Classical Music

Classical Music

A broad and meticulous selection of orchestral works and concertos by Gerald Finzi is here matched by a first-class cast of soloists, supported by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis, expert in British repertoire and conducting this year’s Last Night of the Proms. Paul Watkins displays exhilarating virtuosity in the Cello Concerto, a central work on this album, composed in the wake of the devastating news that Finzi was terminally ill, but yet filled with ‘vigorous, almost turbulent thematic material’, as he wrote in the programme note for the work’s premiere at the Cheltenham Music Festival in 1955. Louis Lortie, for his part, tackles the high-spirited and majestic Grand Fantasia and Toccata, the Fantasia originally conceived as part of a concerto for piano and strings and first performed on two pianos. This contrasts with the more restrained Eclogue for Piano and Strings, timeless, and blessed with a mood of benediction. This album also features the orchestral Nocturne (subtitled ‘New Year Music’), dark, misty, and at times ironic.

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REVIEW:

Sir Andrew Davis’s feeling for the composer’s sensitive, harmonically conservative language is abundantly clear in these vivid readings with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Soloists too are well chosen. Cellist Paul Watkins proves a master of expressing powerful feelings through the prism of British reserve. Admirers of Finzi’s music can buy without hesitation.

– BBC Music Magazine

This recording brings together some of Chandos’ greatest artists in a spellbinding programme. It follows performances that The Guardian described as ‘a thrilling show of ferocity and feistiness,’ given by the same forces in January at the Barbican. After widely acclaimed recordings of Walton’s and Lutoslawski’s violin concertos, Tasmin Little again joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Edward Gardner, in intensely expressive interpretations of the concertos by the Polish composers Karlowicz and Szymanowski. All were written within the space of a generation, and yet they belong to quite different worlds. One was composed at a time of national occupation, another in the throes of wartime, and yet another at a time of national renewal. The first inhabits the lyrical tradition developed by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky, the second escapes towards Debussy and the exoticism of Mediterranean influences, while the third is imbued with the folk culture of the Tatra Mountains.

Distinguished British music interpreter Sir Andrew Davis joins forces with the BBCSO once again, this time with acclaimed soloists Dame Sarah Connolly and Andrew Staples, in this thoughtful presentation of the last two substantial choral works of Sir Edward Elgar. The matury of Elgar as an orchestrator is obvious in both works on this album, notably, in ‘The Music Makers’ (1912), during passages in which he quotes from ‘Sea Pictures’ and the Violin Concerto, and in representing the sound of aircraft in ‘The Spirit of England’ (1917). Elgar uses self-quotation to reflect: ‘The Music Makers’ is a canvas of self-reflection, written quickly following a period of illness. The orchestral introduction is introspective, melancholic, and noble, before the words of Arthur O’Shaughanessy’s poem and much self-quotation within the music offer an insight into the sense of nostalgia and awareness of the loneliness of the creative artist felt by the composer. ‘The Spirit of England’ reflects on the sadness and desolation of war felt by a nation, with the inclusion of quotations from ‘The Dream of Gerontius’ in some of the more negative stanzas that Elgar found harder to set. Specified in the score for tenor or soprano, all three movements are sung here by a tenor in a recording first.

With this new release Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra continue their critically acclaimed series exploring Polish music for Chandos. It features two large scale works by Karol Szymanowski, the expressive Stabat Mater and the vigorous and colorful ballet Harnasie. The Stabat Mater, recorded here in its 1965 revised version, features a cast of internationally acclaimed soloists: Lucy Crowe, Pamela Helen Stephen, Robert Murray and Gabor Bretz.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Reviews:

It’s very fitting that during the four-year period when we continue to commemorate the centenary of World War I there should be a new and long overdue recording of Morning Heroes. Sir Arthur Bliss volunteered for the army in August 1914 and he served with distinction in the trenches in war-time France. He was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and in 1918 he was gassed at Cambrai. All this, and the carnage he witnessed all around him, made an ineradicable impression on him. However the most grievous blow was the loss of his younger brother, Kennard, who was killed in action on 28 September 1916 at Thiepval; he was just 24. After the war was over Bliss returned to France to find his brother’s grave but this pilgrimage failed to lay Kennard's ghost. In his notes for the earlier recording of Morning Heroes by Sir Charles Groves, Felix Aprahamian writes that Bliss began to suffer from nightmares in 1928; these must have been a manifestation of the psychological effects of the war. Finally, the opportunity came to commemorate his brother with a commission for a major choral work for the 1930 Norwich Festival. The result was Morning Heroes, scored for orator, chorus and orchestra. Bliss himself conducted the first performance. The score is dedicated ‘To the memory of my brother Francis Kennard Bliss and all other comrades killed in battle.’

