It was in 1905, an entire decade prior to Wilhelm Stenhammar's second symphony, that Hugo Alfv�n completed his third symphony. In this work Alfv�n, like many other Scandinavian composers, found the typical Nordic tone of his music in the sunny south. Like Sibelius' second symphony and Stenhammar's Serenade for Orchestra, this symphony is Swedish through and through. In addition, it is pervaded by the longing for home repeatedly felt by Alfv�n during his years of wandering. He composed his Uppsala Rhapsody in 1907 for the commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of the great botanist Carl von Linn� (Linnaeus) held at the University of Uppsala in May 1907. Like it's counterpart by Johannes Brahms, this work turned out to be an �Academic Festival Overture� including some student songs. The Concert Suite from Alfv�n's ballet The Mountain King offers a masterful wealth of color. His excellent knowledge of the art of instrumentation was the product of his earlier activity as a violinist in the Royal Court Orchestra, which also served as the Opera Orchestra.
Alfvén: Complete Symphonies, Vol. 2
$18.99
CD
CPO
May 03, 2019
555237-2
Martinu & Shostakovich: Cello Concertos / Poltera, Varga, Berlin Radio Symphony
BIS
Available as
SACD
$21.99
$15.99
Jun 02, 2017
The two cello concertos by Dmitri Shsotakovich were both written for his friend Mstislav Rostropovich but whereas the first is rhythmic and virtuosic, the second is subdued and introverted. Composed in 1966, it is often regarded as a watershed work, heralding Shostakovich's final stylistic period marked by a certain sombreness and a trend towards more transparent scoring. The op. 126 concerto has become somewhat overshadowed by its older, more accessible sibling, something which also applies to the second work on this disc, for completely different reasons. Having compmleted his Cello Cocnerto No. 2 in 1945, Bohuslav Martinu was unsuccessful in his attempts to interest a leading cellist in promoting it. When the composer furthermore reworked his first cello concerto in 1955, the new version effectively obliterated all traces of the 1945 concerto, which didn't receive its first performance until 1965, six years after Martinu's death. The work is melodious with lyrical qualities, and many have interpreted it as an expression of the nostalgia the composer experienced as an exile in the U.S.A. during the last winter of the World War II.
On Sale
Martinu & Shostakovich: Cello Concertos / Poltera, Varga, Berlin Radio Symphony
$21.99
$15.99
SACD
BIS
Jun 02, 2017
BIS-2257
EDITION FRIEDRICH GULDA: THE E
Audite Musikproduktion
Available as
CD
$27.99
$20.99
Aug 28, 2009
Classical Music
On Sale
EDITION FRIEDRICH GULDA: THE E
$27.99
$20.99
CD
Audite Musikproduktion
Aug 28, 2009
AUD21404
Brahms: Violin Concerto, Symphony No 2 / Fricsay, De Vito
Audite Musikproduktion
Available as
CD
$16.99
Jan 01, 2009
Her performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto in the early 1950s, under Ferenc Fricsay, was pervaded by a delicate lyricism and a romantic sorcery rarely encountered elsewhere. Joachim Hartnack about Gioconda De Vito Gioconda De Vito, one of the great violinists of her time, was considered a Brahms specialist. The only evidence to date of her work with Ferenc Fricsay and the RIAS Orchestra is the above mentioned quote. Precisely this collaboration was captured in a superb monaural recording by the RIAS broadcasting company in Berlin - a stroke of luck, for De Vito had an aversion to the recording studio. Gioconda De Vito, Ferenc Fricsay and the RIAS-Symphonie Orchester produce an exemplary realization of the concept of the "symphonic concerto". A great deal of the cogency of this realization is owed to the precise dovetailing of soloist and orchestra, even in those passages in which De Vito grants herself a liberal use of rubato. With wonted translucence, Fricsay allows the solo instrumentalists in his orchestra to share the limelight with the violinist. The recording reveals all of Gioconda De Vito's strengths. She unfolds a large, singing tone, at once brilliantly radiant and warm. This accurate, crisply recorded performance by the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester under Fricsay also brings out the very deliberate rhythmic organization with which she shaped her cantilenas. Under Fricsay, the RIAS-Symphonie-Orchester also succeeds in turning their recording of Brahms's Second Symphony into a touchstone of Brahmsian "orchestral chamber music." " "Sales Inventory
Brahms: Violin Concerto, Symphony No 2 / Fricsay, De Vito
The new Bronislav Gimpel Edition presents on three CDs all recordings made by the violinist between 1954 and 1957 for the RIAS Berlin, creating a striking profile of the artist and the broad stylistic range of his repertoire. This Master Release is of the finest audio quality as befits the artist, an "old school" virtuoso who had a profound effect on violin playing.
