Track Listing
1. Bugya
2. Mizan Qa'im Wa-nisk
3. Twisya No. 3 Of The Nuba
4. Mizan D-dary
5. Mawwal Al-Istihlal
6. Mawwal On Tab' Al-Hiyaz Al-Kabir
7. Mawwal On Tab' Raml Al-Maya

Ibn Baya Ensemble: Eduardo Paniagua, Luis Delgado, Gloria Lergo, Mohamed El Arabi Serghimi, Omar Metioui.

Renaissance polyphony is generally held to be stately, calm, reassuring. But this programme of Palestrina’s six-part Missa sine nomine, complemented by five of his motets and three by Marc'Antonio Ingegneri (c. 1535/36–92), was recorded after the Choir of Girton College, Cambridge, had undertaken a tour of Israel and Palestine. There the music and its texts (‘How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’) took on an extraordinary poignancy, with the dispossession and desperation of thousands of years ago animating the restrained dignity of Palestrina’s counterpoint with an unexpectedly topical intensity. The Girton College Chapel Choir has gained an impressive reputation as one of the most distinguished mixed-voice choirs at the University of Cambridge. As an international prize-winning ensemble comprising around 26 students, it has built its reputation through regular choral services in Girton College Chapel and frequent performances in parish churches and cathedrals across the UK. Choir members are all undergraduate or graduate students at Cambridge University.

Toccata Classics continues its survey of the music of the Hungarian composer Ferenc Farks with this sparkling album of works for wind ensemble. The chief characteristics of all eight scores recorded here are infectious good humor and a high charge of foot-tapping rhythmic energy. Like his teacher Respighi in Rome, Farkas went back to 16th and 17th century originals and brought them to life in arrangements for modern instruments. Laszlo Marosi enjoys a career leading orchestras and wind bands at concerts and festivals and in recording studios and academies around the world. Although he is very active in his native Hungary, his work is international - he is currently the artistic director of the International Band Festival of Villa Carlos Paz in Argentina. The Budapest Wind Symphony is the elite wind ensemble of Hungary, inviting musicians from the leading orchestras of the country. It draws its members from the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra, the orchestra of the Hungarian State Opera House, the dohnanyi Symphony Orchestra and the Hungarian Central Army Band.

Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland remain among the most popular of 20th-century American composers, and the accessible, populist musical style that granted them much success with audiences is evident in this collection of their vocal works. Virgil Thomson, whose music also appears here, is less of a household name; his music, while equally (or more) conservative, has never entered the mainstream like that of his contemporaries has.
This disc is of great historical interest. All the works are heard in their premiere recordings, dating from 1950 to 1954. A young Leontyne Price gives the perfect rendition of Barber's 'Hermit Songs,' imperious, coy and despairing by turns. If Eleanor Steber lacks the naïve, wide-eyed wonder of more recent interpreters of 'Knoxville: Summer of 1915,' such as Dawn Upshaw, it is refreshing to hear a more dramatic performance that may indeed be closer to the composer's wishes. In Copland's folksy 'Old American Songs,' William Warfield sings with verve and complete authority. A special attraction here is that each composer is heard as a piano accompanist in his own works, and as an added bonus, the liner notes feature engaging reminiscences about the three composers by their younger colleague Ned Rorem.

Bronfman's Islamey is a reading of sweep and majesty. A soul-satisfying record that you'll return to often.

If you've seen Yefim Bronfman perform, you know that he's an assertive, brilliant pianist who commands attention, even in a large hall. The soloist is remarkably successful in scaling back his playing for the 12 modest pieces Tchaikovsky produced for serial publication in a monthly music magazine. Bronfman resists the temptation, for instance, to dazzle with a faster tempo in "The Harvest" (August), which he certainly could have undertaken with one hand (or at least a couple of fingers) tied behind his back. Nor does he look for profundity that isn't there in these unassuming miniatures, or "Chopinize" the more lyrical movements. The well-known "Barcarolle" (June) is played with a straightforward sort of melancholy that's exactly right—touching without seeming overwrought. Still, the playing is eventful and involving, and carefully articulated: Listen to the crystalline clarity of February's "Carnival." Sony provides superb sound, utilizing 24-bit encoding and their "Super Bit Mapping" methodology. The performances were taped at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, in New York State, a celebrated venue that has been exploited by a number of labels. The sonic presentation is warm yet immediate and clear, capturing fully the refinement of Bronfman's touch. I prefer Bronfman's Seasons to three others on hand: Antonin Kubalek (on Dorian, recorded 12 years earlier in the same Troy concert hall), Naum Starkman (on PopeMusic) and, by a smaller margin, Luba Edlina (on Chandos). As though to underscore that he was holding back in the Tchaikovsky, which is quite accessible to talented amateurs, the soloist proceeds on to an echt virtuoso vehicle. Islamev, of course, is for major-leaguers: Do not try this at home unless you are a trained professional. Bronfman gives us quite a ride. The work's considerable technical demands are fairly tossed aside as the pianist presents a coherent musical structure, not merely a succession of pianistic feats. This is a reading with sweep and even some majesty. In comparison, Alexander Paley, leading off his admirable six-CD set of Balakirev's complete piano music for ESS.A.Y with Islamey, sounds dutiful and a bit tentative.

