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Brahms: Piano Concerto No 1; Strauss: Burleske / Szell, Serkin

CBS Masterworks

Available as CD

$17.99

Dec 16, 2009

At his best, Serkin's driving energy, fierce intelligence, and his unfailing lucidity of touch produced recordings that do that rare thing: they transcend the medium. This is one such.

Serkin is said to have disliked recording and his legacy is mixed, technically and artistically. Yet, at best, his driving energy, his fierce intelligence, his quick mind, and (until comparatively recently) his unfailing lucidity of touch often produced recordings that do that rare thing: they transcend the medium.

One such recording is his 1968 Cleveland account of Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto which Sony have recently reissued...coupled with another Serkin speciality, Richard Strauss's Burleske for piano and orchestra. Serkin "at the peak of his form, emotionally, intellectually, and technically" is how Trevor Harvey described the performance in these columns in May 1969 and I wouldn't disagree with that. From the piano's first entry it is evident that we are in the presence of a musical plain-dealer who is something more besides. The touch is plain but never monochrome, resolute but never harsh. There are miracles of dynamic shading yet dynamic changes that are elementally swift and steep. Above all, there is a revelatory way with rhythm, full of potency and drive in quicker music, and turning the more reflective passages into slow sustained acts of transcendental enquiry. As a reading this has something of Arrau's weight and profundity (Philips D 420 702-2PSL, 11/87) matched to Curzon's lyricism and sense of forward drive (Decca D 417 641-2DH, 10/87, also conducted by Szell). It is not better than either but it has some of the best qualities of both. There are those, it must be said, who are distracted by Serkin's stamping pedalwork and by breathing that has Serkin, like Arrau, cross-hatching the lie of a phrase with his own peculiar form of musical emphysema. Such things don't worry me unduly. You can't expect a man to go up the north face of the Eiger, silently, in carpet-slippers; and, in the slow movement, I find the counterpointing of Serkin's stressful breathing, with the sublimely conjured and spun melody that floats from it, to be a moving re-enactment of the composer's own recalcitrance in the face of the brute marble out of which this concerto is sculpted.

Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra are, needless to say, superb accompanists, and the sound is excellent in an appropriately forthright way, with pianissimos that are not so much pianissimo as properly hushed and innig. I don't agree with the reviewer who found Serkin's account of the Strauss Burleske to be lacking in poetry. Rather, it glints; it is sharp and witty. Above all, the performance redeems the work from its principal failing: the sense it can give of being marginally but fatally over length... [I]f you want a truly worthy memorial of this great pianist from the current batch, there is absolutely no doubt that the Brahms/Strauss disc is the one to have.

-- Gramophone [7/1991]

Brahms: Piano Concerto No 1; Strauss: Burleske / Szell, Serkin

$17.99
CD

CBS Masterworks

Dec 16, 2009

SONY42261

Album für die Frau - Scenes from the Schumanns' Lieder / Sampson, Middleton

BIS

Available as SACD

~~$21.99~~ $15.99

Apr 09, 2021

For the first four years of their marriage, Robert and Clara Schumann kept a joint diary, a project which Robert described as ‘a record of our wishes and our hopes, and the means whereby we may convey to one another any requests we may have to make, for which words may not suffice...’ In the imaginative recital Album für die Frau, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton combine songs by both composers into something similar – the depiction of a relationship seen through the eyes of both parties. Using the eight songs from Robert’s song cycle Frauenliebe und –leben to poems by Adalbert von Chamisso as the framework, they add songs as well as some piano solos in order to create a fuller and more complex picture. The result seems to suggest that the experiences of our ‘Frau’ are richer than Chamisso and Robert Schumann imagined: while love, marriage and motherhood dominated much of Clara Schumann’s life, Robert’s death in 1856 signaled the start of a four-decade widowhood during which she resumed her stellar career as a pianist. As a team, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton have released a number of acclaimed discs, including ‘Fleurs’, featuring flower-themed songs by composers from Purcell to Richard Strauss and Britten, ‘A Verlaine Songbook’, exploring settings of the poetry of Paul Verlaine, and ‘A Soprano’s Schubertiade’, a Schubert anthology.

REVIEW:

Amid formidable recorded competition, Sampson is close to the top of the Frauenliebe pantheon. It is high time Joseph Middleton made an album of solo Schumann piano music.

