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Respighi: Church Windows, Brazilian Impressions / Simon
$22.99CDChandos
May 01, 1984CHAN 8317 -
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Respighi: La Boutique Fantasque, Etc / Noseda, Bbc Po
$21.99CDChandos
Jun 01, 2003CHAN 10081 -
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Respighi: Roman Trilogy / Wilson, Sinfonia of London
$21.99SACDChandos
Aug 07, 2020CHSA 5261 -
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Respighi: Violin Concerto, Suite For Strings, Aria / Marzadori, Di Vittorio
$19.99CDNaxos
Jun 28, 20118572332 -
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Wolf-Ferrari: Orchestral Works / Noseda, Geoghegan, BBC PO
$21.99CDChandos
Mar 31, 2009CHAN 10511 -
Irmgard Seefried Edition
$119.41CDELOQUENCE AUSTRALIA
Feb 14, 2025ELOA4843250.2 -
Respighi: Church Windows, Poema Autunnale / Ricci, Clark, Pacific Symphony
$18.99CDReference Recordings
Dec 17, 1993RR-15 -
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Weinberg: Symphony No. 3; The Golden Key Suite No. 4 / Svedlund, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
$21.99SACDChandos
May 31, 2011CHSA 5089
Respighi: Church Windows, Brazilian Impressions / Simon
Recorded in: All Saints' Church, Tooting, London 1 January 1984 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Bill Todd [Assistant]
Respighi: La Boutique Fantasque, Etc / Noseda, Bbc Po
This is the second recording from the BBC Philharmonic under its brilliant new Principal Conductor, Gianandrea Noseda. The disc features some of Respighi's most popular music, the glittering ballet 'La Boutique fantasque', alongside the rare and intriguing 'Prelude and fugue in D major' and 'La pentola magica'. Recorded in: Studio 7, New Broadcasting House, Manchester 2, 5 & 6 October 2002 Producer(s) Ralph Couzens Mike George Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker Denise Else (Assistant)
Respighi: Roman Trilogy / Wilson, Sinfonia of London
Following the widespread critical acclaim of their first two recordings – including a BBC Music Magazine Award – John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London turn to Respighi’s Roman Trilogy for their third release. Born in Bologna in 1879, Respighi trained as a violinist and composer, and travelled extensively. His influences are therefore wide-ranging, from Richard Strauss and Debussy to Rimsky-Korsakov (who taught him orchestration) in addition to a love of – and fascination with – Plainsong and music of the Italian baroque. Fountains of Rome was the first of these three great tone poems, composed between 1913 and 1916, and inspired by a series of photographs given to him by the artist Edita Broglio. Intensely programmatic, the work sees Respighi setting out to evoke ‘sentiments and visions suggested… by four of Rome’s fountains contemplated at the hour in which their character is most in harmony with the surrounding landscape, or in which their beauty appears most impressive to the observer’. Pines of Rome was completed in 1924 – a particularly turbulent time in Italy, following Mussolini’s appointment as Prime Minister, in 1922. Like Fountains, the work is explicitly programmatic, set in four sections, and calling for extremely large orchestral forces – including a gramophone recording of a nightingale in the third movement. Roman Festivals was premiered in 1928 by the New York Philharmonic under Toscanini, who was a great supporter of Respighi and regularly performed his works throughout his career. Again, in four parts, Festivals calls for the largest orchestration of all, including a vast array of percussion as well as organ, four-hand piano and mandolin. Despite some negative criticism when they were first introduced, these works have found favor with concert goers around the world and been regularly performed ever since.
Respighi: Violin Concerto, Suite For Strings, Aria / Marzadori, Di Vittorio
Respighi’s unfinished First Violin Concerto in A major (1903) was revised and completed by composer/conductor Salvatore Di Vittorio, who directed its première in 2010. Harking back to the masterful writing of Vivaldi and Mendelssohn, the Concerto also foreshadows the orchestral technicolour of the great Italian composer’s ‘Roman Trilogy’. The lyrical Aria and graceful Suite, newly transcribed by Di Vittorio, embody Respighi’s abiding love of Baroque music, while Rossiniana is a delightful reworking of Rossini’s piano music, Les riens (Trifles), much enhanced by Respighi’s contribution of new melodies and innovative orchestration.
