Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's reputation rests largely on his operas, but the instrumental music he composed at the beginning and end of his career deserves a wider currency. The influence of Brahms can be detected in the First and Second Violin Sonatas, though Wolf-Ferrari's distinctive long-breathed melodies and chromatic flow are clearly present; the dramatic and expressive Second also includes references to Wagner's Tristan. With it's neo-Bachian figuration, passages of intense melancholy and uplifting operatic fantasy, the final Third Sonata is an enigmatic work, and unlike any other in the repertoire.

Ukranian pianist Olena Kushpler is considered to be ‘a great story-teller’. Audiences and critics alike greet her performances regularly with warm enthusiasm and exceptional praise. She is the perfect artist medium for the works of early 20th century Spanish composer Frederic Mompou Dencausse, whose defined artistic goal was ”to achieve a maximum level of expressiveness with a minimum of means

The series of the Mahler Symphonies with the Dusseldorf Symphonic under the baton of Adam Fischer has come to this end with the release of the Symphony No. 6.

Over the last four years Adam Fischer's Mahler recordings grew to a most successful recording project, winning the BBC Music Magazine Award, and the OPUS KLASSIK Trophy in Germany and many splendid and outstanding reviews from around the world.

In the Dusseldorf Tonhalle in late February and early March 2020, we gave Mahler's Sixth Symphony in three live concert performances which we recorded for this CD. This date in the calendar had special significance: the first lockdown period due to the Corona pandemic set in immediately thereafter.

The orchestra was playing in full line-up in front of a full house for the last time for a long while. The mood was ominous: we all felt something was amiss, and the next day everything had to be cancelled. We strongly associate those circumstances with our work on the Sixth, and with the foreboding we felt of a catastrophe that has since ruined the livelihoods of many musician colleagues and deprived us all of a meaningful period in our lives. Mahler's Sixth is always a major event for the orchestra and for the audience. One leaves the concert hall weary and exhausted; time is required to regain one's composure. This symphony requires a gigantic orchestra: here, once more, Mahler was attempting to stretch the boundaries of what was possible in his day.

Not to achieve a mere effect, but simply because he needed such a gigantic instrumental apparatus to express his feelings. The sheer amount of emotions we deal with in this symphony is almost unbearable. The controversial third hammer blow provides a good example: Mahler most certainly crossed it out after a rehearsal, overcome by emotion, afraid of dying. In his very bones he thought and felt that this symphony would prompt his demise.

This new recording from the Linos Piano Trio presents four iconic works from the turn of the 20th Century. The three French works, transcribed for piano trio by the Linos players themselves, are recorded for the first time here, while the Verklärte Nacht arrangement harks back to the inception of the Linos Piano Trio in 2007.

Transcriptions have, since the start of the 19th Century, acted as a precursor to modern day recordings. Works for larger ensembles were transcribed for smaller groups to make music at home, and the piano trio was among the favourite combinations for this purpose, with its rich sonic possibilities apt at recreating the orchestral sound. This aspect of the genre has fascinated the Linos Piano Trio from the beginning, its first ever performance being of Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht in the arrangement by Eduard Steuermann. 

Since 2016, the Linos Piano Trio has been taking this idea further, creating a series of its own transcriptions with the aim of reimagining each work as if originally conceived for piano trio. The transcriptions are all created collaboratively, evolving through experimentation and refinement, seeking the most colourful distillation of the original versions. Inspired by Stravinsky’s notion of creative stealing—taking something and making it one’s own—the Linos Piano Trio calls the project Stolen Music.

The four ambitious transcriptions here share a common thread: all are imbued with poetic images of transformation. The Debussy, Dukas and Schönberg are compositions based on poems by Mallarmé, Goethe, and Dehmel. In Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, Mallarmé’s sensually symbolist images are translated into elusive harmonies. In Dukas’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice the music ‘paints’ the famous broom-conjuring tale literally, almost line-by-line, with its iconic rhythm uncannily echoing Goethe’s relentless tetrameter. Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht depicts, in an intensely emotional late-romantic sweep, the transfiguration of Dehmel’s poem. Ravel’s La Valse, a “poème chorégraphique”, evokes the sense of decadence and nostalgia of old Vienna, plotting “the birth, decay and destruction of a musical genre: the waltz”, as observed by composer George Benjamin.