– Gramophone

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Album für die Frau - Scenes from the Schumanns' Lieder / Sampson, Middleton

~~$21.99~~ $15.99
SACD

BIS

Apr 09, 2021

BIS-2473

Langgaard: Symphony No. 1 "Cliffside Pastorals" / Oramo, Berlin Philharmonic

Dacapo Classical

Available as SACD

~~$17.99~~ $13.99

Nov 04, 2022

Despite being eccentric and at odds with his fellow human beings for most of his life, Danish composer Rued Langgaard was convinced that his time would come – and so it did. In Langgaard’s Symphony No. 1, we find its teenage composer celebrating his love of beauty and harmony in the most hedonistic terms. With this recording the symphony sees it return home, performed by the Berliner Philharmoniker, the first orchestra that understood what a masterpiece perhaps the greatest talent that had ever been seen in Danish music had created.

REVIEWS:

Unjustly misunderstood, and at times even ridiculed or dismissed as an eccentric kook by critics of his day, Danish organist and composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) deserves to be ranked alongside Wagner, Richard Strauss, Bruckner, Mahler and the like.

Brilliantly orchestrated for large orchestra, with motivic and thematic development on par with the music of Gustav Mahler [the First Symphony's] final movement alone is a revelry of ideas brought together to great effect. Seriously, if the five or so minutes near the end don't capture your full attention, and the final minute doesn't leave you slack-jawed in amazement, maybe you should check your pulse. In this live recording of the world premiere recording of the 2010 critical edition by Bendt Viinholt Nielsen, conductor Sakari Oramo and the members of the Berlin Philharmonic certainly seem to be having the time of their lives.

-- Classical Music Sentinel

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Langgaard: Symphony No. 1 "Cliffside Pastorals" / Oramo, Berlin Philharmonic

~~$17.99~~ $13.99
SACD

Dacapo Classical

Nov 04, 2022

6220644

Krenek: Early Piano Works / Korzhev

Centaur Records

Available as CD

$17.99

Feb 03, 2023

Ernst Krenek’s early musical development was informed by the middle-class cultural ambient of the city of Vienna. Already at an early age he heard his mother playing “salon pieces” on the piano; they attended musical theater performances and the Sunday matinees conducted by Alexander Zemlinsky in the nearby Volksoper. The popular repertoire of operettas, military bands, and cabaret also had a fixed place in the life of the Kreneks.

Ernst Krenek learned a wide spectrum of musical literature from his piano teacher. Together they played four-hand arrangements of operas and symphonies. The works of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss had a great influence on him, especially the latter, since at that time he was – as the ‘leader of the most radical modernism’ (Krenek, Memoirs) – on the path to world fame. In spite of their merely playful, childish aspirations, his own early attempts at composition can be associated to his biographical world. In terms of style, they are clearly obliged to the musical language of Viennese classicism and romanticism. The titles of these sometimes only partially realized compositions prove to be an interesting mirror of the social reality of the not yet ten-year-old: biblical and sacred motifs dominate alongside references to historical events, above all from the military history of the Habsburg Monarchy. These ambitious works were complemented by smaller marches and waltzes for piano. In his early and mid-teens, a clear development toward vocal settings of German poetry is evident, be it as art songs or choral works. Occasional instrumental works, such as variation works for piano trio, a sonata for cello and piano, or a stage work, are early testimony of the diversity in Krenek’s future oeuvre.

REVIEW:

Collectors who’ve resisted the thorny atonality of Ernst Krenek’s mature piano music will find his earlier works for the instrument, well, tonal and not all that thorny! Think of Max Reger’s short piano pieces or Korngold’s keyboard output, and you’ve basically got the young Krenek.

Listen to the First sonata’s zestful and harmonically restless Rondo finale, for example. I would have mistaken it for an idiomatic piano transcription of one of Richard Strauss’ late-period wind ensemble pieces. The Sonatina No. 2 Gavotte’s modulatory wanderlust makes the Gavotte from Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony sound minimalist by comparison. In the single-movement Sonatina No. 5 and the Six Piano Pieces, Krenek begins to branch out into the terse expressive qualities, angular phrasings, and tonal ambiguity characterizing his later sonatas.