As the celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth approaches, and following a much-admired version of the Diabelli Variations (Alpha 386 – Gramophone Editor’s Choice), Martin Helmchen has decided to record his complete piano concertos in the company of musical partners with whom he has a special affinity, Andrew Manze and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. They devote this first volume to the Concertos nos. 2 and 5, giving lovingly polished performances of these two masterpieces of the piano repertory. Composed even before Concerto ‘no. 1’, the ‘Second’ Concerto was premiered in Vienna in 1795, when Beethoven was only twenty-five years old, but underwent several revisions before being published in its final version in 1801. Concerto no. 5 is the last that Beethoven composed. Though completed in 1808, it was not premiered until 1811. Beethoven normally gave the first performance of his concertos himself, but this time his increasing deafness meant he was unable to do so.
-----
REVIEW:
Theirs is to all appearances a straight-down-the-middle approach. Yet it does stand high and proud for its artistry, poetry, stylish musicianship and, perhaps above all, rapport between soloist and conductor. This really does feel like a meeting of minds.
RAVEL Daphnis et Chloé: Suite No. 2. STRAVINSKY Le Sacre du printemps. HONEGGER Symphony No. 5, “Di Tre Re” • Igor Markevitch, cond; RIAS SO • AUDITE 95605 (73:15) Live: Berlin 1952
Igor Markevitch (1912–83) was born in Kiev into a family of Ukrainian, French, and Italian lineage. At 14, living with his family in Switzerland, the teenaged Markevitch was discovered by Alfred Cortot, who took the boy with him to Paris and enrolled him in the Ecole Normale. It was there that he trained under Cortot and Nadia Boulanger for a career as a pianist and composer. His first break in the latter capacity came in 1929, when the 17-year-old was commissioned by Serge Diaghilev to write a piano concerto and to collaborate on a ballet. The ballet project came to naught when Diaghilev died later that year, but the young Markevitch completed the concerto, which was subsequently published by Schott.
For the next dozen years, between 1929 and 1941, Markevitch dedicated himself to composing, averaging two works per year in a variety of musical genres and forms. But after the onset of a serious illness late in 1941, he decided to abandon his career as a composer and turned his attention to conducting. He was not, however, a neophyte to the order, as this sudden occupational change might suggest. He had made his conducting debut at the age of 18 leading the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; in subsequent appearances with various ensembles, he had already distinguished himself as a recognized exponent of French, Russian, and 20th-century repertoire. As a point of passing interest, it might be mentioned that the conductor Oleg Caetani—currently director of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra—is Markevitch’s son by his second wife, Donna Topazia Caetani, herself a distant descendant of the Roman family of 14th-century Pope Boniface VII.