One might grouse about the short timing of this disc. Bronfman could have given us more Tchaikovsky, more Balakirev, more something. But what's the better value: a humdrum 75 minutes or a soul-satisfying 50 that you'll return to often? Not a toughie.

-- Andrew Quint, FANFARE [3/1999]

The revival of interest in the music of Robin Milford (1903–59) has largely bypassed his exquisite chamber music, an omission this recording seeks to redress. It presents some of his most attractive chamber works, showing his very personal – and very English – combination of melodic freshness, elegiac lyricism and echoes of folksong. The clarinetist Robert Plane has been described as the ‘current occupier of the shoes of the late Thea King in his championship of British clarinet music’. Other notable performers include violinist Lucy Gould, violist David Adams and cellist Alice Neary.

V5: FOUR SEASONS

Adolf Busch (1891–1952) is generally remembered as one of the great violinists and founder-leader of the peerless Busch Quartet. He was also, as one of the very few German musicians to take a stand against Hitler, a figure of moral authority who was forced into US exile, where he founded the Marlboro Festival. Busch was also an important composer, as an increasing number of recordings is beginning to show, writing in a tradition colored by his friend and mentor Max Reger. Busch's output for solo piano - recorded here for the first time - shows off his natural qualities as a contrapuntist and melodist, in music that is both immediately attractive and intellectually rewarding.

"The unique item on the Starker disc is the first ever recording of the Bartok Viola Concerto in the cello version prepared by the man who originally completed Bartok's sketches of this work, Tibor Serly. I am surprised to find that—according to the notes accompanying the disc—it was published some 30 years ago, but never taken up until Starker started playing it. There is a strong case for preferring the cello version, when the lower register gives extra warmth to the melodic writing, notably in the Adagio religioso slow movement. If Starker shows a degree of emotional restraint in the Dvorak—almost as though he no longer finds the piece quite so fresh—his performance of the Bartok is stirringly expressive, very idiomatically Hungarian in the rhythmic pointing and linking of contrasted sections. He is brilliantly backed up by Slatkin and the St Louis orchestra who offer some alert playing. I hope now that cellists may take up this version more widely, both in concert and on disc, even though that would be hard luck on viola players, whose repertory is even sparser."

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [3/1992]

WAGNER: PIANO TRANSCRIPTIONS F

BEN-HAIM String Quartet No. 1, op. 21. String Quintet in e • Carmel Quartet; Shuli Waterman (va) • TOCCATA 0214 (61:37)


   Here are two major chamber works by the Israeli composer Paul Ben-Haim (1897–1984), who began his career in Munich as Paul Frankenburger. His lengthy, three-movement String Quintet from 1919, which receives its first recording here, is a representative product of the composer’s early period. Its style might be described as early-20th-century German Romantic with leanings toward Franck and Liszt. It’s an ambitious, expertly scored, three-movement work, though its material might have been equally effectively scored as a symphony. There’s a somewhat Modernistic, Hindemith-like approach to the announcement of themes in the outer movements, before the music moves into nostalgic, 19th-century material reminiscent of Brahms or Mahler (Mahler’s work serving as Frankenburger’s model when, later on, as Ben-Haim, he turned to symphonic writing). In the quintet’s third movement, the music’s eclecticism starts to feel contrived, particularly with the commencement of a fugue two-thirds of the way through, a 19th-century compositional cliché. This is not to make light of a piece that contains much beautiful music, particularly an eloquent slow movement that quotes a theme from one of Frankenburger’s songs set to a Christian Morgenstern text.


Frankenburger/Ben-Haim immigrated to Palestine in 1933, in large part rejecting German musical style in favor of the influence of Debussy and Ravel, but more significantly, incorporating regional folk influences into his music. His close association with the Yemenite singer Bracha Zefira, a “walking anthology of Israeli folk music,” was his main source of inspiration.