Mikhail Korzhev makes a cogent and convincing case for this repertoire, which comes as no surprise, given his dazzling and authoritative recordings of Krenek’s first three piano concertos. The pianist’s incisive fingerwork vivifies sequences in obsessive dotted rhythms, such as in the Sonatina No. 1’s Vivace finale and the Sonatina No. 3’s Scherzettino, while giving ample attention to bass lines. Korzhev plays up the Sonatina No. 2’s central Theme and Variations sudden mood shifts in a way that never makes them sound episodic or fragmented. He clearly understands and believes in the music, which makes this release an ever more valuable addition to the Krenek discography.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Dislter)

Krenek: Early Piano Works / Korzhev

$17.99
CD

Centaur Records

Feb 03, 2023

CRC3968

Furtwangler: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor

Chandos

Available as CD

$21.99

Jun 20, 2025

Wilhelm Furtwangler was born in Schoneberg (now a district of Berlin) in 1886, but spent most of his childhood in Munich, where his father, an archaeologist, taught at the university. He received a musical education from an early age, and soon became obsessed with the works of Beethoven - a lifelong fascination. Furtwangler considered himself to be a composer, and learned to conduct principally to be able to promote his own works. Everyone else saw him as an incredibly talented conductor, but as a composer? - not so much. It is, however, his own individual approach that underscores his entire career - his reputation as a conductor was built on the re-interpretation of each score he conducted, a principle far removed from the then more usual rigid adherence to performance tradition. His whole career was built on his belief in the sanctity of the German artistic tradition - not only of music but of literature and philosophy. Furtwangler rose to the most important conductorships available, replacing Richard Strauss at the Staatskapelle Berlin in 1920, and then, following the sudden death of Arthur Nikisch, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. Through the 1930s and '40s, his career was defined by his opposition to Nazism, and the determination of the regime to use his international reputation as propaganda to promote their cause. The best known of his three symphonies, the second was composed in 1945 - 46 whilst he was self-exiled in Switzerland.

Furtwangler: Symphony No. 2 in E Minor

$21.99
CD

Chandos

Jun 20, 2025

CHAN 20373

Müller-Hartmann: Chamber Works / Arc Ensemble

Chandos

Available as CD

~~$21.99~~ $10.99

Nov 17, 2023

Robert Müller-Hartmann was born in Hamburg, in 1884, the son of the piano teacher and clarinettist Josef Müller and his wife, Jenny. He studied in Berlin for four years, but then returned to Hamburg where he pursued a successful career combining teaching, composing, and writing. His works were widely performed by conductors such as Karl Muck, Carl Schuricht, Richard Strauss, Otto Klemperer, and Fritz Busch, and regularly played on German Radio. With the advent of National Socialism, in 1933, Müller-Hartmann was forced to resign from his teaching posts at the University and Conservatory. He continued to teach at Hamburg’s Jewish girls’ school, and was an active contributor to the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural Federation).

In the mid 1930s, Eugenia and Jacob (Yanya) Hornstein, Hamburg friends of the Müller-Hartmanns, moved to the town of Dorking, some twenty-five miles south of London, and in 1937 the Müller-Hartmanns followed them. The thirteen years Robert spent in England saw the country scarred by the losses, destruction, and privations of war. There was very little time or opportunity for him to secure a place in his adoptive country’s musical life, and despite his considerable success in Germany during the 1920s and ’30s, his reputation had failed to cross the English Channel. A general antipathy to the inclusion of German musical exiles and his modest, rather retiring personality ensured that he would soon be forgotten.

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Müller-Hartmann: Chamber Works / Arc Ensemble

~~$21.99~~ $10.99
CD

Chandos

Nov 17, 2023

CHAN 20294

Somnia

PENTATONE

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $14.99

May 23, 2025

This album, which Denis Kozhukhin dedicates in memory of his parents, is very special and deeply personal to him. It brings together the innocence of Tchaikovsky's Children's Album, the playful yet technically demanding Music for Children by Prokofiev, and Alexey Shor's emotionally rich Piano Sonata No. 2. Tchaikovsky's pieces evoke childhood wonder and the fragility of life, while Prokofiev's "easy" works cleverly disguise technical challenges with mischievous charm. Shor's Sonata, filled with bold contrasts and introspective melodies, takes the listener on a journey of emotional discovery and resilience. Together, these works transcend their individual stories to offer a profound exploration of human experience - from the simplicity of childhood to the complexities of adulthood - all brought to life with Kozhukhin's masterful artistry. A prize-winner in prestigious competitions, including the Leeds International Piano Competition (2006) and the Queen Elizabeth Competition (2010), Denis Kozhukhin, has established himself as one of the greatest and most acclaimed pianists, with worldwide success. He now presents another chapter to his exclusive collaboration with PENTATONE, enriching the already extensive discography, after albums Grieg and Tchaikovsky's piano concertos (2016) which received a Gramophone Editor's Choice, Brahms' Ballades and Fantasies (2017) which was awarded 5 stars in Diapason, piano concertos by Ravel and Gershwin, Richard Strauss' Burleske (both 2018), Grieg: Lyric Pieces & Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte (2019) which was selected as Gramophone's Recording of the Month, as well as the Cesar Franck's Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra (2020).