Markevitch’s discography is by no means negligible, but unlike those of other more widely celebrated media darlings (the roughly contemporaneous Karajan comes to mind), his recordings have yet to be cataloged and collected together systematically in a way that makes it easy to grasp the full measure of his contribution. Record labels devoted to restoring historical material, such as Archipel, Tahra, Testament, and Urania, have made a few random stabs at it, but the fact remains that Markevitch’s recordings are scattered far and wide, and some, still available only on LPs selling for eye-popping prices, are difficult to come by, assuming you can afford them. I found, for example, a vinyl copy of what claimed to be a 1955 Rite of Spring with the Philharmonia on an RCA Red Seal LP posted on eBay for an asking price of $145.99. Curiously, this is the only reference I’ve come across to a 1955 Rite, and one to boot on RCA. I’m guessing it was originally pressed in the U.K. by HMV, and I suspect that the actual recording is the 1952 version, 1955 probably being the date of the RCA pressing. What do these eBay sellers know?
Markevitch did make commercial recordings of all three of the works on this disc, in some cases more than once. In 1954, he recorded the Ravel with the Philharmonia; with the same orchestra he led The Rite of Spring twice, in mono in 1952 and in a stereo remake in 1959. Yet another late recording of the Stravinsky with the Suisse Romande Orchestra dates from 1982, one year before the conductor’s death. And for Deutsche Grammophon, in 1950s mono, he recorded Honegger’s Symphony No. 5 with the Lamoureux Orchestra. To the best of my knowledge, all of these are now, or at one time have been, available on CD.
Like another, slightly earlier conductor I can think of, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Igor Markevitch is, I believe, vastly underrated. The recording at hand, however, should go several miles toward boosting his reputation. To begin with, whatever audio engineer Ludger Böckenhoff and the Audite team have done to remaster the original source material, it qualifies as a latter-day miracle. The sound on this disc—its dynamic range, frequency response, and depth of stage—is simply phenomenal. At nine seconds into the Rite of Spring’s “Dances of the Young Girls,” for instance, a cross-rhythm pops out in the bassoon that I don’t believe I’ve ever heard before, even in the latest state-of-the-art SACD recordings.
But let’s not shortchange Markevitch’s role in this. His take on Stravinsky’s still shocking pagan ritual is bracing and determinedly defiant. In his hands, the composer’s score is not one for the lithe, acrobatically inclined danseur, but for the toned, hard-bodied gymnast. For Markevitch, it’s all about the interplay of complex, unyielding rhythms and sudden, explosive gamma ray bursts. The ear-shattering blast that introduces the “Ritual of Abduction” gave me a real start; it was like a Molotov cocktail being lobbed through a plate glass window. Not for Markevitch the toning down or smoothing out of Stravinsky’s heinous hosanna to the cult of ritualistic human sacrifice, a kind of musical prequel, if you will, to Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story The Lottery. Interestingly, that story stirred up as much outrage as had Stravinsky’s Rite 35 years earlier. The music is a study in primitivism; it should, and was meant to, sound barbaric. Too many modern recordings I’ve heard, like a recent and highly touted one by Jonathan Nott and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra on Tudor, transform the score into something gentrified, as if it has now earned a place in the orchestral canon alongside Mozart and Haydn. Markevitch had it right, and he delivers the goods on this recording in one of the most heart-pounding performances of The Rite of Spring you will ever hear.
Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé too was one of the conductor’s specialties, and just as sensationalized as his portrayal of Stravinsky’s tribal blood-letting is, with equal artistry does Markevitch sensualize Ravel’s French goatherd and shepherdess. No gauzy Impressionistic veil can conceal the amorous passion and sexual tension between the two lovers, whose shyness and innocence are eventually overcome by the chemistry of raging hormones in Markevitch’s pitch-perfect performance.
