Sony Classical releases the full cycle of Bruckner’s symphonies recorded by the Vienna Philharmonic under Christian Thielemann on 11 CDs. The box set, featuring the composer’s nine numbered symphonies, his ‘Study Symphony’, his ‘Nullified’ symphony, and a 172-page booklet. This release constitutes the first complete recording of the Austrian composer’s symphonies from the orchestra under a single conductor. Christian Thielemann enjoys a strong rapport with the Vienna Philharmonic and has established himself as one of his generation’s most esteemed interpreters of the Romantic Austro-German repertoire.

Past praise for previously released CDs included in this set:

Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 / Thielemann, Vienna Philharmonic

This new Bruckner Fourth deserves a strong recommendation. It is a reading of undeniable power and presence.

-- Fanfare

Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 / Thielemann, Vienna Ohilharmonic

Overall, there’s an aliveness to the music, inspired by the concert setting, which adds another reason this Bruckner Eighth is so satisfying. If you want to hear Thielemann at his best, conducting a stupendous orchestra, that’s precisely what we have here.

-- Fanfare

Bruckner: Symphony No. 9 . Thielemann, Vienna Philharmonic

Thielemann's interpretation has intimacies hard to find in other versions, and a vulnerability movingly communicated in the Vienna Philharmonic’s super-empathetic playing.

-- BBC Magazine

This album marks the culmination of two special Hallé collaborations and includes four major pieces from one of the most distinctive of current British compositional voices. Delyana Lazarova (Hallé Assistant Conductor 2020-23) and composer Dobrinka Tabakova (Hallé Artist in Residence 2022-23) were both born in the historic city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Working together for the first time during their time with the orchestra they formed a strong musical connection in which the Hallé musicians displayed a close understanding of the intricacies and dialect of Tabakova’s musical language. This album contains two of Tabakova’s major orchestral works. The three-part Earth Suite, which the composer says was inspired by ‘the overwhelming force of Nature’, recently drew ‘exquisite playing’ from the Hallé (Bachtrack, April 2023).

Orpheus Comet features fast rhythmic material combined with atmospheric transparent orchestrations and a glorious climax featuring quotations from Monteverdi. The two significant concertos for strings and soloists included on this album solidified Tabakova’s reputation as an outstanding contemporary voice and display the composer’s close affinity with string instruments. Ukrainian-British Maxim Rysanov, is one of Tabakova’s longest collaborators who premiered the Concerto for Viola and Strings in 2004, a piece described as being ’saturated with an inner, captivating and natural energy’ (Culture Magazine, Nov 2004). The Concerto for Cello and Strings (whose score was described as ‘gorgeous’ by the Daily Telegraph, Australia) is here performed by Guy Johnson, one of the most exciting British cellists of his generation.

This edition of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach performed by Bernard Foccroulle was recorded between 1982 and 1997 on a series of splendid historical instruments and provides a clear picture of Bach’s development as a composer of instrumental music. This complete edition also contains works attributed to Bach as well as the recording of the Chorale Fantasia Wo Gott der Herr BWV 1128 that has only been rediscovered in 2008.

“Darkness and Scattered Light” presents celebrated Pulitzer- and Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams’s mesmerizing; elegant; virtuosic music for double bass—two solos and a work for five basses—written for and all performed by bassist extraordinaire Robert Black. “This is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in years.... It would be hard to imagine a better match of composer and performer than John Luther Adams and Robert Black.”(David Lang; Pulitzer-winning composer); John Luther Adams’s music has been performed by such prominent ensembles as the New York Philharmonic; the Chicago Symphony; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; the Seattle Symphony; the and the JACK?Quartet. Cold Blue Music has released ten recordings of his work; including Houses of the Wind; Arctic Dreams; Lines Made by Walking; Everything That Rises; and The Wind in High Places. “John Luther Adams ... one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century.” (Alex Ross; The New Yorker) “His music . . . is an elemental experience.” (The Guardian). Robert Black tours the world collaborating with composers; musicians; and other artists. A founding member of the Bang on a Can All-Stars; his recent collaborations have been with Philip Glass; Eve Beglarian; and Joan Tower. “No one on the planet can make the double bass sing; dance; sound like a drum; spin like a top; like Robert Black. Robert has single-handedly reinvented the technique and repertoire of the Double Bass; bringing it bursting into the 21st century.” (Michael Gordon)

The featured work on this album of compositions by Justin Dello Joio is the American composer's new piano concerto; "Oceans Apart"; composed for keyboard titan; Garrick Ohlsson. Ohlsson is joined by the Boston Symphony Orchestra; conducted by Alan Gilbert; the artists who premiered the concerto in 2023. The program also includes chamber works performed by the New York Philharmonic's principal cellist; Carter Brey; with pianist Christopher O'Riley; and the American Brass Quintet; and organist Colin Fowler. For more information see www.justindellojoio.net

In April of 1996, Ofra Harnoy entered the venerable Abbey Road Studios in London with the London Philharmonic Orchestra to record Edward Elgar’s great cello concerto. Unfortunately, shortly after this event, the end result did not end up where it was supposed to be and was not released to the public. In fact, the whereabouts of the recording went unknown for quite some time, afterward.

In early 2022, through some diligent searching, the lost recording was located and will now be released paired with Harnoy’s remastered recording of the Édouard Lalo Cello Concerto, on the Sony Classical label. With the help of session notes from and conversations with recording producer Andrew Keener, the 1996 Abbey Road sessions were edited (Mike Herriott) and mastered (Ron Searles). The result is what will likely be lauded as one of the definitive interpretations of Elgar’s great warhorse for the cello.

Described by the New York Times as “born to the instrument”, Ofra Harnoy brings her unmatched passion and virtuoso to Elgar’s masterpiece and final notable composition. Very much influenced by Jacqueline Du Pré’s 1965 recording, and the rare opportunity afforded her to study the work with Ms. Du Pré, in masterclass, Harnoy’s own voice comes to the fore to capture Elgar’s own anguish and heartbreak.