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Somnia

~~$19.99~~ $14.99
CD

PENTATONE

May 23, 2025

PTC5187406

Howe: Songs and Duets / Maina, Dibbern, Leach

Toccata

Available as CD

~~$20.99~~ $15.99

Feb 18, 2022

The name of Mary Howe (1882–1964) seems to have vanished from the history books. But she was an important voice in American music in the first half of the twentieth century, as an activist and organizer and, especially, as a composer. This pioneering album of her songs shows her late-Romantic style open to influences from Debussy, Mahler, Richard Strauss and other contemporaries: she was, she said, ‘alert for new sensations, like a Puritan on a holiday’. Mary Howe was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1882. Her early musical training included studies in Germany with Richard Burmeister, a pupil of Liszt. She studied at the Peabody Conservatory of Music where she met Anne Hull with whom she formed a duo piano team that toured in recital from 1920-1935. In 1922, Howe became one of the few women at Peabody to have earned a diploma in composition at that time. With her three children, she appeared with the 4 Howes singing madrigals and early music. In 1930 she raised the money to found the Washington-based National Symphony Orchestra. Together with Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, she also founded the Chamber Music Society of Washington. In 1925 or 1926 she worked with Amy Beach to organize the Association of American Women Composers. A short period of coaching with Nadia Boulanger in Paris is 1933 marked the end of her formal training. Her diverse catalogue of compositions comprises more than two hundred titles, including works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, chorus, piano, and art songs for solo voice.

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Howe: Songs and Duets / Maina, Dibbern, Leach

~~$20.99~~ $15.99
CD

Toccata

Feb 18, 2022

TOCC0634

PIANO CONCERTOS, THE

Sony Masterworks

Available as CD

$16.98

Nov 25, 2016

No musician of our time is more closely associated with the Brahms piano concertos than Rudolf Buchbinder. The patrician Austrian pianist, who even possesses copies of the composer’s autograph scores and piano parts, stated that “it requires a whole lifetime to become intimate with Brahms’s sound world and achieve the maturity that gives you new freedom as a performer”. He represents the living proof of that assertion. Buchbinder’s interpretations are further claimed to be “a modern-day point of reference” to quote the leading American critic Jed Distler on his first recording of Brahms’s piano concertos in the late 1990s.Sony Classical releases the live recordings of Brahms’s two masterpieces for piano and orchestra – one from the composer’s firebrand youth, the other from his mellow maturity – which Buchbinder, approaching his 70th birthday, made with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by his dear friend and esteemed collaborator Zubin Mehta. Mehta, whose ties with Brahms’s adopted home of Vienna are nearly as deep as the soloist’s, has cited Brahms as one of the two composers (Richard Strauss being the other) whose works, more than any others, inspired him to become a conductor.In 2015, Buchbinder and Mehta united to perform Brahms’s piano concertos with the quintessential Brahmsian orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic. It was a veritable summit meeting of great interpreters of these concertos. The reviewer for Vienna’s Kurier wrote of these performances, “what Rudolf Buchbinder, the Vienna Philharmonic and conductor Zubin Mehta delivered at the Musikverein already deserves the accolade ‘milestone’. Here were a phenomenal piano virtuoso, a no less outstanding orchestra and a deeply knowledgeable conductor collaborating to perfection and producing an image of Brahms that does honour not only to Vienna.”

PIANO CONCERTOS, THE

$16.98
CD

Sony Masterworks

Nov 25, 2016

88985371582

Martucci Collection

Brilliant Classics

Available as CD

~~$51.99~~ $38.99

May 03, 2024

This is the most comprehensive collection ever released of Giuseppe Martucci’s music, in stylish modern recordings by native Italian musicians.

An Italian Brahms is an unlikely idea, but it encapsulates a superficial acquaintance with the music of Giuseppe Martucci (1856-1909). Any listener curious to take a deeper dive into the richly Romantic melodies and impassioned large-scale structures of Martucci will find no better place to start than this survey of his major works in every instrumental genre.

Martucci was an accomplished pianist, received with great enthusiasm on tours of France, Germany, and England, and the tremendous sweep of his Piano Concerto loses nothing by comparison with far more familiar examples. Brought to life here by Alberto Miodini, the piano music, too, is intensely wrought, but it never loses a preeminence of melody which was Martucci’s heritage.

