Classical Music

Classical Music

MOZART Piano Sonatas: No. 10 in C, K 330; No. 11 in A, K 331; No. 12 in F, K 332 • Noriko Ogawa (pn) • BIS 1985 (SACD: 76: 00)


Japanese pianist Noriko Ogawa has appeared in these pages several times in repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Takemitsu. This, however, is her first foray on disc into Mozart. I suppose there’s a degree of pertinence to Ogawa’s selection of these three sonatas for her Mozart debut, since it’s now believed that they were the first piano sonatas Mozart composed after his permanent move to Vienna in 1781. Some older sources, however, still suggest the late 1770s and Salzburg or even Paris as the time and place of their composition. The middle sonata of the set, No. 11, popularly known as “Alla Turca” for its last movement’s “Turkish”-themed Rondo, is the most unusual of the three works, not because of the Rondo but because the sonata is homotonal—i.e., all three movements are in either A Major or A Minor, thus having the same tonic. If you prefer hearing these pieces on a modern Steinway grand—and I do—it’s hard to imagine them being played any more sensitively, charmingly, expressively, and stylishly than they are here by Noriko Ogawa. The combination of BIS’s crystalline recording and Ogawa’s exceptionally limpid touch and pellucid tone makes this a winning entry in the Mozart piano sonata catalog. Recommended to all Mozart lovers, except those who are unalterably opposed to hearing this music played on anything other than a period fortepiano.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Premièred in January 1945, Sergei Prokofiev’s optimistic and heroic Fifth Symphony had seemed to herald the victorious end of World War Two. In stark contrast to this, his Symphony No.6, which received its first performance in 1947, is one of his deepest and most personal works. Although it was greeted with enthusiasm by the audience, the Soviet authorities were critical of the work and in 1948 a Party resolution singled it out as ‘abnormal’ and ‘repellent’. In fact, the first ideas for the symphony preceded those for the Fifth, and date from a period when the issue of the war was still uncertain. Early in 1945 the composer had suffered a collapse, from which he never completely recovered and which forced him to live the life of an invalid with almost constant headaches. In regard to the work, Prokofiev himself stated: ‘Now we are rejoicing in our great victory, but each of us has wounds that cannot be healed.’ This haunted symphony is here coupled with two works which illustrate a very different side of the composer, his gift for creating vivid musical images that can sum up a scene in a few bold strokes. These are the ever-popular suites from The Love for Three Oranges, the tragic-comical opera from 1921, and from the film score to Lieutenant Kijé, a light-hearted satire from 1934. The original film score included two songs, which form the second and fourth movements of the concert suite. Often performed in a version for solo saxophone and orchestra, these are heard in this recording in their original vocal form, performed by the Ukranian baritone Andrei Bondarenko. With acclaimed previous recordings of music by Prokofiev, as well as by Stravinsky and Rachmaninov, Andrew Litton and his Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra are a tried-and-tested team in this repertoire, and once again make the most of the enormous palette of colours and moods provided by these three scores.

In just two years, between 1784 and 1786, Mozart composed no less than twelve piano concertos – a staggering number. Often described as one of the most light-hearted and buoyant among these is the Concerto in F major K 459, sometimes called ‘the second Coronation Concerto’. The nickname comes from the fact that Mozart would later choose to perform it, along with the ‘Coronation Concerto’ in D major, during the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1790. Its companion work on this fourth disc in Ronald Brautigam’s survey hails from the same period: begun in 1784, the Concerto in A major K 488 was completed in March 1786, at the same time as Mozart was putting the finishing touches to his opera Le nozze di Figaro. It is one of only three piano concertos in which Mozart uses clarinets in the orchestra, resulting in a very particular sound world, especially in the magical slow movement. Mozart clearly held the work in high regard, and described it as one of his most select compositions ‘which I keep just for myself and an élite circle of music lovers’, and later audiences have agreed with him. Ronald Brautigam has been described as ‘an absolutely instinctive Mozartian… with melodic playing of consummate beauty’ (International Record Review), and he is once again supported by the period orchestra Die Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens in a partnership which more than one reviewer has termed ‘ideal’.