The title of this album evokes not only the life-long journey of all these musicians, but also a lasting friendship between soprano Barbara Hannigan and the Emerson String Quartet. One of the greatest string quartets of the last four decades, the Emersons will disband in October 2023.

Barbara and the Emersons were determined to record Schoenberg's Quartet No. 2 since they started performing the work together in 2015. "The sheer sonic scope of this work takes us on a voyage into previously uncharted territory" say the Emerson musicians. "It's like a tall, gnarly tree to climb (all the way to another planet, it seems), yet one with deep and emotional roots", continues Barbara Hannigan. "The soprano’s fin-de-siècle primal scream at the end of the 3rd movement, begging to be relieved of love, is a heavy hitter."

Melancholie is a rare and intimate work by the young Hindemith, "a gem of a piece" that the Canadian soprano has wanted to explore for many years. The fascinating Quartet Op. 3, composed by Berg in 1909 as he was finishing his apprenticeship with Schoenberg, features the quartet on its own. And to round out the album, pianist Bertrand Chamayou joins Barbara and the Emersons for another deeply moving encounter by way of Chausson's heartbreaking Chanson perpétuelle.

REVIEW:

This is the final release from the legendary Emerson String Quartet, disbanding nearly five decades after it was formed as a student group. Here, the group takes on monuments of 20th century music, mostly works that it has never recorded before. There are thorny works by Berg and Schoenberg, each on the edge of atonality; the Second String Quartet No. 2 of Schoenberg dispensing with a key signature altogether in the finale. The last two movements of this work feature a vocalist, and the precise, tense singing of soprano Barbara Hannigan makes a perfect foil for the Emerson. There are some little-known songs for voice and string quartet by the young Paul Hindemith, and a fascinating Chanson perpétuelle of Ernest Chausson, which fits the Infinite Voyage theme of the album even if it may not at first seem to be appropriate musically. All in all, this release will hang in listeners’ minds for a good long time, which is exactly what is desired from a valedictory release. Infinite, indeed.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Learn more about these operas on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

James P. Johnson is renowned as the father of stride piano but he also flourished as a composer of opera and of show tunes in the 1920s and 1930s. The Dreamy Kid and De Organizer offer contrasting stories of African American life at that time, set to an eclectic and powerful mixture of jazz, swing, blues and ragtime. These two works were reconstructed by the renowned musicologist, composer and bandleader, James Dapogny, before his untimely death in 2019. The Dreamy Kid is a world premiere recording.

REVIEW:

Both works are one act operas. De Organizer is labelled a ‘Blues opera’ and is, moreover, a choral opera, where there is, apart from a few longer solo portions, constant dialogue between the chorus and individual solo voices. The story takes place on a plantation in the South in the 1930s, i.e. contemporaneous to when the opera was written. A group of Afro-American sharecroppers are waiting for a union organizer and his companion is handing out leaflets. De Organizer appears and explains the advantages of forming a union. Then the Overseer interferes, threatening, with a whip in hand, but the croppers overpower him and the union is formed.

The opera is compact, just over thirty minutes, and packed with drama. The music is permeated with jazz rhythms and blues feeling – it is really A Swingin’ Affair! OK, If I want to be pernickety, there is a great deal of over-vibrant solo singing and some wobbly choristers, but this is easy to wink at in view of their enthusiasm, conviction and vitality, and the chorus Plantin’, plowin’, hoein’! just a couple of minutes into the opera is very moving. Though the score is divided into numbers, it is performed continuously and the whole opera is only one track.

The Dreamy Kid is quite different. It is a chamber play with no chorus and only four characters, and structured more in the European tradition, but musically with an American twist. While the orchestra in De Organizer is a jazz combo, here we have a traditional symphony orchestra. Even though this also is a one-act-opera, it is a bit longer – by how much I don’t know, as we get only seven excerpts, and they amount to 34 minutes. The libretto is an adaptation of an existing play by O’Neill about an old Afro-American woman lying on her deathbed, and her grandson, Dreamy, who has killed a white man in a quarrel. The police are on his heels but he risks his life to visit his grandma, persisting in spite of the knowledge that they could turn up any time. This, too, is a tightly knit drama, but there are several good solo arias. In the first scene (track 2), Irene, Dreamy’s woman, has a long solo and further on Mammy sings a beautiful, tender song to Dreamy. There are also lots of highly dramatic quarrels, including one which turns into a love duet between Dreamy and Irene – though the police’s arrival at any moment is constant threat. I only wish the opera had been recorded complete.

It should be mentioned that both operas had been reconstructed by James Dapogny, who unfortunately didn’t live long enough to experience the issue of this CD, but was present at the recordings and the staged performances back in 2006. In the notes, he writes at length about his extensive restoration work, without which we wouldn’t have been able to hear this music and the world would have been much poorer.

So, dear reader, grab the opportunity and give this disc a listen. Whether you like it or not is less important than that you should be made to think about to what degree the world for African-Americans has since changed

-- MusicWeb International

The fourteenth volume of the Haydn 2032 edition is entitled L'Imperiale, after the nickname given to Symphony no.53 in the nineteenth century. This was perhaps Haydn's most famous symphony during his lifetime. Premiered in the theatre at Eszterháza Palace in 1778, it was published in London around 1781, and its melodious Andante was arranged more than thirty times for various instruments between 1783 and 1820. It made a decisive contribution to Haydn’s success, opening the way for him to perform in England. Symphony no.54, whose entertaining, theatrical style is a perfectly match for the atmosphere of the legendary court festivities given at Eszterháza around 1775, completes this programme along with no.33, one of his first festive works with trumpets, composed c.1761. In his introductory text, Giovanni Antonini revels in the ‘capricious’, whimsical character of certain passages in the last movement of Symphony No. 53; he also offers an alternative finale of the work at the end of the album.

