Classical Music

True connoisseurs know that one of the finest ways to spend thirty or sixty minutes is listening to an excellent recording of a magnificent symphony. They will also know that some of the twentieth century's greatest symphonists have been Scandinavian - Holmboe, Langgaard, Aho, Sæverud, Rosenberg, Nørgård, Englund, Rautavaara, Sallinen, Segerstam, to name at random some very different composers often overshadowed by Sibelius. Prominent in that list must stand the name of Swede Allan Pettersson - any arguments to the contrary are truly obliterated by this recording, the latest volume in BIS's long-winded but compelling series dedicated to this relatively unsung master of the genre.

CPO have already been here and long since left sporting their "First Pettersson Complete Symphonies" t-shirts, yet BIS held their own ace with the previous volume's premiere recording of the composer's unfinished First Symphony, the extensive extant bits and pieces assembled into a more-than-adequate performing edition by Christian Lindberg.

Some of the earlier volumes from both BIS and CPO are compromised to a degree by less than ideal audio engineering, but sound quality on BIS's latest two has been of the finest - the crystal clarity of this latest 'Super Audio' recording is almost matched by the standard stereo of the last.

At any rate, by the time Pettersson reached his Sixth Symphony his imagination had attained a level of ideational and architectural supremacy that many can only dream of. Written typically as a single movement, spanning more than two thousand bars of incredible colour and detail, the Sixth is shorter only than the 70-odd-minute Thirteenth and the 75-minute Ninth in terms of gigantism, but Pettersson never forgets his audience: propelled constantly onwards by the sheer force of musical argument and expression - always fundamentally tonal too - the listener's mind is unable to wander. Moreover, though Pettersson's severe arthritis sentenced him to a painful, almost wretched life, his music does not resort to morbidity or miserabilism. On the other hand, the tone is almost always expansively serious-minded, graphically introspective, post-apocalyptically serene: the symphonies are eerily lifelike in their restriction of genuinely joyous moments. The final ten minutes of the Sixth are devastatingly soulful. This is one of the twentieth century's greatest symphonic works.

The accompanying quadrilingual booklet has a shortish but illuminating essay by Michael Kube. With a terrific performance under Lindberg by the astonishingly talented Norrköping Symphony Orchestra - their second of the year too! - this is one of the recordings of the year.

-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

When Sergei Rachmaninov composed his Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934, it was after an almost complete seven-year silence – so complete that he was thought to have renounced composing. Nevertheless, the Rhapsody was finished in only seven weeks, with a speed that was possibly stimulated by Paganini’s theme itself; taken from the 24th Caprice for solo violin it had already been used by Schumann, Liszt, Brahms and Szymanowski and is ideal for variation. Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody consists of twenty-four continuous variations, of which the 18th has become so popular that it is often included separately in compilations of ‘classical favourites’. The variations fall into larger sections, forming a structure which has caused the work to be called ‘Rachmaninov’s Fifth Piano Concerto’. The soloist on the present recording is Yevgeny Sudbin, whose highly acclaimed discography includes a Rachmaninov solo recital, as well as a recording of the Fourth Piano Concerto described in BBC Music Magazine as an ‘ exhilarating, barnstorming, spine-tingling performance’. The warm reception that the Rhapsody received no doubt spurred Rachmaninov on to the composition of his Third Symphony. The work of a reluctant exile from his native Russia, its themes often have a marked Russian character, but are treated with great ambiguity. One example is the ‘motto theme’ which is heard at the very opening of the symphony, but which cannot be heard for what it really is until the finale (and then only fleetingly): a variant of the Dies iræ theme, which the composer used so often – for instance in the Rhapsody – as a symbol of mortality. With this disc, Lan Shui and his Singapore Symphony Orchestra follow up on their 2008 recording of the composer’s Symphony No.2, which impressed critics around the world, for instance on the website Klassik Heute: ‘Lan Shui allows himself to be guided by the music itself, by its arcs, meanderings, sudden impulses, melancholies and triumphs … and at the same time propels his marvellous orchestra to musical heights from which the entire panorama of this work can be perceived.’

Classical Music

Classical Music

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



REVIEW:

Vanska's Sibelius is all about clarity - of rhythm, of texture, of intention. It is zealously unfussy and entirely without exaggeration. But it can stop you in your tracks. One just knows that the ear-pricking clarity throughout these performances is of Vanska's and not the balance engineer's making.

