Classical Music

"Martin Jones’s recordings of Percy Grainger have been gathered together into a 5-CD box set of the Complete Works, NI1767, in which form they were reviewed by Jonathan Woolf in March 2011 but we don’t seem to have reviewed this generous selection. It’s all that many potential listeners will want and I see that it’s advertised as available again. My copy of the CD dates from 1994. It’s not a reissue of a single CD from the set but a compendium of Grainger’s best-known works.

Let me deal with the least attractive part first: as Jonathan Woolf noted, the recording is not to everyone’s taste – it’s certainly too reverberant for my liking, but it didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment too much. Subscribers to the Naxos Music Library might wish to try it there first but give it a chance: after a few tracks you’ll hardly notice any problem.

Just about all the likely suspects are included in the programme, together with several pieces that I would hardly have described as well-known: track 4, for example, offers Grainger’s take on Dowland’s Now, O now, I needs must part. It’s in a style far removed from the madly dancing Percy Grainger that viewers of a certain age will retain from Ken Russell’s film about Delius – that’s Grainger, that was – and, though I hardly recognised Dowland’s original tune from Grainger’s treatment, he does retain the gravity and melancholy spirit of the original.

Much the same is true of My Robin is to the Greenwood gone (track 7) – the original tune is submerged in Grainger’s arrangement of what emerges as a fine piece in its own right. Nor is a folk tune such as Near Woodstock Town (track 15) quite the same after Grainger’s treatment. Mock Morris on the following track makes no pretentions to be other than Grainger’s own take on folk music – it only sounds as if it were based on a folk tune. In many respects it’s more quintessentially Grainger than anything else and it’s brought off to perfection here.

There are several arrangements here: the next track after Dowland (tr.5) contains Blithe Bells, Grainger’s arrangement of Schafe können sicher weiden (Sheep may safely graze), though, again, Bach’s original is almost lost in the latter part of the arrangement – it’s much more Grainger’s ‘own’ than Walton’s take on the same piece in The Wise Virgins. Other tracks contain arrangements of Stanford, Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss – a characteristic Ramble on the final love-duet of Rosenkavalier.

The pop items are skilfully interwoven in the programme, starting with Handel in the Strand (track 1). Memories of George Malcolm playing this on the harpsichord are not erased but Martin Jones offers idiomatic and dextrous performances of the well-known and lesser-known works alike. Getting your fingers around the notes in a piece like the Stanford March-jig (track 9) is only half the story; the other half, which Jones contrives beautifully, is summoning an image of Grainger himself dancing to it around Delius’s garden.

On the following track we’re on Irish territory again in very different mood for the Tune from County Derry (alias Danny Boy). Does Jones milk the sentiment here slightly too much in the manner of those Irish tenors such as Josef Locke whom my father and grandfather worshipped? I think so, but perhaps my great-grandfather’s Irish blood was simply running a little too thin by the time it reached my generation. In any case, Marc-André Hamelin on Hyperion is faster and less sentimental here (see below). John Pickard’s observation in the booklet that ‘Grainger’s music shares with Bach’s the fact that, no matter how slowly one plays it, it always sounds satisfying’ looks as if it might have been written in defence of Jones’s tempo for this piece.

On track 11 Grainger and Jones take on the opening of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto single-handed, and do so surprisingly effectively. No question of too slow a tempo here.

Only if you are likely to be put off by the recording should you need to look elsewhere. If you do, you are likely to find a 1996 recording by Marc-André Hamelin on Hyperion your best choice – a very similar selection to that on Nimbus, on CDA66884 (CD or download in mp3 or lossless). If anything, Hamelin is even more fleet-fingered than Jones, but there’s not much to choose between them. If it’s the orchestral arrangements that you’re looking for, look no further than the inexpensive Introduction to Percy Grainger (Chandos CHAN2029: Bargain of the Month – see review), a sampler for their excellent complete series (see review), or another budget-price Chandos selection (CHAN6542, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Montgomery).

