The expressive immediacy of Aram Khachaturian's music, with its sensuous melodic writing, vibrant orchestration and rhythmic drive, resulted in a popularity equaled by few composers of his generation. Composed in 1936, the Piano Concerto was the work that established Khachaturian’s name. Cast in the customary three movements, it is scored for a sizable orchestra, with notable contributions from both side-drum and military drum in the percussion section. In the second movement there is also an extensive solo for a so-called ‘flexatone’; it is often put forward that Khachaturian in fact intended the part to be played on the musical saw, as it is on the present recording. Thirty years after the Concerto, the composer returned to the genre with his Concerto-Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. This time the score offers prominent roles for the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone, which contribute towards making this one of the composer’s most colorful works. The demanding solo parts are here performed by the young Jordanian-Palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer, with spirited support from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under Andrew Litton. Sughayer made his acclaimed début as a recording artist with an album of Khachaturian's piano works and sandwiched between the two works with orchestra he here presents the piano version of one of the composer's best loved pieces, the Masquerade Suite with its yearning opening Waltz and closing Galop.

Concertos for cor anglais are few and far between, and harp concertos aren’t very common either. In combining the two, Kalevi Aho has come up with a true rarity – possibly the only double concerto in existence for these two instruments. Composed in 2014, the work was commissioned by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra for two of its solo players: Anneleen Lenaerts and Dimitri Mestdag, who also perform it here. The work is characteristically eclectic, making the most of the sonic possibilities of the solo instruments, but also of the orchestral palette. The Antwerp Symphony Orchestra is no newcomer to Aho’s music, having previously recorded his concertos for trombone and trumpet. On the present disc, it also provides support for the Storioni Trio, in the Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano and chamber orchestra, a joint commission by the trio and the orchestra. In 2017, as Aho started work on the concerto, his granddaughter was born. Having written a lullaby for her, he decided to use that as the core melodic material of the piece. The lullaby is heard several times in the first movement, which is quite tonal and very dreamlike. It also features in the movements that follow, while the harmonic language becomes more complex. Aho himself describes the work as having ‘a general atmosphere full of joy and positive (sometimes quite virtuosic) energy.’

REVIEW:

The Finnish composer Kalevi Aho is amazingly prolific. Not only are there, so far, seventeen symphonies and five operas, but also no fewer than thirty-seven concertos. Here we have two of them.

The Double Concerto for cor anglais and harp begins very quietly, so quietly in fact that at first I thought there was something wrong with my player while sounds like background noises started emerging. However, the two solo instruments do enter and gradually the work gathers definition and then rhythmic bite. There is a cadenza for the two instruments before the music subsides. This first movement is as long as the remaining three together. The second movement is a short cadenza for the harp alone, a most attractive passage, which leads into a brisk and exciting allegro. The finale is again short and quiet and we return to something like the mood of the beginning.

The Triple Concerto for violin, cello and piano is a more traditional combination, and the listener will at once think of Beethoven’s concerto for the same combination. Aho is obviously aware of this and does something quite different. For a start he uses a chamber orchestra, with strings and just two wind instruments. He rarely employs his soloists as a group together, but writes more in the concerto grosso kind of idiom, with a good deal of interplay between the soloists and the orchestra. If this sounds rather like Martinů, this is deliberate, and I was several times reminded of the Czech master in hearing this work. It is based on a lullaby he wrote for his granddaughter Matilda, which used the musical letters in her name. This comes several times in the dreamy and atmospheric first movement. This is followed by an energetic Presto, then another mysterious slow movement and a finale which starts slowly but soon speeds up.

The performers here are a mainly Belgian team, and they were all involved in the premieres apart from the conductor, who on those occasions was Martyn Brabbins, who has had quite a close association with Aho’s music. For whatever reason, he is not the conductor here, and that role is taken by the Estonian Olari Elts. He does a good job and secures confident performances. The sleevenote, in four languages is helpful. This is a SACD but I was listening in ordinary two channel stereo, in which the sound was immaculate. BIS has been supporting Aho for a long time and this latest issue is a worthy addition to their series. Aho’s fans need not hesitate, and those curious about trying this composer could well dip a toe in here.