‘It would be difficult to find a simpler and more poignant subject’, Massenet remarked during the composition of Ariane, a vast score in five acts premiered at the Paris Opéra in October 1906. The libretto by Catulle Mendès is part ancient drama, part symbolist poem, and sets Phaedra and Ariadne, two sisters in love with Theseus, in violent conflict with each other. This epic work does not shrink from relating the combat against the Minotaur, from showing a ship tossed by the raging billows, nor even from transporting the audience to the Underworld where Persephone reigns. Despite its flamboyant orchestration, its grandiose scenography and its triumphant premiere, Ariane remains one of the few Massenet operas never recorded until now. The young Egyptian soprano Amina Edris takes the title role with ardour and passion, surrounded by a cast well versed in the specificities of the French style. The Bavarian Radio Chorus provides dedicated support in the epic scenes, under the baton of Laurent Campellone, a great champion of Massenet.

Glyndebourne’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is pure magic. Brilliantly adapted from Shakespeare’s play, the opera follows the adventures of four lovers and a group of naïve rustics who, in a wood on a moonstruck midsummer night, fall foul of Oberon and Tytania, the quarrelling king and queen of the fairies. In Peter Hall’s remarkable staging, the very wood comes alive as logs and trees move and rustle, creating ambiguous silhouettes in the dark mysterious woodland, lit only by designer John Bury’s wonderful rising sun and moon.

Recorded 1983.

Ronald Brautigam performs some of Franz Schubert’s most profound and beloved works: the eight Impromptus. Schubert’s name has become closely associated with this genre, often characterized by a lyrical melody and a free-flowing structure, with a sense of spontaneity. With it, Schubert seems to have found an ideal setting for the expression of his genius. The Impromptus, D 899, are reminiscent of a four-movement sonata. The first begins theatrically, before giving way to a funeral march of sorts, in which the melody is harmonised, amplified and constantly renewed. In the second, everything appears light and fluid. In the third, Schubert offers us one of his most inspired songs with one of his most beautiful melodies. The fourth takes us back to the waterworks of a fairy-tale park. The Impromptus, D 935, were published after Schubert’s death. The first is a great rhapsodic poem in which expression reaches into the deepest recesses of the Schubertian soul. The second demonstrates how Schubert manages to rise high with simple material. The third impromptu is a series of variations on ‘Rosamunde’, one of the composer’s most famous themes. The fourth is a lightning-fast scherzando – a free and whimsical piece that ideally concludes this disc.

Mulgrew Miller, one of the most important pianists of jazz’ modern era, proudly delivers his brand-new album Solo in Barcelona via Storyville Records. The occasion of a present-day release of a solo recording by this remarkable musician is a very rare and extraordinary occasion. This album, which was recorded on February 2, 2004 in Barcelona, is truly a rare gem for the admirers of a man and piano player, who was loved by so many fans and the entire jazz global community. With his unique take on arrangements from Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Cole Porter, Miles Davis and Duke Ellington, MM shows us why he is considered a modern legend.

On this solo album, MM's piano embarks on an extraordinary musical journey. With each note, he effortlessly paints a vivid tapestry of emotions, traversing a rich musical landscape that spans genres and styles characterized by versatility, proficient soloing and tasteful restraint. He plays like a modern-day exponent of Art Tatum with the deepest musical roots, but with the freshest, most forward-thinking, profoundly original voice that’s uniquely his own. Live in Barcelona shows how he is able to tell us a story and swing like very few others. A real master on the piano. The highlight is perhaps his ‘Excursions in Blue’, playing the blues like it should be done - in the moment! Solo in Barcelona is a beautiful documentation of Mulgrew Miller playing solo material that has not been recorded before.

MM was one of the most influential jazz pianists of his generation. Renowned for his technical mastery, improvisational genius and deep musicality, Mulgrew Miller worked with Miles Davis, Betty Carter, Woody Shaw, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and his own trio around the globe. Still missed by his big audience. Mulgrew Miller (1955-2013) was a world-renowned jazz pianist and composer. His illustrious career spanned over four decades, during which he performed with legendary jazz artists and received critical acclaim for his exceptional musicianship. His unique approach to the piano and his profound contributions to jazz have solidified his place as one of the greatest pianists in the history of the genre. With this exceptional solo album, MM invites listeners on a personal and intimate musical journey, as he displays his extraordinary command of the piano. His nuanced phrasing, exquisite dynamics and deep understanding of harmony create an enchanting and captivating listening experience.

No better Joplin cycle exists, and its first complete appearance on CD is long overdue.

Between January and April 1975, the classically trained, multi-award-winning jazz pianist and composer Dick Hyman – whose astounding résumé includes playing with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman, writing and arranging for Count Basie, and scoring most of the films of Woody Allen – went into RCA’s Studio A in New York City and set down the definitive recording of ragtime legend Scott Joplin’s piano works. In 1988, an hour-long selection from the five LPs was released on CD. Now at last, Sony Classical is issuing Hyman’s entire Joplin album on three well-filled silver discs.

This really is Joplin’s complete piano output. It even includes the six short exercises that form his 1908 School of Ragtime, with their printed prefatory remarks read by the 92-year-old Eubie Blake, a friend of Joplin and a distinguished ragtime player in his own right. Also here are Joplin’s less familiar marches and waltzes. And there’s a bonus: the set contains Hyman’s own twelve delightful improvisations on themes by Joplin, which he designed to demonstrate the composer's influence on the development of jazz harmony and melody. When the LPs were first released, Gramophone’s jazz critic wrote that “the eminently musical quality of Hyman’s playing is in evidence throughout the collection; he has the ability to characterize perfectly each piece and somehow to pinpoint every little harmonic subtlety and melodic felicity without in any way detracting from the conception as a whole.... He pays as much attention to matters of tempo, texture, phrasing and dynamics as though he were doing the twenty-four Chopin Preludes. Two for instance I particularly enjoyed were Cascades with its rippling lightness of touch and Scott Joplin’s New Rag in which Hyman’s cleanness of articulation and rhythmic exuberance are a joy. … Joplin well deserves this very handsome and well-recorded tribute.”