Morning Heroes is an ambitious score and its construction is rather unusual in that two of its five movements are for orator with orchestra – though, as we shall see, the accompaniment in the second spoken movement is sparse indeed. A choral finale follows the second spoken section; together these two sections constitute the fifth movement. In the centre of the work are three movements for chorus and orchestra. Bliss assembled an anthology of texts; his sources include Homer’s epic Greek poem, The Iliad; Whitman’s Drum Taps; the eighth century Chinese poet, Li Tai Po; and poems by two twentieth century poets, Wilfred Owen and Robert Nichols.

Bliss’s scoring – if we can call it that – is astonishingly original and imaginative here. There is virtually no accompaniment to the orator’s recitation save for timpani rumbling ominously in the background like distant, menacing guns. Only once – at “Exposed!” – do the drums play loudly and that’s terrifying. What a masterstroke it is for Bliss to reintroduce the orchestra as the orator recites Owens last line, “Why speak they not of comrades that went under?” The woodwind play melancholy, lilting material from the first movement and the effect is very moving. The chorus then sing Robert Nichols’ Dawn on the Somme. The music begins quietly, almost like a hymn, but gradually the intensity increases as Nichols’ ‘morning heroes’ are saluted. If this music sounds like a glorification of heroism then who better than Bliss to write in this vein? After all he had been through he was surely entitled to celebrate heroism. Yet the work ends on a subdued, pensive note and that too feels eminently right.

Morning Heroes is a work of great stature and I find it very moving indeed. There’s no doubt at all that this new Davis recording is now a clear first choice for this fine score.

The “filler” is interesting – and relevant. Bliss wrote Hymn to Apollo in 1926 in gratitude to Pierre Monteux for his early championship of A Colour Symphony. Indeed, it was Monteux who gave the first performance, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It seems that very early on Bliss was dissatisfied with the work but he didn’t get round to revising it until 1964. Sir Andrew offers the original version of the score, recording it for the first time.

This is a splendid disc. The performance standard is extremely high and Ralph Couzens’ engineering is excellent. Similarly excellent are the notes by Andrew Burn. Bliss devotees should acquire this as a matter of urgency and other collectors are strongly urged to hear this eloquent musical commemoration of the fallen of World War I. On this evidence Sir Andrew Davis appears to be a doughty champion of Bliss. I hope he may record more of his music in the future: might we hope, at last, for a modern recording of The Beatitudes?

– MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

This new recording is a revelation for its clarity (notably of the composer's vivid orchestral palette and imaginative choral writing), coherence and sheer emotional intensity.

– Gramophone

Sir Andrew Davis's performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus surpasses Sir Charles Groves's fine 1974 EMI Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra account with urgent tempos, choral singing of full tone and incisive attack, eloquent orchestral playing, and an excellent, open recording.

– BBC Music Magazine

Chandos Records is delighted to present this new recording of Elgar’s choral masterpiece The Dream of Gerontius and the popular song cycle Sea Pictures. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus are conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, a peerless Elgarian who this year was awarded the prestigious Elgar Society Medal in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the composer’s music. In Gerontius the soloists are Stuart Skelton, David Soar and Sarah Connolly, who also sings in Sea Pictures. This recording was made in the days leading up to their triumphant live performance of Gerontius in April 2014. Skelton was praised as “the ideal tenor for the role of Gerontius,” Soar described as “an implacable, dark-sounding Priest,” and Connolly, “a consummately polished Angel” (The Guardian).

