Sitkovetsky, Yulian: Art of Yulian Sitkovetsky (The), Vol. 4

PROKOFIEF: Violin Sonata in F minor / Violin Sonata in D maj

Sitkovetsky, Yulian: Art of Yulian Sitkovetsky (The), Vol. 1

Includes work(s) by various composers.

Sitkovetsky, Yulian: Art of Yulian Sitkovetsky (The), Vol. 2

SCHUBERT: String Quartet in G major / Piano Trio in E-Flat M

Includes work(s) by Sir Edward Elgar. Soloist: Elmar Oliveira.

REVIEWS:
Fanfare (1-2/00, pp.191-192) - "...The performances are solid and committed....[Hugh Aitken] is a composer whose music is diverting, inventive, and well worth hearing. Gerard Schwarz is once again to be commended and thanked for his services to American music."

REVIEWS:
Fanfare (1-2/00, p.214) - "...here we have playing that reflects not only this artist's customary polish and tonal warmth, but also...characteristic interpretive toughness and intensity....Oliveira plays both works in virtuoso manner..."

RESPIGHI / PIZZETTI: Violin Sonatas

Composer and guitarist Ernesto Cordero (born in 1946 in New York and raised in Puerto Rico) has composed a large rich catalogue distinguished by its Caribbean flavor. To date, there are more than fifty recordings of Cordero’s works. Although now generally known only as a composer, the New York Times highly acclaimed his January 1978 Carnegie Hall debut as a guitarist and as a composer: “His technique is impeccable… The colorist variety of his playing is also extensive… a beguiling sensuous wash of sound”. Of Cordero’s compositions, the New York Times review said, “...like Mr. Cordero’s performances they projected a healthy combination of skill, sensitive invention and sound musical effect”. Artek’s Two Puerto Rican Cantatas features a number of talented, prominent as well as up-and-coming Puerto Rican musicians, including rapper Welmo Romero, guitarist Carlos Rodríguez Quirós, tenor Joel Prieto and bass Ricardo L Lugo. Commissioned by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture as part of the celebration of its 50th anniversary, Estampas criollas (2005) received its successful premiere at that time.

� In 1888 Gustav Mahler composed a tone-poem called Totenfeier (Funeral Rites). This became the foundation for and the first movement of what would later be his Symphony #2. � As the complexity of this work grew, (it wasn't finished until sometime in 1894), it would eventually be known as the "Resurrection" Symphony, after the "moment of clarity" and inspiration he experienced at the funeral of Hans von Bulow, his friend and conducting mentor. � This massive musical composition containing five movements uses a full chorus, soprano and alto soloists, and a featured alto solo voice essential to the work's fourth movement. � Internationally renowned conductor Gerard Schwartz leads the Royal Philharmonic in this live performance of Mahler's "Resurrection" that features soprano Ailish Tynan and mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers. � "Mezzo-soprano Catherine Wyn-Rogers was sublime in the short fourth movement... Made a splendid contribution to the shattering, blistering finale." Glyn Mon Hughes, Liverpool Daily Post and Classical Source � AilishTynan, soprano, winner of the 2003 BBC CardoffSinger of the World Competition, has sung at the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Covent Garden, Royal Swedish Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and all over Europe.

"Gerard Schwarz offers a solid interpretation of the Seventh Symphony that merits attention from start to finish." - Opera Today

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MAHLER Symphony No. 7 • Gerard Schwarz, cond; Royal Liverpool PO • ARTEK 43 (76:00)


Generally speaking, Mahler’s late symphonies—except for No. 8, which is extremely popular because of its splendid exhibitionism, despite its complexity—are not only unpopular but also extremely difficult to bring off well, and the Seventh has always been considered the most difficult of all. Only a handful of conductors, among them Kubelík, Abbado, and Boulez, seem to have managed to solve this hardest of Mahler’s musical puzzles. All three of the conductors named were able to do so because they reveled in its grotesqueries, yet were able to knit its disparate elements together, and even they do not always succeed (or succeed equally) in each of the performances they lead.


As I write these introductory words, I am in fact listening to Rafael Kubelík conduct the symphony, the performance of February 28, 1981, with the New York Philharmonic that is generally considered to be his finest. All the swirling details of the score are brought out clearly, yet each and every element is knitted together splendidly and woven into a tapestry that touches the spirit and evokes a world of different moods. Kubelík’s tempos, in this performance especially, were rather slow, yet they never sound slow; he maintains momentum, no matter how convoluted the texture or how difficult the rhythms, and sustains tension despite his slowness.


Switching to Schwarz, one hears a performance 10 minutes faster than Kubelík’s. There is less rubato, more of a linear concept. It is played with great feeling, however—something I did not hear in Schwarz’s readings of the First and Ninth symphonies—and although not quite as fiery as Abbado’s second, more successful, recording, it works very well. Like Kubelík, Schwarz revels in the music’s grotesqueries, albeit in stricter tempo. There is sufficient relaxation in the soft string passages to offset this drama, and the Royal Liverpool orchestra responds with verve and great feeling to Schwarz’s every shift of mood.


