Classical Music

This retrospective disc presents music composed by the late Elliott Carter over a period of more than 70 years. Unquestionably, the major work presented here is the late Charles Rosen’s performance of Carter’s Piano Concerto. Rosen, a great advocate of Carter’s music, had recorded most of Carter’s solo piano music over the course of his long career, though he never made a studio recording of Carter’s brilliant concerto. The release of this radio recording, featuring the superb Basel Sinfonietta, conducted by Joel Smirnoff, was one of Rosen’s last wishes. Volume 9 of Bridge’s ongoing Carter series opens with vocal works of Carter’s from the 30s and 40s, and proceeds to Steven Beck’s electrifying accounts of late solo piano music, and the Slowind Quintet’s performance of Carter’s quintet, Nine by Five, completed during the composer’s 101st year.

Edward Burlingame Hill is best known today as the teacher of composers Leonard Bernstein, Walter Piston, Roger Sessions, Randall Thompson, Virgil Thomson and Elliott Carter. Hill’s beautifully crafted compositions have fallen off the musical map, a point illustrated by the fact that this recording of his Symphony No. 4, was made following its world premiere performance in 2013, some 72 years after the work’s completion! In his day, Hill was performed regularly- between 1916 and 1949, the Boston Symphony performed his music on 85 occasions. Peter Bay, Anton Nel, and the Austin Symphony give us vivid performances of these fine scores. - Bridge

In his 10/10 review for Classicstoday.com, critic David Hurwitz calls Primakov's Dvorak Concerto recording 'one terrific performance...it's so different from anything else available that it really does offer a fresh view of the work....Primakov's playing is so beautiful, and so captivatingly inflected...The other thing that makes this performance special is the outstanding contribution of Justin Brown and the Odense orchestra. Certainly this must be the finest accompaniment this concerto has yet received, full of color, transparency, fire, and (in the slow movement especially) sensitivity. Perfect balances and ideally natural engineering bathe the performance in a warmly sonorous glow. A magnificent release, surprising in the best possible way.' In the 'Classical Music Sentinel', Jean-Yves Duperron writes: 'In this new recording, the pianist Vassily Primakov negates any doubts as to the quality of Dvorak's writing, and plays this work with the flair and brilliance it deserves. His articulation is clean, his accents are precise, his nuances flow in and out of the orchestral fabric with ease, and his technique is flawless.' Writing in the 'Birmingham News', critic Michael Huebner praises both Primakov and Justin Brown, giving the recording '5 out of 5 Stars'. 'Antonin Dvorak's Piano Concerto receives a vibrant, probing reading that defies its reputation. Brown stakes out the opening movement with clear formal signposts and incisive accents, creating a canvas on which Primakov's painterly solos soar above the orchestra, then bond seamlessly with it. Hearing performances like this, it's a wonder this concerto hasn't garnered the attention it deserves. But it takes a pianist as fearless as Primakov to pull it off this well.' Vassily Primakov brings his formidable pianism to the wonderful, but infrequently performed Dvorak Piano Concerto, playing Dvorak's notoriously fiendish original version. British conductor Justin Brown leads the Odense SO in an impassioned account. Primakov also is heard in five solo pieces from Dvorak's inspired Poetic Tone Pictures, Op. 85.

Jeremy McCoyís new album, Dialogues with Double Bass presents a wide-ranging look at the double bass repertoire. The album highlights two particular themes. The primary notion is highlighting the bass as an equal voice in instrumental duos that are diverse and interesting conversations. A second theme is found in the vocal quality of much of the music. Like Bottesini, one of historyís most famous bass players, who earned his living playing in an opera orchestra, Jeremy McCoy is a seasoned member of New York Cityís Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (the orchestraís assistant principal bassist). The influence of great singing can be heard in McCoyís playing, in the way he shapes a phrase and in the varied tonal colors of his sound. McCoyís wide experience as a soloist, chamber player and orchestral musician, and the expressive range of his instrument, finds him right at home in this engaging collection of eloquent dialogues with the double bass.

The Stuyvesant Quartet was founded in 1938 by violinist Sylvan Shulman and cellist Alan Shulman, and made its first recording for Victor that year. In 1939, the Quartet began recording for Columbia Records. This CD includes studio recordings of works by Malipiero (recorded in 1950), and Debussy and Ravel (recorded between 1951-53), released for the first time on compact disc. Also featured on this CD is a live broadcast performance of the Stuyvesantís performance of Alan Shulmanís Rendezvous featuring clarinet great Benny Goodman. In 1946, Benny Goodman asked the Quartet to join him playing a movement of the Mozart Clarinet Quintet on his weekly radio program. Alan Shulman suggested instead that Goodman commission him to write a short original work for clarinet and string quartet. Goodman agreed, and Shulman composed Rendezvous with Benny, which was premiered over WEAF in August 1946. The Stuyvesant made their final recordings in 1953 for the groupís own label ñ Philharmonia Records. This CD restores to the catalog key recordings by one of mid-20th century Americaís finest chamber ensembles.