CONTENTS:

• Maple Leaf Rag
• Original Rags
• Swipesy
• Peacherine Rag
• The Easy Winners
• Sunflower Slow Drag
• The Entertainer
• Elite Syncopations
• The Strenuous Life
• A Breeze from Alabama
• Palm Leaf Rag
• Something Doing
• Weeping Willow
• The Chrysanthemum
• The Cascades
• The Sycamore
• The Favorite
• Leola
• The Ragtime Dance
• Eugenia
• Lily Queen
• Gladiolus Rag
• Nonpareil
• Heliotrope Bouquet
• Search-light Rag
• Rose Leaf Rag
• Fig Leaf Rag
• Pine Apple Rag
• Solace
• Sugar Cane
• Stoptime Rag
• Euphonic Sounds
• Country Club
• Wall Street Rag
• Felicity Rag
• Paragon Rag
• Silver Swan Rag
• Kismet Rag
• Magnetic Rag
• Reflection Rag
• Antoinette
• Cleopha
• March majestic
• Combination March
• Rosebud
• Great Crush Collision
• School of Ragtime (Exercises Nr. 1-6)
• Bethena (Concert waltz)
• Binks' Waltz
• Pleasant Moments
• Augustan Club Waltz
• Harmony Club Waltz
• New Rag
• +Dick Hyman-Improvisation on Peacherine Rag
• The Entertainer
• Elite Syncopations
• A Breeze from Alabama
• Something Doing
• Gladiolus Rag
• Heliotrope Bouquet
• Fig Leaf Rag
• Stoptime Rag
• New Rag
• Pleasant moments

REVIEW:

The ragtime genre came into full flower from the mid-1890s through the end of World War I, spearheaded by Scott Joplin (1868-1917), whose 1899 composition Maple Leaf Rag became the template and standard bearer for classic through-composed rags. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw newfound interest in Joplin as a serious composer, starting with the New York Public Library’s publication of Joplin’s collected works. Joplin’s 1902 rag The Entertainer figured prominently in the soundtrack for the 1973 Academy Award-winning film The Sting, launching a floodgate of Joplin releases. Even classical artists as unlikely as Itzhak Perlman, James Levine, and E. Power Biggs hitched their stars to the Joplin bandwagon.

However, the most comprehensive, intelligently produced, respectful, and artistically satisfying collection of Joplin’s complete piano works came from RCA Victor in a five-LP boxed set, featuring pianist Dick Hyman. No better Joplin cycle exists, and its first complete appearance on CD is long overdue.

The music is presented by genre, with the rags arranged in loose chronological order by composition, followed by marches and waltzes. Also included is Joplin’s charming “School of Ragtime” Etudes complete with Joplin’s introductory remarks read by composer/pianist and Joplin colleague Eubie Blake, who was 92 when he faced the microphone to speak. Hyman also offers the Grand Crush Collision march both in its original text and in his own ragtime transformation.

Although Hyman’s pianism embraces the entire history of jazz piano, his effortless virtuosity is firmly rooted in classical training. As Rudi Blesh aptly stated in his brilliant and insightful original booklet annotations, the pianist “takes ragtime seriously without becoming solemn and portentous, more as one must do in approaching, say, much of Mozart.”

Two further qualities make Hyman’s Joplin stand out: his intelligent tempo choices, and his ideal fusion of classical projection and jazz time keeping. Take Joplin’s 1899 hit Maple Leaf Rag, for example. Hyman’s vigorous pace, dynamic contrasts, and clear articulation convey pure joy with a soupçon of brashness, so unlike Joshua Rifkin’s effete and rhythmically stiff traversal. The Cascades’ descending runs are as crystalline and transparent as Rubinstein’s Chopin. By contrast, Hyman’s measured tempo and ear-catching inflections of phrase in Elite Syncopations give shape and breathing room to Joplin’s polyphony.

Note, too, Hyman’s lovely legato touch and subtly lilting rubatos in Weeping Willow, Gladiolus Rag, and Solace, while Something Doing is pure lightness and effervescence. The pianist’s characterful animation keeps the episodic Bethena concert waltz afloat and moving. And although Hyman clearly respects Joplin’s texts, the pianist is not above filling out the texture with discreet octave reinforcements in the left hand, as he does in the difficult Euphonic Sounds, a rag that foreshadows elements of stride piano. Because Hyman approaches each piece on its own terms, one gleans more variety and expressive scope from Joplin’s oeuvre than we experience from most other Joplin interpreters.

The original LP edition devoted the tenth side to twelve of Hyman’s improvisations on Joplin themes, which here are spread across the three CDs, most likely for timing considerations. They are sheer delights, from The Entertainer’s bi-tonal coda to a brief and unbuttoned Peacherine Rag that brilliantly burlesques Art Tatum’s 1940 recording of Harold Arlen’s Get Happy.

A Breeze From Alabama is pure, unadulterated barrelhouse and boogie-woogie, while in Joplin’s New Rag Hyman can’t resist interpolating Juventino Rosas’ Over the Waves–better known as the summer camp ditty “George Washington Bridge”. In short, Dick Hyman and Scott Joplin unquestionably belong to the coterie of symbiotic performer/composer pairings that include Schnabel/Beethoven, Gould/Bach, Gieseking/Debussy, Larrocha/Albéniz, and Hamelin/Alkan.

Full disclosure: I met Dick Hyman nearly 60 years ago when I was eight years old, and he has been a friend, a colleague, and a musical father figure to me ever since. We even played two pianos together in several concerts. I vividly remember hearing Dick preparing these Joplin pieces at the time of the 1975 sessions, and marveled at his absolute commitment to the material, his focus and his flexibility in the process of getting all of the music under his awesome fingers. Thanks to Sony/BMG for reissuing and gorgeously remastering an important recording project that belongs in every serious collection.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; Jed Distler)

From the middle of the nineteenth century there was a blossoming of nationalism within the creative arts – very notably in music – in Finland that reflected the political mood in the country. From an international perspective, the dominant stature of Sibelius can often overshadow the wide-ranging works of his peers – something that this album goes some way to redressing.