In 1888 he conducted the Italian premiere of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde; his song-cycle La canzone dei Ricordi, written a year earlier, is the closest he came to translating the opera’s chromatic eroticism into his own music, and this box affords the opportunity to hear the piece in both its orchestral and piano versions; no less enlightening than (for example) the distinct versions of the Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss.

Disc 10 collects Martucci’s other songs for soprano, such as the remarkable Pagine sparse of 1888. Other highlights of the set include Martucci’s deep investment in chamber music, resulting in piano trios, violin and cello sonatas, and a magnificently brooding Piano Quintet, again in the Brahmsian mold.

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Martucci Collection

~~$51.99~~ $38.99
CD

Brilliant Classics

May 03, 2024

BRI96920

Puccini: La Rondine / Vassileva, Dashuk, Sartori

Naxos AudioVisual

Available as DVD

$32.99

Apr 28, 2009

Although one of his most consistently lyrical operas, La rondine (The Swallow) remains one of Puccini’s least known. Dissatisfied with the result of his work, Puccini wrote three versions, with two different endings, and continued to make further revisions up to his death in 1924. The innovative 2007 production at the Torre del Lago Giacomo Puccini Festival, presented on this DVD, is in effect a fourth version, which combines Acts I and II of the first version (1917), with Lorenzo Ferrero’s 1994 orchestration of parts of the Finale of Act III of the incomplete third version (1921), some of which had survived only in piano score, as well as Ruggero’s Act I romanza, Parigi è la città dei desideri, from the second version (1920).

With a sparkling score reminiscent of Franz Lehár and Richard Strauss, La rondine, set in mid-19th century Paris, tells the story of Magda de Civry, a young courtesan who falls in love one evening with Ruggero Lastouc, the handsome son of a childhood friend of her protector, Rambaldo Fernandez. Although Magda believes that her compromised social position prevents their marrying, in Puccini’s third version it is Ruggero who leaves Magda when he discovers that she is the mistress of Rambaldo. - Naxos

Giacomo Puccini
LA RONDINE

Magda – Svetla Vassileva
Lisette – Maya Dashuk
Ruggero – Fabio Sartori
Prunier – Emanuele Giannino
Rambaldo – Marzio Giossi
Périchaud – Fernando Ciuffo
Gobin – Giorgio Berrugi
Crébillon – Andrea Patucelli
Yvette – Polina Volfson
Bianca – Alessandra Meozzi
Suzy – Annunziata Vestri
Fleury – Katia De Sarlo
Mariette – Chang Chiung Wen
Roro – Elisabetta Lombardo
Un maggiordomo – Alessando Manghesi

Puccini Festival Chorus and Orchestra
Alberto Veronesi, conductor

Recorded live from the 53rd Puccini Festival, Torre del Lago, Italy, on 8, 10 and 16 August 2007

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: Dolby Digital 2.0 / Dolby Surround 5.0
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, Italian
Running time: 111 mins