The three cantatas on this recording come from the first half of the 1730s, by which time J.S. Bach was no longer writing a new cantata every week. In these later works, Bach’s affinity for instrumental colour is coming more clearly to the fore, as are elements of the new ‘empfindsamer Stil’ with its tendency towards expressive melodies rich in syncopations and suspensions, and towards homophonic writing. The three cantatas are also linked in that they are all chorale cantatas, harking back to Bach’s second year in Leipzig (1724–25), when the cantatas that he wrote were each based in their entirety on a well-known hymn. The opening cantata, In allen meinen Taten BWV 97, is a setting of nine strophes from a poem by Paul Fleming, one of the great German baroque poets, and begins with a splendid French overture, in which the orchestra intones a solemn, slow introduction with the typical dotted rhythms, followed by a lively fugal section during which the choir makes its entry. This is followed by BWV 177, Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, which at its centre has the aria Verleih, dass ich aus Herzensgrund… a heartfelt prayer from the soprano and oboe da caccia for the capacity to forgive one’s enemies. The hymn Es ist das Heil uns kommen her, on which the closing BWV 9 is based, remains an important hymn in the German Evangelical Church. The text – and Bach’s setting of it – eloquently conveys the message that it is through faith rather than deeds that mankind may achieve salvation.

With a flourishing international concert career and an acclaimed discography, Freddy Kempf has become firmly established among the top pianists of today. His very first disc, at the age of 22, was a Schumann recital that made reviewers around the world sit up and take notice.

Kempf now returns to Schumann, with these three solo piano works. The Études symphoniques is one of Schumann’s most imposing piano works and is played here in its 1852 version, with the additional five variations (later published by Brahms) and the third and ninth études from the 1837 edition. This really gives the listener an opportunity to hear this work in all its glory. 

REVIEW:

There is real beauty to Kempf's sound, especially in the lyrical moments of the Fantasiestucke, and careful, intelligent voicing of the very contrapuntal Etudes Symphoniques...there's also rewarding flair which never seems to exist for its own sake, but pursues a larger total impression.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Classical Music

Classical Music

PAUL HINDEMITH FRANK P. ZIMMERMANN, VIOLIN;*FRANKFURT RADIO SYM. ORCH./P.JARVIENRICO PACE, PIANO ** CTO. FOR VIOLIN & ORCH.(1939*)SONATA FOR SOLO VLN, OP.31 NO.2,"ES IST SO SCHONES WETTER DRAUBEN';SONATA IN E FLAT FOR VIOLIN& PIANO, OP.11 NO.1; SONATA IN E FOR VIOLIN & PNO. (1935)SONATA IN C FOR VIOLIN & PN. (1939)**

Chamber orchestra Schubert, but with plenty of bite.

Having greatly enjoyed Thomas Dausgaard’s Schumann symphonic recordings, I was more than delighted to find this Schubert disc amongst my allocation. This is still part of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s ‘Opening Doors’ collection, though the logo isn’t being paraded with quite as high a profile as previously and my copy had no extra cardboard slip for the standard jewel case. Schubert’s 8th and 9th Symphonies are already available in this series on BIS-1656. BIS already released some Schubert Symphonies with Neeme Järvi in the 1980s with nice performances from the Stockholm Sinfonietta, but Dausgaard’s recordings, while drier in acoustic, are more distinctive in terms of style.

My last encounter with Schubert’s symphonies via these pages was with Herbert Blomstedt’s fine Berlin Classics set with the Staatskapelle Dresden. The orchestral sound is inevitably grander than with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, but timings with each movement are not so very different, and I still like Blomstedt’s lightness of touch with these works, even if the wobbly vibrato to the flute sound is bothersome. There are no such quibbles with the orchestral sections with this BIS recording. The music is played expressively but without any kind of over-emphasis, the actual recording not terribly spectacular but nicely detailed and realistic.

Performing Schubert symphonies with a chamber orchestra should hold few if any real surprises, unless you are only used to the likes of Herbert von Karajan, whose Berlin Philharmonic recordings on EMI Gemini are a rich and refined sonic feast but of a distinctively mid to late Beethovenian flavour. Schubert’s symphonies were never performed publicly in his lifetime, and the Symphony No. 6 was the only one he heard played in rehearsal with an amateur orchestra. This is a youthful work which makes tribute to the likes of Rossini, and the orchestra of the time would have been more comparable with those used by Mozart and Haydn than anything particularly Romantic. Chamber orchestra forces do not however result in Schubert-lite, and you only have to listen to the tremendous accents of the Scherzo to be made aware of the hard-hitting possibilities of such an ensemble. Fewer strings make for a more equal partnership between these and the wind sections, and the sense of inner dialogue is a strong aspect in this recording. As far as I am concerned there is nothing anaemic about this performance, and it ticks all the boxes for radiant joy and underlying drama.