HOLST The Mystic Trumpeter. First Choral Symphony 1 • Andrew Davis, cond; Susan Gritton (s); 1 BBC S Ch; BBC SO • CHANDOS 5127 (SACD: 69:20 Text and Translation)


I complain so often of the modern tendency towards over-reverberant sonics, particularly in Naxos and Chandos releases, that when the sound matches the mood of the music I am pleased to admit that it works. In this disc, titled Holst Orchestral Works Vol. 3, the fine conductor Andrew Davis leads inspired performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and soprano Susan Gritton in two of Holst’s most interesting and appealing works for that combination.


The Mystic Trumpeter (1904, revised 1912) is described in the booklet as being in Wagnerian musical language, but evolved. Based on a poem by Walt Whitman, “From Noon to Starry Night,” it includes musical premonitions of The Planets , particularly “Neptune the Mystic.” The musical evolution also owes something to Richard Strauss, who Holst played under as a trombonist, but here Holst’s continuing musical growth is clear and fascinating from first note to last. It also has the trait in common with Debussy that every time the music reaches a climax, it pulls back shortly after and recedes. This ability of his to “cap the geyser,” so to speak, was to come to fruition in the next three decades of his life.


The First Choral Symphony, as the notes indicate, has a weakness only in the text setting of the Finale; otherwise this, too, is an outstanding work, and one deserving of greater exposure. Here, too, the mature Holst is able to maintain a spellbinding atmosphere at a consistently soft volume level, only occasionally opening up the sound to create brief climaxes. The orchestral texture is more varied, even in the fast sections of the music where a certain sameness might have been expected. There’s a touch of Britten in the later sections of this work—a possible influence on the younger composer? I make no claim for this, only a suggestion; make of it what you will. In any case, this is an excellent disc of truly excellent music.


Susan Gritton contributes a brief statement in the booklet recalling how she rehearsed these works under the late Richard Hickox, only to have that esteemed conductor die suddenly before the recordings could be completed. Under such circumstances, I’m sure that this project was a bittersweet one for her, but as I say, Andrew Davis has done himself—and Holst—proud.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Following a highly praised recording of Symphony No. 1 last year, Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony present here an electrifying interpretation of Elgar’s Symphony No. 2, with the addition of one of his most performed works: the Serenade for Strings. Having now become experts in British repertoire with highly lauded series of Walton and Britten, they reveal all the aspects of Elgar’s masterpiece in this surround sound recording. Symphony No. 2 is richly orchestrated and skillfully constructed, drawing on hugely varied resources of harmony, rhythm and melody, and making considerable use of thematic transformation as a unifying technique. While the Symphony No. 2 is one of the greatest products of Elgar’s maturity, the Serenade in E minor for Strings is perhaps the most charming product of his youth. In this three-movement piece dominated by a deeply passionate Larghetto, the strings of the BBC Symphony superbly encapsulate all the emotions offered by this graceful work: tender lyrical and intense.

Music of dissonant discontinuity and conflagration.

In this disc Lyrita steps about as far away as you can go from their accustomed heartland. This is music of dissonant discontinuity and conflagration – especially in the symphony. Its upheavals and eruptions are expressed in pointillistic silvery fragments and vertiginous stop-starts and mood-swings.sample We are immersed in this pool of imaginative effects immediately in Gerhard's Fourth - and final completed - Symphony. It stutters, creeps, excoriates and bawls. Previously recorded by Naive and by Chandos this its world premiere recording. In that sense it is an awesomely honest document recorded in the last year of Gerhard's life. In addition however it shouts the ultima thule of 1970s exclusivity and ivory towers.

The Violin Concerto is written in more beguilingly compromising tones. Here there is a connection with melody and an evident allegiance for the long melodic line even if it does have an astringent after-taste. Yfrah Neaman with his unmistakable silver thread of tone is as dedicated and fluent an interpreter as his BBC colleagues. In the finale Gerhard gives us a buzz-saw pell-mell climactic display - not above borrowing from Sarasate in mood rather than detail. Overall the concerto can be loosely and rather unsophisticatedly bracketed with the two Rawsthorne concertos, the Frankel and the Fricker; the latter reissued this month on Lyrita. The silence at the end of the concerto demands a burly if misty-eyed cheer from even the most impassive of listeners.

The BBCSO and its then conductor Colin Davis put this music through the hoops. Did anyone at the time think that these works would be recorded more than once. In the studio they must have thought they were recording these works for all time. The results certainly suggest that.