Puccini: La Rondine / Vassileva, Dashuk, Sartori

$32.99
DVD

Naxos AudioVisual

Apr 28, 2009

2110266

ARTUR RODZINSKI EDITION

ELOQUENCE AUSTRALIA

Available as CD

$207.49

Apr 24, 2026

The complete Westminster recordings by ARTUR RODZINSKI date were made in London and Vienna from 1954 to 1958. While they represent a true autocrat of the podium, Rodzinski drew from orchestras every last ounce of energy as well as cultivating their virtuoso talents. Most recordings in this set appear internationally for the first time, together with some (previously unpublished) rehearsal extracts. Like his colleagues and fellow emigres Fritz Reiner, George Szell and Arturo Toscanini, Artur Rodzinski did not seek to make friends in the process of making music. His rehearsal methods were as ruthless as his conducting style was fiercely driven. His caustic manner extended to fellow professionals in the business such as soloists and agents, and the new essay by James H. North for this Eloquence collection includes stories of his dictatorial behaviour. But then Rodzinski's musical values also represent another era, and he drew from orchestras every last ounce of energy as well as cultivating their virtuoso talents. Once he had emigrated to the US, Rodzinski played an instrumental role in making the Cleveland and Chicago Symphony orchestras into the superbly responsive ensembles for which they are world-renowned today. Having retired from the stress of directorships, in the mid-1950s and in variable health, he produced a remarkable Indian summer of recordings for the Westminster label. Made mostly in London between 1954 and his death in November 1958, these Westminster albums centred on the late-Romantic and early-20th-century repertoire which responds to a virtuoso conductor's concern for subtle orchestral colours and extremes of speed and dynamic: Mussorgsky Pictures, Kodaly Dances and Richard Strauss's tone-poems. Rodzinski plays insightful accompanist to piano concertos with Paul Badura-Skoda, Youri Boukoff and Jorg Demus, but he achieved a special affinity with Erica Morini in the violin concertos of Brahms and Tchaikovsky. Rodzinski's decades of experience in the theatre bring sweeping authority to 'bleeding chunks' of Wagner, suites of Bizet and Tchaikovsky ballets. Further highlights in this set of newly-remastered mono and stereo albums include a Shostakovich Fifth which testifies to Rodzinski's early commitment to the composer in the West. Other, enduringly robust interpretations of canon symphonies include Dvorak's Ninth, Prokofiev's First, Tchaikovsky Nos. 4-6, and his very last Westminster album, of Beethoven and Schubert. At the end of the sessions, Rodzinski thanked the orchestra in a speech which was captured for posterity and reissued here. More rarities unearthed especially for this set include several rehearsal sequences, capturing Rodzinski's inimitable manner and dedication to his craft.

ARTUR RODZINSKI EDITION

$207.49
CD

ELOQUENCE AUSTRALIA

Apr 24, 2026

ELOA4848489.2

Korngold: String Quartets 2 & 3 / Alma Quartet

Challenge Classics

Available as CD

~~$18.99~~ $14.99

Nov 19, 2021

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was a genius. Naturally he was most widely known and rewarded as one of the founding composers of Hollywood film music, but he is not a particularly well-known composer in the classical music world. His three string quartets are surely masterpieces and can be seen as modern tone poems imbued with beautiful melancholy and Viennese charm. A child prodigy, Korngold wrote some of the most heart-wrenching melodies, which are sure to leave any listener longing for more. His String Quartet No. 2, Op. 26 (1933) was written just before Korngold moved to Hollywood and is full of musical imagery of Vienna, with gestures towards the waltzes of Johan Strauss II as well as the intricate lyricism of Richard Strauss. A fierce anti-serialist, Korngold was determined that it was still possible to stretch the boundaries of tonality without adapting to the 12-tone technique. The String Quartet No. 3, Op. 34 (1945) is full of themes that he used in his film scores and was written when Korngold was suffering from deep depression. The quartet is much darker. Why did we choose to tackle Korngold’s music for this unique project of a direct-to-disc recording on vinyl? The music resonates deeply with us, as it represents the epitome of late romanticism and lyrical expression. We all have a profound love for romantic music and after listening to some recordings of his quartets we knew instantly these were the perfect fit for us. It was definitely a challenge to understand the idiom in Korngold’s writing. Our individual personalities as well as the Alma sound is clearly audible.

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Korngold: String Quartets 2 & 3 / Alma Quartet

~~$18.99~~ $14.99
CD

Challenge Classics

Nov 19, 2021

CC 72869

Korngold: String Quartets 2 & 3 / Alma Quartet [Vinyl]

Challenge Classics

Available as Vinyl

~~$37.99~~ $28.99

Nov 19, 2021

On Sale

Korngold: String Quartets 2 & 3 / Alma Quartet [Vinyl]

~~$37.99~~ $28.99
Vinyl

Challenge Classics

Nov 19, 2021

CCLP 72868

ORCHESTRAL WORKS

Berlin Classics

Available as CD

~~$20.99~~ $15.99

Aug 06, 2021

With the reopening of the Stadtcasino, the music city of Basel gets back it's unique sound jewel. In August 2020, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, resident orchestra of the Stadtcasino Basel, celebrated it's return to the music hall, which was completed in 1876 according to plans by Basel architect Johann Jakob Stehlin. Acoustically the historic music hall is one of the world's best concert halls. The extension of the Stadtcasino was commissioned from the prominent architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron with their headquarters in Basel and who have already designed several famous buildings and concert halls, most recently the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. The program of the concert on August 26, 2020, was entirely dedicated to the reopening and under the impression of a newly forming music world after the Corona lockdown. The present recording was made as a co-production with SRF, which recorded the symphony orchestra's first concert in it's home venue, the Stadtcasino Basel. The lavish booklet presents numerous photographs of the opulent concert hall as well as an essay by Elke Heidenreich, who has been associated with the orchestra for years. The concert began with Beethoven's overture "The Consecration of the House, " with which the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna was opened in 1822. With Debussy's orchestration of the 3rd Gymnopédies, a wealth of delicate timbres floated weightlessly into the restored concert hall. Satie described his music as "musique d'ameublement", a music of furnishing, which may also be understood allegorically as the tonal furnishing of the music hall. In the orchestral song "Morgen" by Richard Strauss, soprano Christina Landshamer presented herself as artist in residence. Finally, Dvorak's 9th Symphony "From the New World" was symbolic of the very special start to a new chapter in music with the Basel Symphony Orchestra under the baton of principal conductor Ivor Bolton.