With first-class performances and excellent notes there’s a lot to be said in favour of this single-CD selection. Don’t blame me if it leads you to purchase the complete box, or if the Chandos sampler tempts you to buy some of the recordings in that series."

-- Brian Wilson, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Classical Music

This disc, superbly recorded in the Henry Wood Hall in Glasgow, makes a most welcome addition to Naxos’s growing collection of English music. In every way it provides formidable rivalry for the two excellent full-price Holst discs which substantially overlap with this in repertory – from Richard Hickox on Chandos and from Sir Adrian Boult on Lyrita in vintage performances from around 1970.

Like Hickox, Lloyd-Jones has as his two weightiest items the Hardy-inspired Egdon Heath, arguably Holst’s finest work, as well as the prelude and fugue, Hammersmith, comparably dark and intense. But where Hickox has the latter in its usual orchestral form, Lloyd-Jones chooses the wind-band version, achieving a subtlety of shading in phrasing and dynamic amply to justify that striking choice. The Chandos recording is sumptuous, but the Naxos sound is at least as vividly atmospheric, while letting one hear more inner detail, particularly important in the fugue.

As to interpretation, Hickox is a degree warmer in phrasing and more passionate in his build-up of climaxes, where Lloyd-Jones, generally adopting more flowing speeds closer to those of Boult, is more objective, while bringing out to the full the tenderness and refinement of the writing. Particularly beautiful is the performance of A Somerset Rhapsody which opens the disc, with the cor anglais solo ravishingly played. Boult of course has unique authority in this music, and the Lyrita analogue recordings – among the finest of their period – still sound superb, with clean focus and separation.

Yet quite apart from the intrinsic quality of Lloyd-Jones’s performances with the Scottish orchestra, and the formidable advantage of price, his grouping of works is more generous than that on either rival disc. The six works are neatly balanced, three dating from before the climactic period of The Planets and The Hymn of Jesus, and three after. Particularly valuable – and not included on either rival disc – is the atmospheric Invocation for cello and orchestra of 1911, rather dismissed by Imogen Holst, but here given a yearningly intense, deeply thoughtful performance with Tim Hugh as soloist.

A highly recommendable offering, whether for the dedicated Holstian or the newcomer wanting to investigate this composer’s more characteristic work outside The Planets.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [6/1998]

Atterberg's piano concerto, as I noted in discussing its previous incarnation on Sterling, comes perilously close to self-parody. The endless Romantic heaving and gesticulating, capped by a finale whose main tune sounds like a demented cross between two Tom Lehrer tunes ("Be Prepared" and "The Irish Ballad"), may well make it hard for some listeners to take seriously (believe me, Atterberg was dead serious). Still, if you just sit back and wallow in its billowing excess, there's much fun to be had, and this performance improves on its predecessor being better played by both soloist and orchestra, and better recorded. In particular, the slightly less frantic, but even more rhythmically emphatic approach to the last movement carries the music forward with every bit as much conviction and less suspicion of embarrassment. I also prefer the couplings: two very appealing (and gratifyingly concise) works for piano and orchestra (whereas its competitor featured a pretty awful rendition of the Violin Concerto). Indeed, the Ballad and Passacaglia, based on a Swedish folk tune, could very well become a popular hit. In short, this is another winner in CPO's ongoing Atterberg series. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Italian Passion in Surround. The Munich Radio Orchestra now turns to the sensuous fascination offered by Ottorino Respighi's masterpieces - a logical and natural choice for this orchestra, which during the course of it's history of more than sixty years has developed into an ensemble with an enormously broad artistic spectrum and earned a firm place in the orchestral landscape precisely because of it's versatility. For Respighi familiarity with music history and the old masters was not only a sublime pastime but also a source of inspiration for his own compositional work, and he certainly also contributed a great deal to the now current concert practice involving the performance of early music with modern orchestras. His Antiche danze ed arie, free arrangements of arias and dances from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, enables us to rediscover forgotten rhythms and tones. While he alters the character of the music by introducing a rich array of instruments, all sorts of different orchestrations, and harmonic modulations of modern coloration, the art of the old masters remains untouched. These works are finely complemented by his Gli Uccelli (The Birds) suite. In 1927 he drew on various harpsichord and lute miniatures for this quasi-ornithological "Suite for Small Orchestra," producing picturesque snapshots here showing him from his admirable and remarkable side as a sensitive observer who discovers the pictorial element in all that he sees.