Robert Kajanus was the leading figure in Finnish music before Sibelius became established. His Overtura sinfonica is a late work, from 1926, which epitomizes his style. Armas Järnefelt was a friend and fellow student of Sibelius, and eventually became his brother-in-law. Erkki Melartin wrote his incidental music for Prinsessa Ruusunen (Sleeping Beauty) for a production of Zachris Topelius’s fairy-tale play at the Finnish Theatre. Ernst Mielck (who cruelly died aged twenty-one) was mentored by Robert Kajanus, who also conducted the première of Mielck’s Dramatische Ouvertüre in Helsinki. Selim Palmgren was an acclaimed pianist and composer, and was eventually appointed Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music. The overture from his Tuhkimo-Sarja (Cinderella Suite) is particularly exotic. Another pianist-composer, Heino Kaski, spent his career as a teacher, leaving little time for composition. His Prélude is an orchestration of one of his most popular piano miniatures. The work of Uuno Klami is closer to European modernism, reflecting his studies in Paris and Vienna. Leevi Madetoja was perhaps the most talented of Sibelius’s small number of private pupils. His Comedy Overture is an orchestral tour-de-force, with echoes of Richard Strauss. He was a native of Oulu, the home of the Oulu Sinfonia, conducted here by its chief conductor, Rumon Gamba.

Learn more about this release on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

Duo Duel, a concerto for 2 percussion and orchestra, is dedicated to the two percussionists who inspired it, Svet Stoyanov and Matthew Strauss. The work is in one continuous movement, but the pacing of the individual sections is: slow, fast, slow, fast-cadenza (one of the fastest cadenzas ever written for percussionists), fast (with dueling timpani).

The soloists sometimes play together, and sometimes they “duel” their way through the music. There is some seriously high-speed playing in this concerto, so don’t blink – you might miss something!

The Concerto for Orchestra is truly a concerto in that it requires virtuosity from the principal players, the individual sections and the entire orchestra. The first movement was the last to be composed. It took writing the other four movements to create a clear picture of what was needed to start this virtuosic tour-de-force. The second movement was written next, inspired by the string sound of The Philadelphia Orchestra. The third movement was written first, and it is this movement that allows each principal player a solo, before moving into section solos. The fourth movement is a tribute to rhythm, and the percussion section of the orchestra. The fifth movement, which begins with the entrance of the violins, highlights the entire orchestra.

This album was released in the summer of 2023; it may not have been intended as a Christmas album, but it would make a wonderful purchase at that time.

The fourth volume of Masaaki Suzuki’s Bach works for organ series features one of the most important surviving instruments of Bach’s time, made by the German organ builder Christoph Treutmann the Elder. Widely known for its extraordinary tonal quality, the instrument was built between 1734 and 1737. A recent general restoration preserved all essential structural elements or renewed them, remaining faithful to the originals, making it an ideal instrument for Bach interpreters who wish to come close to the sound ideas of the Leipzig Thomaskantor.

Suzuki now takes up the Orgel-Büchlein (literally, ‘little organ book’), a collection of 45 short chorale preludes on melodies from the Lutheran hymn book, a project that came into being in connection with Bach’s appointment as organist and chamber musician at the Duke’s court in Weimar in 1708. Presenting chorales for different periods of the church year, this collection serves as a general guide to text-based composition focusing on specific word-sound relationships and content-specific musical expression. Two Preludes and Fugues complete the first volume dedicated to the Orgel-Büchlein, illustrating the principle of variety and structure historically practised by concert organists in order to demonstrate the tone colours and expressive possibilities of their instrument.

REVIEW:

The great Masaaki Suzuki’s traversal of Bach’s keyboard music is well underway, and several attractions have become clear. In general, he is a bit less concerned with a pearly surface and a bit more with direct expression. In works for organ, he has shown a willingness to delve into period instruments, and the one here is a real find. Suzuki is willing to take a bit of time to bring out its colors; there is nothing too radical, but there are subtle adjustments to the tempo throughout that define the profile of each little ornamented chorale, and all the performances are vivid. This album was released in the summer of 2023; it may not have been intended as a Christmas album, but it would make a wonderful purchase at that time.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

The 37 songs in this recital, written by 27 composers – male, female, English, French, Swiss, German, Romantic, modern and contemporary – bear witness to the richness of Shakespeare’s works to which this recital is dedicated. Organised in the form of a play in five acts, including prologue and epilogue, the songs, which include several duets, are in turn cheerful and sad, light and profound, classical and jazzy – thus allowing, in Carolyn Sampson’s words, ‘a breadth of responses to these great texts’. Alongside well-known melodies, such as those by Schubert, there are musical adaptations by different composers of the same texts, as well as a contemporary reflection for the two voices by Hannah Kendall exploring the question of gender fluidity and identity through the elusive character of Rosalind from As You Like It.

After many acclaimed releases on BIS, including Album für die Frau, a collection of songs by Clara and Robert Schumann, A Soprano’s Schubertiade and Elysium, two Schubert recitals, as well as a number of themed recitals, some of which were named ‘Recording of the Month’ by MusicWeb International and ‘CD-Tipp’ by BR Klassik, Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton are joined here by renowned British baritone Roderick Williams.