I was rather surprised to find no reviews of Honegger’s Symphony No. 5, subtitled “Di Tre Re,” in the Fanfare Archive. It’s one of the composer’s more widely recorded works, with a number of fine versions available, including classics by Michel Plasson and Charles Munch. The current live recording with Markevitch is in direct competition with the aforementioned slightly later but still mono Markevitch effort with the Lamoureux Orchestra on Deutsche Grammophon. Unfortunately, I do not have that recording for comparison purposes, but I can tell you that the one at hand is every bit as good, performance-wise, interpretively, and sonically as the Munch with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on RCA, which I do have, and better performance-wise and interpretively, if not quite as sonically wide-spectrum, as the Neeme Järvi with the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra on Chandos, which I also have. The piece is worth getting to know, if you don’t already know it. It’s quite a magnificent score (the “tre re” refers to the three Ds struck on the timpani at the end of each movement), and Markevitch’s reading is deeply satisfying.
More often than not, I end up recommending releases of archival recordings such as this mainly to those who have a particular interest in the conductor or featured artist, but this one is different. The performances are fantastic, and the sound is as good as, if not better than, any number of newly minted recordings I’ve heard. This is an urgent buy recommendation.
FANFARE: Jerry Dubins
Markevitch Conducts Ravel, Stravinsky & Honegger
$14.99
CD
Audite Musikproduktion
Jul 17, 2009
AUD95605
LA MER
Linn Records
Available as
CD
$20.99
Sep 01, 2017
To launch their exciting new partnership Robin Ticciati and the DSO present Debussy’s La mer, Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande and the premiere recording of composer Brett Dean’s arrangements of Debussy’s Ariettes oubliées featuring Magdalena KoženA. Following his DSO debut Ticciati chose La mer to perform when he returned as the newly announced Principal Conductor in 2016. Ticciati has conducted La mer and Pelléas et Mélisande across Europe with the LPO, Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Budapest Festival Orchestra receiving excellent reviews. Brett Dean’s orchestration of the Ariettes premiered in Sydney in 2015 and at once displayed Debussy’s music in a new light. Dean’s new arrangements expand on the colours heard in Debussy’s original six songs applying unbelievably delicate orchestration that sounds like gossamer; The Daily Telegraph declared it ‘a revelation’. The all-French programme also includes the prelude to Fauré’s opera Pénélope and his orchestral suite Pelléas et Mélisande in a perfectly judged recording which augurs well for this exciting new partnership.
Along with Wilhelm Stenhammar and Wilhelm Peterson-Berger, Hugo Alfvén surely ranks with the leading composers of Swedish late romanticism. In the country of his birth he made a name for himself above all with his compositions inspired by Swedish folklore, one of which, Midsommarvaka, his most famous work, is heard on Vol. 1 of our new edition of his complete symphonic works. It is both astonishing and impressive that Alfvén, who previously had composed nothing more than a few piano pieces, songs, and chamber works, suddenly came forward in 1897 with a full-length symphony of some forty minutes in length. This highly regarded Symphony No. 1 exhibits very finely nuanced tone colors, and with it he immediately became known as a capable and experienced composer. Alfvén composed Drapa, a monumental, magnificent, and festive work with the subtitle “King Oscar II in memoriam,” for a gala event at the Royal College of Music and conducted its premiere on 18 October 1908. For our ambitious project we have secured the support of the German Symphony Orchestra of Berlin and Lukasz Borowicz – one of Germany’s best orchestras and one of today’s most promising young conductors.
G. Schumann: Symphony in F Minor & Overtures / Feddeck, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin
CPO
Available as
CD
$18.99
$13.99
Nov 03, 2017
Do you know Georg Schumann? No, he is not the unknown brother, nephew or grandson of his famous name father Robert. Nevertheless, he was a respected composer, pianist and, above all, a music teacher. The German Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, under the direction of James Feddeck, has recently dealt with some of his great orchestral works. Trained by Carl Reinecke, encounters with Liszt, Brahms, Rubinstein, Mahler or Bruch, head of the master class for composition at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin for more than half a century, Berlin Philharmonic's long-standing regular guest etc. All these are unmistakable signs of the importance of Georg Schumann as a composer, pianist, conductor and pedagogue. Musicians of the following generations would still have to be indefinitely grateful to him, since he and Richard Strauss, together with others, founded the cooperative of German composers, today's GEMA. And yet his name is nowadays no longer on concert programs, let alone in CD catalogs. It is all the more pleasing to see Georg Schumann again at cpo.