Six years on from the Symphony No. 6 saw Schubert involved in Rosamunde, a play which promised much but ended in humiliating public failure, Schubert’s excellent incidental music unable to lift the audience’s indifference to the theatre experience, but strong enough to become popular in its own right. The sections presented here are Entr’actes 1, 3, and 2, and the Ballet Music No. 2 and No. 1 in that order. This is a more complete set than most ‘filler’ movements added to orchestral recordings, and with the famous tune of Entr’acte No. 3 played with warmth and affection, the two ballets given perfect energy and tempi and plenty of atmospheric dramas elsewhere I can find nothing to complain about. You won’t find the orchestral opulence of recordings such as the Chamber Orchestra of Europe under Claudio Abbado on Deutsche Grammophon, and this is still one of your best bets if looking for the complete Rosamunde, choir and all. Listening to this BIS recording does however make one realise how idealised such performances can become, and it is Thomas Dausgaard who brings us closer to the earthy reality of an orchestra in something approaching a theatre setting.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

The Unknown Sibelius presents a spectrum of the music that is the least wide-spread of the Finnish master’s production, either because the pieces included belong to genres not usually associated with ‘Sibelius the symphonist’, or because they appear in versions that differ from the ones that are performed frequently all over the world. A case in point is the opening Finland Awakes, a rarely heard version of what is possibly Sibelius’ best-known piece, Finlandia, in which the famous ‘hymn’ tune is restated in full, scored with unashamed flamboyance for brass, at the end of the piece. That recording and others on this disc are culled from the complete SIBELIUS EDITION brought to a close in 2011 – but completeness is a relative concept: a ‘complete’ edition is only complete until the next mislaid manuscript or forgotten work is re-discovered. The present disc thus serves a dual purpose, as it also includes première recordings of works and fragments that have been discovered or otherwise have become available after the EDITION was brought to a close. Among these, the late orchestral fragments earned a certain celebrity in October 2011, as media across the world greeted the discovery of what was soon proclaimed to be sketches for the famed 8th Symphony – that elusive Holy Grail of all Sibelius-spotters. Dr. Timo Virtanen, the respected authority on Sibelius, has prepared the sketches for the present recording and also written a text – available on the BIS web site – discussing them and the context in which they may have been written. If the orchestral fragments generally tend towards the harmonically bold sound world that Sibelius explored in some of his very late works, the three piano pieces that have also come to recent light are earlier works which all in different ways are connected to other compositions by Sibelius.

Simply the best.

This release turned up just as James Ehnes’s superb two disc ‘Complete Works for Violin’ has been receiving massive plaudits. With this being the 60th anniversary of 1953 these coincidences are always likely, but unless SACD sound is a deciding factor when purchasing such releases this does put Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe straight against stiff competition.

By any standards these are all terrific performances, recorded in stunning sound - up quite close and personal, but with plenty of space around the instruments, inviting us in rather than blowing us off our seats. The BIS balance puts the piano on a more equal footing than that with Chandos, where the violin is a little closer in feel, though not to the extent that it covers the piano. Ehnes has a fine parlando feel in the first movement of the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 1, which heightens the emotion in a part of the piece which can sometimes sound a little static. Vadim Gluzman has this and greater eloquence, giving even passages of restraint an emotional weight which carries us forward into realms of ever increasing intensity. Ehnes is more abstract, which has its own strengths, but which keeps this first movement as more of a prelude rather than a powerful statement in its own right. The drier Chandos acoustic is less favourable to the chunky notes which throw us straight into the deep end of the Allegro brusco, played with greater on-the-edge string-grabbing heft by Gluzman. The theme at 1:07 becomes a dramatic moment here as if the entire piece has been building to this point, and Gluzman and Yoffe hold us in a grip of staggering intensity. For all its fine qualities, Ehnes and Armstrong’s performance is somewhat blown out of the water by Gluzman and Yoffe, whose Andante in this piece is meltingly beautiful, the muted violin having a nicer tone than Ehnes, Yoffe’s arabesques in the piano and the deeper sonority in the bass line phrases also having a greater expressive effect. The final Allegrissimo is hugely exciting in both performances, Ehnes and Armstong being swifter by an appreciable margin, but Gluzman/Yoffe able to muster massive sonorities and greater degrees of contrast for the more lyrical passages as a result.