REVIEW:

Soprano Carolyn Sampson and baritone Roderick Williams are prolific singers who can handle almost any kind of repertory but have a strong connection to the English tradition from the Baroque to the 20th century. It would be hard to imagine better singers for this collection of Shakespeare songs, for on one hand, Shakespeare settings are about as traditional as one can get, while on the other, this is an exceptionally diverse collection. Listeners unaware that Haydn set Shakespeare should make it their business to hear Sampson in She never told her love, as soon as possible. There are settings of German Shakespeare translations by Schubert, Schumann, and Hugo Wolf, a French one by Arthur Honegger, and an entrancing English-language Fancy by Poulenc. This album represents, in short, an embarrassment of riches, and it is one of the finest Shakespeare song releases to come along in quite some time.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

CONTENTS:

• Ireland: Full fathom five
• Vaughan Williams: Dirge for Fidele
• Moeran: The Lover and his Lass
• Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Arise, "Sea Murmurs"
• Smith, J C: You spotted snakes
• Tippett: Songs for Ariel
• Arne: Under the Greenwood Tree
• Gurney: Under the greenwood tree
• Parry: Sonnet LXXXVII
• Ireland: When daffodils begin to peer
• Haydn: She Never Told Her Love, Hob. XXVIa:34
• Schubert: An Silvia, D 106
• Schubert: Ständchen 'Horch! Horch! die Lerch!', D889
• Schubert: Trinklied D888
• Schumann: Schlusslied des Narren, Op.127 No. 5
• Wolf, H: Lied des transferierten Zettel
• Cornelius: Komm herbei, Tod, Op.16 No. 3
• Frances-Hoad: Rosalind
• Poulenc: Fancy
• Britten: Fancie
• Honegger: Deux Chants d'Ariel
• Bridge: Blow, blow, thou winter wind
• Dring: Take, O Take Those Lips Away
• Dankworth: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
• Horder: Under the greenwood tree
• Coleridge-Taylor: The Willow Song
• Beach, A: Fairy Lullaby
• Williams, Roderick: Sigh no More, Ladies
• Sullivan, A: Orpheus with his Lute

Although he had famous students (i.e. Szymanowski) and teachers (Moniuszko), few listeners know much, if anything, about Zygmunt Noskowski (1846–1909). And yet, for most of the 19th century, he was the primary exponent of modern symphonic music in Poland. As a conductor and concert organizer, he had himself championed the causes of forgotten Polish composers. Now it is Antoni Wit, Noskowski’s successor at the helm of the Warsaw Philharmonic at a distance of 94, who helps out his late-romantic colleague – just as he has already done with the music Zygmunt Stojowski on a previous Capriccio recording (C5464).

REVIEW:

When you listen to the music of Zygmunt Noskowski, you can’t help but notice that all of the elemental characteristics of late 19th century orchestral music are present. The intense seriousness of Brahms, the romantic idealism of Schumann, as well as the folk-influenced melodic writing of Dvorák. And within its overall sunny disposition, it even points to some of Bruckner’s more lighthearted scherzo movements.

There’s a heartwarming ease and charm to the inner slow movements of these symphonies, as well as dramatic and rhythmic fervor to the outer movements. All aspects that Polish conductor Antoni Wit brings to the forefront. The members of the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz perform this music with enthusiasm and the same attention to expressive details they would apply to any and all repertoire standbys and warhorses. Makes you wonder why Zygmunt Noskowski’s name doesn’t come up to the surface more often.

-- Classical Music Sentinel

The Transcendental Études form a cycle of twelve pieces whose composition began in 1826 and was completed in 1851. Starting from the idea of an encyclopædic collection which, in the manner of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Liszt’s Transcendental Études became something of a seismograph of his compositional aesthetic, first strongly under the influence of Paganini, later more in the style of character pieces. These études are among the most difficult works ever written for the piano. Together with Chopin’s Études, they serve as a basis for piano technique, some of them already prefiguring musical impressionism, and they had a significant influence on subsequent piano music, most notably that of Debussy, Rachmaninov, Bartók, and Ligeti.

In 2009, Haochen Zhang was the youngest pianist ever to receive the Gold Medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Since then, he has captivated audiences worldwide with a unique combination of deep musical sensitivity, fearless imagination and spectacular virtuosity. After two releases devoted to concertos (Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, BIS-2381 and Beethoven, BIS-2581), Zhang returns to the solo recital with this disc devoted to some of the most important works in the repertoire of modern pianists.

REVIEW:

Haochen Zhang’s Liszt Transcendental Etudes are bound to attract intense scrutiny, in light of these works’ recent proliferation in the catalog and Zhang’s growing prominence on the international piano scene. The brief opening Prelude’s individual touches are totally borne out by the score: such as the accented ascending left-hand lines, or how the marcatissimo chords take on a slashing ferocity when played strictly in tempo, as opposed to the broadening one hears from most pianists.

Some may find the second etude too compulsively detailed where inner voices sometimes stick out to a fault, while the upward leggermente triplets are on the careful, studio-bound side. It takes a while for Paysage’s long lines to truly resonate and soar. Mazeppa’s thickets of notes hold no difficulties for Zhang’s technique, yet his clattery, undifferentiated textural layering pales next to the extraordinary three-dimensional perspectives revealed in Yunchan Lim’s 2022 Van Cliburn Competition semi-finals performance.

Happily, Zhang’s fusion of breathtaking speed and felicitous poetry make for a Feux Follets worthy to mention alongside those of Sviatoslav Richter and Minoru Nojima. The pianist builds Vision in steadily moving blocks, and wisely starts out less loudly than Liszt indicates in order for the fortes and fortissimos to make a stronger impact. He takes more than usual dramatic advantage of Eroica’s fermatas, while his muted deliberation in the main section transforms the music into more of a funeral than military march.

To my ears, Zhang’s swiftness and clipped articulation in Wilde Jagd’s broken octaves and rapid-fire chords evokes not so much a royal hunt as a Road Runner cartoon. However, the lyrical Ricordanza features some of Zhang’s most direct, and stingingly proportioned pianism in the cycle. His forthright pacing and wide dynamic scope in Harmonies du Soir convey a similar impression. While it’s impressive how Zhang shapes and controls No. 10 to the extent that he does with little help from the sustain pedal, the effects draw more attention to themselves rather than to the music’s underlying agitato subtext. By contrast, the pianist’s variety of touch and timbre minimizes the tremolo texture’s potential for fatigue and monotony.