-- MusicWeb International (Stephen Barber)

Celebrating the 130th anniversary of Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953), the present box set brings together recordings of his seven symphonies made by Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra between 2012 and 2017. Released on separate discs, the series has received acclaim from international reviewers, variously highlighting the orchestra ('Bergen Philharmonic plays gorgeously... ', ClassicsToday. Com), the conductor ('It is clear that Litton has a deep understanding of Prokofiev's complex, protean style... ', MusicWeb-International) and the recordings themselves ('BIS's blockbuster sound... ', Fanfare). The symphonies appear with their original couplings, including the popular suites from the film score to Lieutenant Kijé and the ballet The Love for Three Oranges. As an added bonus, the set includes the team's very first recording for BIS: an innovative and highly praised version of Prokofiev's three suites from Romeo and Juliet, with the 20 movements reordered to follow the ballet score.

Excerpts of reviews from previously released volumes included in this set:

Prokofiev: Symphonies Nos. 1-3

In sum these performances, engineered with warmth, clarity and impact, rank with best; and having all three symphonies on a single disc makes this release something of a bargain as well–even at full price.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

This is a perfect disc; absolutely everything goes right. The revised, enlarged version of the Fourth Symphony can sound bloated and too long for its material. This performance, by contrast, has passion, color, and drive aplenty. Especially in the outer movements, you’d never know that the leaner, meaner first version exists, and no praise can be higher than that.

The Seventh has always been, for me at least, a better work than many commentators allow. It contains, for example, one of Prokofiev’s best lyrical melodies in its first movement and finale. The waltz-like scherzo is wholly delightful, the slow third movement touching. Prokofiev often indulges a deliberate simplicity, and Litton takes him at his word, never for a moment lapsing into artifice or affectation.

The finale, which we get to hear twice complete, once with each of its endings, is particularly breezy and exhilarating. Through it all the Bergen Philharmonic plays gorgeously, and the SACD sonics are state-of-the-art. A wonderful release.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

For its final concert of the 2021–22 season and Osmo Vänskä’s last as artistic director, the Minnesota Orchestra chose to present Mahler’s mammoth Eighth Symphony, which calls for one of the largest complement of performers in the history of music, a symbol of the communitarian spirit of collective cultural, social, and religious-philosophical endeavor in what has been referred to as a ‘Mass for the Masses’.

Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, unlike his others, reveals no contrary despairing voice. It is instead a monumentally affirmative expression of human spiritual achievement achieved through the union of two seemingly incompatible texts: the Latin hymn Veni Creator Spiritus and the conclusion of the second part of Goethe’s Faust. Its première in Munich in September 1910 gave rise to the greatest triumph of Mahler’s career, and a rollcall of European royalty and the artistic élite attended the final public rehearsal and the performances.

The Minnesota Orchestra and Osmo Vänskä are here joined by Carolyn Sampson, Jacquelyn Wagner, Sasha Cooke, Jess Dandy, Barry Banks, Julian Orlishausen, Christian Immler as well as the Minnesota Chorale, the National Lutheran Choir, the Minnesota Boychoir and the Angelica Cantanti Youth Choir.

The Seven Last Words of Christ refers to the seven short phrases uttered by Jesus on the cross, as gathered from the New Testament. Over the centuries the crucifixion has served as inspiration to countless composers, and settings of these utterances have become something of a subgenre, beginning in the Renaissance with early motets and continuing into our own time. By way of Cesar Franck and Sofia Gubaidulina, composers ranging from Heinrich Schutz to Tristan Murail have contributed versions using various combinations of voice and/or instruments. One of the best known of these settings is probably the one by Joseph Haydn. The one – or rather the four… A rather complicated story begins in 1785, when Haydn received a commission from Cadiz in Spain, at the other end of Europe. He was asked to compose seven slow movements, each ca 10 minutes long, to be played by an orchestra in alternation with the priest expounding on each of the seven words. Relishing this unusual challenge, Haydn accepted and ended up so pleased with the result that he immediately made a version for string quartet as well as authorising another one for keyboard. The work became so popular across Europe that ten years later the music was used one final time, in an oratorio for choir and orchestra. The work is here heard in the version for keyboard, performed by the French pianist Nicolas Stavy. He closes the disc with another unusual work in Haydn’s oeuvre, the Andante con variazioni, Hob. XVII/6, which has been described as ‘the deepest and most profound set of variations for piano composed between Bach and Beethoven’.