The completely satisfying notes are by MusicWeb writer Paul Conway one of the rising and risen authorities on twentieth century British music. Paul’s article on the Gerhard symphonies is well worth your attention … and mine. However don’t miss Guy Rickard’s article while you are here.

Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Sir Malcolm Sargent was regarded as Britain's 'ambassador of music' and made many overseas tours as both principal and guest conductor of leading British orchestras and choirs. His energetic and efficient work to popularize classical music made him a household name. Sargent was a skilled conversationalist, and a popular member of Radio's wartime informational programme 'The Brains Trust'. He was knighted in 1947. On the present release, he is heard at the helm of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a cast of stellar soloists as they perform Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust, and Dvorak's Te Deum. The Berlioz performance is a BBC Broadcast which was made live from the Royal Festival Hall on February 25, 1953, and the Dvorak is a BBC Broadcast which was made live from the Royal Festival Hall on May 26, 1954.

A unique and symbolic encounter: the most distinguished Czech conductor of the present time and a fabulous British orchestra communicate the profound messages in the works of great national composers.

Ukrainian-born conductor Nicolai Malko studied music in St. Petersburg. He eventually began teaching at the Moscow and Leningrad Conservatories. Malko had a sporadic relationship with the BBC, and although he was never a staff conductor, he visited, taught, and conducted occasionally from 1929 until his passing in 1962. This 4-disc set contains some of Malko’s best conducting for BBC broadcast, including works by Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Haydn, Mussorgsky, Bruckner, and more.

"This well-transferred collection of BBC broadcasts has to be one of the most significant "historical" orchestral releases in recent years. There are of course various commercial discs with Malko; here, though, we have the Russian-born conductor captured in full flight.

The principle novelty is The Kodaly's one-act theater piece The Spinning Room, sung in English, and thoroughly enjoyable. The remainder of the set is purely orchestral.

Minor tape imperfections and playing fluffs notwithstanding, this is a musically enriching set and our experience of the conductor is duly extended." – Gramophone

The Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra, Op.38, was written in 1934-1936 and revised and rescored in 1942-1943. The composer himself was the soloist in the premiere which took place in a Promenade concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult on 10 August 1943. Rubbra also performed it with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Malcolm Sargent on 4 July 1946 at the second Cheltenham Music Festival. The Prelude and Fugue on a theme of Cyril Scott for piano, Op.69, was composed in honour of Scott’s seventieth birthday in September 1949 and premiered by Margaret Good on 5 June 1950 in a BBC broadcast. It is based on three bars from the slow movement of Scott’s Piano Sonata no.1, Op.66. As part of the Northampton concert of Cyril Scott’s music which Rubbra organised in 1918, he programmed and performed four of Scott’s short solo piano works. Nearly fifty years later, he chose to perform another brief solo piano work by Scott to round off his BBC recital on 9 August 1967, Consolation. In his brief spoken introduction to the broadcast performance, Rubbra described this as ‘one of Scott’s maturest pieces’ written ‘at the height of his powers’ and characterised it as ‘a deeply felt ‘in memoriam’ written as a tribute to a close friend’. In 1958 he began work on the Violin Concerto, Op.103, finishing it in the summer of the following year. It was premiered at the Royal Festival Hall on 17 February 1960 when the soloist was Endré Wolf with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by its Principal Conductor at the time, Rudolf Schwarz. This first performance was relayed live and the BBC repeated the work in a Maida Vale performance three days later. A recording of that impressive second performance is presented here.

Lyrita was founded in 1958 by Richard Itter, and is one of those record labels without which our appreciation of British music would be much the poorer. This release however takes us beyond the label’s own recordings, bringing examples of broadcast performances preserved by Itter on the professional recording equipment he had at his home in Burnham. With excellent BBC reception he made huge numbers or recordings of live performances which would otherwise have been lost into the ether. All of these recordings are from his tapes, while the Walton Cello Concerto was transferred to an acetate disc.

These are mono recordings, but the combination of the BBC’s high broadcast standard and Richard Itter’s superb tape recorder, the sound is remarkably good. You can find Arthur Benjamin’s Violin Concerto in modern sound on the Dutton Epoch label (see review), but Derek Collier’s 1961 recording is superbly shaped and much of the orchestral detail comes through. This is a work which was famously admired by Constant Lambert as “a brilliantly executed work”, and the same can be said of this performance. I remember Derek Collier as a teacher at the Royal Academy of Music when I was a student there in the 1980s and having this recording with him clearly at his best is a very fine tribute.

