Classical Music

Classical Music

With this disc, Miklós Spányi's survey of the complete keyboard concertos of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, begun in 1995, reaches its conclusion. But over the years it has already been described as 'a unique monument to one of the 18th century's most underrated composers' (Gramophone) as well as 'one of the most important and monumental recording projects of the century so far' (MusicWeb International) and 'an epoch-making achievement... in the history of recorded music' (klassik-heute.de). Together, the 64 works - composed over a period of fifty-five years (1733-88) - form an endlessly fascinating picture of their composer's various choices made in the course of a long career. They also illustrate the development of the concerto genre, and, indeed, of music itself during the mid-eighteenth century - a period of experimentation and great variety. All of these aspects are explored in an admirable fashion in the liner notes to the various discs, written by the C.P.E. Bach scholars Jane R. Stevens and Darrell M. Berg. Throughout the series, Miklós Spányi has performed the solo parts on harpsichord, fortepiano and tangent piano, carefully explaining his choices in his own remarks to each volume, and thereby providing much insight into a crucial chapter in the development of the keyboard instruments. The two double concertos on this final volume frame most of Bach's career, with the F major work for two harpsichords hailing from 1740 and the Concerto in E flat major being the fruit of the composer's final year. The latter work is intriguing in that Bach in his score specified that the solo parts should be performed on a harpsichord and a fortepiano respectively, resulting in some fascinating sound effects. The disc ends with a Sonatina for two harpsichords, composed in the 1760s, and remarkable for the size of its orchestra: the work employs the largest forces ever used by Bach, and forms a suitably resplendent finale to this great recording project.

Completed in 1891 and 1895 respectively, the Piano Concerto No.1 and the D minor Symphony were Sergei Rachmaninov's first large-scale orchestral compositions, written by a young man still in his early 20s. The composer, whose self-critical vein was evident from the start, almost immediately decided to revise the concerto, even though he did choose to perform it in its original form when he made his London début as a pianist in 1899. Two years earlier, the symphony had been premièred, an event which has become notorious as one of music's great disasters: the rehearsal time had been completely inadequate, and Glazunov, who conducted the work, was less than sympathetic to it - and may also have been drunk during the performance. The scathing reception caused Rachmaninov to doubt not only the quality of the work, but his own gifts as a composer, and he didn't write anything of importance for three years. In 1917, he did revise the piano concerto, making use of the experience gained from having in the meantime composed the immensely successful 2nd and 3rd piano concertos and performing them numerous times himself. Rachmaninov also repeatedly expressed the wish to return to his first symphony, but the score was lost in the upheavals of the Russian revolution and the composer's move to the USA. Not until after his death in 1943 was a set of the original orchestral parts rediscovered. That Rachmaninov never forgot the work is however proven by the fact that he quoted it in his very last orchestral composition, the Symphonic Dances from 1940. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Lan Shui have previously impressed critics worldwide with their performances of Rachmaninovs Second and Third Symphony, and are once again joined by the piano soloist Yevgeny Sudbin, with whom the team recently recorded what the reviewer in American Record Guide described as 'the most stunning performance of the Rhapsody [on a theme of Paganini] I've ever heard.'

Classical Music

Classical Music

Composed over a period of 14 years, John Pickard's Gaia Symphony and Eden are scored for the standard ‘British’ brass band, with expanded percussion in the case of the 65 minute 'Gaia' symphony. Both works in different ways mirror concerns regarding the world and nature, and their relationship with the human species. Eikanger-Bjørsvik Musikklag from Norway, one of today’s leading brass bands and the first non-British band to claim the European brass band title, perform these two demanding scores.

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

On this disc one of the world's finest pianists encounters one of the world's greatest wind quintets, performing two very special works: Mozart's and Beethoven's quintets for piano and winds. While the Beethoven Quintet is a new recording, the Mozart works on this disc have been previously released, on BIS-CD-1332. On its release in 2000 that disc was highly praised, for instance in Gramophone, which called it 'a real Mozartian experience' and in American Record Guide: 'The best recording of Mozart's Quintet I have ever heard.' According to Le Monde de la Musique, 'by the clarity, the subtly applied abundance of inflexions and a very real inner power' the musicians proved themselves 'true Mozartians'. As this disc will show, they are no less true Beethovenians!