Between 1803 and 1968, the Grand Prix de Rome marked the zenith of composition studies at the Paris Conservatoire. In Maurice Ravel’s time the competition included an elimination round (a fugue and a choral piece) followed by a cantata in the form of an operatic scena. The entries were judged by a jury which generally favoured expertise and conformity more than originality and Ravel’s growing reputation as a member of the avant-garde was therefore hardly to his advantage, and may explain why he never won the coveted Premier Grand Prix, and the three-year stay at Rome’s Villa Medici that went with it.

The present set brings together all the vocal works that Ravel composed for the Prix de Rome – five shorter settings for choir and orchestra and three cantatas, each with three characters taking part in a plot which followed a more or less fixed sequence of introduction, recitative and aria, a duet, a trio and a brief conclusion. First published more than half a century after Ravel’s death, these test pieces for the Prix de Rome have never acquired the popularity of his other early works, such as Pavane pour une infante défunte, Jeux d’eau or the String Quartet. They are worth more than their reputation as academic exercises might suggest, however, and deserve to be better known, especially when performed by Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and Pascal Rophé and a team of vocal soloists including Véronique Gens and Michael Spyres.

REVIEWS:

This two-disc set brings together all of these rare vocal pieces by the composer: five shorter settings for choir and orchestra, and three cantatas, each with three characters taking part in the plot, which followed a more or less fixed sequence of introduction, recitative and aria, a duet, a trio and a brief conclusion. First published more than half a century after Ravel's death in 1937, these test pieces for the Prix de Rome have never acquired the popularity of his later and more mature works, but they are no mean pieces and are worth more than their reputation as academic exercises might suggest. These are compositions that are deftly crafted, full of attractive melodies, harmonically refined, and very often deeply sensitive. Indeed, they encapsulate all of the future Ravel hallmarks that were to make him one of the twentieth century's leading French composers.

Pascal Rophé draws some convincing performances and, in his hands, the music has an immediacy that keeps it consistently fresh and vivid. More than a collector's item which should attract the interest of all music lovers - Ravel aficionados in particular. Sonics and booklet notes are first-rate.

-- Classical Music Daily



Less well known among his works, the Missa sacra, Op. 147, bears witness to Robert Schumann’s late interest in sacred music – and in particular in Catholic church music. The work would have a rather difficult fate: during Schumann’s lifetime, it was neither published nor performed in its entirety. Even after its posthumous première, opinions were lukewarm. Wrongly so: the Missa sacra is a fascinating attempt to update sacred music through a refined post-classical musical language. It was originally conceived for orchestra, but Schumann also made a version for organ, presented here. This version allows great vocal transparency and immediacy, thus contributing to a clearer vision of the work. The Vier doppelchörige Gesänge for mixed choir a cappella, Op. 141, are also undeservedly neglected works: they constitute the high point in Schumann’s music for choir. These four songs unite both secular and religious-themed, the latter component being musically emphasised by the effect of multiple choirs. These two fascinating works are performed by the Swedish Radio Choir under the direction of Kaspar Putninš. Among his recordings for BIS is the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom by Rachmaninov (BIS-2571), which has received widespread critical acclaim, for example being awarded a prestigious Diapason d’Or by the French magazine Diapason.

REVIEW:

Schumann’s Missa Sacra, Op. 147, was one of the last things he wrote, and it wasn’t published until after his death. As it happens, it is marvelous, and it was probably just waiting for a top-notch reading of the sort that it receives here. Schumann attempts to merge the rather conservative structure of the Classical mass with Romantic stylistic ideas, and the work is really not like anything else he ever wrote. The Four Songs for Double Choir, Op. 141, close out the program; written slightly earlier, they are rare and quite persuasive. Yet it is the mass that may rewrite the choral repertory lists a bit; in this lovely performance, it is a gem.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