Includes work(s) by Franz Schreker. Ensemble: AML Lucerne Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: John Axelrod.

Classical Music

This is a highly realistic-sounding recording of a piano four-hands recital from the position of the players. In other words the keyboard is spread in front of the listener with the top end distinctly to the right. One can hear the pedalling and even the breathing of these two. I do slightly question the decision to record from this perspective in that no audience member is able to sit like this. However such a view is not unique in the recording world and they can be forgiven because it sounds so good. The engineering is not 100% perfect - there is a clear editing error in track 4 at 3.08, as if the digital scissors slipped. A reminder that modern recordings are made up of often hundreds of edits, considering which it is well disguised the rest of the time.

What of the music? Most collectors will have a substantial amount of Debussy's delicious piano music, but this collector discovered that most of this CD was new to him, a pleasure in itself. The early Petite Suite is the most famous music present. The even earlier Première Suite d'orchestre was only published in 2008 in this four-hand version. It is a lovelypiece throughout its full 26 minutes and does not sound like anyone except Debussy. The Six Épigraphes antiques are late Debussy and display his extraordinary command of advanced harmony. The ear is constantly tickled by the most strange sounds. The recital is completed by the rare 1st version of the Marche écossaise sur un thème populaire.

The two pianists are new to me and display a high degree of togetherness, if not the pin-sharp unity of, say, Aloys and Alfons Kontarsky. Given such unusual fare this is a fine set of performances and mostly very well recorded indeed. The notes by Gérald Hugon are detailed and well structured - and translated into elegant English by Susannah Howe. Hugon tells the purchaser everything he is likely to want to know about the discovery of the early compositions and their complex history, and then goes on to discuss each piece thoroughly. We have grown to expect such quality from Naxos, another star to them.

– Dave Billinge, MusicWeb International

“The Glière Symphony No 3 has always been a piece that shimmered on my horizon—a cult piece, in a way, renowned as the composer’s towering masterpiece but rarely played in concert. As long as a Mahler symphony and enormous in its instrumental requirements, it was a work that people spoke about reverently but almost never heard live. The recording was an adventure that changed our orchestra, strengthened us, and became an artistic benchmark for our musicians. We revelled in the gorgeous landscape of the Symphony—from mysterious bass murmurings to crushing walls of brass fortissimo to breathtaking impressionistic renderings of forests and birds. We performed and recorded this massive work uncut to preserve Glière’s extraordinary architecture. This work is a cathedral in sound that unfolds in breathtaking swashes of colour, poetry and monumental climaxes.” – JoAnn Falletta

Magic on a budget: Szymanowski's fantasy world is beautifully caught

Naxos offers an exceptionally clear recording of these three concertante works by Szymanowski, not just the two Violin Concertos but an orchestrated version of the Nocturne and Tarantella. Ilya Kaler, as on his other Naxos discs, gives pure, clear readings with flawless intonation and careful use of vibrato. Having a Polish conductor and orchestra as his accompanists adds to the idiomatic feel of each, with the magical orchestral sounds beautifully conjured up, particularly in No 1, the more radical of the two works.