BAROQUE ARIAS: BACH, HANDEL, AHLE, BY Yoshikazu Mera

Classical Music

SKALKOTTAS Concerto for 2 Violins (orch. Demertzis). Concertino for 2 Pianos. Characteristic Piece, “Nocturnal Amusement” 1 • Vassilis Christopoulos, cond; Georgios Demertzis (vn); Simos Papanas (vn); Maria Asteriadou (pn); Nikolaos Samaltanos (pn); Dimitris Desyllas (xyl); 1 Thessaloniki St SO • BIS 1554 (55:02)


BIS has lavished a great deal of attention on Nikos Skalkottas (1904–1949), a former student of Arnold Schoenberg, who, like Alban Berg, took dodecaphony in a somewhat different direction from that of Schoenberg’s or Anton Webern’s. Kostis Demertzis’s booklet notes describe Skalkottas’s efforts to combine the system with popular elements that would entertain its listeners. He did so, for sure, in his Concerto for Two Violins (an unorchestrated version of which appeared on BIS 1244), a piece from 1944 that he never completed (or heard performed) and that he apparently intended to finish after he had completed his Second Symphonic Suite in the last year of his life. The Concerto’s first movement integrates the two bustling violin parts into an orchestral web (not only that of Kostis Demertzis’s orchestration but that of the engineers) more in the manner of Bach’s Double Concerto than in that of, say, Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for violin and viola. As did Berg’s Violin Concerto, Skalkottas’s slow movement incorporates a borrowed tonal melody, this one, according to the notes, a rebetiko by Vassilis Tsitsanis that Skalkottas had chromatically enhanced. This popular-style melody slinks, if not as suggestively, in the sultry manner of the Blues from Ravel’s Violin Sonata, though the outer, fast, movements have been influenced by, and pay tribute to, a popular idiom of a different kind—folk music. The Concerto is substantial in both length (almost 38 minutes in this performance) and in substance, despite its emphasis on accessibility and entertainment. While the ardent violin lines in the slow movement emerge, as do those in the outer movements, from sonorous, highly colored tuttis, the third movement returns to the whirlwind manner of the first, with the violins emerging now in bands of melody reminiscent of Corelli’s trio-sonata textures, and now in sharply articulated folk-inspired thematic statements. A brilliant cadenza about two-thirds of the way through the finale showcases the two violins’ virtuosity. The soloists play with great energy and élan in the outer movements and an appropriate sultriness in the slow one; Christopoulos and the Orchestra provide highly colorful, enthusiastic orchestral support.


If anything, the Concertino for Two Pianos (from 1935) sounds even lighter and chattier in its first movement, affecting a boulevardier’s breeziness (as did Poulenc’s) but couched in the rigorous procedures of serialism. Demertzis’s notes trace some of the tone-row manipulations, while the lighthearted style will—especially in this engaging performance by Maria Asteriadou and Nikolaos Samaltanos—tempt a willing listener’s ear away from those compositional elements.


The Characteristic Piece (from 1949), almost—almost—firmly tonal, serves as a sort of fireworks display that brings the program to a close in an intoxicating performance with all the carnival appeal of George H. Green’s Fluffy Ruffles . It’s like musical licorice, and it’s hard not to listen again several times.


Charles Warren Fox, the Eastman School’s protomusicologist, used to insist in his classes on the 20th century that dodecaphony didn’t necessarily imply any particular compositional style. Skalkottas’s music, placed beside that of Webern, seems to reinforce the point of view upon which Fox so vehemently (and disdainfully) insisted. In any case, even in an era in which serialism’s sun may be setting, Skalkottas’s music, for its energetic forging of a novel, syncretistic, idiom, should appeal to a new generation of listeners. Recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Classical Music

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

In a series that has been called "very important" (Classics Today.com), "of an exceptional level" (Diapason), "always surprising, and certainly ideal" (Répertoire) and "deeply sympathetic" (International Record Review), Miklòs Spànyi has reached the 13th volume, featuring one concerto and two sonatinas for keyboard and orchestra - a genre which, according to the informative liner notes by C.P.E. Bach scholars Jane R. Stevens and Darrell M. Berg, arose as "a direct effort to provide music for a growing concert-going musical public". As might be expected, these are works of immediate appeal, with those trademarks of their composer: the unceasing spirit of innovation and the highly individual use of rhythm and keys. (The opener on this disc is the Sonatina in F major - which actually starts in d minor: a strategy that increases the major mode's feeling of brightness when it belatedly appears.) For those of you who haven't yet discovered the wonderful world of C. P. E. Bach's keyboard works, this is a good place to start; for those who have, prepare yourself for a generous hour of sheer enjoyment!