Lyrita’s own 1979 debut commercial recording of the E.J. Moeran very Irish Violin Concerto is inevitably more refined sonically (see review), but even with a little tape hiss and a few extraneous noises this is a very moving performance. Renowned soloist Alfredo Campoli is heard on top form in this recording and is worth the asking price for this set alone. One has the feeling the BBC Symphony Orchestra are also raising their game to meet the heartfelt expressiveness of Campoli’s solo, and the warmth of the accompaniment is present without a doubt, even if the recording is a little on the crisp side. The playful central movement is full of verve and energy, and the final Lento puts the seal on this work as a masterpiece which deserves far wider recognition.

Arnold Bax’s Violin Concerto has appeared in a modern recording from Chandos, as well as Dutton’s historic 1944 version from the BBC with soloist Eda Kersey conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Made shortly after its première in 1943 and not long before Kersey’s tragic early death, this is a precious recording, but the present performance with Belgian violinist André Gertler is certainly worth having. Gertler was a champion of the music of his time, and this is a colourful and commited performance, the solo violin not quite as closely recorded as with some of the other works in this collection but certainly audible in most essential respects. The heart of the work, the central Adagio is beautifully played and Sir Malcolm Sargent proves a sensitive accompanist, though the consumptive audience is hard to ignore at times.

William Walton’s Cello Concerto is the best known work here by some way, and easily obtainable in numerous more or less recent recordings. Gregor Piatigorsky’s early recordings include one from 1957 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra which you can find on Pristine Audio. This stereo studio recording is an altogether cleaner affair, but as the booklet notes for this Lyrita release argue, this “European premiere … is more rhapsodic and instinctive …” It is indeed the difference between a carefully prepared studio recording and the more edgy excitement of live performance; fans of this work will want to have both. One of the differences is that Piatigorsky’s cello is made to sound rather fluffy and delicious in the Boston recording, and while his instrument is further away and sounding a tad boxy on the Royal Festival Hall stage, you can hear the raw impact of Walton’s energetic central Allegro appassionato and the lyrical expressiveness in the Lento opening of the final movement in different and equally valid perspectives.

We have to be grateful to Richard Itter for his enthusiastic taping of these and many other broadcasts, and I’m sure there is much more to be discovered from this source. Lyrita’s release of this collection of concertos is very valuable indeed, and with informative booklet notes by Paul Conway it is of more than just historical interest. These fine performances and recordings are a snapshot of the BBC’s programming in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and part of the foundation of its hard-earned reputation. Now, let’s see what’s on tonight.

– Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

Composed by Bent Sørensen (b. 1955), the three works with the piano in focus, released here for the first time on CD, have been recorded by the English pianist Rolf Hind in collaboration with his regular duo partner, the violinist David Alberman, and accompanied by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Michael Schønwandt.

Despite the (mainly traditional) cuts, this 1955 BBC broadcast is treasurable. Not only does it feature Joan Sutherland’s touchingly pure and limpid Euryanthe – a role she only sang this once – but it also extends the small discography of Frans Vroons, in a lyric-heroic role which could have been written for him. Marianne Schech and Otakar Kraus are matchless villains, Kurt Bohme a comfortable King. Yet perhaps the performance’s prime virtue is the candescent conducting of Fritz Stiedry. His visionary readings of the familiar Overture and the desolate Prelude to Act 3 are heightened by unusually good broadcast sound, captured by the late Richard Itter on state-of-the-art equipment. This thrilling Euryanthe fully vindicates Weber’s – and Chezy’s –achievement.

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REVIEW:

Despite big cuts (including around 20 minutes’ worth of Act 3), this is a well-prepared performance of considerable merits. Not the least of these is the proof that Joan Sutherland could indeed have made a serious career in the dramatic German Fach: she sounds an outstandingly fluent and natural exponent of the titlerole. Conductor Fritz Stiedry’s preserved Wagner performances are often a little spotty but here he seems in well-ordered control of everything. All the other major roles are on committed top form.