Tolstoy described Alexander Scriabin’s music as “a sincere expression of genius” while Scriabin described himself as “all impulse, all desire...” His virtuosity rivalling that of Rachmaninov, the young and colorful musician and composer found inspiration in his idol, Chopin, while still touching his compositions with Russian darkness and sensuous passion. This album of his less-popular compositions also includes the child prodigy’s Canon in D Minor, composed when Scriabin was only 11 years old.

The outstanding English composer working in the mid-20th century, Benjamin Britten won a significant international reputation, whilst remaining thoroughly English in inspiration.

The New York Philharmonic - America's preeminent symphony orchestra gave 'A Concert for New York' to mark the tenth anniversary of the events of 9/11. What work could be better suited to the occasion than Mahler's 'Resurrection' Symphony with it's 'evocation of every aspect of life' and 'it's profound sense of hope', as the Philharmonic's Music Director Alan Gilbert put it? This concert became an unforgettable event, a 'consistently impressive' performance with 'gripping playing', 'magnificent' soloists and an 'excellent' chorus (New York Times).

A 2019 New York Times Gift Guide Selection

This is the second release ever of Henzes famous Oratorio, after the release of the general rehearsal for the world's first premiere from 1968 by Deutsche Grammophon. Excellent sound technique, first class singers and orchestra (conducted by none other than Peter Eötvös) as well as a booklet containing detailed liner notes and the libretto contribute in making this album a very important testimony about the music of the 20th century. Henze wrote the Oratorio as a Requiem for Che Guevara and set it to a text by Ernst Schnabel. It tells the story of the French frigate Meduse, which ran aground off the west coast of Africa in 1816, immortalized in the painting of the same name by Theodore Gericault. The work employs a large orchestra, a speaker, a soprano, a baritone, and choruses. In the course of a performance, the chorus members move from left side of the stage, “the Side of the Living,” to the right side, “the Side of the Dead.”

-----

REVIEWS:

Looking for that special something for that special someone this holiday?

Flowers? Those die.

Jewelry? Too bougie.

A day at the spa? Namaste!

An hour-long modernist requiem on the death of Che Guevara featuring a head of snakes, sung/spoken/sprechtimme’d IN GERMAN? Dear, you are so generous. I cannot possibly repay the kindness.

– New York Times 2019 Gift Guide

Anyone who wants to know Henze or know him better would be well-served and enlivened by this one. And it would be a valuable addition to the confirmed Henze fan's library. Recommended.

– Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

Following her highly acclaimed initial recordings Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 12 & 13 (2014) and J. S. Bach: Inventions & Sinfonies, BWV 772-801 (2017), pianist Karin Kei Nagano now presents an inspired new album, Reincarnation: Schubert - Messiaen. “The two pieces on this album, both part of larger circular anthologies, convey the cyclical notion of end and of beginning: reincarnation. While Schubert’s Sonata in B-flat represents a bittersweet and painful negotiation with death in a moment where his life is fading, Messiaen’s Première communion de la Vierge celebrates the overwhelming joy of new life and birth. In bringing together Schubert and Messiaen, this album intends to bring to light those profound and fundamental human sentiments that I hope the listener can identify with, sentiments that we, as a society, can find solace in.” - Karin Kei Nagano

Featuring composers such as Piazzolla, Brouwer, Arcas, and Barrios, this album is an exciting adventure through pieces with latin musical roots. Guitarist Luciano Tortorelli is a professor of classical guitar and also performs frequently in concertos. He is one of Italy’s foremost guitarists. Tortorelli also performs an original piece on this album: Dobru noc Brno, which was composed as an homage to the Brno Guitar Festival.

This first extended survey of the piano music of Ernst Krenek (1900–92) continues with a range of works showing his craftsmanship and imagination – and humor. The early Toccata and Chaconne, Op. 13, has its origins in a joke intended to pull the legs of musicologists and music critics, but it develops into a massive contrapuntal essay of astonishing ambit. Krenek’s treatment of Baroque and contemporary dances in the three early suites reveal a fondness for learned whimsy – and that wry dispassion informs even the elegiac and brittle Fifth Sonata, written a quarter-century later in American exile. The closing Sechs Vermessene are kaleidoscopic miniatures with an improvised quality, as if advanced musical modernism were meeting the freest of free jazz.