After the six Op. 18 quartets, the much-acclaimed Chiaroscuro Quartet now turns to two masterpieces from Beethoven’s middle and late periods. String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 74, nicknamed ‘Harp’ because of the abundant pizzicati in its first movement, comes across as a genial and unproblematic work that was very well received immediately upon publication and has remained one of the composer’s best-loved quartets. String Quartet No. 13 in B flat major, Op. 130, is in a very different vein. Belonging to the series of so-called ‘late’ quartets composed between 1824 and 1826, it is a six-movement structure modelled on an eighteenth-century divertimento, adding two movements to the traditional four-movement scheme: an Alla danza tedesca and a Cavatina. Despite its evocation of an archaic dance, the Alla danza tedesca is typically Beethovenian, with its original treatment of dynamics. The Cavatina, which moved the composer to tears during its composition, is a lyrical and moving piece. Beethoven had intended to conclude this imposing work with a large-scale fugue, but its boldness baffled his first listeners and, at the request of his publisher, he resorted instead to a more approachable movement presenting a mixture of laconic dryness and, in places, tender lyricism.

REVIEW:

Though there’s no shortage of recordings of the Beethoven quartets, versions by groups taking an historically informed approach to these works, such as these from the Chiaroscuro Quartet, are still relatively rare. The ensemble's sound world is warmer, more expressively flexible and transparent than we have become so used to in this familiar music. The wonderfully paced opening of the E flat Quartet Op 74, grows steadily in insistence, until it blossoms into melody in a totally unforced way, setting the tone for everything that follows; there seem to be no preconceptions in these performances, everything comes from the music itself.

The challenges of the B flat Quartet Op 130 are on a different level, and not every decision the Chiaroscuro make in that work is convincing – the great slow movement, the Cavatina, is taken just a fraction too fast, for instance, but the finale that follows (the replacement that Beethoven composed in 1826, not the original Grosse Fuge) has a wonderfully clipped character that, like a lot in these performances, seems perfectly appropriate.

-- The Guardian (Andrew Clements)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Gothenburg Symphony OrchestraNeeme Jarvi, conductor Symphony no 1 in G minor "Winter Dreams", Op. 13; Romeo &Â?JulietSymphony no 2 in C minor "Little Russian", Op. 17; Overture in FSymphony no 3 in D major "Polish", Op. 29; The Snow Maiden, Op.12Symphony no 4 in F minor, Op. 36; Symphony no 5 in E minor, Op 64Symphony no 6 in B minor "Pathetique", Op. 74; The Tempest;Overture on the Danish National Anthem; Voyevoda Dances;Dmitri Pretender and Vassily Shuisky; Serenade for N.Rubinstein;Capriccio Italien; Francesca da Rimini; etc.

This disc celebrates the centenary of Jean Francaix, (1912-1997), as well as his music, written with the stated aim to 'give pleasure;. A precocious talent, praised by Ravel for his great gifts and curiosity, and astonishing Nadia Boulanger with his ability, Francaix wrote his first chamber work for winds, the Quartet, in 1933 at the age of 21, and completed his Quintet No.2 more than 50 years later - with a remarkably consistent style marked by lightness and wit. Francaix' works are favourites not only with audiences but also with the musicians themselves, enjoying the challenges of his virtuosic writing, his fleet way with rhythms and timbres and the conversational character of the interplay between individual parts. The highly regarded Bergen Woodwind Quintet, consisting of solo players from the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, here perform four chamber works for winds which all share these characteristics - and do so with obvious pleasure. The versatile ensemble released its first disc on BIS in 1985, and has recorded chamber music by Carl Nielsen as well as by David Maslanka, to critical acclaim.

Dan Laurin has released around thirty albums on BIS since the beginning of his collaboration in 1987. Laurin’s recorder music spans the globe and across the years, from England to Japan, and from the Renaissance to today. This latest release journeys to early 18th century France, and features composers such as Nicolas Chedeville, Anne Danican Philidor, Charles Dieupart, Marin Marais, and more.

Born in Russia, Victoria Borisova-Ollas has lived in Sweden since 1993. In the international music press, she has been described as ‘a composer with a sparkling individual voice’ and an ‘orchestrator of the greatest virtuosity’. This is borne out by this well-filled album which features five works from 2003 to 2013, in performances by the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra (RSPO) with which Borisova-Ollas enjoys a long-standing collaboration. Angelus was composed for the 850th anniversary of the city of Munich and takes the listener on a walk through the city and its many clock towers. Angelus is conducted by Andrey Boreyko, who has championed the music of Borisova-Ollas for many years.

