RIGHT AS THE RAIN - LEONTYNE P

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO 7, CORI

Previn's Four Songs, using poems by Toni Morrison, continues the US song tradition established by Copland. They may not be strikingly original in style (they owe a debt to 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson), but they are very attractive, idiomatically American and movingly evocative of their texts. The set was written for Sylvia McNair, with a plangent cello obbligato for Yo-Yo Ma. McNair is outstanding here, her voice radiant but warm, soaring but secure. She is a singer for whom every syllable counts, and her performance is utterly absorbing in the way she is able to illuminate words that might seem obscure on the page. From the haunting 'Mercy', to the 'bright and sassy' (Previn's marking) 'Stones', to the dreamy content of the other set here, Two Remembrances, with their shimmering flute obbligatos, McNair's performance is perfection. The rest of the disc contains a diverting Cello Sonata, commissioned and dramatically performed by Ma, and a Vocalise for soprano, cello and piano, that is schmaltzy, bland and reminiscent of Francis Lai's film soundtracks. (Previn boasts of having written it in an afternoon during the recording sessions; well it sounds like it.) The sound, however, is exceptional: brilliant, vivid and so detailed that Ma's breathing is audible.

Performance: 4 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Claire Wrathall, BBC Music Magazine

WALTON: SYMPHONY NO 1 ANDRÈ P

I have an old HMV LP with a youthful looking Andre Previn on the sleeve (9/74 - nla) and coupling the Ravel Trio and Shostakovich E minor Trio, and very good it is; the other artists were Young Uck Kim and Ralph Kirshbaum. Now an older Previn returns to the Ravel, and with new colleagues brings to it the same affection, together with a chaste quality wholly appropriate to this composer who evinced an honourable bashfulness yet whose passion is unfailingly genuine and moving - surely one reason for his immense popularity today. The Trio is one of the largest and grandest of chamber works, yet its rhetoric is without hollowness (and how rare that is in French music!) and it somehow just stays within the bounds of chamber music: oddly enough, one of the most shattering climaxes comes in the slow movement. A rich yet un-glitzy recording helps this intensely felt yet refined performance, and altogether the artists offer a memorable musical experience.

Debussy's long lost piano trio is a youthful work that I'm certain he would have hated to have played at all, but scholars don't always mind about that sort of thing. Having come to light fairly recently, this jejune piece now has several performances on disc. Undoubtedly it needs skilful playing to avoid seeming embarrassingly weak alongside the Ravel, and the present artists do a very decent job, presenting its naIvety without apology. Their disc is not generous at 48 minutes, but the performance of the Ravel above all makes it value for money.

-- Gramophone [11/1995]

The great inner strength and glories of this music are revealed here by fabulously eloquent playing. This performance of the Fifth Symphony is the pinnacle of Previn’s Vaughan Williams cycle - a major achievement.

The major offering is the seraphic Fifth Symphony. This is a supreme work, packed with thematic references to RVW’s opera (or ‘Morality’ as he called it), Pilgrim’s Progress, which at the time the symphony was written was still very much work in progress.

The long lines of the first movement are most lovingly shaped by Previn. The strings sing and soar marvellously and the horns contribute burnished tone. It seems to me that everything about the account of this movement, pacing, dynamic control and contrast, and sympathetic playing is just ‘right’. Later, when the tempo picks up the strings are dexterous and light and the interjections of the wind and brass introduce a suitable note of foreboding, which will be familiar to anyone who knows Pilgrim. The brief climax is convincingly built before the return of the luminous material with which the movement began (Track 1, 7’58")

The scherzo is brilliantly poised and gossamer light. This music always seems to me to be suggestive of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That’s certainly the case here. Then comes the glorious Romanza. A featherbed of hushed strings is the foundation for the beautiful melody, heard first on the cor anglais. In Pilgrim’s Progress (Act 1, scene 2) this theme movingly sets the words "He hath given me rest by His sorrow, and life by His death", sung by Pilgrim himself. This movement is, surely, one of the most moving creations in English music and Previn and the LSO do it full justice. The music, though beautiful, also has great inner strength and its glories are revealed here by some fabulously eloquent playing. If the performance of this symphony is a highlight of Previn’s cycle (which I believe it is) then the performance of this slow movement must be counted the pinnacle of the entire set. Here is just over twelve minutes of balm for the soul. Then the quietly radiant finale is a delight. This is RVW at his most outgoing and beneficent. The whole performance is a major achievement.