Clarinetist Stephan Siegenthaler brings Max Reger's complete works for clarinet back to life, 100 years after his death. Reger barely had 20 productive years of composition however you'd never know it looking at his vast oeuvre, comprised of all genres with the exception of opera. Siegenthaler, born in Switzerland has studied music and performed all throughout Europe including Germany, Geneva and Bratislava.

 

REVIEW:

 

All chamber works of Max Reger for clarinet, one with string quartet, the others with piano, are comprised in this compilation. The music is not easy and one has to listen carefully until getting the point, even though the artists on this CD come up with very fine performances.

 

– Pizzicato

Dmitry Shostakovich’s succinctly composed and highly distinctive 24 Preludes have proved their popularity in numerous arrangements, but when the composer heard these transcriptions by Smitry Tsyganov he declared that ‘I forgot they were originally written for piano, so naturally did they sound.’ The set was completed in 2000 by the Russian-born composer and pianist Lera Auerbach. These often whimsical and ironic Preludes contrast greatly with the chilling and profound Violin Sonata, a late work that concludes with Shostakovich’s last ever use of passacaglia form.

Alexander Zemlinsky composed his Lyric Symphony op. 18 for soprano, baritone and orchestra during his time as musical director of the New German Theatre in Prague, where he had moved in 1911 from Vienna. It was generally regarded as his corresponding equivalent to Mahler’s Lied von der Erde (C210021) and is based on Nobel Prize laureate and most important representative of modern Indian literature Rabindranath Tagore. The work is combined with the befriended and three years older ‘phantasmogorist’ Franz Schreker’s Prelude to a Drama, which is a version of the overture of his Die Gezeichneten. It might be considered symptomatic for the most notable characteristic of Schreker’s music: the dominance of chordal sounds over the melodic element.

REVIEW:

Zemlinsky’s seven-movement Lyric Symphony lays claim to being his best-known work and is certainly the only one to attract a significant number of prominent conductors. This live account from Vienna in 1989 was Gielen’s second recording of the work, and it finds him in prime form. He leads a powerful orchestral reading that is all the more impressive because Vienna’s proficient Radio Symphony was the last orchestra I expected to be virtuosic. Every section is totally committed to the score’s voluptuous passions, however, and the recorded sound from Austrian Radio is wonderfully clear and vivid, no small achievement where Zemlinsky’s dense orchestration is concerned.

In the soprano part the choice has typically been big, dramatic voices on the order of Deborah Voigt and Alessandra Marc. Karen Armstrong can’t compete in that league, and wisely she doesn’t try to. By not pushing her voice, singing the chromatic lines accurately, and paying attention to the verse, she delivers a more than respectable performance. But realistically neither singer has the most beautiful or distinctive voice. Orfeo supplies no texts or translations, which means that this recording can only be supplementary to one that does. There are enough drawbacks, despite Gielen’s outstanding conducting, to place this release somewhere in the middle of the pack.

The pairing of Franz Schreker’s 20-minute Prelude to a Drama from 1914 isn’t a new addition to Gielen’s discography, since it also served as the filler to his Mahler Fourth Symphony. The Prelude is rich in themes and incidents, and so skillfully structured that it can be analyzed as a sonata movement. Schreker was a colorist, as he described himself: “I am a sound artist, a phantasmagorist of sound, a sound-aesthete, and there’s not a trace of melody in me.”

The music is lovely, and Gielen’s performance glows with ardent feeling, not a mode I associate with him.

For me the evocation of history hangs heavily over this release, but it holds considerable musical rewards, too, especially for aficionados of an aesthetic doomed to be wiped out through political denunciation.

-- Fanfare (Huntley Dent)

Listen to the Naxos Podcast to learn more about this release

Now here’s a novelty that fans of Ravel and Rimsky-Korsakov will want to hear. In 1910, the story of Antar reached the stage in Paris as a play, with incidental music by Ravel arranged out of Rimsky’s eponymous symphony/tone poem (with a bit of Mlada thrown in for good measure). There is very little original music by Ravel–just a couple of minutes in all–but the arrangements involve some telling reorchestration and the creation of numerous short interludes. The cinematic conclusion (sound clip) sums things up nicely. All told, you get almost the complete original work: the first three movements, plus a good bit of the finale, albeit in a different order.