As a performer and conductor, Christian Lindberg has a rare ability to electrify an audience, and as reviewers attest, the same applies to his compositions. Released on disc in 2018, his viola concerto Steppenwolf was described as ‘one of those rare contemporary works that captures the attention from the first notes’ (Fanfare) while the five-star review in BBC Music Magazine spoke of ‘thrilling orchestral storytelling’ and ‘glorious musical cavalcades’. The present album offers further opportunity to acquaint oneself with the unstoppable energy of Lindberg in all of his three incarnations. The album is named after the closing work, 2017, described by Lindberg as his testimony about a year when the world changed, as a result of the US presidential election. Starting work on it on 1st January he followed the news in the media and let it feed his creative process throughout the course of the year. The opening work is an earlier one, commissioned for the nine trombones of The New Trombone Collective, and inspired by the spectacle of great waves rolling in at the beach in Wollongong, Australia. Framed by these two is Liverpool Lullabies, a concertante work for percussion and trombone which Lindberg composed with Evelyn Glennie and himself in mind. They are also the soloists on this recording, supported by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra which also shines in the other two works on the album.

Growing up in Vienna, with its great Lied tradition, Hans Gál had written about 100 songs before leaving secondary school. He later destroyed them, along with all his other works composed prior to 1910, but between 1910 and 1921 he wrote many more. Except for the five songs of Op. 33, these were never published, and Gál himself would later refer to them as ‘laid aside’. Many of these songs were publicly performed at the time, however, often with the composer at the piano. Through the initiative of Christian Immler and Helmut Deutsch, 26 of the ‘laid-aside’ songs are now being made available to a modern audience. A labor of love for the performers, the project has had the support of the composer’s family – in fact the recording was produced by Hans Gál’s grandson, Simon Fox-Gál. The songs provide a missing link in Gál’s creative development, and show him engaging with a wide variety of poets, extending back from the twelfth-century (Walther von der Vogelweide) to contemporaries, such as Hermann Hesse and Richard Dehmel, by way of the classics (Heine, Mörike). Reflecting a taste for the exotic which was fashionable at the time, the selection also includes settings of poems by Rabindranath Tagore. The performers close their recital with the Op. 33 set, the only songs that Hans Gál did publish during his long career.

REVIEW:

This is a treasure-trove of songs in the tradition of Richard Strauss, melodically radiant and full of sensitivity to atmosphere. Immler is ideally suited to them, with expansive, radiant tone and splendid diction; Helmut Deutsch sets his peerless pianism at the disposal of composer and singer.

– BBC Music Magazine

For the fifth volume in her series of Erik Satie's piano music, Noriko Ogawa reaches back to an early period in the composer's life. A large part of the program comes from Satie's so-called mystical period. Influenced by medieval plainsong and avoiding all pathos, Satie resorted to austere melodies based on rhythms and harmonies simplified to the extreme; he turned away from the concepts of development and variation in favour of simple repetition of perfectly symmetrical phrases. In other words, he broke completely with the classical-romantic tradition. In its purity and abstraction, Satie’s music from this period seems surprisingly modern by comparison with that of his contemporaries. The title of this volume is Ésoterik Satie, a nickname given to the composer during the period when he began a collaboration with Joséphin Peladan, the grand-master of the ‘Rose-Croix catholique du temple et du graal’, an artistic movement close to symbolism and esotericism. Satie’s fascination for the Middle Ages is reflected not only in the music itself, but also in the titles of some works, such as Ogives (the pointed arches of Gothic architecture), Danses gothiques or Fête donnée par les Chevaliers Normand.

REVIEW:

Noriko Ogawa is a sure guide to these pieces. She plays them on an 1890 Erard piano, which has a bright, clear, rather shallow tone. The booklet is very informative, though the pieces are not played in the order in which they are discussed. These works are best taken a few at a time. Satie’s world is intense but it is also narrow, and the pieces here are all rather similar.

