Apollo’s Fire has won critical acclaim and enjoyed Top 10 Billboard Classical chart success with their half-dozen releases on AVIE. Returning to their baroque roots, they offer a selection of works by Handel that showcase the Apollo’s Fire chorus. The centerpiece of the album is the grand Dixit Dominus, written during the composer’s early days in Rome. In a gesture to Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee year, Sorrell has chosen two works written for the monarch’s forbearers: the “Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne” and “Zadok the Priest.” As a bonus, Sorrell includes “The Lord Shall Reign” from the epic Israel in Egypt.

GÁL Serenade in D, Op. 41. Trio in f?, Op. 104. KRÁSA Tanec (Dance). Passacaglia and Fugue • Ens Epomeo • AVIE 2259 (67:08)

Hans Gál has been receiving some well-deserved, if belated, attention on disc lately. Just a couple of issues back, I reviewed a must-have recording by cellist Antonio Meneses performing Gál’s very beautiful Cello Concerto. And now, here on the present release, we have what is advertised as the complete string trios of both Gál and his close contemporary Hans Krása. Though born only nine years apart— Gál in 1890 and Krása in 1899— Gál was fortunate to escape the advancing Nazi forces into Austria, fleeing to the U.K. in 1938 and eventually settling in Edinburgh, where he died in 1987. Krása was not so lucky. He was deported first to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and then transferred to Auschwitz where he was killed in 1944. Given Krása’s much shorter life, it’s understandable that his output is considerably less than Gál’s. Neither composer, however, apparently devoted much effort to the string trio, since the contents of this CD are said to be the extent of it.

The two Gál works are recorded here for the first time, and, in terms of scale, they’re both major additions to the literature, each lasting over 25 minutes. Written in 1932, before the serious trouble began, the Serenade lives up to its title, in name, if not strictly in form. The piece is in four movements in what I would describe as a nod to the Baroque and Classical periods as reflected through the lens of an easygoing, listener-friendly modernist style that teases and tickles the ear with fractured and fragmented references to familiar pieces. Throughout the first movement (Capriccioso), for example, you’ll hear the distinctive three-note pattern that permeates the first movement of Bach’s G-Major Brandenburg Concerto. While I wouldn’t want to push the analogy too far, I’d say that to a degree Gál’s Serenade reminds me of some of Hindemith’s Kleine Kammermusik pieces. Gál’s score is mostly busy, breezy, and boffo, perhaps more in the manner of a divertimento than a serenade.

Just as long, but in only three movements this time, the Trio in F?-Minor is a much later work, dating from 1971, when the trouble was long over. The piece was commissioned by the London Viola d’amore Society and originally scored for violin, viola d’amore, and cello, but Gál made this version for traditional string trio at the same time. The mood is now introspective, brooding, and perhaps a bit bereft. If there’s an analog here, I’d have to say that the Trio seems to look back to the highly chromatic, freely tonal style familiar from works of the late 19th- and early 20th-century Viennese composers before they succumbed to the siren of dodecaphonism. In other words, Gál’s Trio is a nostalgic soak in a muddy pond. But mud baths are supposed to be therapeutic, and this one left me with a nice, warm glow.

The Krása pieces are considerably shorter—six minutes for Tanec and just under 10 minutes for the Passacaglia and Fugue. Tanec, or Dance, was composed in the last year of Krása’s life. With its strong rhythmic thrust, ostinato figure in the cello, and Hungarian folk flavor, the music is at first suggestive of Bartók, but as Kenneth Woods’s note indicates, the piece is meant to be evocative of trains, with the obvious reference to the boxcars that transported Krása and the millions of others to the death camps. To quote Woods, “the atmosphere ranges from eerie nostalgia, to barely contained menace, to explicit violence,” and ends in a series of manic shrieks. Written later that same year (1944), the Passacaglia and Fugue is Krása’s last completed work. It’s difficult to describe this music of broken spirit and soul. Initially, Shostakovich comes to mind in a frozen soundscape benumbed by cruel and forbidding cold. But slowly, the music rises to a pitch of bickering and physical altercation.