Unfortunately, for this premiere recording a long, pretentious, self-consciously “poetic” narration has been added, with words by Amin Maalouf. His main musical distinction lies in the fact that he has furnished several opera librettos for Kaija Saariaho, as if that’s a recommendation. My annoyance grew with every word. I mean, the only reason anyone wants to hear this piece is to find out what Ravel did with Rimsky’s original. Why put narrator André Dussolier in what sounds like an empty aircraft hangar and superimpose his histrionic reading of the text on top of the music? You’ll get through it, but it was a bad decision.

That said, Slatkin’s conducting is excellent, as it almost always is when he’s interpreting Russian music, and the sonics are very good when the narrator isn’t narrating. The coupling is a fine performance of Shéhérazade. Isabelle Druet’s voice is, arguably, a bit too small for the work, but she only sounds strained at the climax of Asie. Otherwise, she sings with intelligence, excellent diction, and characterful attention to the text. A sometimes frustrating release, then, but a collector’s item all the same.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Sharon Kam discovers Hindemith on her third album on Orfeo label. Even if some people still consider him “too modern” today, Hanau-born Hesse Paul Hindemith is undoubtedly one of the most influential German composers of the generation after Richard Strauss. Few of his immediate colleagues have found their way into the international repertoire to the same extent that he has, or influenced subsequent generations through comparably extensive educational work. All three works for clarinet featured on this recording date from years of extensive travel: the Quartet for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano was written in 1938 around the time of his emigration to Switzerland, the Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in 1939 during the course of the tours of the USA that immediately followed the emigration, and finally, the Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra in 1947 (written for and premiered by Benny Goodman) when Hindemith left his American exile to visit Europe again for the first time after the Second World War. Sharon Kam has teamed up with her long-standing musical partners Enrico Pace , Antje Weithaas , and Julian Steckel for the chamber music part of the album, and with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony under the musical direction of Daniel Cohen for the clarinet concerto.

Peter Maxwell Davies's Strathclyde Concertos, jointly commissioned by Strathclyde Regional Council and the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in 1987, have given rise to a whole family of concertos for different and unusual instruments. The Ninth Concerto provides an opportunity for woodwind instruments to shine as soloists, the music inspired by the infinite shades of winter light reflected from the seas of Orkney. The final Tenth Concerto is "a concerto for orchestra that's as bracing as a gale on the rugged Orkney cliffs" (BBC Music Magazine), and the delightful Carol�sima is filled with dances and singable tunes.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Strathclyde Concertos, all premiered by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, are among his most significant contributions to the concerto genre. Concerto No. 3 for Horn and Trumpet marks a turning point in the cycle of ten concertos by employing multiple soloists, and stands in the lineage of works by Haydn, Mozart and Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. Concerto No. 4 explores the clarinet's lyrical Mozartian heritage, alongside subtle percussive effects and agile virtuosity.

Classical Music

Volume 5 of Naxos’s acclaimed series of Debussy’s orchestral music presents a potpourri of works that were either left incomplete by the composer or were orchestrated by others who greatly admired his music. His rarely-heard children’s ballet The Toy Box, dedicated to Debussy’s daughter Emma-Claude but not premièred until after the composer’s death, recalls the innocent world of his popular Children’s Corner suite. Based on Pierre Louÿs’ Chansons de Bilitis, Debussy’s Six épigraphes antiques evoke poetic scenes from the ancient world, as does the sole surviving portion of The Triumph of Bacchus.

The orchestra used by Peter Maxwell Davies for his Fourth Symphony is of Classical period proportions, but this relatively compact framework belies a richness of ideas and sonorities. With it's starting point in the tone poem Chat Moss, the single-movement Fifth Symphony utilizes a more varied orchestral palette than it's predecessor, with a large percussion section often in evidence. Both works are performed here by the orchestras for which they were written. The First Symphony can be heard on 8.572348, the Second Symphony on 8.572349, and the Third Symphony on 8.572350. Universally acknowledged as one of the foremost composers of our time, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies has made a significant contribution to musical history through his wide-ranging and prolific output. He lives in the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, where he writes most of his music.