The String Quartet No. 1, composed in 1937, was acclaimed at its premiere in 1939 as the first chamber work by an Israeli composer. The work remains popular in Israel, and it’s easy to hear why. The dimensions of its first three movements are more compact than those of the quintet, and the use of modal, ethnic-sounding motives sounds natural and eloquent in the first, third, and fourth. Toccata’s booklet notes compare the quartet’s fourth movement to the Finale of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2, composed seven years later. In both works, the finale is the most extended movement, and in each, a Jewish dance theme takes on a sense of catastrophe by the end. It’s an apt comparison, though the Ben-Haim Quartet doesn’t achieve (or attempt) the shattering impact of the Shostakovich.


I commend Toccata Classics for the high level of its presentation of two little-known works of very high quality, by a composer who, while hardly unknown, deserves much more attention on recordings. The Carmel Quartet and violist Shuli Waterman play with the technical polish that these colorful, dynamic scores demand, along with obvious commitment and feeling. The recorded sound has good definition and clarity, and the booklet offers two substantial essays by experts on Ben-Haim.


FANFARE: Paul Orgel

This CD of Adolf Busch's lyrical writing for clarinet is the first in a series of recordings of his light-filled chamber music in an effort to rediscover one of the leading musicians of his day. Bettina Biegelbeck has appeared as clarinet soloist with a number of orchestras. The Busch Kollegium Karlsruhe was founded by Biegelbeck expressly to make this recording.

After 20 highly acclaimed classical guitar records, Liona entered the "new age" with style in 1988. Starting with the Vangelis piece from The Year of Living Dangerously (L'Enfant) and featuring guest appearances from Eric Clapton, David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) and Yo-Yo Ma, the scope and variety of Persona is kind of "beyond belief." Exciting, beautiful and dazzling, it's just like the artist herself.

-- AllMusic.com

Horowitz Plays Chopin, Vol. 1

Silvestrov’s Fifth Symphony might well have emerged from Prospero’s island. The music epitomises something rich and strange. Ominous, heavy with threat (trs. 3, 5), dissonant but accessible, dreamy and romantic. Ham-fisted and insensitive but useful parallels include Mahler’s Adagietto, Berg, Griffes’ Pleasure Dome, the film scores of John Barry and the Hollywood 1970s and further enlivened by idyllic evocations of birdsong. A massive orchestra is used and there is an orchestral piano presumably played by Lubimov who is at the centre of things in the similarly ecstatic Postludium. At one point there is a low-key chatter of voices – but very low. This is voluptuously expressive music given spine by the undertow of gloom. I do not know why it has not made more headway. If there were any justice this would have been played at the BBC Proms but the same could be said of a host of other regrettably neglected works including Hovhaness’s Majnun and Etchmiadzin symphonies, of the Benjamin Dale tone poem The Flowing Tide, of Ronald Stevenson’s concertos, the oratorios and symphony of Yuri Shaporin and the piano concertos of Nikolai Kapustin.

This Sony-Arkiv re-animation scores over the competition in various areas. Its sound is rich – bathed in warmth yet not smearing detail. Students of the work will find that the version under review is in nine tracks which certainly aids the process of getting to grips with a single span of three quarters of an hour. Even timid souls – and I count myself in their company – should make a point of hearing the remarkable Fifth Symphony. It is as much an ikon of the second half of the twentieth century as Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 and the various mystic-religious works of Macmillan and Tavener. The difference is that the Silvestrov is sensuous to the point of saturation rather than devout to the point of asceticism.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Includes toccata(s) by Giovanni Gabrieli. Ensemble: Cologne Musica Fiata. Conductor: Roland Wilson. Soloists: Graham Nicholson, Sebastian Scharr, François Petit-Laurent, Martin Lubenow, Matthias Sprinz, Yuji Fujimoto, Detlef Reimers, Sebastian Krause, Ole Andersen, Cas Gevers, Henning Plumeyer, Peter Sommer.

REVIEWS:
BBC Music (4/98, p.73) - Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5) - "...Haydn's usual playfulness and inventive wit...are expertly realised in the clear sounds and open textures of the players' period instruments on this elegant and enjoyable recording."

Like his close friend and colleague Shostakovich Shebalin (1902-63) knew a life of both celebrity and hardship. He was condemned in the infamous '48 Party congress in Moscow and in later life he fought to overcome a series of crippling strokes. His personality remained undaunted by these tribulations as his music resolutely proves.

In this new concerto album one of the greatest violinists of our time, Christian Tetzlaff, performs two standard violin concertos in fresh new interpretations together with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin directed by the orchestra’s exciting new music director, Robin Ticciati.