The recording at hand represents the Ensemble Epomeo’s disc debut. Named for the Mediterranean volcano, Mt. Epomeo, the group was founded when the three players—Caroline Chin, violin; David Yang, viola; and Kenneth Woods, cello—came together at the Festivale di Musica da Camera d’Ischia in Italy in 2008. It’s always difficult to judge an ensemble in unfamiliar repertoire, but I think I can say that the Epomeo’s musicians are more than up to the technical task of their business and that they sound intensely engaged in the emotional worlds of these two composers and their music. I would now look forward to hearing the ensemble in something more familiar, like Mozart’s great Divertimento in E?-Major, K 563, or the Beethoven string trios. Meanwhile, this new, excellent recording is strongly recommended.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Composer Elena Ruehr’s first release for Avie assembles vocal and choral works inspired by three distinctive American poets – Louise Glück, Emily Dickinson and Langston Hughes. The title work, Averno, is a cantata that sets 11 poems of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Glück’s collection of the same name, which is a retelling of the story of Demeter, goddess of the earth, and her daughter Persephone. Ruehr’s score deftly conjures ancient themes in a modern idiom. The miniatures Cricket, Spider, Bee paint a vivid, aural picture of Dickinson’s scenic natural world. The large scale GOSPEL CHA-CHA sets Langston Hughes’ expansive and socially critical late poetry, evoking African dances and drumming, and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1960s with improvisatory flair. The works are performed by acclaimed New York-based Trinity Choir under their dynamic Music Director Julian Wachner, and Trinity’s new music ensemble Novus NY. The superb soloists are soprano Marguerite Krull and baritone Stephen Salters.

Elena Ruehr studied at the University of Michigan and The Juilliard School. She composed Averno while a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute. She was composer-in-residence of The Boston Modern Orchestra Project. He oeuvre includes works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, chorus, wind ensemble, instrumental solo, opera, dance and silent film. Since 1991, Dr. Ruehr has taught at MIT.

Classical Music

Combining elegance and virtuosity, pianist Russell Sherman returns to Avie with a traversal of Chopin’s Mazurkas, a popular 19th-century genre among Polish composers, but one that Chopin made his own. He wrote mazurkas throughout his lifetime, from his early days in his native Warsaw until 1849, the year of his death in Paris. He brought numerous innovations to the dance form, evolving its humble folk origins to more contemporary art music. Russell, who has performed the world over on the most illustrious stages and with all of the major orchestras, brings his signature grace, imagination, and poetry to Chopin’s beloved oeuvre. -----

REVIEW:

Awe-inspiring: in some of the most difficult works in the piano repertoire, he exhibits the kind of impeccable perfection that is the hallmark of players like Pollini and Michelangeli.

- All Music Guide

Adrian Chandler and La Serenissima’s 10th release for Avie—coinciding with the label’s 10th anniversary—has all the hallmarks that have made the Vivaldi specialists one of the best-selling and acclaimed period-instrument bands performing today. As with the chart-topping French Connection 2 (AVR 2218), which featured the world-premiere recording of the flute concerto “Il Gran Mogol,” Adrian has once again unearthed numerous works from this period, recorded for the first time.

-----

La Serenissima's latest album, “Venice by Night,” seeks to portray a night in Venice, with several thematically linked sections, starting with the arrival by Gondola. La Serenissima plays the Concerto for Bassoon and the dashing Violin Concerto in E minor with Chandler as the nimble and lyrical soloist. The musical journey also stops at the opera house to sample two enjoyable selections from L’Olimpiade, Vivaldi's Olympics opera. The album includes some neglected but worthy composers including Veracini, Lotti and Pollarolo. A particular standout is a remarkable Sinfonia for trumpet and strings by Giovanni Porta. Why he’s not better known today is a bit of a mystery but this collection shines some welcome light on his output.

– WQXR [7/2012]

Classical Music

Classical Music

GÁL Cello Concerto. ELGAR Cello Concerto • Antonio Meneses (vc); Claudio Cruz, cond; Northern Sinf • AVIE 2237 (61:48)

Receiving two very fine recordings of my favorite cello concerto, the Elgar, two issues in a row (see Fanfare 36:1 for review of Paul Watkins’s Chandos release) is enough treat in itself. But the real news here is the first-ever recording of Hans Gál’s Cello Concerto, composed in 1944 under very trying circumstances.

It’s not surprising, I suppose, that the booklet cover that displays through the jewel case’s front window lists the Elgar first, no doubt a lure based on name recognition. But it’s the Gál that comes first on the disc and is so confirmed by the booklet’s backplate that displays through the rear window.