Classical Music

Two highly awarded German musicians present themselves on GENUIN with a powerful Shostakovich album: The sisters Anouchka (cello) and Katharina Hack (piano) combine the early Cello Sonata, Op. 40, and the late work of the Viola Sonata, Op. 147. It is a fascinating experiment that not only takes into account the life of the Russian composer but also focuses on his vital, rousing music. Anouchka and Katharina Hack have been bringing musical freshness and passion for some years now both as soloists as well as in Duo to concert halls including Beethovenhaus Bonn, Gasteig Munich, Fondation Louis Vuitton Paris and Konzerthaus Dortmund. The Duo plays numerous recitals appreciated by press and audience alike; they were broadcast by the WDR and NDR and by medici.tv. In November 2018 they gave their debut at the Berliner Philharmoniker Lunch concert series at the Berliner Philharmonie, in summer 2019 they were invited to play a recital at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival.

After the successful album release “Slavonic Souls” (Capriccio C5039) the Vienna State Opera Singer Zoryana Kushpler, accompanied on the piano by her partner and twin sister Olena, offer a rich recital of famous Spanish songs by the likes of Granados, de Falla, Mompou, Rodrigo and Montsalvage, including some choice rarities by these composers. Born in Lvov, Ukraine, Ms. Kushpler made her debut at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2007 as Adelaide in Richard Strauss’s Arabella. She has also been heard there in the operas of Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Puccini, Offenbach and Johann Strauss.

Classical Music

This release is Alarm Will Sound’s fifth full-length project with Cantaloupe Music, and precurses several performances throughout 2016. The six tracks on this album feature incidental variations on compositions by The Beatles, Charles Wuorinen, Edgard Varese, and more. Best described as postmodern classical music, this genre-bending ensemble doesn’t fail to entertain as they push the outer limits of the canon with this adventurous project. -----

REVIEWS:

The 23 members of Alarm Will Sound perform the provocative pieces playfully, inviting all sides of the modernism debate to lighten up and listen. Each work composed for the ensemble is easily digestible, running under seven minutes. Wolfgang Rihm’s Will Sound delivers in trickily spaced bursts, mostly centered around a sinewy saxophone line. The ensemble’s percussionists are in particularly fine form, rattling and skipping through unintuitive and complex rhythms.

– NPR

The comic portrait of screaming human faces on the album's cover poses a rhetorical question: Do we honestly still need to act scared by this modernist stuff? Over the course of their set, the Alarm Will Sound players and conductor Alan Pierson respond to this prompt by delivering pure modern-classical fun. The six pieces they’ve chosen speak different structural languages, though each one shares a desire to bring across a sense of wildness that is exuberant at heart.

– Pitchfork

This new DVD preserves some superb performances directed by a conductor of the highest calibre, performing live and at the peak of his abilities.



STRAUSS Ein Heldenleben 1. DVO?ÁK Symphony No. 9, “From the New World 2” • Rudolf Kempe, cond; 1 Royal PO; 2 BBC SO • ICA 5009, mono (DVD: 89:22) Live: Royal Albert Hall, London 1 8/28/1974; 2 8/29/1975


How absolutely wonderful it is to see Rudolf Kempe, looking hale and fit, ascend the podium and direct an absolutely magical performance of Ein Heldenleben with his usual minimum of podium fuss, his face mirroring both the music’s changes and his obvious pleasure at hearing it emerge the way he wants, the Royal Philharmonic members playing their little hearts out for him. This is exactly the way I always imagined Kempe in performance, as close to Toscanini’s podium style as any conductor who outlived him, eliciting that magical, transparent sound, ignoring nothing in rhythmic acuity and liveliness, and now we have the pleasure of seeing how he did it.


The sound is still mono but the images are in color. The members of the orchestra look completely rapt in concentration; everything in this performance is focused on the music, nothing on how they look to the audience. A bit dull to watch? Perhaps. But, like watching such similar conductors as Toscanini, Doráti, and Böhm, it amazes one that such exuberance of spirit and a rich palette of colors can emanate from such outward calm and control. For make no mistake, Kempe was a master of coloration. He knew how to make an orchestra “speak.” He knew the secret, now lost to a modern generation of conductors, of how to play music like this so that it sounded not only beautiful but noble, eschewing bombast in favor of the long line, the gradual ebb and flow of suspense, and—I reiterate—that unbelievable palette of colors he had at his disposal. Kempe’s strings had the sound of a choir singing.