Classical Music

Bridge already recorded Unto the Hills, actually the third part of Crumb's epic American Songbook tetralogy, but later decided to rearrange a couple of the songs and add one more number: Down in the Valley/Hush, Little Baby, the latter spoken by the composer himself. Alongside the first cycle in the series, The River of Life, this two-disc set (offered at a special price) comprises works composed expressly for the composer's daughter, singer and actress Ann Crumb. She has a beautiful, non-operatic yet very well-trained voice that's just perfect for this music. Her experience as a jazz singer stands her in particularly good stead in Amazing Grace, the third number in The River of Life, where she ornaments her father's relatively plain vocal line extensively, but wholly idiomatically.

Scored like its predecessor for a splendidly sonorous ensemble of amplified piano and four percussionists, The River of Life focuses on hymns, spirituals, and revival tunes. These include favorites like Shall We Gather at the River?, Nearer, My God to Thee, and Deep River, as well as some that are less familiar. Crumb sets them with his trademark combination of warmth, fantasy, and an aural imagination unique in the annals of music, ancient or contemporary. One More River to Cross, subtitled "A Humoresque", already suggests the rich vein of humor that runs through this collection, but it hardly prepares you for the hilarious ending of Give Me That Old Time Religion, where the singer has to imitate the skipping of a 78rpm record needle (a feat that Ann Crumb manages with effortless glee).

The performances, by singer and ensemble alike, are as close to perfect as makes no difference, and so are the sonics. Even if you already bought Unto the Hills, get this anyway. Crumb is a national treasure, and one of the very few contemporary composers whose new works are worth waiting for. These song cycles are masterpieces, plain and simple, and you must hear them.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Complete Crumb Edition, Volume 8 George Crumb: Makrokosmos, Volumes I and II, for Amplified Piano (1972-73); Robert Shannon, piano; Otherworldly Resonances (2002), for Two Amplified Pianos (premiere recording), Quattro Mani

The latest volume in BRIDGE'S award-winning survey of George Crumb complete works presents a new recording of a major Crumb cycle and the premiere of a new composition for two pianos. Makrokosmos I and II have come to be regarded as landmark compositions in the piano repertoire, requiring the pianist to display a virtuoso's control of both the keyboard and the inside of the piano. In addition, the performer is asked to whistle, speak, and sing, while simultaneously playing some of the most dramatic and fantasy-filled piano music of the late twentieth century. Robert Shannon, a leading exponent of Crumb's music, gives the 67 minute cycle of 24 "zodiac" pieces a spectacular reading. The duo piano team, Quattro Mani, has also had a long association with Crumb's music, and can be heard playing Crumb's music on BRIDGE 9105, a disc that received ‘Best of Year' honors from Fanfare, and highest ratings from France's Repertoire, and the USA's ClassicsToday.com. In 2002, Crumb composed "Otherworldy Resonances", a 10 minute quasi-passacaglia for Quattro Mani. Based on a hypnotic four-note motif, this 10 minute composition marks Crumb's return to writing piano music after a hiatus of nearly 15 years. Both of these recordings, as with the rest of this series, were supervised by the composer.

R E V I E W S

Fanfare magazine
Bridge’s essential Crumb series takes on one of the monuments in the composer’s canon with this release. The Makrokosmos I and II (1972–73) are two sets of 12 piano pieces each (based on the Zodiac), and are perhaps the definitive catalog of Crumb’s re-imagining of the instrument. All the trademark innovations of “extended techniques” are here, from rattling paper threaded through the strings, to interior pizzicatos, to glissando harmonics, to—well, the list just goes on and on. Every movement has surprises; each is a unique, mysterious landscape. There are also highly theatrical gestures, which involve the performer vocalizing with chants, whistles, shouts, whispers, and musically mimetic sounds. I’ll admit that while I believe Crumb is one of the most important American composers of the second half of the 20th century and the creator of some of the most beautiful and imaginative music of our time, these pieces remain somewhat problematic for me. At times, the desire to expand the expressive palette goes so far over the top as to verge on kitsch. This goes especially for the vocalizing, which can sound a little like the soundtrack of those live-action haunted houses that spring up on Halloween. Also, the music is so episodic that it can be hard to feel a formal motivation that is more than the astrological program.

That off my chest, I’ll say that for most of the time I can still sit back and enjoy Crumb’s fertile inventiveness, his desire to stretch boundaries and communicate directly, and the sheer sonic expansiveness of the whole set. One does have a sense of constant surprise and delight that an entire orchestra of colors is extracted from this single instrument. There’s also a genuine tenderness amidst the Grand Guignol moments, a nostalgia for the passage of past beauties (such as when a wisp of Chopin’s Fantasie-Impromptu suddenly emerges and submerges from the depths) that is strangely allied to that of another composer, Valentin Silvestrov. One more point to mention is that the second set seems much more focused and organic than the first. It seems to move faster, even though it is only four minutes shorter in this rendition.