Like Kaler, Thomas Zehetmair plays with flawlesss intonation in a wonderfully pure reading, using minimal vibrato. Kaler is a degree warmer with a shade more vibrato, and the Naxos recording brings out the fantasy of the composer’s orchestration, particularly in No 1, with wonderful clarity. Lydia Mordkovitch is warmer still, playing with hushed intensity in the gentle passages and relishing the pure beauty of the passages of writing above the stave. In the more openly lyrical Second Concerto, Mordkovitch makes the Andantino deeply reflective at a very measured pace, while the others adopt more flowing speeds with lighter results.

Kaler then plays the relatively brief Nocturne and Tarantella just as sympathetically, with the Tarantella a flamboyant virtuoso vehicle making a splendid climax to an excellent disc. The point which trumps all competition inevitably is that the Naxos issue, beautifully and idiomatically played and brilliantly recorded, comes at such a reasonable price.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [7/2007]

Sleep, Holy Babe is a collection of Christmas lullabies which reflect the old traditions and restful, contemplative nature of the nativity story.

Drawing on the romantic spirit in music, Schubert’s moving setting is of a poem by Goethe which compares a rushing waterfall to the soul of man, while Strauss’s gorgeous Mittagsruhe depicts the peace of a summer noontide. Narrative vocal traditions are heard in Sibelius’s nationalist Vapautettu kuningatar, Bruckner’s heroic Helgoland, and Grieg’s Landkjenning, which tells of the 10th-century Norwegian king Oleg Tryggvason. Das Liebesmahl der Apostel anticipates the religious ecstasies of Wagner’s Parsifal, while Debussy’s early cantata Invocation resonates with Gallic sparkle.

The cpo label now completes its edition of the concertos of Kurt Atterberg with the Cello Concerto and the Horn Concerto, both written in the 1920s when Atterberg was already a very experienced musician known throughout Europe and active at home and abroad. More intuitive than analytical as a composer, one may understand the ‘movements’ of the Cello Concerto as representatives of ‘normal’ sonata form in which the motifs are reconfigured and then taken up again, whereas the Horn Concerto, despite its unusual but purposeful employment of forces, adheres to traditional form.

One of the leading English composers of his generation, Vaughan Williams went some way towards creating a specifically English musical idiom, influenced by his interest in folk-song yet underpinned by a personal vision and language.

Classical Music

Hovhaness' admirers often tend to overlook the piano works in favour of his big orchestral statements. Nevertheless there's much to enjoy in these compact pieces which are here drawn from a wide time frame, spanning Op.36 to Op.390. The Twelve Armenian Folk Songs were composed around 1943 but not published until two decades later. The melodies are attractive in themselves but, more than that, they are most attractively played by Alessandra Pompili who shows a very strong affinity with all the music in this 52-minute disc. She plays the 'unfamiliar melodies' - in the composer's words - with simplicity and a real degree of affection in an acoustic that tends to the dry, though on balance I'd rather that than a billowing sound in these pieces.

Ghazal and Ghazal-Sufi date from 1938 and here the bass line underlies a weaving lyric right hand melody line. The former, which is the longer, has a tolling, melancholy-sounding motif whilst the latter is the more rarefied in expression. This is, it would seem the first ever recording of both pieces. Composed in 1959 whilst Hovhaness was in the Kashmir, Shalimar reflects his huge enthusiasm for Indian music. Formally, he introduced the idea of borders in this suite in an attempt to suggest the carpet-like designs of Moghul gardens. As much as rhythm drives this music, there is a huge amount of nature painting involved, the composer evoking the now-silent fountains through the memory of their music. Much is coolly flowing, beautifully expressive and often hypnotically rhythmic but there is also the Bachian element of the Third Interlude. Helpfully each incident - there are eight in all - is separately tracked.