In my experience there was only one performance of Ein Heldenleben I really loved prior to hearing this performance, and that was Willem Mengelberg’s 1941 broadcast with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. The Concertgebouw of that time was by no means the technically precise instrument that the New York Philharmonic of 1928 was, in his Victor recording, but there is so much more detail and drama in the later performance that I forgave the roughly played passages. Kempe’s Heldenleben is an entirely different animal. The contrasts are all musical, not as dramatic, but with a flow and coloristic quality that make the score sound more akin to the upward spiral of ascending angels than to Mengelberg’s explosive reading (though they join hands in “The Hero’s Deeds of War”). There is nothing like it in my experience, not even Kempe’s studio recording for EMI, because the studio recording adds the goop of mid 1960s reverb to a performance that doesn’t need it. Here we have, if you will, Kempe urtext, and the result is simply mind-boggling. Listen, for instance, to the way he makes the low bass passage resound with great depth without sounding heavy or ponderous. His legato flow is seamless, the accuracy and crispness of his attacks and releases flawless. It was exactly moments like these that took your breath away when listening to a Kempe performance.


Yet he resented EMI’s pushing him as a Wagner and Strauss specialist. Kempe conducted a great deal more than that, Schubert, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dvo?ák, Shostakovich, and Bruckner among them, and all of them well (he’s one of the few conductors besides Furtwängler who, to me, made some sense of Bruckner’s succession of endings in his symphonies), and here he follows Heldenleben with the “New World” Symphony of Dvo?ák. Unexpectedly, his performance of this symphony is startlingly dramatic, having almost the punch and drama of Toscanini’s excellent 1953 recording, only with Kempe’s patented transparency. The orchestra swells and ebbs flawlessly and naturally under his guiding hands; an unexpected rubato after the brief flute solo is picked up with tremendous force when the brass and high strings erupt again. Dozens of little details—clipped rhythmic accents here, buoyant legato bridges there—mark this interpretation as unique.


Kempe uses a fairly small baton, even a little smaller than Toscanini’s but not as tiny as the toothpicks that Strauss and Reiner used. His arms are a little further apart than Toscanini’s, but he is only slightly more animated on the podium, his arms moving in graceful arcs. Only a few months after the Dvo?ák performance came the shocking announcement that Kempe had died. I can remember that moment as if it were yesterday; it grieved me more than you can imagine. He had a very special gift, sought by many but bestowed on few, and we are all the poorer for his untimely passing.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley


--------

In a letter to his friend, the distinguished French man of letters Romain Rolland, Richard Strauss categorically denied that he was the model for Ein Heldenleben: “I am not a hero. I have not got the necessary strength; I am not cut out for battle; I prefer to withdraw, to be quiet, to have peace.”

Some commentators may have refused to take Strauss at his word, but the uncredited director of this BBC transmission of a 1974 Proms concert is clearly not among them. His view of things is crystal clear for, throughout the whole of the work’s first section, a musical depiction of Der Held (The Hero), he resolutely directs his cameras at the conductor. There is, in fact, not a single second of that opening 4:59 of music when Rudolf Kempe is not pictured on-screen, whether in close-up, middle distance or in long-shot. The corollary of that fact is that as soon as we begin the work’s second section, Des Helden Widersacher (The Hero’s Adversaries), we start to see the orchestra members on their own – but maybe I am now stretching my theory of the supposed relationship between the visual images and the “text” just a little too far.

Even though Kempe’s widow Cordula records in the DVD booklet notes that her husband “thoroughly resented” being pigeonholed as a Strauss (and Wagner) specialist, his affinity with Strauss’s music was well recognised at the time. His record company EMI persuaded him to set down the complete orchestral works on disc. No less a personage than the Queen Mother reportedly gushed “Oh, Mr Kempe, when will you do the Alpine Symphony again?” (rather a surprise, given recent revelations of the sort of music she listened to at home). And, as evidenced in this performance taken from the conductor’s very last concert with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the 1974 Promenaders were quite over the moon with this Ein Heldenleben; critic Joan Chissell reported that this performance elicited “a hero’s ovation and rightly”.

Having never seen Kempe conduct live or on film before, the first thing that struck me was just how physically charismatic and animated he was on the podium. By fastidious, very precise gestures with both his baton and the fingers of his left hand, he coaxes some exquisite sonorities that we can fully appreciate thanks to his scrupulous care for orchestral balance - and to the installation of fibre-glass acoustic diffusing discs on the Royal Albert Hall’s ceiling just five years earlier, successfully reducing its notorious echo.