Wolf-Ferrari: Orchestral Works / Noseda, Geoghegan, BBC PO
Gianandrea Noseda continues his Italian series with a recording of works of Wolf-Ferrari. This will be promoted as the March Featured Release. This is a project very close to the heart of the BBC Philharmonic's Principal Conductor, something reflected in the passionate performances he creates. BBC Music magazine commented early on that 'Noseda's affection for the music is evident throughout'. Even at the time of his appointment, he spoke of his ambition to record the works of the twentieth-century Italian composers, and he has since recorded works by Respighi and Dallapiccola. 'Gianandrea Noseda understands the music's lyrical strength and fragile sound-world perfectly; the playing of the BBC Philharmonic is exemplary, too', wrote The Guardian on the Dallapiccola disc. Known mainly for his operatic compositions, perhaps especially the overture to Il segreto di Susanna, Wolf-Ferrari was that rare phenomenon, famously exemplified by Busoni, of an Italian composer better known in Germany than in his homeland. The son of a German painter and his Italian wife, Wolf-Ferrari made his home in Munich and was throughout his life divided by the two cultures, something that provided a foundation of his creative existence, particularly in his attachment to the neo-classical style. Noseda and the BBC Philharmonic present extracts from five operas, I quattro rusteghi, Il segreto di Susanna, I gioielli della Madonna, Il campiello and La dama boba. They are complemented by the Suite-Concertino for bassoon, two horns and strings. The soloist is Karen Geoghegan who recently made her debut on Chandos following her appearance on the television programme Classical Star. With such distinguished and sympathetic advocacy, the music of Wolf-Ferrari should achieve the worldwide recognition that it deserves.
Irmgard Seefried Edition
"We all envied her, because all that we had to struggle so hard to achieve seemed so natural and self-evident to her because she knew how to sing from the heart" said Elisabeth Schwarzkopf of her colleague Irmgard Seefried. Collected here are Seefried's complete recital recordings for Deutsche Grammophon as well as highlights from her recordings of opera and sacred music for the label and includes material both unpublished and new to CD.
Irmgard Seefried was a revered artist among lovers of natural singing, wrote the critic Alan Blyth. 'The emotions, grave or gay, are expressed directly, unfussily, genuinely, in that peculiarly outgoing manner that was this artist's supreme gift.' This gift illuminates song repertoire from Bach to Bartók and beyond in a newly compiled and remastered set of her recital albums recorded by Deutsche Grammophon in the 1950s and 60s. 'If I were condemned to hear only one voice for the remainder of my life I think it might well be hers,' wrote Blyth on another occasion (a reissue of the 1953 'Liederabend' anthology of concert performances). 'If I wanted to be charmed, to laugh or to cry I would find her the perfect companion.'
The core of the set is formed by several albums of Romantic Lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf. As well as an imaginative collection of Goethe settings, there is an album of Heine and Schumann, poetry and song, in which the recited portions are reissued on CD for the first time. The set includes two appendices, both also new to CD: Seefried's contribution to the DG audio documentary series 'Erzähltes Leben', and 'Erik Werba Accompanies You', in which the soprano's regular recital partner plays the piano part for famous Lieder (with the idea that the listener at home will take the sung line for themselves).
Seefried also made several opera recordings as well as sacred music for Deutsche Grammophon. Generous excerpts from these - often including entire scenes, not just arias - are included as newly-compiled anthologies across five CDs.