For us flute players the popularity of the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 in D Major Op. 94bis will always be something of a sore point, but it is such good music that, in the end, who cares what it’s played on. Once again it is Gluzman and Ehnes in competition, but the comments with regard to the first sonata are equally valid in this case. Ehnes and Armstrong are excellent, but Gluzman and Yoffe are just so much more beefy, more involving. Again it comes back to emotion against abstraction - Ehnes and Armstrong technically brilliant and musically sensitive, but Gluzman and Yoffe conjuring a considerable extra layer of poetry and empathetic impact. Little extra touches of weight on certain notes or harmonies, a little more detail in the articulation, a few degrees more breath and freedom in the music all adding up and making the big difference in the end. There are of course other competitors in this field, and that with Isabelle van Keulen and Ronald Brautigam on Challenge Classics comes from the same Sendesaal acoustic as this BIS recording. I’ve only been able to listen to this online and it does sound like an excellent release, also a Chandos-beater in these pieces but to my ears still not quite displaying the same degree of convincing musical depth and weight as Gluzman/Yoffe. Keulen and Brautigam tend to slightly swifter tempi which have their own excitement, but it is that sense of every note and phrase conveying its own message, like the sentences in an intimate letter, which makes this BIS recording a touch more special. Take the tender Andante of Op.94 bis, which both duos take at roughly similar, fairly swift and suitably unsentimental tempi. Keulen and Brautigam have fine phrasing and dynamics, but when compared to Gluzman and Yoffe appear almost just to be charging ahead and missing the points the latter find so precious. Without disturbing the flow of the music Gluzman holds onto notes a fraction longer here and there, Yoffe in perfect synchronization, introducing a sense of nostalgic yearning right from the start and delivering that sense of narrative which I always bang on about, but which I all too rarely find in actual fact. That second section is a bit like our characters have decided to go for a walk in the park on Challenge Classics, where at 1:05 our BIS artists manage to establish a magical change of mood, celestial and poetic - creating all kinds of flitting images in the mind rather than conjuring amused feet sweeping through autumn leaves.

The Three Pieces from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ open with ‘that music off of BBC’s The Apprentice’, Montagues and Capulets performed with maximum power and a sense or real orchestral thrust from pianist Angela Yoffe. Prokofiev wrote all too few works for violin and piano, and this arrangement by D. Grjunes is a fine addition to the repertoire, also including the Dance of the Girls with Lilies and Masks.

I’ve admired Vadim Gluzman’s playing before, and all of his recordings on the BIS label can safely be recommended. It’s tricky to be definitive, but of the more recent recordings of these sonatas I have heard this would be the one for me. There are others. Ilya Grubert and Matti Raekallio on Ondine is potent stuff, but Grubert is a bit shouty on some accents and there are too many unappealing moments to make this a real contender. You might come across Joseph Szigeti and Joseph Levine’s historical performance as a digital download from Past Classics, and while this is of great interest I can’t bear Szigeti’s wobbly vibrato, and the balance between violin and piano in the Second Sonata is terminally in favour of the violin, which sounds as if Szigeti is playing while sitting on your lap. So yes, with stunning SACD sound, everything in its favour and with musical qualities which make this a recording to relish for years to come, I’m going to stick my neck out and say Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe are the best for these two Prokofiev masterpieces.

– Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

BACH Cantatas Nos. 1001; 142; No. 1973; No. 197a4 • Masaaki Suzuki, cond; Bach Collegium Japan; 1-3Hana Blažiková (sop); 1,3,4Damien Guillon (ct); 1,2Gerd Türk (ten); 1-4Peter Kooij (bs) • BIS 2021 (SACD: 75:40 Text and Translation)

As his momentous series nears its conclusion, Masaaki Suzuki turns his attention to three late cantatas, all presumably composed in the mid-1730s, all richly scored. Cantata No. 100’s two horns (and timpani), flute, and oboe d’amore suggest a festive occasion, but actually which one is not known. Cantata No. 197, with three trumpets, two oboes, and an obbligato bassoon, was composed for a wedding, although, again, the principals are unknown. Given the lavish score—10 numbers divided into two parts—it’s fairly safely assumed that they were persons of rank. Little did they suspect that by simply affixing their names to the score they could have achieved immortality—of a sort! Cantata No. 14 was composed for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany in 1735. Its scoring includes one trumpet, a horn, and two oboes. Bach wrote No. 14 to fill a gap in his chorale cantata cycle of 1724–25; there was no fourth Sunday after Epiphany in 1725. It opens with a contrapuntally complex motet-style chorus, a harbinger, perhaps of The Art of Fugue, which must have been percolating in Bach’s mind at the time. BWV 100 has the distinction of being one of four Leipzig cantatas (along with 97, 117, and 192) in which all movements are based on the chorale melody. It’s also one of the few cantatas without recitatives. Ever the tinkerer, Bach drew upon an existing Christmas cantata for some of BWV 197. Only three movements and a part of a fourth of the earlier cantata have survived. In crafting a viable, performable fragment, the musicologist Diethard Hellmann has returned the favor, in a way, basing his reconstruction of its incomplete alto aria on Bach’s second thoughts.

The reconstructed aria, accompanied by a pair of flutes, is tenderly realized by Damien Guillon. Hana Blažíková is brilliant in her aria with trumpet in Cantata No. 14. Gerd Türk and Peter Kooij are their usual dependable selves. The chorus and orchestra—all Japanese except for the solo quartet and the two hornists/trumpeters—are predictably excellent as well. Masaaki’s direction is masterful, as always. It’s another triumph for Suzuki and the Bach Collegium Japan.

FANFARE: George Chien

Manfred Huss and the period orchestra Haydn Sinfonietta Wien are internationally acclaimed for their rousing performances of music by Haydn and Schubert. They now bring their indomitable enthusiasm and collective expertise to one of Handel's most famous and popular works, rounding off the disc with the composer's far less well-known, but equally resplendent Ouverture from the Occasional Oratorio.

Among the most widely performed of Mozart’s piano concertos for a good half century after its composition in 1785, the Concerto No.20 in D minor still assumes a commanding place in the concert hall. Among its early devotees was Beethoven, who performed the work at a benefit concert for Mozart’s widow in March 1795 and who may well have found much to admire in the work’s brooding opening, characterized by syncopations and later punctuated by more aggressive outbursts; in his informative liner notes, the Mozart scholar John Irving goes so far as to call it ‘Mozart’s grittiest concerto’. Six years after the D minor concerto, in January 1791, the composer completed the Piano Concerto No.27 in B flat major, K595, giving the first performance of it two months later. This was to be his last public appearance as a soloist, and the concerto has sometimes been considered as a work in which the typical sparkle of Mozart’s virtuosity is tempered by resignation, as if the composer were already aware of his imminent demise. Such an interpretation is contradicted by a close study of the autograph manuscript, however: the concerto appears to have been begun two full years before it was completed. Its language is nevertheless more introverted than most of Mozart’s works in the genre: he seems to be aiming for a sublime delicacy of expression rarely attempted elsewhere in his concerto output. These two exceptional works are here performed by Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie, on their fifth disc of Mozart’s concertos – an ongoing series which has been described as ‘a lucky break and a true delight’ in the German magazine Piano News.

More than most composers currently active, Brett Dean uses music to tackle political and social themes of our times. A common factor in the works on this recording is the sometimes problematic aspects of human communication and the erosion and misuse of language. The recording was made during a public performance of Vexations and Devotions in the framework of the BBC Proms in 2007, with David Robertson conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the Australian children's choir Gondwana Voices.

This disc completes the set of CPE Bach’s Fortsetzung Sonatas, Wq51 that began in Volume 26 in this series. Although the sonatas were not published together with the composer's own variants on them, such alternative versions exist in manuscript, and splitting this set of large-scale works over two discs, Miklós Spányi also includes recordings of these varied or embellished versions that may represent the composer's revisions but could equally well have been intended as study material for his students.