The Three Portraits from "The England of Elizabeth" consist of music extracted by Muir Matheson from a score that RVW had been invited to compose in 1955 by British Transport Films. The company had produced a short documentary about [16th century] Elizabethan England in order to promote tourism in Shakespeare country. Matheson’s three movement suite doesn’t contain vintage Vaughan Williams but it’s enjoyable and so far as I know there is no other recording.

The Tuba Concerto is a delightful piece, even if it too is not top-drawer RVW. As the notes point out the composer took a good deal of trouble to learn the capabilities of the tuba which he then exploited to the full. John Fletcher is a splendid soloist. He’s athletic in the outer movements and in the central Romanza he displays a poetic vein to the tuba which may surprise some listeners.

-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

The special interest here is the ''world premiere recording'' of Schumann's first Piano Quartet in C minor, completed in March, 1829, when he was still only 18. Though his Leipzig piano teacher, Friedrich Wieck, and other discerning music-loving friends found much in the work to praise after a domestic performance by Schumann and some fellow-students, he himself lost faith in it and the score remained unpublished until the Schumann scholar, Wolfgang Boetticher, prepared a performing edition in 1979. The gem of the four movements is the nimble Minuetto, with a trio (its leading theme reappears in the fourth of his Op. 4 Intermezzos for solo piano) subsequently picked out by him as the moment when he first recognized himself as a ''romantic... departing from the former musical style''. The tenderly spun Andante is winning too, and even though the Beethoven-cum-Schubert-inspired faster flanking movements (the last dominated by an obsessively reiterated dotted rhythm) need—and I think in this performance receive—some pruning, both have an irresistible youthful elan. Andre Previn and his three colleagues cannot be over-praised for coming to the Quartet's rescue with such immediacy and warmth of sympathy.

Though never enjoying the popularity of the Piano Quintet, the E flat Piano Quartet, written some 13 years after the C minor work, has rarely lacked dedicated protagonists. These players hold their own with them all, especially the very lively pianist with his keen ear for textural clarity.

-- Joan Chissell, Gramophone [5/1993]

Mozart: Concerto & Sonata for 2 Pianos (Alicia De Larrocha)

Elgar's defiant late work and Walton's richly atmospheric display vehicle have inspired Daniel Müller-Schott and André Previn - who was a personal friend of Walton - to collaborate on a recording that does full justice to the variety and uniqueness of these two masterpieces of English music.

BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO 6, EGMO

Alicia de Larrocha will always be remembered as one of the most idiomatic and poetic interpreters of Spanish piano music, but this beloved artist – born in Barcelona in 1923 to two pianists – was hardly less devoted to Mozart. In the 1990s, towards the end of her career, she undertook a series of concerto recordings for RCA with Sir Colin Davis – one of the great Mozartians of his time – conducting the English Chamber Orchestra, formidable Mozart veterans themselves. Now collected for the first time in a 6-album set, these performances were widely admired by music lovers and critics. Gramophone wrote: “In their transparency and vitality these performances are outstanding. Sir Colin’s partnership is affectionate and exemplary [Nos. 25 and 27].” And of their collaboration in Nos. 19 and 27: “Sir Colin’s unforced way with the opening tutti of K 595, his awareness of ‘all passion spent’ is haunting but unobtrusive. Such sensitivity is effortlessly mirrored by Larrocha with her enviable ease, her avoidance of all artifice or attention-seeking dalliance. Few other pianists are more attuned to Mozart’s mix of pain and radiance.”

Recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, London on 26 July 1973 (Rachmaninov), Fairfield Hall, Croydon on 24 April 1977 (Prokofiev), and at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 25 November 1971 (Bernstein)

Picture format: NTSC 4:3
Sound format: Ambient Mastering
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Menu language: English
Booklet notes: English, French, German
Running time: 62 mins
No. of DVDs: 1

A multitalented conductor, Previn leads the LSO in the first performance of Rachmaninov’s The Bells at the BBC Proms with celebrated soloists Sheila Armstrong, Robert Tear and John Shirley-Quirk. All three performances on this DVD were recorded during Previn’s eleven year tenure as Principal Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, from which he received a Gramophone Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

The ICA Classics Legacy series presents a collection of historic performances by some of the world’s greatest artists. These performances are released on DVD for the first time, incorporating rare archive footage that has been expertly and lovingly restored. - ICA Classics

A film by Lillian Birnbaum and Peter Stephan Jungk

With:
André Previn, Mia Farrow, Renée Fleming, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Tom Stoppard, David Finck, and others

Bonus:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E flat major, K. 493
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478


André Previn, piano
Rainer Küchl, violin
Günter Seifert, viola
Franz Bartolomey, cello

André Previn is one of the leading musicians of our day. The eighty-one-year-old cosmopolitan pianist, conductor and classical composer has not only received no fewer than four Academy awards for his film adaptations but was also one of the most influential jazz musicians of the fifties and sixties. A Bridge Between Two Worlds is a portrait of Previn's fascinating musicianship and also looks candidly at his private life, including his relations with his two ex-wives, Mia Farrow and Anne-Sophie Mutter. As a bonus, this release features Mozart's two Piano Quartets K. 478 and K. 493 with André Previn at the keyboard.

Picture format: NTSC 16:9
Sound format: PCM Stereo 2.0 / Dolby Digital 5.1
Region code: 0 (worldwide)
Subtitles: English, German, French, Spanish
Booklet notes: English, German, French
Running time: 52 mins (documentary) + 55 mins (performance)
No. of DVDs: 1 (DVD 9)

Andr� Previn's landmark 1974 recording of Carmina burana with the London Symphony Orchestra remains one of the most electrifying accounts of Orff's exuberant cantata. From the momentous opening "O Fortuna" to the rapturous closing chorus, Previn brings out the rhythmic vitality, sensuality, and theatrical flair of this hedonistic celebration of life and love. Captured in the acoustically rich Kingsway Hall and produced by Christopher Bishop, this recording delivers an immediacy and spontaneity that have stood the test of time. As Previn's classical career blossomed in the UK, this performance confirmed his rare ability to bridge serious musicianship with mass appeal - a vibrant, unforgettable classic that continues to resonate across generations.

Andre Previn - Early Years 1945-53 / Among his remarkable musical accomplishments, he was a brilliant pianist, and even at this early stage of his career - Andre Previn was a celebrated German/American pianist, composer and conductor, whose long career - he died in 2019 at the age of 89 - encompassed movie music, jazz and classical music. He composed or arranged music for more than 50 films, and was music al director and conductor for many top symphony orchestra as well as composing classical art music. This collection focuses on his early career as a jazz pianist. His family, who were Jewish, left Berlin for Paris and then the USA in 1938, and when he graduated from high school in Los Angeles in 1946, started working at MGM studios. However, by then he was already playing jazz piano in Hollywood clubs and had made his first records. This 66-track 3-CD collection comprises most of his recordings from these early years as a solo pianist, with small groups and with strings, released on the Sunset, V-Disc, Monarch, RCA-Victor and Tops labels. It includes the titles from his "Andre Previn Plays George Gershwin" and "Andre Previn Plays Fats Waller" albums. He was especially noted for his recordings with his trios, and this set features trio and quartet recordings with Irving Ashby, Red Callender, Lee Young, Al Viola, Charles Parnell, Jackie Mills, Bob Bain, Ralph Collier, Lloyd Pratt, Art Shapiro, Irv Cottler, Al Hendrickson Buddy Clark and Shelly Manne. Among his remarkable musical accomplishments, he was a brilliant pianist, and even at this early stage of his career, his playing is fast, fluent and imaginative, and this collection offers a fine showcase for those talents.

Classical Music