Seefried's voice was renowned for it's beauty and tonally purity, with minimal vibrato. Her diction was exquisite, as were her phrasing and legato in Schumann's cycle of Mary, Queen of Scots Lieder. Especially in folksong repertoire such as the Liebeslieder-Walzer of Brahms, she contrived to give the impression that her art came easily to her, and that it's expression was an inevitable extension of her personality, devoid of any suggestion of imposing her will upon the music. But this impression was the essence of Seefried's greatness, and it transferred to modern song repertoire, too: not only the opulent romanticism of Respighi's Il tramonto but Werner Egk's German-Mediterranean Quattro canzoni, and a selection of sacred solo motets by Paul Hindemith that surprised and delighted many critics on it's first issue.
All the material in this Original Covers collection has been newly remastered, and the set is richly illustrated and accompanied by a new essay on Seefried's art by Tully Potter as well as an English translation of Ein Selbstporträt by Fer van Campen.
Respighi: Church Windows, Poema Autunnale / Ricci, Clark, Pacific Symphony
Weinberg: Symphony No. 3; The Golden Key Suite No. 4 / Svedlund, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra
Suite No. 4 from the ballet "The Golden Key", a puppet ballet loosely based on Pinocchio is also tuneful and of interest for its somewhat eccentric dances, (a "Cricket" dance consists of little less than a minute of a single, rhythmically odd, continuously repeated hopping motive,) as well as folk-like dances with a rustic quality. If Weinberg in these works had been a Western composer of that era the music would often be considered light pops concert fare with bright, straight-forward tunefulness, not unlike popular movie or TV music, yet at times there is a darker undercurrent that occasionally surfaces. We know from other Weinberg works that he was capable of music of considerable emotional depth. This occasional faint uneasiness might have been sensed in these otherwise tuneful works, for Weinberg himself withdrew his Third Symphony before the premiere to correct "errors" and later edited and revised it and the ballet, though eventually accepted by a Soviet dance company was not staged. Both were performed some ten years later and after Stalin's death. Interesting, eccentric and appealing music that comes from living through a dangerous period.
- Greg La Traille, ArkivMusic.com
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WEINBERG Symphony No. 3. The Golden Key: Suite No. 4 • Thord Svedlund, cond; Gothenburg SO • CHANDOS 5089 (49:53)
Mieczyslaw Weinberg found it easier than most composers in the late 1940s and early 1950s to comply with the vague yet dangerously contradictory goals of the Zhdanov Doctrine. He had a naturally lyrical gift, a clear sense of structure, and an ability to write simply, with complete focus. Paying uncomplicated tribute to folk music without a hint of condescension was easy for him, though of course it came easier in smaller forms than larger ones. That was why a plethora of such works as the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes , the Polish Themes, Serenade for Orchestra , and Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra , along with various concertinos and sonatinas grace Weinberg’s list of compositions at that time. But the Symphony No. 3 was a bid for popularity in a big, mainstream work. It was not to get a chance to grow an audience, unfortunately, as Stalin’s paranoia over Jews (and Poles, Ukrainians, and just about every other group he could imagine) denied Weinberg a performance. It had to await the so-called “cultural thaw” under Krushchev for its debut in 1960. I can find no other currently available recordings of the work.
The Symphony No. 3 is very much of its time and place, as you’d expect. The dissonant elements of the First Symphony, the gritty anguish of the Second, the complexities of counterpoint and the emotional ambiguity of both, are nowhere to be found. The work is formally non-programmatic, but it’s all to easy to hear the “youth” theme (a standard formula in many composers’ Soviet pieces of the period, a naively cheerful melody with a flattened seventh and little else to offer the world) in the first movement and the minor-key, slightly dissonant obstacles it faces as a tribute to the Young Soviet Facing the Tide of Obstruction and Overcoming. To Weinberg’s credit, his youth theme is the most graceful I’ve heard, and his orchestral writing is a delight throughout. The attractive Scherzo includes a Polish mazurka, along with a few fine examples of counterpoint imbedded as folk improvisation, while the Adagio is a threnody displaying Khachaturian’s gift for emotional directness without descending into mawkishness: pathos, not bathos. The finale returns to the battlefield of the opening Allegro, with curious overtones of Shostakovich’s Fifth and Sixth. It ends not with the triumphalism one might expect, but with a grim “soldiering on” attitude that doesn’t quite fit with or summarize everything that’s gone before.