On Sale
G. Schumann: Symphony in F Minor & Overtures / Feddeck, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin
$18.99
$13.99
CD
CPO
Nov 03, 2017
555110-2
Weinberger: Overture to a Chivalrous Play, 6 Bohemian Songs & Dances & Passacaglia / Albrecht
Capriccio
Available as
CD
$21.99
$16.99
May 13, 2016
Czech American composer Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967) was best-known for his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper, but he also excelled in other genres. The pieces featured here include his Overture to a Chivalrous Play (1931), 6 Bohemian Songs and Dances (1929), and Passacaglia for organ and large orchestra (1932). Organist Jorg Strodthoff is featured on the Passacaglia. The album also features the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Gerd Albrecht.
On Sale
Weinberger: Overture to a Chivalrous Play, 6 Bohemian Songs & Dances & Passacaglia / Albrecht
$21.99
$16.99
CD
Capriccio
May 13, 2016
C5272
CARMEN
Audite Musikproduktion
Available as
CD
$14.99
Oct 24, 2007
Classical Music
CARMEN
$14.99
CD
Audite Musikproduktion
Oct 24, 2007
AUD95497
V 7: EDITION FERENC FRICSAY -
Audite Musikproduktion
Available as
CD
$14.99
Oct 29, 2008
V 7: EDITION FERENC FRICSAY -
V 7: EDITION FERENC FRICSAY -
$14.99
CD
Audite Musikproduktion
Oct 29, 2008
AUD95596
Offenbach: Le Royaume de Neptune & Other Works / Griffiths, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin
CPO
Available as
CD
$18.99
$13.99
Nov 01, 2019
On his recently released Offenbach album featuring some of this composer’s unknown overtures, “Howard Griffiths is able to generate sparkling moments, dramatic buildups of suspense, highly expressive lyrical designs, and frequently suddenly occurring shifts of mood with absolutely outstanding success” (klassik-heute. com). And the latest Offenbach interpretation by Griffiths also does perfect justice to this composer’s highly effectively instrumented and melodically very appealing music while transmitting infectious zest for life. Orphee aux Enfers was Offenbach’s first international success and perhaps his most performed opera throughout the world – a landmark establishing a new genre known as the “Offenbachiade” and standing for societal satire in the form of music theater. The present album offers the essence of the orchestral numbers and ballet inserts composed for the version of Orpheus in the Underworld from 1874. The rediscovery of the magnificent ballet L’Atlantide or Le Royaume de Neptune (The Realm of Neptune) and its recording premiere on this album qualify as nothing short of sensational. Found under incredible circumstances by Jean-Christophe Keck in an old storage box, this music from the recently published volume of Keck’s Offenbach edition for Boosey & Hawkes / Bote & Bock accomplishes a very important task ranking first on the list of every composer’s desiderata by making available score material in its uncorrupted form. These gems are finely orchestrated and filled with magical melodies!
