to the composer’s Gothic imagination in its sumptuousness and menace but also icily precise in negotiating tricky rhythmic maneuvers, and oddly modern … Besides having a ferocity all its own, [it] comes in a whole treasure box of other incisive Berlioz recordings by Mr. Boulez in his early maturity. Yvonne Minton is splendid in La Mort de Cléopâtre, flinging out regal defiance, and Jean-Louis Barrault is the perfect restless narrator for the work Berlioz wrote to continue the dream of the Fantastique, the concert autobiography Lélio.” The new 4-album reissue also includes Yvonne Minton’s “dramatically incisive … passionate response [to Les Nuits d’été] showing her at her most movingly eloquent and [Stuart] Burrows also at his finest … Strongly recommended … highly stimulating” (Penguin Guide).

REVIEW:

Some of Boulez's finest Berlioz performances are gathered together in this very welcome compendium. Not the least of the pleasures is the association of the Symphonic Fantastique with its pendant Lelio: they are not a required coupling, of course, but there is a special pleasure in hearing the unforgettable tones of Jean-Louis Barrault (he who once memorably played Berlioz on film) as he revives after the drug-induced nightmare. Barrault speaks so beautifully that the ramshackle concoction of some very mixed inspirations becomes a rich Berliozian experience. The symphony is given a formidable performance, terrifyingly formidable in the measured tread of the "March to the Scaffold", somewhat too much so where the waltz should charm, even if ironically, and making a morose landscape of the "Scene aux champs". But it is a sustained and valid performance which does not seek to make the work into a vehicle for personal virtuosity (as in different ways so many conductors have done), and conjures up Berlioz's dark romantic vision.

As can be seen, the Nuits d'ete songs are shared. Berlioz first wrote them for mezzo-soprano or tenor and piano, then rewriting them to some extent and transposing the first three for the orchestral vision, probably because he then had particular singers in mind or each song. Boulez keeps to the orchestral version of the key sequence (which not all do) and divides them equally between male and female voices. So Stuart Burrows sings a fresh. lively "Villanelle", and this is followed by Yvonne Minton's richly phrased "Spectre de la rose" and "Sur les lagunes" (in which she takes, successfully, the option of a low F). Burrows returns for "Absence", which he sings admirably, though without stifling regrets that this of all songs might have suited Minton and the mezzo-soprano timbre (many will remember Janet Baker here). He also sings "Au cimetiere", leaving Minton to finish the cycle off with her warm performance of "L'ile inconnue". There can be no question or an authentic version when Berlioz left so many options open; this is a compromise, and even if one may have other preferences, it works well. Yvonne Minton goes on to show not only a fine voice but fine musicianship as she sustains Boulez in holding La mort de Cleopatre together so well. Berliozians will recognize one or two familiar ideas in this remarkable piece. notably one that was to serve again in Benvenuto Cellini, whose overture is given a sharp, vigorous performance here.

-- Gramophone [3/1995]