'My apotheosis of the dance' is how Kalevi Aho describes his Symphony No.15. With two dance movements and rhythm a central element, the score calls for numerous percussion instruments, including non-Western ones such as bongos, darbuka, djembe and the riqq, an Arabian tambourine. The composer's interest in non-Western music and instruments has been evident in several recent works, such as his Symphony No. 14 (recorded on BIS-1686) and Oboe Concerto (BIS-1876). It also played an important part during the creation of Minea, composed as a concert opener for the Minnesota Orchestra on the initiative of Osmo Vänskä, who also conducts the work here. Mentioning Indian ragas, Japanese shakuhachi music, Arabian rhythms and Eastern scales, Aho explains that his aim has been to expand his own sound world with elements of other classical music cultures, and to try to view the Western musical tradition from other perspectives. Minea and Symphony No.15 frame the composer's Concerto for Double Bass, composed in 2005 for Eero Munter. In order to be able to write idiomatically for the instrument, the composer borrowed a double bass, and as work on the piece progressed, he actually grew proficient enough to try out most of the solo part - albeit at a very slow tempo, as he freely admits! The concerto offers the opportunity to hear the solo instrument in highly unusual contexts, for instance in the two accompanied cadenzas - the first a pizzicato duet with the harp, and the second a trio with two percussionists. Throughout the disc we hear the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, which for more than 20 years has made a remarkable commitment to the composer, performing and recording a large number of his works. The orchestra is conducted by Jaakko Kuusisto and Dima Slobodeniouk, as well as by the above-mentioned Osmo Vänskä.

The French organ tradition is one of the strongest and proudest in all of 20th-century music, to the point of forming a genre of its own. Standing on the shoulders of predecessors such as Franck and Widor and composing for instruments built in the glorious tradition of Cavaillé-Coll, a group of organist-composers created a number of works central to the organ literature; works which in spite of their great variety combine to form a highly characteristic repertoire. The young organist Pétur Sakari has gathered five such composers on his first disc for BIS, performing their music on the famous organ of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont in Paris. The five composers are all interconnected - Charles Tournemire and Louis Vierne studied together (under Franck), Maurice Duruflé studied under Tournemire and was Vierne's assistant at Notre Dame, and Marcel Dupré counted Vierne (and Widor) among his teachers and himself taught Olivier Messiaen. And although Pétur Sakari hails from Finland, he is also to an extent part of this great tradition, as the student of Thierry Escaich and Vincent Warnier, successors of Duruflé and his wife Marie-Madeleine as organists of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. Sakari's selection brings together key works such as the hugely taxing Prelude and Fugue in B major by Dupré, Vierne's fantasy on the Bells of Westminster and Messiaen's meditative and atmospheric Celestial Banquet. The opening work on the disc is Tournemire's powerful improvisation on the Easter plain-chant Victimae paschali laudes, recorded in 1930 and later transcribed by Duruflé, whose own monumental Suite closes the recital. Throughout, Pétur Sakari - at the age of only 21 - gives proof of a mastery of the organ and a musicianship which promise great things to come. *playing the great organ of the Saint-Étienne-du-Mont Church, Paris

Included on a separate DVD: 'Människans röst' ('Vox humana'), an 81-minute documentary (1973-78) about the composer made for Sveriges Television by Peter Berggren, Tommy Höglind and Gunnar Källström. With subtitles in English Allan Pettersson composed his Ninth Symphony in 1970, two years after the Seventh had been given a triumphant première conducted by Antal Dorati. This had brought him greater recognition than ever before, but at the same time his health was deteriorating even further, and shortly after completing the Ninth Pettersson was hospitalized for a period of nine months. It is striking that he at such a time should have chosen to compose what is the longest of all his works - in the score Pettersson himself estimated the duration to '65-70 minutes', and the first recording of the work actually lasted for more than 80 minutes. As so many of the symphonies, the work is in one single movement which may be described as an extended struggle in which harmony is the ultimate winner. As Pettersson himself had said about an earlier work: 'If one fights one's way through a symphony one needs to achieve consonance and harmony even if it takes twenty hours to do so.' In the case of the Ninth, this harmony is summed up more concisely than ever before or after, in the final two chords which form a plagal or 'Amen' cadence in F major. Completing a cycle for BIS of Pettersson's symphonies, Christian Lindberg and the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra have been receiving great critical acclaim for previous instalments - most recently a Sixth described in International Record Review as 'a release that could well be the ideal introduction to Pettersson's singular musical vision'. About the same disc, the reviewer in Gramophone wrote: 'Lindberg's empathy for Pettersson's music is once again shown in the Sixth, where he catches its dark atmosphere to perfection, pacing its progress through the succession of climaxes superbly well.' The present recording is accompanied by a bonus DVD - an 80-minute documentary made during Allan Pettersson's final years which for the first time is being made available to a wider international audience.