On Sale
Offenbach: Le Royaume de Neptune & Other Works / Griffiths, Deutsches Symphony Orchestra Berlin
$18.99
$13.99
CD
CPO
Nov 01, 2019
555301-2
Cello Concertos
Channel Classics
Available as
CD
$20.99
Jan 01, 2016
Classical Music
Cello Concertos
$20.99
CD
Channel Classics
Jan 01, 2016
CCS38116
In the Shadow of War / Isserlis
BIS
Available as
SACD
$21.99
Jan 01, 2013
BLOCH Schelomo1. BRIDGE Oration, Concerto elegiaco1. HOUGH The Loneliest Wilderness2 • Steven Isserlis (vc); 1Hugo Wolff, cond; 1German SO Berlin; 2Gábor Takács, cond; 2Tapiola Sinfonietta • BIS 1992 (SACD: 67:40)
Steven Isserlis joined Richard Hickox and the London Symphony Orchestra in 1988 for a very fine and critically well-received recording of Bloch’s Schelomo for Virgin Classics. Also on that disc was a more than respectable account of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. Except for the benefit of surround-sound audio and improved sonics on this new BIS release, I’m not prepared to say that Isserlis betters his previous account. At 58, he’s still in his prime and at the height of his game technically, but the years seem not to have aged Isserlis’s ancient King of Israel. If anything, Isserlis and Hugo Wolff now put a bit more spring into Solomon’s step, though the difference of only 23 seconds—21:45 in 1988 vs. 21:22 in 2012 is simply too small to notice over the given timespan.
The album comes with a title, In the Shadow of War, and a theme. Bloch, as is well known, was deeply depressed over the grim events unfolding during World War I, and for solace and understanding, he turned to the words of despair and wisdom in the Book of Ecclesiastes, believed to have been authored by Solomon 2,000 years earlier. It was from this that in 1916 Bloch drew inspiration for his magnificent rhapsody-cum-tone poem, Schelomo, for cello and orchestra.
Frank Bridge’s Oration, Concerto elegiaco for Cello and Orchestra is far less well known than Bloch’s opus, but it, too, has received a previous recording by Isserlis and Hickox with the City of London Sinfonia on EMI. Unfortunately, I don’t have that disc, so I can’t compare the performance to this new one, but it doesn’t go back as far as Isserlis’s Virgin Classics Schelomo. The Isserlis/Hickox/EMI CD, coupled with Britten’s Cello Symphony, was released in 2007. We don’t have a description of Bridge’s Oration in the composer’s own words, as we do a description of Schelomo from Bloch himself, so we can only speculate on Bridge’s motives for writing the piece and its precise meaning. In 1930, the date of Oration’s composition, World War I had long ago ended and World War II was yet to come. Yet everything about this work paints the most grisly, gruesome portrait imaginable of war’s death and destruction. Isserlis, who has written his own album note, describes the music minute by minute, evoking images of “men hurling themselves into enemy fire” and “the leaden march of doomed soldiers.” The solo cello is the fallen soldier who, in the end, is left to expire alone, “his final desolate thoughts fading into empty nothingness.”
Nearly 30 minutes in duration, Bridge’s Oration is not an easy work to listen to, or to play, I’m sure, so it’s not surprising that it hasn’t achieved anything close to the popularity of Bloch’s Schelomo. Besides Isserlis’s own previous recording of the piece, it hasn’t received much attention on disc, but the attention it has received has come from major-league cellists, namely, Rafael Wallfisch, Alban Gerhardt, and Julian Lloyd Webber.
I have to admit that before listening to it, Stephen Hough’s The Loneliest Wilderness shouted, “Raise shields! Raise shields!,” as would any piece for me dated 2005. Well, it only took a matter of seconds before the music cried out to me, “Lower shields! Lower shields!” I would buy this disc for The Loneliest Wilderness alone. The piece was originally composed for bassoon and orchestra, but Isserlis persuaded Hough, composer, pianist, and good friend, that the lyrical nature of the solo part was ideal for cello. Since the ranges of the two instruments are reasonably close to each other, I don’t know if it was necessary for Hough to make any adjustments in the solo line or not, but this is one gorgeous outpouring of poignant, moving, heartfelt music. Bless Stephen Hough for composing it, and bless Steven Isserlis for including it on this disc. The work, according to the note, was inspired by Herbert Read’s poem My Company, and I can’t think of any other way to describe it than to say it’s a rapturous rhapsody in full neoromantic bloom.
This may prove to be the best cello and orchestra recording of the year, and it’s urgently recommended.
On Sale
On Sale
On Sale
On Sale
On Sale
On Sale
On Sale