– Gramophone

English composer Arnold Bax was born in the late nineteenth century but had his maturity and came to prominence in the first half of the twentieth. His was an affluent and literate London-based family and Bax was able to pursue a dazzling career undistracted by worldly necessities. He had no need to earn a living, teach, give concerts, court the great and good or chase commissions. In this sense he was like his ultimately more popular contemporary Vaughan Williams. No stranger to writing songs, chamber music and piano solos, Bax seemed most fluently at ease with the orchestra. The Second Symphony, written in London and Geneva, carries a dedication to Serge Koussevitsky who directed the premiere with his Boston Symphony Orchestra on 13 December 1929. Eugene Goossens gave the United Kingdom premiere on 30 May 1930. Bax who had not been able to travel to Boston, wrote: “I feel very grateful to Eugene for his brilliant performance … which lifted it at last for me into a purely abstract world. So for the moment I feel unduly tender towards its grim features.”

Tchaikovsky has dedicated some of his finest music to the violin, but this new album expands the instrument’s repertoire even further. Inspired by greats such as Sarasate, Heifetz, Kreisler and Joachim, violinist Guy Braunstein reanimates a tradition of violin and orchestra rhapsodies with new arrangements of famous excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Swan Lake. Together with the extraordinary Violin Concerto, Valse Scherzo and Sérénade mélancolique, they constitute a collection of glittering Tchaikovsky Treasures. On this first PENTATONE album, Braunstein plays with the renowned BBC Symphony Orchestra, led by maestro Kirill Karabits. Violinist Guy Braunstein was born in Tel Aviv and studied under the guidance of Chaim Taub and later in New York with Glenn Dicterow and Pinchas Zuckerman. He started performing as an international soloist and a chamber musician at a young age and has since performed with many of the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors. His chamber music collaborations have included projects with Issac Stern, András Schiff, Zubin Mehta, Maurizio Pollini, Yefim Bronfman, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Mitsuko Uchida and Angelika Kirschlager to name a few. He was the youngest person ever to be appointed concertmaster of the Berliner Philharmoniker in 2000, a position he held for twelve years before leaving to pursue his solo career.

Raphael Wallfisch recorded the First Cello Concerto for Chandos, one of the very first CD releases on that label, coupled with the Barber Concerto. It was a good performance, but it pales in comparison with his remake here. This set offers what is, hands down, the finest pairing of the two Shostakovich Cello Concertos since Heinrich Schiff and the composer's son--with all due respect to Rostropovich--set the modern standard in this music (on Philips). The First Concerto comes across with positively frightening intensity, a product not just of Wallfisch's strong projection of the solo, but also owing much to the take-no-prisoners accompaniments of Martyn Brabbins and the BBC Symphony. Just listen to the interplay between Wallfisch and the sneering, threatening woodwind section--it's what this music is all about.

At the opening of the second movement, Wallfisch adopts a dusky, gamba-like sonority: think of Dowland's Lachrymae. The instrument truly seems to weep through the music, while the finale acquires an extra degree of bitter edge by being played very rhythmically, but not too quickly. Wallfisch really comes into his own in the cadenza, holding the entire movement together through perfect timing and a wide range of tone colors and dynamics. It's a great performance, as is that of the comparatively neglected Second Concerto.

Again we find soloist, conductor, and orchestra keenly attuned to the music's overt emotionalism. In the first movement, Wallfisch and Brabbins subtly characterize both the first and second subjects, preventing any hint of monotonous sameness in the exposition section. The development rises to a splendidly impassioned climax, followed by a ghostly coda that never drags.

In the central scherzo, once again a comparatively deliberate tempo combines with punchy rhythms to the music's expressive advantage, while the lengthy half-sweet, half-grotesque variation-finale never has been so colorfully projected. This is such a beautiful work; only the fact that it ends quietly and mysteriously conspires to keep it in the shadow of the First Concerto. In some ways it's even more melodically appealing, and this is a performance that captures its wide-ranging expression as well or better than any other.

The inclusion of the Cello Sonata and the cello arrangement of the late Viola Sonata, along with two miscellaneous short pieces, completes a package offering all of Shostakovich's music featuring solo cello. In the chamber works, John York is the sensitive piano accompanist, and both he and Wallfisch offer excellent interpretations of both large works. The finale of the Viola/Cello Sonata is particularly well held-together, with the youthful freshness of the earlier "true" Cello Sonata enthusiastically captured.

