These pieces aren’t nearly so unfamiliar, on disc at least, as they used to be. Metamorphoseon is a theme and variations on an attractive, modal tune. It was commissioned by the Boston Symphony for its 5oth anniversary celebrations, part of an amazing crop of 20th century masterpieces that included Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, Honegger’s First Symphony, Hindemith’s Concert Music for Strings and Brass, Hanson’s Romantic Symphony, Prokofiev’s Fourth Symphony, and Roussel’s Third Symphony. You might call it Respighi’s answer to Elgar’s Enigma Variations in the sense that it’s a rich, colorful, thoroughly symphonic score that hangs together quite well. It deserves to be better known still.

The Ballad of the Gnomes must be Respighi’s least familiar tone poem; it’s only been recorded a couple of times previously. Forget the grotesque story–Mrs. Gnome decapitates Mr. Gnome–and simply enjoy the typically glitzy orchestration and good tunes. We are still waiting for a complete recording of Belkis, Queen of Sheba (the score is now available from Editions Höflich in Munich), and until that comes along this standard, four-movement suite will do nicely.

All of the performances here are expert, but conductor John Neschling deserves particular credit for keeping things movement purposefully forward in the first two long, and mostly slowish, movements of the Belkis suite. The same work’s vulgar (let’s not kid ourselves) concluding Danza orgiastica also sounds more musical than usual–less like a back-alley gang bang–but with no loss of energy. The Liège orchestra plays with great bravura, and BIS’s SACD sonics, typically, are just terrific. In short, a very worthy entry in this ongoing series.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Eivind Groven (1901-70) was an oddity among Norwegian composers. He spent most of his life obsessing about the best chordal structures that would carry the sonority of just intonation into the standard, tempered system of modern tuning, thus reproducing the true sound of folk music more authentically. As with most composers who aren't geniuses and who adopt a restrictive harmonic system, the results have a limited emotional range, but the music is nevertheless curiously compelling: fresh, soulful, and, well, folk-like. Think of a mixture of Vaughan Williams in his pastoral style, but with Copland's feeling for sonority and that "open air" quality to the orchestration. If you like those composers, you're sure to enjoy Groven.


The Hjalarljod Overture was previously released in a collection of Norwegian orchestral favorites, but the remaining items are receiving their first releases by a major label. Groven's First Symphony actually had its premiere in New York. Its four movements show a non-traditional slow-fast-slow-fast approach to form, and have plenty of character otherwise. Of the two remaining works, both based on Norwegian folk dances arranged in single-movement, rhapsodic form (like Bartók's Dance Suite), the first actually borrows from the symphony. Groven apparently spent a good bit of time working out solutions to his harmonization theories by reusing the same material, but the results are sufficiently different to make the outcome interesting and certainly never dull. The performances are very sincere, not to mention well recorded, and are as freshly pointed as the music itself. Curious, quirky, but ultimately very enjoyable!
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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'Finland has Sibelius, Norway has Grieg and Denmark Nielsen - so what about Sweden?' This question, often put to Swedish musicians and music-lovers, is one that has no simple answer. Wilhelm Stenhammar (1871-1927), a personal friend of both Sibelius and Nielsen, would seem to be the obvious candidate - but when his name is suggested the usual reaction is 'Stenhammar who?' It is therefore gratifying that the tide seems to be turning: there is a growing international awareness of Stenhammar's great skills as an orchestrator, and his quite individual approach to the opportunities that offered themselves to composers around the turn of the 20th century. The present recording is an indication of this trend, with a Belgian orchestra - the eminent Royal Flemish Philharmonic - choosing to record three of Stenhammar's orchestral works for its first disc on BIS. Conducting the music of his fellow-Swede is Christian Lindberg, who has collaborated with the orchestra in his three-fold capacity as trombone soloist, composer and conductor. The team has chosen to open with the symphonic overture Excelsior!, composed for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1896. Having made his début as a composer only four years previously, Stenhammar had not yet entirely found his own voice, but the work displays an infectious exuberance and enthusiasm, contrasting with the following, more reflective Interlude from the composer's final large-scale work, the cantata Sången from 1921. Closing the disc is the Serenade in F major, often regarded as Stenhammar's finest orchestral score. Beginning it during an extended visit to Florence in 1907, Stenhammar was hoping to create 'a sort of Florentine dithyramb to spring', but doubts soon made themselves felt: 'I wanted to write so beautifully and tenderly about the South, as only a Northerner is able to. But I don't know if I can.' Premièred in 1913 (with revisions made in 1919), the work has proved to its many admirers that he could - as well as, if not better than, anyone else.

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There have been more than a few excellent recent releases of Grieg’s music for string orchestra, notably on Naxos, including orchestrations of his String Quartet in G minor. The Quartet took a lot of heat when it first came out on account of its acres of double-stops and consequent “orchestral” sound, and truth is that it makes an absolutely terrific piece for larger ensemble, losing very little in translation. Tognetti’s arrangement really is as good as any, and as you can well imagine he has his crack ensemble playing the piece to a fare-thee-well, with all of the passion and drive that one could possibly ask for.

The Naxos releases divided discs between the quartet arrangements (including Grieg’s incomplete Quartet in F major) and all of the remaining works for string orchestra. Tognetti presents a mixture. His arrangement of Erotikk, from the Lyric Pieces, is charming and effective, and rather more sensual than the keyboard original. The Two Elegiac Melodies are touching, fluid, and less heavy in these performances than when played by larger forces; but the highlight of the disc must be the performance of the Holberg Suite.

Even though it has been done to death, this version stands out for the vivacious charm and witty phrasing of its Praeludium (sound sample attached), and for the rustic brilliance of the concluding Rigaudon. In between, the Gavotte also has a welcome spring to its step, and as with the Elegiac Melodies the two slower movements never bog down in excessive sentiment. Mind you, sentiment in this music, and plenty of it, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you are going to use smaller forces, this is surely the way to do it. Sonically, this is absolutely state of the art: clear, pure, and tactile in the best way. If the coupling appeals, go for it.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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’.

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Separately, both Freddy Kempf and the team of Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra under Andrew Litton have recorded music by Prokofiev for BIS, resulting in highly acclaimed releases. Freddy Kempf's 2003 Prokofiev solo recital was described as 'a superb disc' in Gramophone, whose critic went on to write: 'Kempf is joyfully exuberant, flashing through every savage challenge with the assurance and instinct of a born virtuoso.' Four years later, the Bergen orchestra and Litton recorded the twenty movements from the composer's three Romeo and Juliet suites, performed in the order the music appears in the ballet score. The outcome of this original approach was widely praised, for instance by the reviewer on the German website Klassik Heute: "a European top orchestra and an American conductor with great insights into the Russian repertoire meet up, and the result is sparkling, colourful, ardent and with great presence..." Kempf, Litton and the Bergen PO now join forces in an all-Prokofiev programme that includes the most popular of his five piano concertos, namely the Third, a spontaneous work, vigorous and melodic in turns and full of striking material presented in a typical Prokofiev manner. This is coupled with the Second Piano Concerto, which Prokofiev himself premièred in 1913, shocking the audience with its modernistic sounds and jagged rhythms. The original score was lost during the Russian Revolution and Prokofiev reconstructed the work in Paris in 1923. According to the composer himself, the new version was so completely rewritten that it almost constituted a new work. Between the two concertos Freddy Kempf performs the Second Piano Sonata, a key work in Prokofiev's development and full of striking and individual ideas.

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