-- MusicWeb International

‘The fantastic thing about art and music is that one can pose questions and conjure up visions at the same time.’ The words are those of the Swedish composer Jesper Nordin, who does exactly that in Emerging from Currents and Waves. A large-scale work for orchestra, clarinet soloist, conductor and live electronics, Emerging… is a collaboration between Nordin, Martin Fröst and Esa-Pekka Salonen. All three are interested in how new technology can – and will – influence art and artistic expression, and in exploring the intersection of mankind, music and technology. Emerging from Currents and Waves is in three parts, with the clarinet concerto "Emerging" at its center. In the work the electronic and the acoustic world meet on an equal footing. The sound of the live orchestra is recorded in real time, sampled, treated and played back, in processes that are controlled by both soloist and conductor with the help of motion sensors. The technology used for this is Gestrument (from ‘gesture’ and ‘instrument’), originally invented by Nordin as a tool for composition, but which here is used rather as an instrument.

The present recording was made at the first performance of the work, in Stockholm’s Berwaldhallen during the 2018 Baltic Sea Festival. In concert a visual element was added as images generated by the electronic music-making were projected onto several layers of transparent fabrics forming a specially designed sculpture that hovered above the orchestra.

Following their critically acclaimed albums of Schubert (BIS-2597), Mozart and Birchall (BIS-2647), works for clarinet trio (BIS-2535) and, more recently, Beethoven and Berwald (BIS-2707), the Wigmore Soloists now turn their attention to twentieth-century English chamber works which, while eschewing some of the continent’s modernist tendencies, are both deeply personal and supremely written, highlighting the specific colors of each of the instruments.

Howard Ferguson’s Octet, a direct and engaging work, was the first of his works to attract attention. Ferguson’s skill is brilliantly demonstrated in this tonally ambiguous work, which takes its instrumentation from Schubert’s famous Octet.

The main characteristic of Sir Arthur Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet, like those of Mozart and Brahms with the same instrumental line-up, is its intense, overtly emotional lyricism, but the sunny, extrovert aspects of Bliss’s character ultimately prevail in the brilliantly energetic finale.

Robin Holloway’s Serenade in C for octet is the most recent work on this disc, and also features the instrumentation of Schubert’s Octet, which the composer acknowledges as a model. Few contemporary composers display as keen a sense of humor as Holloway who wished here to give “an affectionate twist to tonal common practice and light-music clichés all the way from Biedermeier Vienna to Southend Pier”.

Asked the question ‘How many sonatas for violin and piano did Johannes Brahms compose?’, many lovers of chamber music would probably answer three, and maybe also add their respective keys and opus numbers. When pressed, a number of them would also remember the so-called F.A.E. Sonata, a collaborative effort by the young Brahms, Albert Dietrich and their mentor Robert Schumann. But very few would probably think of the two Opus 120 sonatas, composed in 1894 for clarinet (or viola) and piano, but a year later published in the composer’s own version for the violin. As the range of the B flat clarinet goes a fourth lower than that of the violin, Brahms had been forced to make considerable revisions to the clarinet part – which in turned entailed changes in the piano part, and consequently the printing of a new piano score. The seasoned team of violinist Ulf Wallin and pianist Roland Pöntinen have now decided to record all the Brahms sonatas, and the results are being released on two albums, the first one including the first of the ‘official’ sonatas, No. 1 in G major, Op. 78, the F minor Sonata from Op. 120 and Brahms’s Scherzo from the F.A.E. Sonata. Wallin and Pöntinen round off the programme with transcriptions of two of Brahms’s more lyrical songs.

As a composer Sergei Prokofiev was so versatile that audiences never quite knew what to expect. As a strategy, this could misfire but with his first symphony he got things just right. He once described what he had wanted to achieve: ‘If Haydn had lived into this era he would have kept his own style while absorbing things from what was new in music. That’s the kind of symphony I wanted to write...’ The ‘Classical’ symphony has been a true classic since its first performance in 1918 and is one of the few genuinely witty pieces in the twentieth-century orchestral repertory. A few months after the performance, Prokofiev left Russia for the USA where he remained for some years before settling in Paris in 1923. It was here that he composed the Second Symphony, now with the aim to be as up-to-date as possible. The first audience in 1925 was more bewildered than enthusiastic, however, and Prokofiev himself came to have doubts, wondering whether in this symphony ‘made out of iron and steel’ he’d overdone the rough counterpoint and density of texture. He now returned to a project he had been working on for several years – the opera The Fiery Angel. In 1928, when he began to think that no opera house would take it up, Prokofiev decided to reuse the music and found that ‘the material unexpectedly packed itself up into a four-movement symphony’ – his Third, characterized by an overwhelming sense of anxiety and tension. The present disc is the fourth and last in a symphony cycle which has earned the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Andrew Litton critical acclaim worldwide.