In sum, you may not agree with all of Zhang’s interpretive decisions, yet he clearly is a thinking and often stimulating virtuoso who leaves a strong imprint on these oft-recorded works. With that in mind, I prefer the conceptual consistency and more settled musicality of an earlier BIS Liszt Etudes from pianist Laszlo Simon (a/k/a Joyce Hatto, for those who remember the scandal we helped to uncover back in 2007). I also should mention that Yunchan Lim’s stunning Liszt cycle from the Cliburn is imminent from Steinway & Sons, hence its inclusion among the reference versions.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

Learn more about Elite Recordings and the revival of their VOX Classics albums on the Naxos Classical Spotlight Podcast!

George Gershwin’s epochal Rhapsody in Blue is heard here alongside his Concerto in F, one of the most popular American works in the genre, Second Rhapsody and Variations on ‘I Got Rhythm’. These classic Vox recordings date from 1974, with the piano material last released on a Vox Box in 1990. The Elite Recordings for Vox by legendary producers Marc Aubort and Joanna Nickrenz are considered by audiophiles to be among the finest sounding examples of orchestral recordings.

Performers and listeners alike have long gravitated to Louis Couperin's music more than to that of any other member of the French keyboard school of the time, probably because of its fascinating and surprising harmonic language. There are 129 pieces catalogued as authentic.

In making this new recording of all 129 pieces, Massimo Berghella has chosen to take the Preludes as starting points for ‘suites’ – 17 in all – which gather up the remaining dance movements into coherent sequences cast in the same key as the relevant Prelude.

Among the most distinguished active Italian harpsichordists, Massimo Bergella studied with Kenneth Gilbert at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He has a 30-year-long career as a teacher himself, as well as a performance diary and discography that has taken him across Europe for recitals, broadcasts and recordings. Of a previous album of d’Anglebert, La Nazione remarked that Berghella ‘grasps the reconstructive necessity of the scores, performing them in all their poetic complexity.’

The only complete available recording of a landmark in Elizabethan keyboard music. With a huge catalogue of Brilliant Classics recordings to his credit, Pieter-Jan Belder has won particular praise for his ambitious project to record the complete Fitzwilliam Virginal Book), a treasury of English keyboard music from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean era. Now he focuses his attention on the greatest English composer of that age, with a volume dedicated to William Byrd, and to his largest single collection of music for the keyboard.

My Ladye Nevells Booke embraces the most popular genres of its day. Its contents are typical fare for English Renaissance composers: dances, variation sets, marches, contrapuntal fantasies and programmatic pieces, and the repertory comes from a period beginning in the mid 1560s. Byrd makes each of these genres his own with consummate ingenuity; the variety and the beauty of the collection as a whole rewards players and listeners alike. The CD booklet contains an extensive essay on My Ladye Nevells Booke by Jon Baxendale, who is co-editor of the latest edition of the score.

Chicago has long been a welcoming home to the working composer, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at the heart of the musical life they found in the city. The three American composers whose music is performed on this recording all have important ties to the CSO, from Philip Glass’ formative years as a student listener in Orchestra Hall in the 1950s, to Jessie Montgomery, who is the Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence today, and Max Raimi, who is both a prolific composer and a longtime member of the Orchestra’s viola section. 

The works by Montgomery and Raimi were both their first CSO commissions, and these are their world premiere performances. Montgomery’s Hymn for Everyone is a meditation for orchestra that speaks to the significance of her emergence in today’s cultural climate through its reflection on the personal and collective challenges of the spring of 2021. In it, a hymn-like melody traverses different orchestral choirs to poignant effect. For each poem in Raimi’s Three Lisel Mueller Settings, he selects an admired colleague to enter into a dialogue with the soloist, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong. This highlights the talents of Principal Clarinet Stephen Williamson in a frenetic waltz, Principal Bassoon Keith Buncke in a tragic elegy and Principal Bass Alexander Hanna in a metaphor for hope, with soaring, song-like phrases that transcend standard conceptions of the instrument’s expressive possibilities.

Glass’ Eleventh Symphony is part of the symphonic tradition that captivated him as a student. Each movement has its own unique character — the first bold and driving, the second crowned by a slowly unfolding melody and the third a barrage of cascading energy and racing percussion.

For Glass in the 50s, it was Fritz Reiner. Now Riccardo Muti champions the compositional voices of the age with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. “It takes courage,” says Glass of the Orchestra’s legacy of performing contemporary music, “and that courage becomes a tradition.”

REVIEWS:

This album stands as testimony to the Italian master’s innate musical understanding and ability to bring out the best in almost everything he conducts.

-- Gramophone

Glass delivers a variant of the crowd-pleasing movie music he has trademarked for decades. It is hard to gainsay America’s most prolific and popular serious composer. Muti’s performance is all that it could be, and the orchestra lends glamour to the score.

-- Fanfare

Grammy-Award-winning Kenneth Fuchs (born 1956) is without doubt one of American music’s leading orchestral composers. His orchestral output has grown and developed to encompass a wide range of genres, from overtures and tone poems to suites and concertos (ten to date, including ones for string quartet, electric guitar, and piano, the last entitled Spiritualist), inspired by a diverse range of subjects, testimony to his wide sympathies and fields of knowledge. His output includes chamber music (including five string quartets), solos and duos, vocal and choral music, and four chamber musicals. Cloud Slant is a virtuoso orchestral concerto based on three of Helen Frankenthaler’s canvasses: Blue Fall (1966), Flood (1967), and Cloud Slant (1968)–not just musical depictions of them but also the composer’s reactions to their artistic sweep and power.

The flute was Fuchs’ first instrument, so it was inevitable that he would compose a flute concerto. However, it was not until 2019 that he set about the task – for the flautist Peg Luke, to whom the concerto is dedicated. As is customary of compositions by this composer, the concerto carries a descriptive title, Solitary the Thrush, a reference to lines from Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d'. Commissioned by the Californian Musique Sur La Mer Orchestras, Pacific Visions is scored for string orchestra, and is a single, dynamic movement sub-divided into five sections. Quiet in the Land, a Poem for Orchestra is a revision of a chamber work Fuchs composed in 2003, inspired by the rolling prairie of the Midwestern United States and the ‘immense arching sky’ under which it sits, cast against the impact of the Second Gulf War which had then recently broken out. The orchestral version heard here was composed in 2017 for the Phoenix Symphony. The album was recorded in Surround Sound, and is available as a Hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.