On Sale

ORCHESTRAL WORKS

~~$20.99~~ $15.99
CD

Berlin Classics

Aug 06, 2021

0301675BC

Wolfgang Sawallisch: Complete Symphonic, Lieder & Choral Recordings - Warner Classics Edition, Vol. 1

WARNER CLASSICS

Available as CD

$200.17

Aug 09, 2024

For five decades Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) held a central position in the musical world. That centrality was reflected in a series of top orchestral and operatic posts and in his interpretations, free of self-regarding eccentricities. His modest but highly effective conducting technique also made him the ideal recording artist. Sawallisch was a Bavarian born in Munich, city of orchestras and a great opera company, which he headed for 21 years. He started his career as an outstanding pianist and remained a sought-after accompanist to great Lieder singers and instrumentalists. Volume 1 of a complete conspectus of his Warner Classics recordings (made for Electrola and EMI Classics between 1954 to 1997) includes wonderful Lieder and song collaborations, as well as famous concerto accompaniments for eminent soloists and a heartwarming traversal of Schubert's secular vocal and sacred choral music with Bavarian Radio colleagues. But the main focus among the 65 discs is on his symphonic achievements: Beethoven, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bruckner and Dvorak - the latter's Eighth Symphony was his first published recording, from 1954. Richard Strauss, an early influence, is strongly represented. This 65CD-box brings together all the non-operatic recordings that the German conductor and pianist Wolfgang Sawallisch (1923-2013) made in the years from 1954 to 1997 for EMI Classics and Electrola (now Warner Classics).

Wolfgang Sawallisch: Complete Symphonic, Lieder & Choral Recordings - Warner Classics Edition, Vol. 1

$200.17
CD

WARNER CLASSICS

Aug 09, 2024

WCL783217.2

Arriola: Orchestral Music

Brilliant Classics

Available as CD

~~$18.99~~ $9.49

Sep 13, 2018

These are the first-ever recordings of music composed by José (Pepito) Arriola, whose works are virtually unknown. Born in Betanzos in the northern Spanish region of Galicia in 1895, Arriola was a celebrated child prodigy known at the time as a 'Galician Mozart', who dazzled audiences across Europe and American with his piano-playing. Most of Arriola's work was lost when his home in Berlin was destroyed during the Second World War. The manuscripts for the three concertos and two song-cycles presented here were discovered just a few years ago, and mysteriously vanished almost as soon as they had been photocopied for dissemination. They were composed in the final decade of Arriola's life: in 1946 he settled in Barcelona, where he lived quietly until his death in 1954. Arriola's music belongs to the second golden age of Spanish music, that of Albéniz, Granados, Turina and Falla (and, a little later, Joaquín Rodrigo), flavoured by nationalism and the rich Spanish folk tradition, along with a verismo that concerned itself with the ordinary people of Spain and their suffering (as mirrored in Carmen, or Candela in El amor brujo). Yet in common with other post-Romantic composers, Arriola sought out a world of vanished beauty, experimenting with color, texture, unusual tonal combinations and harmony full of color, sensuality and emotion. As a student in Leipzig, Arriola had been taught by Richard Strauss, and his teacher's influence may be heard to positive effect in both the soaring vocal lines of the Tres textos cervantinos and the transplanted Classical idiom of the Horn Concerto. The piano-writing in the Concertino and Divertimento concertante is more compact and Stravinskian, while two songs from the cycle of Seis poesías de Antonio Machado disclose yet another, more impassioned facet of Arriola's style.