The ballet The Golden Key was finished in 1955, two years after Stalin’s sudden death (and Weinberg’s resultant freedom from prison). The satirical tale of the puppet lovers Burattino and Malvina, who after facing several animal and human antagonists encourage the other puppets to revolt, would seem tailor-made for the composer’s talents, but Weinberg found it surprisingly difficult to gain acceptance for the score. When the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater finally accepted it in 1955, it took another seven years before staging The Golden Key —and then, only with a largely reworked scenario. Weinberg, like Prokofiev, knew the value of a good ballet suite, and he wrote four in 1964 that accessed music from the original and the revised versions. This, the fourth suite (presumably others will appear in future releases in this series), is a tuneful delight. My favorites are the dance of the two animal villains, Alice the Fox and Basilio(!) the Cat, a nose-thumbing, heavily accented folk piece; and “The Pursuit,” with its nod at Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.
Thord Svedlund is in strong form on this release, emphasizing orchestral color, clarity, and internal balance. He doesn’t miss any of the humor in the Third Symphony’s Scherzo or several of the ballet’s dances, but also doesn’t shortchange the emotional appeal of the former’s Adagio and the latter’s Elegy. The Gothenberg musicians play with delicacy and character. This certainly isn’t the most representative disc of Weinberg to come down the musical pike, as more attention is finally paid to this excellent composer, but it may prove to be the one with the greatest overall appeal to general classical listeners. My only reservation is the short timing. At less than 50 minutes, was there nothing else Weinberg composed for orchestra that could have been included?
Regardless, definitely recommended.
FANFARE: Barry Brenesal
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This latest CD volume from Chandos makes for another outstanding contribution to their unique survey of Weinberg’s symphonies and pleasure is diffused only slightly by the short playing time.
The playing by the Gothenburgers is exemplary. This is early Weinberg - at least the Third Symphony is. It's a 30-plus minute, four movement, B minor piece written in 1950 and revised in 1959. The first movement sports a tickling forward-pressing motif. This is clothed sweetly, at first, but the atmosphere becomes gradually more determined and warlike-heroic with a sideways glance at Shostakovich's Leningrad. It's extremely exciting and might be thought of as comparable to the first symphonies of Sviridov and Dvarionas among others. It is not as belligerent as these other examples; certainly the sweet oboe pastoral (I 6:20) is far more gentle than anything found in those other works. Something of dancing snowflakes in this but also of warm pine forests. A chill sets in towards the end of the movement. There's a playful sprinting and flittering allegro giocoso and this can be contrasted with a potently sustained and meditative gloom. There’s tenderness in the Adagio (III) which is almost as long as the first movement. The clarinet solos have a plangently woody bubble and the theme seems a byway off the Volga Boatmen’s Song. This ends in a becalmed murmur from the strings. The finale returns to the implacably sturdy fast-pulsed mood of the heroic first movement. This is a splendidly rich recording with a nice throaty roar to the brass.
This revised version of the Symphony was premiered by Aleksandr Gauk conducting the All-Union Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra in Moscow on 23 March 1960.
The Golden Key was a ballet written in 1954-55 to a fairy fable scenario by Aleksey Tolstoy (1882-1945). In this format the music was premiered on 10 June 1962. Two years later Weinberg extracted for suites of which this is the last. The music is full of Petrushkan character, gawky, winningly elegiac (tr. 6 with its oboe singer), impudently Respighian (tr. 7) and ruthlessly driven (The Rat). The final Pursuit movement combines iterative obsessional onrush with an innocence absent from the assaults of the Symphony’s first and final movements
Every part of this production shouts quality. The notes are by David Fanning whose knowledge of the music and the era must be second to none. Svedlund knows the Weinberg works well having already recorded many of them so he is a reliable and inspired guide
If you enjoy Russian music of the mid and first half of the last century then you need to hear this. It's by no means garish poster material and its depth and accessible grip may surprise.
– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International