The engineering in the concertos is absolutely outstanding: balances between cello and orchestra are perfectly judged, but the microphones still capture a tremendous amount of ear-catching detail. Obviously a great deal of credit for this has to go to Brabbins and the orchestra, who offer none of that generic, lazy professionalism so common today. These performances display an idiomatic style of a kind that you seldom find even inside Russia today (witness Pletnev's often bland Russian National Orchestra, or Gergiev's mediocre Kirov band). The result is an absolutely irresistible set that no fan of Shostakovich will want to miss.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Early Exclusive: This title will ship exclusively to ArkivMusic customers starting on January 12th, 2018, three weeks before its wide street date!

Over the course of almost 10 years, Yevgeny Sudbin has been recording Sergei Rachmaninov’s works for piano and orchestra. The journey began in the U.S.A. in 2008 with the Fourth Piano Concerto in what Classic FM Magazine described as ‘a glorious recording’ with the North Carolina Symphony Orchestra under Grant Llewellyn. For the Paganini Variations and Piano Concerto No. 1, Sudbin continued to Asia and highly praised collaborations with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra and conductor Lan Shui. Reviewers remarked on the soloist’s ‘transcendental virtuosity and kaleidoscopic keyboard colour’ (BBC Music Magazine) and enjoyed piano-playing with ‘depth of tone, subtlety and richness of texture, and scintillating dynamism allied to acute lyrical sensibility’ (Gramophone). The grand finale of the cycle combines the two most popular of Rachmaninov’s concertos – No. 2 in C minor and No. 3 in D minor – but it also constitutes a home-coming of a kind, as it was recorded in London, Yevgeny Sudbin’s base since 1997. For his partners in these monumental and almost iconic concertos, Sudbin has chosen the BBC Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Sakari Oramo.

Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen has been one of the most striking composers from northern Europe over the past half century - a unique personality and a major figure in Danish musical life, even though he considered himself to be an outsider. In his early works, Gundmundsen-Holmgreen was inspired by figures such as Bartok and Stravinsky. He's considered extremely ambiguous and provocative.

Leopold Stokowski was born in London of Polish/Irish ancestry in 1882 and showed such an early aptitude for music that he was able to enter the Royal College of Music at the tender age of 13, the youngest student at that time to do so. His first foreign tour took place in the spring of 1951 when, at the invitation of Sir Thomas Beecham, he took the Royal Philharmonic on a tour of England to coincide with the 'Festival of Britain' that year. It was during this tour that he also made his first appearance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a Royal Festival Hall concert that included Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. During the next couple of years Stokowski performed many works with the BBC Symphony in a Maida Vale studio programme which included two full-length radio broadcasts. One such broadcast was on May 5, 1954, consisting of Malcolm Arnold's Beckus the Dandipratt, Glière's Concerto for Coloratura Soprano and Orchestra, and the Enescu Romanian Rhapsody No. 1. We must be grateful that Richard Itter recorded the three short works from the first concert, in particular in the case of the Arnold and Glière works, Stokowski was performing both of them for the only time in his life. It was Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony that he played the most, having conducted it for the first time in Cincinnati in 1910. The performance heard here has a certain historical interest as it was the very last time he conducted the work. A packed Royal Albert Hall responded with great enthusiasm to the nonagenarian maestro and indeed to the youthful band of players on the platform.

Classical Music

Anna Clynne’s enormous palette of colors and special effects coalesce into an aural three-dimensional experience of striking originality. Equally there’s a comforting familiarity to her music, as she draws inspiration from historic styles that she transforms into a new musical dialect. Anna’s background in electro-acoustic music and her fascination for a variety of multi-media – including poetry, visual art and videography – combine to create rich and exhilarating textures of popular appeal.