The 'Cougar Mountain' Sonata, Op.390 dates from 1985 and returns to his love of nature - of vistas and expanse. As well as a slow opening movement there is a lament, a slumber song and, as finale, a dance. There are hints of Ravel in the early part of the sonata and the stomping dance with which the sonata ends certainly generates considerable dynamism. Its compact nature still allows a rich sense of characterization to emerge. The Fantasy, Op.15 - again this is a first recording - was written in 1938 but was later re-worked and absorbed into the Blue Job Mountain Sonata, Op.340. It's an unusually alternating work for Hovhaness, in which lyricism and percussiveness sit on opposite sides of the equation. Finally there is Dark River and Distant Bell which, with its oriental mood, was originally intended for harpsichord or clavichord. This is its first appearance on disc in piano guise.

Pompili, then, is a splendid young exponent of Hovhaness' music. That dry sound does help to clarify and centralize the piano writing without sounding off-puttingly objectified. Liner notes are in Italian and English and worth a detour, as indeed is this disarmingly well-played disc.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

Britten: The Turn of the Screw

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 is not only Mahler’s longest work, but is the longest symphony in the standard repertoire. A typical performance lasts between 90 and 105 minutes. The six-movement piece is regarded as one of Mahler’s greatest, and has been recorded by all of the major orchestras. This recording of Mahler’s 3rd symphony was taken in Moscow, 1961, and features contralto Valentina Levko as well as the Ladies of the Moscow State Choir and Children’s Choir. Alongside Mahler’s work is Prokofiev’s October, Cantata Op 74, in a recording taken in Moscow in 1966. Both of these works feature the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Kirill Kondrashin.

“In 1912, when my second quartet was performed in Berlin, a tumult arose in the audience that was not far from a tussle. On the one side, shouts of amazement; on the other side, expressions of displeasure and boos. Even Schönberg, who attaches special value to flops, was envious of me because of this flop.” “…our generation too has fought for its ideals and had to wait long and often still is waiting to receive honest and full recognition of its efforts to produce a new musical language, which very often again became the basis for the new aspirations of the younger generation.” These words were not written by an anarchistic innovator but by the euphonious late romanticist Josef Suk. His second string quartet, however, is surely the most ambitious and ‘most modern’ work he penned. In the field of chamber music it also ranks as his most important. For cpo the Minguet Quartet has recorded Suk’s complete œuvre for string quartet – with Matthias Kirschnereit joining them for the early piano quintet.

This disc represents an easy first choice in Finzi's Intimations of Immortality, one of the masterpieces of the English choral literature and a surprisingly neglected one too. Its only serious competition comes from Richard Hickox on EMI (if it's still in print) and Matthew Best on Hyperion (a very good version, if not quite as orchestrally polished as this). David Hill has one advantage over everyone: his is simply the most exciting performance available, not just a function of swift tempos, but also in terms of the acuity and enthusiasm of the instrumental response to the music's bold contrasts and driving climaxes.


With James Gilchrist, a very fine tenor soloist, singing with impressive clarity of diction and very little of that traditionally English, pinched tone quality, the overall picture only gets better. It may be that in his own Corydon Singers Best has a finer contingent of massed voices, but the Bournemouth choir certainly does as well as Hickox's Liverpool forces. The coupling is equally impressive: a resounding performance of the ebullient ceremonial ode For St. Cecilia (Hickox offers the Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano and orchestra, Best the gentle cantata Dies Natalis). At Naxos' budget price, this is an easy call. Buy it! [7/24/2006]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Alexander Zemlinsky’s four numbered string quartets span some four decades, moving from the conservatism of his Brahms-inspired youth to the experimental works of his mature years. Written just after the Lyric Symphony (Naxos 8.572048), the Third Quartet is constructed in a cool, austere language far removed from the emotional, expressionistic atmosphere of the Second Quartet. The Fourth Quartet, written in memory of Alban Berg, is a fitting conclusion to an important body of work bridging the Romantic world of the nineteenth century to the modern age of the twentieth. Quartets Nos 1 and 2 will follow on Naxos 8.573088.