REVIEW:

The scores, as heard here in gloriously deep-staged and brilliant sound, are awash with oxygen and rich in melody. The players and conductor are celebrities and their playing is of a piece with that hard-won status.

The sound style of these four pieces, written between 2016 and 2021, is inviting; there are few complexities of texture. The scores are oxygen-rich and their skies are blue Californian or Mid-West vaults. The explosion of cornflower blue is that of Hockney’s A bigger splash and almost has you reaching for the aural equivalent of Ray-Bans. His sound signature is stable and uniform without being tedious. Allowing for passing echoes of others, like Martinů, he has his own sound and you can almost hear him intoning his article of faith: to thine own self be true.

The first piece is a concerto for orchestra in three movements: Cloud Slant (2020-2021). Impressions flood in: a Bernstein brilliance, succulent softness, very exposed Britten-like writing, as in the Grimes Interludes. It’s all superbly recorded[.]

The booklet notes are by Guy Rickards – so we are in safe hands – and are in English, German and French. They tell us much of what we need to know. Even so, I would have liked a lot more about what the music meant to the composer, a fuller biographical setting and what stung Fuchs into creating the music.

Fuchs has a brilliant tonal voice and here it is heard through a medium that equates to un-smeared dustless glass.

-- MusicWeb International

The album Reconnaissance was, of course, never intended as an epitaph. Nonetheless, It is difficult to imagine a more fitting summary of, or introduction to, the character, spirit and life’s work of Kaija Saariaho (1952-2023) on a single disc, especially where her choral repertoire is concerned.

This recording presents Kaija Saariaho’s works for choir, a cappella and with electronics, and displays her virtuosity in the treatment of texts, which she endows with the full range of verbal expression. Nuits, adieux, presented here both in its a cappella version and with electronics, could be described as a lullaby, not so much for a sleeping child as for an elderly person sleeping out of our world. Funny and very serious at the same time, Horloge, tais-toi was conceived for a children choir.

Écho! deals with the myth of Echo and Narcissus, with the idea of echo being naturally extended with electronics that process and reverb the voices of the singers. Based on poems by German poet Friedrich Hölderlin, Tags des Jahrs display an archaic choral treatment expanded by sounds of the human voices, birds, wind and other natural phenomena. Überzeugung engages with medieval music and treats the contrast between light and dark as a trance-like interplay between past and present. Finally, Reconnaissance can be seen as a ‘science-fiction madrigal’.

Nils Schweckendiek and the Helsinki Chamber Choir initially performed this program in concert in August 2022 as part of the celebrations surrounding Saariaho’s 70th birthday.

REVIEW:

The album Reconnaissance was, of course, never intended as an epitaph. Nonetheless, it is difficult to imagine a more fitting summary of, or introduction to, the character, spirit and life’s work of Kaija Saariaho on a single disc, especially where her choral repertoire is concerned. To quote her artistic statement on choral music from the booklet, ‘the entire range of verbal expression is available to be woven into a multi-layered and heterogeneous whole’. The remarkable array of works showcased here – and mostly in recording premieres, no less – demonstrates just how dedicated she was to this principle over the course of so many decades.

In addition, by presenting two contrasting versions of the same piece (Nuits, adieux) together, the album provides a rare example of a composer’s process of revisiting the same material for different times and places, allowing us a glimpse into a whole other dimension of Saariaho’s musical thinking. Lastly, the album is a testament to her ongoing collaboration with other members of the musical community, including high-profile colleagues and young family members alike. How fortunate we are to have this one last gift from Saariaho, a document that not only expands the discography of her critically important oeuvre but also serves as a testament for future generations to the example of a composer’s life exceptionally well lived.

-- Classical Music Daily

The opening work, Nuits, adieux, is as good an illustration as any of the manifoldness of Saariaho’s sound-world. It exists in two versions: the original (with electronics) from 1991, and the a cappella version from 1996. Together, they bookend this delectable programme...A particular attraction is the recurring solos by the marvellously beautiful soprano voice of Linnéa Sundfær Casserly. In the a cappella version, the electronics are replaced by eight-part chorus, while the solo parts are practically identical with the original. It is a special treat to return to the work in that modified version at the end of the programme.

Écho! from 2007 for eight voices and electronics, was inspired by a double-choir motet by Claude Le Jeune (c. 1528/30–1600), which deals with the Echo myth...It is immensely beautiful.

To me, [the title work, Reconaissance] is the most important choral work composed on this side of the turn of the millennium, and in harness with the rest of the programme, which is just as valuable, this is an indispensable disc for all lovers of choral music. The performances are tremendous. It is also a worthy memorial to Kaija Saariaho.

-- MusicWeb International

Bernard Herrmann is widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s most important composers, responsible for more than fifty film scores (in addition to his work for TV, radio, and the concert hall), and noted for his collaborations with Orson Welles and, later, with Alfred Hitchcock.

Welles was unofficially involved with Robert Stevenson’s film of Jane Eyre in the 1940s, and it was Welles that suggested Herrmann as composer for the project. Herrmann became obsessed with all things Brontë, and within months was writing to friends of his plans to write an opera on Wuthering Heights. It took him eight years to complete the vocal score, using a libretto written by his wife, Lucille Fletcher. Although he conducted a recording of the work, in 1966, he failed to see a live production in his lifetime. Although the opera features eight solo roles, Cathy and Heathcliff dominate the action and are the only singers in Hans Sørensen’s Suite of excerpts – recorded here for the very first time.

Keri Fuge and Roderick Williams take the vocal roles in this recording. Echoes was composed in 1965 for string quartet, and was later arranged for string orchestra by Hans Sørensen – the version heard on this album. The recording was made in the Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore. in Surround Sound, and is available as a Hybrid SACD and in Spatial Audio.