Hans Gál (1890–1987) lived a long life but one filled with tragedy for a good part of it. An Austrian Jew, he was caught up in the Nazi vise, believing he’d be safe back in Austria after being dismissed from his post as director of the Mainz Conservatory in Germany. But the Anschluss soon brought Hitler’s storm troopers to Austria to round up and deport the Jews there as well. Gál and his immediate family were able to escape to the U.K. in 1938 before they were conveyed to a concentration camp, but trouble followed them across the Channel.

At first, Gál’s prospects brightened. Francis Donald Tovey invited him to Edinburgh to work as an archivist cataloging the Reid Music Library. But when Tovey was suddenly incapacitated by a stroke, Gál returned to London just in time for the outbreak of the war. Citing national security concerns, the Brits began rounding up German and Austrian nationals and sequestering them in detention camps. Gál was caught up in the sweeps and found himself interned in a camp on the Isle of Man, perversely incarcerated side by side with those from whom he’d fled. Upon his release four months later, he returned to Edinburgh. But by now, Hitler’s death camps, mostly in Poland, were working overtime, and members of Gál’s extended family who were still in Germany were at grave risk.

Gál’s mother, thankfully for her, died on her own in 1942, but in Weimar his sister and an aunt took their own lives to avoid deportation to Auschwitz, and that same year, Gál’s youngest son, Peter, who was physically out of harm’s way with the family in Edinburgh, committed suicide at the age of 18. Gál remained in Edinburgh where he was appointed lecturer at the city’s university, founded the Edinburgh Festival, and was eventually awarded the Order of the British Empire. He was also honored by the nations that would almost certainly have killed him had he remained. His cantata De Profundis was premiered in Wiesbaden, and he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Mainz and the Literis et Artibus medal by Austria.

Gál’s Cello Concerto is a work purely of the heart and soul, for no commission or even remote prospect of performance prompted it. Six years would pass before the work was first heard at a concert by the Göteborg Orchestra in 1950 with cellist Guido Vecchi playing the solo part.

Despite its 1944 date of composition, the concerto is as romantic a score as anyone could have made to order. Considering the circumstances under which it was written, it’s not as dark a work as Elgar’s World War I Cello Concerto. There are passages, however, of lament and exquisite, soaring lyrical beauty, and from time to time an exotic Middle Eastern element in the music comes to the surface that distantly echoes Bloch’s Schelomo and Voice in the Wilderness. The solo part in Gál’s concerto requires a good deal of virtuosic skill, but the work is not what you would call a virtuoso showpiece. For much of the score’s first two movements, the cello plays an almost obbligato role, dialoging with instruments in the orchestra in a pretty much equal engagement. It’s not until the concluding movement, in which the cello has an extended and technically challenging cadenza, that the writing highlights the soloist in a more traditional virtuoso concerto role.

This is a most magnificent addition to the cello repertoire, a work that, in my opinion, deserves to take its place beside the Schumann, Dvo?ák, and Elgar concertos as one of the cello’s great repertoire works. Antonio Meneses, unquestionably one of the instrument’s great players on the world stage, performs Gál’s concerto with breathtaking sweep.

Elgar’s Cello Concerto is well known and has been covered extensively in these pages. Therefore, I will restrict myself to telling you that Meneses’s deeply penetrating, intensely passionate, throbbing reading, supported by some of the most sympathetic orchestral playing from Claudio Cruz and the Northern Sinfonia I’ve heard in this score, goes straight to my 2012 Want List without passing GO.

This is an absolutely must-have disc, assuredly for the Gál, but also for one of the most beautiful performances of the Elgar you may ever hear.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

Classical Music

Following a critically acclaimed recording of music from the Eton Choirbook, More Divine Than Human (AV 2167), The Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford returns with a second volume from the vast collection of 15th-century English sacred music, Choirs of Angels. The works range from John Browne's richly scored eight-part O Maria salvatoris mater, the first piece in the Eton Choirbook, to William Cornysh's exquisite miniature Ave Maria mater Dei, the choirbook's shortest work. The compositional range in the Eton Choirbook demands extraordinary virtuosity from its performers, and Stephen Darlington and his choir of men and boys do this glorious music tremendous justice. "hugely appealing ... natural, spacious, rich, expressive performances." - The Sunday Times "They do a fantastic job and the soundworld is terrific." - BBC Music Magazine

One of JS Bach’s most famous and loved masterpieces with the Portland Baroque Orchestra conducted by Monica Huggett. The double-CD package includes full texts and translations. (Avie)

Classical Music

Classical Music