The five works on Anna Clyne: Mythologies were written over a 10-year period between 2005 and 2015. The performances on the album feature the BBC Symphony Orchestra and four internationally-acclaimed conductors. Masquerade, commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to open the Last Night of the Proms 2013 and conducted by Marin Alsop, captures the spirit of that quintessentially English tradition. The title evokes an 18th-century outdoor festivity featuring fireworks, acrobats and street entertainers. This Midnight Hour, conducted by the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Chief Conductor Sakari Oramo, encapsulates the modernity and decadence of two European poets, Nobel Prize-winning Spaniard Juan Ramón Jiménez and Frenchman Charles Baudelaire. Oramo also conducts The Seamstress, a single-movement violin concerto in all but name, featuring soloist Jennifer Koh as well as the whispered voice of Irene Buckley reciting the work’s inspiration, a poem by William Butler Yeats.

More poetry by a Nobel laureate, the Irishman Seamus Heaney, inspired Night Ferry; conducted by Andrew Litton, the work conjures crashing waves and weathered seafaring. The album concludes with rewind, conducted by André de Ridder. It’s a wild romp imagining the backwards scroll of a video tape complete with glitches, skips and freezes.

Mythologies became an instant media and popular success when it was released in October 2020 – “hands-down one of the half-dozen best classical albums of 2020”, according to New York Music Daily. The album is now presented in both a CD version and as a magnificent 2-LP set. The splendor of the glossy gatefold and 180-gram vinyl in particular is an appropriate match for Anna’s enormous palette of colors and special effects.

REVIEWS:

I found her music colourful, full of energy and overflowing with ideas which grip you from first to last. The present release of her compositions spanning the decade from 2005 up to 2015 thus offers a fine survey of her recent orchestral music and there is no better place to begin with than the first work recorded here, the short Masquerade, a brilliant concert-opener if ever there was one. The music skips along with high spirits until it concludes with a quotation from John Playford's The English Dancing Master which comes as a surprise - although I for one would not be surprised to learn that that very tune had already been there since the very beginning but cleverly and subtly disguised. Anyway, this short and brilliant work presents Anna Clyne's music-making in a nutshell, as it were.

These superb works receive committed readings from all concerned and, besides singling out the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing at its customary best, I would like to draw attention to Jennifer Koh's impressive take on the violin part in The Seamstress, one of the gems in this collection. I hope that many will derive as much musical pleasure from this very fine release as I have, and that it will not take too long before more of Clyne's orchestral music is committed to disc.

-- MusicWeb International

Mythologies is an apt title choice for this striking collection by London-born composer Anna Clyne (b. 1980). However ancient mythological tales might appear at the surface level, their archetypal themes resonate across the ages, as relevant today as when they were born, and they're fantastical in nature too, populated as they are with gods and mythical beasts. In similar manner, Clyne's music exudes an era-transcending quality in these phantasmagoric pieces, some of which stretch out for twenty minutes at a time. The Grammy-nominated composer is a tale-spinner whose creations transport the listener to dazzling realms.

Certainly a key part of the recording's appeal has to do with unpredictability: in not conforming to long-established scripts, the pieces are able to unfold in any number of stylistic directions, even if ultimately each develops in accordance with her sensibility.

-- Textura

The First and Fourth Symphonies of the Swiss composer Richard Flury (1896–1967) both have a strong sense of place. They retain a hint of Bruckner but are fluid rather than monumental. The First is lyrical and grandiose in equal measure, reflecting the grandeurs of the Swiss landscape. The Fourth was inspired by memories of childhood visits to Liechtenstein and spins out tunes and atmosphere with the profligacy of a Hollywood film score.

After a move to the U.S.A., Bohuslav Martinů was to compose four works which all belong to the central 20th century repertoire for the viola. Maxim Rysanov, one of today's leading viola players, has gathered these works on this disc, opening with the Rhapsody-Concerto from 1952. In this lyrical two-movement work, characterized by sustained legato writing, sudden changes of mood and texture and a vivid style of orchestration, Rysanov is supported by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the eminent Martin? expert Jirí Belohlávek. The two Duos for violin and viola which follow are slightly earlier (from 1947 and 1950, respectively) and were written with the husband-and-wife team Joseph and Lillian Fuchs in mind. Here the young Russian violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky joins Rysanov, in two scores where exacting technical demands bring the reward of an astonishing richness in sounds and variety from such a sparse instrumentation. Maxim Rysanov closes the disc in the company of the pianist Katya Apekisheva, performing the Viola Sonata of 1955 – like the Rhapsody-Concerto in two movements, with a tough, passionate mood that often recalls the composer's better-known cello sonatas.