Christian Tetzlaff is considered one of the world’s leading international violinists and maintains a most extensive performing schedule. Musical America named him ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ in 2005. His recording of the Bartók Violin Concertos (ODE 1317-2) received both Gramophone and ICMA Awards, and the recording was also a finalist for the BBC Music Award in 2019. His recording of the Violin Concertos by Mendelssohn and Schumann, released on Ondine in 2011 (ODE 1195-2), and Bach Sonatas and Partitas released in 2017 (ODE 1299-2D) received the ‘Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik’. In addition, in 2015 ICMA awarded Christian Tetzlaff as the ‘Artist of the Year’, and he also received ECHO ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ award in 2017.

REVIEWS:

Tetzlaff may at times excitedly rush his fences, but in collaboration with Robin Ticciati and his alert Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, he transforms aspects of what so many have treated as a sort of Holy Grail into a beer tankard. If Beethoven’s Concerto emerges as uncompromisingly provocative, Tetzlaff’s Sibelius also errs on the side of danger…In many respects, a real knock-out.

– Gramophone (Editor's Choice)

What I especially admire about these entrancing performances by Tetzlaff is the freshness and vitality he brings so effectively to these masterworks. One senses that he is entirely inside the music emotionally. Throughout both works the sound of Tetzlaff’s violin, a modern instrument made by German luthier Stefan-Peter Greiner, is glorious. Under Robin Ticciati the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin excel with firm and resolute playing in performances which are entirely empathetic to the soloist from start to finish.

– MusicWeb International

This recording of music by Ernest Krenek follows on from Toccata Classics’ wildly successful recording, in two albums, of his complete piano concertos. It covers almost half a century of his compositions, and shows the sheer range of his creativity. There are early piano fugues written for his teacher, Franz Schreker, via elegant fin de siècle Viennese lyricism to a relaxed application of Schoenberg’s dodecaphonic technique- often enlivened with a surprising degree of charm and a knowing sense of humor. The Ernst Krenek Ensemble is joined here by three of the finest lieder singers currently active, Laura Aikin, Bernarda Fink, and Florian Boesch. The Ernst Krenek Ensemble has set itself the task of introducing Ernst Krenek’s important and extensive chamber music oeuvre to the programmes of international concert halls, although its repertoire also includes works by composers such as Schubert and Beethoven, who provided Krenek with important stimulus. Its musicians delve with special curiosity into Krenek’s less familiar works and reveal the many colorful facets of his substantial output. Concerts have taken the ensemble throughout Europe and the USA.

Adolf Busch (1891–1952) enjoys a reputation as one of the great violinists: his Busch Quartet Beethoven recordings have never been surpassed. But Busch was also a major composer, equally natural as contrapuntist and melodist, with a style that owed much to Max Reger. Yet, always a man of principle, he sacrificed his career as both violinist and composer with his dignified refusal to perform or be performed in Nazi Germany. This second CD of his lyrical writing for clarinet, one in a series of recordings of Busch’s light-filled chamber music, extends the rediscovery of this once leading musician.

The 1967 performance of Schubert's "Trout" Quintet is the most fascinating offering, largely because the musicians play with great cohesion yet maintain distinctive parts without shaking the ensemble's equilibrium. Rudolf Serkin is clearly the leader, but his playing never upstages the sturdy quartet of Jaime Laredo, Philipp Naegele, Leslie Parnas, and Julius Levine, an enthusiastic group that rises to the work's challenges and Serkin's inspired promptings. Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, performed in 1968, is a little less engrossing, though it shares with the Schubert a similar balance of distinctive lines and bonded ensemble playing.

-- Blair Sanderson, AllMusic.com

The organ music of Joan (or Juan) Cabanilles (1644–1712) is virtuosic and colourfully Baroque, and touched with a distinctively Spanish intensity. Cabanilles is claimed as the most prolific of all composers for the organ, and publication of his works, begun in 1927, has not caught up with his output. But the surviving manuscripts can be seriously corrupt, requiring extensive editing and sometimes even detailed recomposition. This recording – Volume Three of an ongoing series – therefore uses a number of new editions to present the music as never heard before, as close as possible to what the composer might have intended. It was made using the historic (1732) organ in the Basilica of Sant Jaume in Vila-real, Valencia. Timothy Roberts was for twenty years principal keyboard of the Gabrieli Consort and Players; he also became director of His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts. In recent years he has also been active as a recording engineer and sound editor, composer and music-typesetter.

Classical Music

Handel, G.F.: Giove in Argo [Opera]