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

The sixth disc in this highly acclaimed series combine two works in which Mozart's powers as an orchestrator come to the fore. Concerto No. 18 in B flat major, K 456, is sometimes referred to as one of the composer’s ‘military concertos’ on the basis of the march-like main theme of the first movement. But more striking is the variety of ways that Mozart employs the various groups of instruments: strings, wind instruments and, of course, the piano. This aspect certainly didn’t pass unnoticed by a listener as initiated as Mozart’s father Leopold: in a letter to his daughter Nannerl he described how his enjoyment of the orchestral interplay had brought tears to his eyes. The performance that Leopold was referring to was by Mozart himself at a concert in Vienna in 1785, but the work is believed to have been written for the blind virtuoso Maria Theresia von Paradis to play on a concert trip to Paris, and the demanding piano part leaves us in no doubt about her abilities as a pianist. Concerto No. 22 in E flat major, on the other hand, is one that Mozart wrote primarily for his own use, completing it on 16th December 1785, and performing it later the same month. It is the first of only three piano concertos in which he uses clarinets, to particular effect in the expressive Andantino cantabile episode of the otherwise ebullient Finale. The orchestra is on the whole unusually large, with trumpets and timpani, and horn parts which are uncommonly independent and important to the musical argument.

Andrzej Panufnik’s (1914-91) three original works for solo piano, spread out over almost four decades, are all highly crafted, demonstrating the composer’s fascination with mirror forms and symmetrical patterns. + Also included here are two ‘posthumous collaborations’ between the composer and his daughter Roxanna, herself an acclaimed composer, as well as two of Ms. Panufnik’s own compositions. + The young British pianist Clare Hammond devised the present disc for her first BIS release.

A companion to Jan Lehtola’s recording of Kalevi Aho’s (b. 1949) monumental organ symphony ‘Alles Vergängliche’, this present disc includes five smaller Aho pieces for organ solo, as well as three compositions for organ and other instruments. + Mr. Lehtola has appeared with the leading Finnish orchestras, performed at international festivals and given recitals in leading European churches and concert halls. + He has had works written for him by several composers, including Kalevi Aho.

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

It was during the winter of 1900–01 that Elgar began to sketch what he hoped would turn into a symphony – his first. But the sketches were quickly absorbed into several shorter pieces, one of which was the Cockaigne overture. Although composed in the rural area of the Malvern Hills, the work is nevertheless an unashamedly populist portrait of ‘old London town’, complete with references to whistling errand boys and a marching band – the composer himself described the music as ‘cheerful and Londony’. As for the First Symphony, seven years would pass before its première in Manchester and subsequent London performance – a triumphant occasion, as described by Elgar’s publisher: ‘After the first movement E.E. was called out; again, several times, after the third… people stood up and even on their seats to get a view.’ For Elgar, the success must have come as an immense relief - the symphony is hugely ambitious in scale and scope, but also seems to have had a personal significance to the composer, who summarized it as follows: ‘There is no programme beyond a wide experience of human life, with a great charity (love) & a massive hope in the future.’ Conducting this all-Elgar programme is Sakari Oramo, the Finnish conductor who has been all but adopted by English music-lovers and orchestras – for ten years he was music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and since 2013 he holds the post as chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Playing here, however, as on the acclaimed 2013 release of Elgar’s Second Symphony, is his ‘Swedish orchestra’, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. But lovers of Elgar’s music can rest assured: in the words of the reviewer on the British web site classicalsource.com ‘there is no need to be concerned that a Finnish conductor and a Swedish orchestra do not “get” Elgar’s music. They do – with power, passion, compassion and authority…’