about the release In a short space of time Augustin Hadelich has become one of the most respected and admired violinists of his generation. Two critically acclaimed and Billboard Classical Chart-topping releases for AVIE, a string of major debuts with the likes of the New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco, St. Louis and National Symphony Orchestras, multiple awards including an Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, have resulted in major media coverage in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and Philadelphia Inquirer, among many others, and an ever-widening and adoring fan base. On Histoire du Tango, Augustin conjures a dark and sultry night of fiery, hot-blooded dancing. Partnered by award-winning Spanish guitarist Pablo Sáinz Villegas, Augustin traces the history of Argentina's national dance in Piazzola's title track, stirs up folk, gypsy and flamenco dances which inspired De Falla's Six Popular Spanish Songs, and tosses off a fusillade of pyrotechnics in works by the pinnacles of 19th-century violin performance, Paganini and Sarasate. critical acclaim for Augustin Hadelich "If a layer of surface noise were added to Augustin Hadelich's recent solo-violin recording on the Avie label, you might think you were hearing a virtuoso out of the Golden Age." - The New Yorker "behind Hadelich's talent was a molten intensity, a determination to explore the music's passionate, earthy sides with gritty articulation and tender lyricism." - Cleveland Plain Dealer "impressive -- intonation dead-on, with a luscious tone and an Old World grace that you don't hear very much from young violinists anymore." - Los Angeles Times "he easily confirmed his place on the shortlist of today's top violin virtuosos" - The Denver Post, on Augustin's New York Philharmonic debut at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival

The magnificent Graz premiere of Joseph Marx’s Herbstsymphonie (Autumn Symphony) was held on 28 September 1922 under the expert conductor and sound specialist Clemens Krauss. It was a great triumph for Marx, and when Krauss selected this work for a concert program in Vienna in late May of the following year, the public went wild. The Herbstsymphonie is not so much a symphony in the traditional sense as a multimovement rhapsody of massive proportions, both in view of its huge orchestral dimensions and its performance length. For this reason this gigantic composition ranks as one of music history’s most lavishly instrumented works. Until now Joseph Marx has been known primarily as a composer of songs and chamber music. However, already in 1911 he had composed the sumptuously designed cantata Herbstchor an Pan (Autumn Chorus to Pan), a work that also in its choice of theme may be said to herald the coming of the Herbstsymphonie.

ENESCU Piano Quartets: No. 1 in D; No. 2 in d • Tammuz Pn Qrt • CPO 777506 (65:40)


Pianist Oliver Triendl is a veteran of numerous cpo chamber-music recordings in which the ensembles he is part of—the Minguet, Sine Nomine, and Vogler quartets, and Ensemble Acht—seem to change from one release to the next. I mention this because the Tammuz Piano Quartet is yet another ensemble recently established when Triendl and this time friends Daniel Gaede, violin; Lars Anders Tomter, viola; and cellist Gustav Rivinius (not to be confused with pianist Paul Rivinius) came together. This is their first, and as far as I’m aware, their only commercial recording.


The name of the ensemble struck me as odd, the booklet note informing us that Tammuz, in Babylonian and Assyrian mythology, was the lover of Ishtar, the goddess of love. I suppose for those up on their ancient Mesopotamian history, Ishtar might be the first reference to come to mind, but for many more of us, I suspect, Tammuz will ring a bell as the name of the 10th month on the Hebrew calendar, corresponding roughly to the Gregorian calendar month of July.


For most of my early years of musical discovery, I knew Romanian composer George Enescu (1881–1955) only by his Romanian Rhapsodies . I still remember a Columbia LP recording of them I had with Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. It has only been within the last 20 or so years, I’d say, that Enescu’s large body of works has made inroads among the classical-music listening public. Live performances of his symphonies, orchestral compositions, and many chamber works are still relatively rare, and his large scale opera Œdipe , completed in 1931, had to wait until 2005 for its U.S. premiere. However, much of Enescu’s music is today available on record, and what has emerged in works like the C-Major Octet and the Sinfonia Concertante for Cello and Orchestra, which can be heard on Volume 1 of Hyperion’s Romantic Cello Concerto series, is a composer of broader scope than might have been thought from some of his popular folk-styled works.