On Sale

Arriola: Orchestral Music

~~$18.99~~ $9.49
CD

Brilliant Classics

Sep 13, 2018

BRI95797

Antonio Pappano - Complete Santa Cecilia Symphonic,Concertante & Sacred Music Recordings

WARNER CLASSICS

Available as CD

$100.49

Aug 09, 2024

The collaborative efforts, the mutual emulation and inspiration of Sir Antonio Pappano and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome have spanned 18 years, led to one of the world's greatest and most versatile virtuoso ensembles and to acclaimed live and studio recordings showcasing an eclectic selection of symphonic and choral music. Their repertoire features already legendary performances of Verdi's Requiem and Quattro pezzi sacri. In addition, their recording of Bruckner's 8th Symphony features here for the very first time! This box brings together all the recordings that the British conductor Sir Antonio Pappano (b.1959) made with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in the years from 2005 to 2022 for Warner Classics.

Antonio Pappano - Complete Santa Cecilia Symphonic,Concertante & Sacred Music Recordings

$100.49
CD

WARNER CLASSICS

Aug 09, 2024

WCL779307.2

Rarities: Chamber Musical / Brogli-Sacher, Hansestadt Lubeck Philharmonic

Musicaphon

Available as SACD

$16.99

May 01, 2020

Richard Strauss‘ father, Franz Strauss, was one of the most prominent horn virtuosos of the time, and the horn was one of the instruments for which Richard had a predilection throughout his life. With his “Serenade,” Strauss junior convinced conductor Hans von Bülow of his talent. Von Bülow took the piece into the program of his famous Meininger Hofkapelle. There is a close relationship between the first concerto in C Minor op. 8 by Franz Strauss to the horn concerto op. 11 of his son who orientated him-self at the romantic stile of his father. The horn virtuoso himself premiered his own concerto in C Minor in spring 1865 during an academy in the Odeon concert house in Munich. Born in the same year as Franz Strauss, Franck received his first music lessons and made his first public appearances as pianist before moving with his parents to Paris, where he became a pupil of Anton Reicha. In 1871 he was a co-founder of the Société Nationale de Musique, and later elected its president. Characteristic of Franck’s mature style is the so-called “cyclical form” – a formal concept that attained full significance only in the works from Franck’s last decade. This period also saw the composition of his today most well-known works, which of course attained their great popularity only after his death. The Piano Quintet is considered the beginning, the “portal work,” whose tendencies and motifs are taken up again in later works such as the D-Minor Symphony, the Violin Sonata, and the String Quartet. Premiered in its original form on 17 January 1880 in the Société Nationale de Musique, the work experienced its premiere in the expanded form of a “Symphony for Orchestra and Piano” on 8 June 2008 with Mathias Weber, who made the arrangement, performing the piano part.

Rarities: Chamber Musical / Brogli-Sacher, Hansestadt Lubeck Philharmonic

$16.99
SACD

Musicaphon

May 01, 2020

M56916

Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau / Albrecht, Netherlands Philharmonic

PENTATONE

Available as CD

~~$19.99~~ $14.99

Jun 26, 2020

Marc Albrecht and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra present Zemlinsky’s lush symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau. Zemlinsky was a child of fin-de-siècle Vienna, who for decades has been overshadowed by colleagues such as Gustav Mahler – the man who married Alma, the woman Zemlinsky also loved – and Arnold Schoenberg – the man who would later become his brother-in-law. In recent times, Zemlinsky is finally gaining the recognition he deserves. The same applies to his symphonic poem Die Seejungfrau, based on Andersen’s Little Mermaid story. Zemlinsky withdrew the score after its premiere in 1905; the three movements were first reunited in the 1980s thanks to scholars, after which the piece could start its second life. Die Seejungfrau seems inspired by Zemlinsky’s love in vain for Alma, clothed in cinematic fin-de-siècle music with Debussy-like evocations of the sea. This new recording marks the final PENTATONE album of Marc Albrecht as chief conductor of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. It is their sixth collective PENTATONE recording, and underlines their proficiency in German late-Romantic repertoire. Previously, they have released Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben/Burleske (2018), Mahler Song Cycles (2017), Brahms/Schoenberg (2015), Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (2015) and his song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (2013).

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REVIEWS:

Albrecht inspires his orchestra in this late-Romantic score, intoxicated with the chromatic ecstasy of Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night.

– Sunday Times (UK)

For sheer tonal allure Albrecht’s performance can’t quite match the two available from Riccardo Chailly and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (on Decca and the orchestra’s own label), but it’s still powerful enough to convince any sceptics that this is a score that deserves much more than the occasional dutiful revival.

– Guardian (UK)

On Sale

Zemlinsky: Die Seejungfrau / Albrecht, Netherlands Philharmonic

~~$19.99~~ $14.99
CD

PENTATONE

Jun 26, 2020

PTC5186740

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