The first “Nachtmusik” movement plays off the dark and light elements in perfect equilibrium. The lyrical middle section has just the right tenderness and gemütlich for the music. The music sings—and how it sings! One almost expects a soprano to come swooping in at any moment. The Scherzo has proper bounce and swagger, with a light touch that makes the odd violin glisses sound like aerial acrobats riding above the ebb and flow of the music. There is also a touch of humor, so important in this score. The second “Nachtmusik” continues this mood in a most charming vein. In the finale, Schwarz pulls out all the stops: the music leaps from the speakers and grabs you by the shoulders. There is an almost Baroque feeling to the counterpoint, though dressed in modern harmonic clothing, that Schwarz, an expert Baroque conductor, understands very well.


Gerard, you scored a hit with this one! The sound quality is nothing short of fantastic. Five stars, easily.

FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

SCHUMANN Hermann and Dorothea Overture, Op. 136. Overture, Scherzo, and Finale, Op. 52. Violin Concerto in d, WoO 1 1 & • Stewart Robertson, cond; Elmar Oliveira (vn); Atlantic Classical O • ARTEK 0059 (79:08) Live: Boca Raton, FL 3/5/2012


& A conversation on the Schumann Violin Concerto with Elmar Oliveira and Stewart Robertson


In March of last year, a Boca Raton, Florida, audience was treated to this unusual all-Schumann program—unusual in that the works performed are not that often heard on record let alone live in concert. The highlight was Schumann’s ill-fated Violin Concerto, about which I’ve already had my say in the above interview. I first came to know the piece from Henryk Szeryng’s Mercury recording with Antal Doráti conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. That recording, coupled with Szeryng’s Mendelssohn Concerto was made in 1964, and I acquired it as an LP. I didn’t think much of the Schumann concerto then, and after a parade of others that followed—including Thomas Zehetmair, Joshua Bell, and Christian Tetzlaff—I still don’t think much of the piece now. Or, I didn’t, until I heard Elmar Oliveira play it on this CD. I wasn’t just trying to flatter him in our interview when I said I found his performance of the work the most persuasive I’ve heard.


I think there are some artists who play a piece for the same reason that some mountaineers climb a particular mountain—because it’s there. Then there are those artists who really believe in a piece and commit themselves to it body, mind, and soul in an effort to bring it to life in a way that no one else has before. I can’t, and won’t, say that I’m ready to accord Schumann’s violin concerto a place on high among the Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and Sibelius concertos, but I can, and will, say that Oliveira, Robertson, and the ACO’s performance of the score made more sense to me than it ever has, and has convinced me that the work deserves at least second-tier status among the likes of the Dvo?ák, Glazunov, Goldmark, and Bruch concertos—and that’s not bad company to be in. It’s certainly several steps above where Schumann’s concerto has long languished, and Oliveira and Robertson can take credit for its rehabilitation.


Schumann composed a trivet of concert overtures based on literary works. I use the word “trivet” rather than trilogy, because though the three scores were composed in the same year, 1851, they are not related, and they were assigned non-contiguous opus numbers. The first of them, Braut von Messina , op. 100, is based on Schiller’s tragic play of the same name. The second overture, Julius Caesar , op. 128, was inspired by Shakespeare’s tragedy. And last, the overture performed here, Hermann and Dorothea , op. 136, was inspired by Goethe’s epic poem telling of the tragic fate of two lovers during the French Revolution. Tchaikovsky, it seems, was not the first composer to use the Marseillaise when he incorporated it into his 1812 Overture ; Schumann uses it here to set the time and place for his score. In works such as these, the lines between concert overture and tone poem are blurred. The question is not merely academic: If an orchestral piece of music takes its inspiration from a literary work, and it purports to depict the work’s characters and/or to outline its story, how does that differ from a tone poem?


It’s a question that spills over into the other orchestral work on this program, the Overture, Scherzo, and Finale, op. 52. What is its musical taxonomy? Even Schumann didn’t seem to know, at one time referring to it as his “Symphony No. 2,” at another time as a “suite,” and at still another time as a “sinfonietta.” Reducing it to its component parts, one could say it’s a symphony without a slow movement. Perhaps because of confusion over its classification, the work was long neglected for most of the 19th century, but it has been dusted off in the 20th and taken up by a number of famous conductors in the modern recording era, from Kletzki, Schuricht, and Konwitschny, to Karajan, Solti, Sawallisch, Marriner, Gardiner, and Thielemann.


The two orchestral works are presented in highly polished performances by conductor Robertson and the Atlantic Classical Orchestra, but of course, it’s Schumann’s violin concerto with soloist Oliveira that is the main fare on the menu and the reason for you to purchase this disc. As mentioned earlier, a 20-minute bonus track at the end includes a fascinating conversation on the concerto between Oliveira and Robertson.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

BEETHOVEN / MENDELSSOHN: Violin Concertos