James Manheim, reviewing the current CD for the website AllMusic, writes that “Enescu’s Piano Quartet No. 1, composed in 1909, sounds a bit like what might have happened if Richard Strauss had grown up in Paris.” Manheim’s observation that “the quartet is a large piece (for a chamber work), with the first two of its three movements clocking in at over 13 minutes each,” comports with Christoph Schlüren’s booklet note in which he states, “If only in point of length, the First Piano Quartet is a composition of epic dimensions.” “Epic” may be a bit exaggerated, for certainly there are chamber works, like Franck’s D-Major String Quartet, that exceed Enescu’s in duration. But “epic” has as much to do with weight and gravity of content as with length; and these two piano quartets are as serious in intent as they are seriously gorgeous.


Up until World War II, Enescu divided his time between his native Romania and France, but following the Soviet occupation of Romania, he repaired permanently to Paris. The French influence on Enescu cannot be downplayed. He studied with Massenet and Fauré, and in the first decade of the 20th century he would have heard not only the works of his teachers but also of Debussy. So, Manheim got the Paris part right, but not, I think, the Strauss reference. Enescu’s Piano Quartet No. 1 sounds to me like Fauré on testosterone, which is to say it has much the same restless harmony, arresting melody, and free-flowing rhythm, but it’s scruffier around the edges, with a week-old beard, sounding more masculine and muscular and smelling more of musk than of hyacinth and lavender.


Writing during the worst of times, Enescu composed his Piano Quartet No. 2 between 1943 and 1944. It was written to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Fauré’s death. Unlike its older companion, however, which is heavily influenced by Fauré’s melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic language, if not so much his elegant, refined style, the later work seems to take note of Bartók in the way it draws upon Magyar folk elements in its first and last movements, and to explore a kind of post-Debussy Impressionism in its slow movement.


Both of these works make very personal, very powerful, and very moving musical statements. For several years now, there has been a Naxos recording of the Piano Quartet No. 2 with the Solomon Ensemble, but it’s coupled with a performance of the composer’s Piano Quintet. To the extent that current listings can be trusted, this new cpo recording seems to be the only one available of the Piano Quartet No. 1. But it’s not trumpeted as a world premiere recording, which record companies usually boast when they’ve managed a coup.


The Tammuz Piano Quartet is really outstanding. The music sounds quite technically challenging, yet I hear no stress or strain in these performances. Playing and recording are superb. If the Romanian Rhapsodies are the only Enescu in your collection, you are in for a real surprise and a real treat with this CD. Not only do I urgently recommend it, I’m setting it aside as a potential candidate for my 2011 Want List.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Includes work(s) for piano by Luciano Berio. Soloist: Andrea Lucchesini.

Shortly after the Nazis had seized power, Paul Frankenburger, like many other Jewish composers, left Germany for Palestine, which was then under British administration. In Palestine he resumed his creative work with Ben-Haim as his Hebrew name. He became one of the pioneers of classical music in Israel, both as a composer and as an admired composition teacher. His Concerto Grosso, his first work for symphony orchestra, is embedded in the spiritual and technical sound world of German late romanticism and French impressionism and related to the Baroque concerto grosso only insofar as it contains numerous solos and homogeneous orchestral segments. Ben-Haim concluded the score of his Symphony No. 2, his longest orchestral work, in October 1945. This work adheres to the four-movement structure of classical and romantic music. The autographic score has an epigraph by the Israeli poet Shin Shalom: "Awake with the morning, O my soul, on the summit of Carmel over the sea." It indicates the hopeful, optimistic mood prevailing throughout most of the symphony. The conductor Israel Yinon (who unfortunately died in 2015) is once again our skillful guide through this second Ben-Haim production.