The outstanding characteristic of Kempe’s interpretation is that, by the application of both sensitivity and sensibility, he gives Strauss’s score the opportunity to breathe. This is, indeed, anything but a brash, bombastic account: the orchestra plays with notable and carefully controlled intensity and Erich Gruenberg’s substantial violin solos are especially affecting - he justifiably gets a special roar of approval from the Promenaders as he takes his bow.

If the Strauss is very fine indeed, the Dvorák is, however, outstanding. Edward Greenfield’s booklet notes suggest that its distinguishing feature is the wide range of dynamics that Kempe applies. What struck me most, however, was the interpretation itself. In contrast to performances that emphasise the score’s elements of cheery Bohemian bonhomie, Kempe’s is a deeply serious account.

The opening movement is characterised by fierce attack and precision - wonderful playing from the BBC orchestra - and Kempe minimises the elements of lyricism in favour high drama. In a similar vein, the second movement’s sentimentality is entirely played down. Its well-known “big tune” ( Goin’ home, Goin’ home, I’m a goin’ home / Quiet like, still some day, I’m just goin’ home) is moved purposefully along and the fervent manner in which its central section is played communicates, to this listener at least, a distinctly uneasy feeling of agitation and unrest.

Kempe’s interpretation is nothing if not consistently of a piece for the scherzo and the allegro con fuoco finale are similarly driven powerfully forward. The formers elements of bucolic rusticism are given short shrift and the latter, right from its opening bars, emerges as a real daredevil ride and is terribly exciting - while still very skilfully controlled and crafted.

This New World is one that emerges as a real eye-opener and a very different work from the one that we’re usually presented with. It justifiably receives a huge ovation from the audience.

This new DVD, then, preserves some superb performances. The direction – originally for BBC TV - is expert and thus almost entirely unobtrusive, the visual image - in colour throughout - is sharp and pleasing and the sound is more than acceptable. It offers an opportunity to acquaint or reacquaint oneself with a conductor of the highest calibre, performing live and at the peak of his abilities.

-- Rob Maynard, MusicWeb International

Gennadi Rozhdestvensky (b.1931) is the last living survivor of a great Russian quartet of conductors consisting of Mravinsky, Kondrashin and Svetlanov. He was the highly distinguished principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 1978 to 1981, an exciting period in the orchestra’s history faithfully captured here. These recordings of Holst’s Planets and Britten’s Variations & Fugue on a Theme of Purcell have never been issued before on CD.

This new release showcases the stylistic similarities and differences between two powerhouse composers- Gustav Mahler, and Dmitri Shostakovich. Mahler’s Symphony No. 10 (Adagio) is paired with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. The National Philharmonic Minsk was founded in 1930 and is one of Russia’s most renowned orchestras. As one of only three orchestras the National Philharmonic Minsk beared the honorary title “Academic Orchestra” during the Soviet Government. The repertoire of the 120 musicians includes not only important works of the Classic and Romantic periods, but also compositions by contemporary Russian composers and, in collaboration with the Philharmonic Chorus, the great works of the chorale literature.

“***** The music of [The Kreutzer Sonata] is… an emotional maelstrom… a whole kaleidoscope of feelings that the Doric brings to bear in a vivid, trenchant and intuitively heartfelt performance… [A] disc of outstanding musical insight and dynamic presence.” – Daily Telegraph (UK)

This new recording by the Doric String Quartet pays homage to the Czech chamber music of the 1920s, featuring string quartets by Janácek and Martinu. Exclusive on Chandos, The Doric String Quartet is now established as one of the finest young ensembles in the world.

The chamber music output of Janácek is relatively small but often programmatic. As acknowledged by the composer, the two string quartets are a vehicle for his deepest feelings. The mounting tension of String Quartet No. 1, which culminates in a less anguished last movement, emphasises the heightened feelings of love, passion, and remorse with which he was concerned at the time of its writing. As he summed it up, the work depicts the ‘miserable woman, suffering, beaten, beaten to death’ from Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata. Titled Intimate Letters, the Second Quartet – the last work Janácek completed – fulfils an autobiographical function, being a no less ardent and personal composition.

The Third String Quartet by Martinc reflects the influences of his teacher Roussel as well as the night-life ragtime and jazz world of Paris in which it was written, in 1929. By far the shortest of his seven mature quartets, it yet gives a greater degree of independence to each of the four instruments, allowing for some striking harmonic clashes and colourful scoring.