The suddenness of the hush Vanska manages as we enter the "no-man's-land a few pages into the Third changes the way the air moves in the Minnesota Hall. There really isn't much to say about this performance (of the Sixth), it just feels perfectly balanced - in music as in nature. And the work's evaporating final chord is startling. As for the eleventh-hour resolution into C Major in the Seventh, it is as emphatic as it is precipitous.

– Gramophone

As one of the finest pianists of his era and an improviser of genius, Ludwig van Beethoven’s preferred vehicle for musical exploration was the piano. His earliest composition, from 1782, was a set of piano variations and he continued to compose for solo piano until the last years of his life. His interest in the concerto form diminished as his deafness forced him to retire from performing. Nonetheless, with his five piano concertos composed between 1788 and 1809, Beethoven not only achieved a brilliant conclusion to the Classical piano concerto, but also established a new model for the Romantic era: a sort of symphony with obbligato piano which remained a reference point well into the beginning of the twentieth. Ronald Brautigam has already recorded these seminal works with the Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra, in acclaimed performances released between 2008 and 2010. Since then he has also released all of Beethoven’s solo piano music on the fortepiano to universal praise. When Brautigam now returns to the concertos, it is in the company of conductor Michael Alexander Willens and Die Kolner Akademie playing on period instruments. The same team has previously partnered him in an 11-album survey of Mozart’s piano concertos and it is plain to hear that all involved clearly relish the opportunity to congratulate Beethoven on the eve of his 250th anniversary.

-----

REVIEW:

Textures are bracingly lean, with a lightness and transparency that seems airborne. There’s nothing pompous or heavyhanded in these readings. Both Brautigam and Willens are alive to Beethoven’s every indication on the page, and that most precious of all commodities in music, the life of the phrase, is sacrosanct. Original, stylish and authoritative, this concerto set is a worthy and thought-provoking contribution to the recordings marking the Beethoven year.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The distinguished clarinetist Michael Collins has in recent years also gained recognition as a conductor, appearing with eminent orchestras across the world. The present disc sees his recording debut as a conductor of symphonic repertoire, from which he has chosen Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony - one of the composer's best-loved works. Written during the Second World War and with it's symphonic predecessor displaying a convulsive fury and desolation, the Fifth is surprisingly serene and pastoral. Vaughan Williams dedicated it 'without permission' to Jean Sibelius - who in his diary described his impression on first hearing the work as 'a caress from a summer world.' On the present release, Vaughan Williams is followed by his younger colleague and friend Gerald Finzi, who he once advised to write a symphony: 'They're ever so easy'. Finzi was not convinced, and remains known as a composer of primarily vocal music, but among his few instrumental works is a Concerto for Clarinet, the instrument widely regarded as the most voice-like of all. For this, Michael Collins reverts to his customary role as soloist, conducting the strings of the Philharmonia Orchestra from the clarinet.

Classical Music

Finnish composer Kalevi Aho's Fourth Symphony (1972) contains, in its three movements, elements both typical of his early work and prophetic of things to come. The first movement's fugal exposition reveals a continuation of that concern with musical shape and form already quite evident in Aho's previous symphonies. His skillful use of counterpoint to convey an impression of sadness or dread echoes that great master of creepy fugue writing, Bartók. The second movement unleashes a violent whirlwind of sound very much in the spirit of Mahler's or Shostakovich's more nihilistic moments, and its instrumental virtuosity very much anticipates the composer's most recent, concertante-style symphonic writing. The desolate finale returns to the mood of the first movement, and to another of Aho's characteristic moods: music of stillness, neither happy nor sad, but coolly mysterious, hypnotic, desolate, and almost "Eastern" in effect if not modality. The Chinese Songs--exquisitely delicate, finely chiseled settings of love poetry--wear their orientalisms lightly and naturally; Aho creates an exotic aura through masterful use of instrumental color rather than through tacky excursions into pentatonic clichés. Soprano Tiina Vahevaara sings them very beautifully; the cycle should enter the concert repertoire forthwith.

As always with BIS' recordings in its ongoing Aho cycle, the Lahti Symphony under Osmo Vänskä plays this music with the loving care that comes from close, ongoing association with the composer, and the sonics are marvelous. Important, beautiful music, this. --David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Classical Music