XENAKIS Phlegra. Anaktoria. Dhipli Zyla. Waarg. VARÈSE Octandre. ROMITELLI Mediterraneo I & II • Stefan Asbury, cond; Asko Ens; Marieke Koster (mez) • STRADIVARIUS 33871 (72:34) Live: Milan 11/6/2005


GERVASONI Meta della ripa. MANZONI Ode. Sembianti. WEBERN Passacaglia • Lothar Koenigs, cond; RAI Natl SO • STRADIVARIUS 33872 (69:16) Live: Milan 11/4/2006


Thanks to the cost-cutting and absence of commercial considerations that occur as more orchestras, ensembles, artists, and in this case festivals issue their own recordings or find new outlets for them, audiences now have an increased opportunity to experience more unusual repertory, especially contemporary music. The Milan Music Festival has specialized in the latter since 1991, and these two concert recordings—Volume 2 featuring the Xenakis, Volume 3 the Gervasoni, et al.—show how they are frequently able to establish helpful thematic, stylistic, or conceptual connections between familiar and lesser-known works in their programming.


The Netherlands’s Asko Ensemble, featured in Vol. 2, has a long history of exceptional performances of 20th- and 21st-century works (see its large and impressive catalog of recordings at askoschoenberg.nl), and by anchoring its concert with Edgard Varèse’s Octandre , it focuses the listener’s attention on the variety of ways in which kindred composers Iannis Xenakis and Fausto Romitelli construct surprising tonal environments out of sometimes subtle, sometimes extravagant timbral and textural resources. The four Xenakis selections wisely reflect different periods, and thus distinct characteristics, from his career. Dhipli Zyla (1952), the earliest, is a contrapuntal dance for violin and cello, showing Bartók’s influence on the composer’s use of Greek folk material, while Phlegra (1975), for 11 instruments, suggests a Stravinsky-like rhythmic lilt and an almost slapstick humor to the ever-more-insistent harmonic disorientation. The harsh juxtaposition of colors swells and recedes in Anaktoria (1969), while the separate layers of activity in Waarg (1988), like isolated lines drawn in the air, twist and blend in the wind. Heard together, they are good preparation for Romitelli’s Mediterraneo (1992). Divided into two parts, the first sets contrasting qualities in instrumental groups against each other—sliding strings, resonating chimes, sustained wind tones—as if the sounds were reaching out from a common nucleus; the second part, including mezzo-soprano Marieke Koster’s intonation of an elliptical text by the French poet Paul Valéry, is equally dense but more compact, implying a nevertheless vague tonal center toward which the pitches are now drawn.


Though placed at the end of Vol. 3, Anton Webern’s richly textured, lyrically abstracted Passacaglia (1909) conceptually sets the stage for the music of Stefano Gervasoni and Giacomo Manzoni, whose works imaginatively reorganize the orchestra into patterns of colors rather than instrumental sections. The shimmering motives and static but evocative sonorities in Gervasoni’s Meta della ripa (2002–03) may seem reminiscent of some spectral strategies, but the fluctuating events, alternately chilly and heated, form a cohesive, gradually emerging drama. Likewise, Manzoni’s two compositions are full of shifting textures and dynamics creating dramatic tension, but obtained through unpredictable, partially indeterminate, devices. In Ode (1982), the orchestral material is divided into five “tracks” that progress horizontally in and out of sync with each other, although the blend of sounds is altogether natural and convincing. Sembianti (2003) is a kind of Enigma Variations , with parts of the composition dedicated to friends, using pitch motives derived from their names, mixing in solos from all sections of the orchestra, and inserting free rhythmic episodes—less of a storytelling enigma, however, à la Elgar, than a structural one.


Both the Asko Ensemble and the RAI National Orchestra make a strong case for the new music as well as the more familiar items they are presenting. Recommended to adventurous listeners.


FANFARE: Art Lange

Classical Music