REVIEW:

This disc represents one heck of a deal–86 minutes of first-class Prokofiev courtesy of BIS, Andrew Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic. The “Classical” Symphony receives a performance in which nothing–and I mean NOTHING–gets taken for granted. Litton adopts a leisurely tempo for the opening movement, allowing sufficient time for each delectable instrumental detail to register. The entire performance sounds like chamber music writ large. At this stage in his career, Litton’s conducting has become more heavily inflected, sometimes to the point of mannerism. You can hear this approach most clearly in the Gavotte, but never (in this case) to the point of excess–and the finale is probably the most pointed and characterful version currently available. If you think you know this music cold, think again. You’ve got to hear this.

The Second and Third Symphonies both belong to Prokofiev’s “gnarly” phase, but I think they’re much better than their reputation leads us to believe. At least in these performances, Litton uncovers a world of color and nuance, never mind an abundance of melody sometimes concealed beneath and within the music’s hard-edged exterior. The Second Symphony’s concluding variation movement, for example, contains an entire population of captivating vignettes, and each one springs vividly to life. Similarly, Litton and the Bergen players beautifully declog the dense textures in the Third Symphony’s outer movements while still leaving the music plenty of room to shock. This work, in particular, has been very lucky on disc in the digital era, with superb versions from Järvi, Chailly, and above all, Muti; but this newcomer certainly belongs in their company.

In sum these performances, engineered with warmth, clarity and impact, rank with best best; and having all three symphonies on a single disc makes this release something of a bargain as well–even at full price.

– ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

The piano works by Isaac Albéniz range from indisputable masterpieces to ravishing salon music, the composer painting with bright Spanish colors as well as the hues of Classicism and Romanticism. On nine discs, originally released between 1998 and 2017 and gathered here, Miguel Baselga guides listeners through the music of his compatriot, earning acclaim from reviewers worldwide: ‘pianism of the highest order’ (MusicWeb-International); ‘berauschend agil und rhytmisch spannungsgeladen’ (PIANONews); ‘un pianista elegante y refinado’ (CD Compact). Composed between December 1905 and January 1908, only a year before the death of Albéniz, Iberia is the crowning achievement of the composer’s genius. Marking a high point of the post-romantic piano literature, this collection of ‘12 nouvelles impressions’ was to serve as an endless source of inspiration for other composers throughout the twentieth century, admired by Debussy and Messiaen, who called it 'the marvel of the piano'. Baselga’s exhaustive series places Iberia in its proper context, and with the assistance of Albéniz scholar Jacinto Torres, he has been able to access original editions and scores, including rarities such as the Marcha militar by a nine-year-old Albéniz and the composer's two scores for piano and orchestra. We are also given the opportunity to hear three improvisations, transcribed from a phonograph recording made by the composer in 1903.

REVIEW:

Miguel Baselga was the first and (I believe) only pianist to have recorded Albéniz’s complete solo piano works, a project encompassing nine CDs. The cycle has been reissued in a boxed set, together with each individual release’s original booklet. It remains a significant catalog milestone.

As a stylist, Albéniz covered all bases, from unabashedly salon-like trifles and flashy neo-Lisztian fare to the Iberia Suite’s astonishing originality and labyrinthine complexities. Since Baselga wanted each disc to represent different aspects of Albéniz’s musical personality, he cunningly divided Iberia’s four parts across the first four volumes, aiming to give lesser-known masterpieces like the wild and woolly La Vega and tender Barcarola Op. 202 their due.

The two concerted works (the Piano Concerto No. 1 and Rapsodia Espanola) also receive impressively fresh and well-balanced readings. And for those who can’t get past the faded sound of Albéniz’s three 1903 improvisations preserved on private cylinders, Milton Laufer’s painstakingly notated editions will be revelations, especially in Baselga’s inspired hands.

In all, Baselga’s combination of technical brilliance, exuberant temperament, and tonal imagination yields consistently idiomatic and enjoyable results. A must-have for serious aficionados of Spanish piano music.

– ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)