Otherworldly Resonances (2002) is yet another of the wonderful pieces emerging from Crumb’s recent prolificity. His style hasn’t changed much at all—the techniques, the gestures, the melodic and harmonic formulas all remain similar to what they were two to three decades ago—but somehow the music has found a new calm and balance, and has become a little more abstract without losing any luster or poetry. Crumb, one of the most genuinely modest of great artists, would probably be the first to admit he’s not found something new after his great discoveries of the 1960s and 1970s. But that really doesn’t matter, because these new works are strong, individual, and memorable. In them, the composer seems able to accept who he is, and to share his gifts generously. This two-piano work is a compact epilogue to the grand cycles of Makrokosmos III (“Music for a Summer Evening”) and “Celestial Mechanics” (Makrokosmos IV), but extremely effective for its deliberately narrowed focus. A simple four-note ostinato is passed between the keyboards and surrounded with a constantly mutating garland of events—flashes of lightning, lullabies, delicate ornaments. The result is genuinely hypnotic. It should be simplistic, but instead it touches on something more profound.

All the performances are outstanding, but I must give special notice to Robert Shannon, who plays the Makrokosmos with a level of passion and authority that’s breathtaking. His precision and confidence in the inside-the-keyboard techniques makes this fiendishly difficult material sound quite natural, and will help future players codify the music’s performance practice and redefine virtuosity (and I say this with all respect and admiration for the pioneering premiere recordings of the works by their dedicatees, David Burge and Robert Miller; Shannon simply represents the next step of a new generation). His dazzling passagework in the fast sections reminds us how exciting fast Crumb can be, and that the composer is not all laid-back, glacial vistas.

In the end, an important release of enduring music. Where it bumps up against my aesthetic is probably more my issue than the music’s—it is a landmark of the literature, and I suspect it will be around for quite a while after I’m gone.

Robert Carl, FANFARE

Complete Crumb Edition, Volume 7
Unto the Hills
Black Angels
Ann Crumb, soprano
Marcantonio Barone, piano
Orchestra 2001
James Freeman, conductor
The Miró Quartet

Volume Seven of Bridge's Complete Crumb Edition features the world premiere recording of Crumb's new Appalachian folk song cycle, "Unto the Hills". Performed by Crumb's daughter, soprano Ann Crumb, and an ensemble of percussion quartet and amplified piano, the thirty-six minute cycle features spectacularly colorful (more than 75 percussion instruments) and moving renditions of such classic folk tunes as "Black, Black, Black is the Color", "Poor Wayfaring Stranger"," The Riddle", and "All the Pretty Little Horses". Also included on this CD is a stunning new reading of Crumb's classic "Black Angels" for Electric String Quartet. Performed by the brilliant, young Miró Quartet, this performance, supervised by the composer, features a combination of early 21st Century virtuosity and state of the art recording technology.

This selection contains both ADD and DDD recordings.

Volume 18 of Bridge's Complete Crumb Edition features premiere recordings of two recent works ("The Yellow Moon of Andalusia" and "Yesteryear") as well the premiere recording of the recently revised version of a Crumb classic, "Celestial Mechanics". Crumb returns to his favorite poet, Federico Garcia Lorca, for "The Yellow Moon of Andalusia", six settings of English translations of Lorca's work. The performance features the work's dedicatees, the brilliant American soprano Tony Arnold, and the superb pianist, Marcantonio Barone. Mr. Barone follows with Crumb's 'Thelonious Monk variations' for solo piano, "Eine Kleine Mitternachtmusik". Crumb was never satisfied with the ending of "Celestial Mechanics" and re-wrote it in 2012, recorded here for the first time. "Yesteryear" is a vocalise for soprano and three players, dedicated to Ms. Arnold. Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning composer George Crumb, now in his 88th year, continues to compose highly expressive, colorful and dramatic music. This new recording is a must-hear for all fans of a unique voice in contemporary music.

Formerly issued by Arabesque, Bridge is pleased to be bringing this recital back into the catalog in Adam Abeshouse's newly re-mastered update. Sinding's music, once immensely popular, is brought to life in Lowenthal's generously detailed readings. Of particular interest is the rarely performed Sonata, a work of considerable beauty.

The young Russian/American virtuoso, Vassily Primakov, has created an impressive buzz in the classical music world. Of a recent Lincoln Center performance, critic Jeremy Eichler in The New York Times wrote that Primakov "gave a fiery performance of Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto, with bold, expressive phrasing and dramatic commitment that brought the audience to its feet." The International Record Review heaped praise on his Beethoven CD (BRIDGE 9251), writing of the "thoughtful performances from a young musician who is more than a virtuoso." Winner of the Young Concert Artists Competition, Primakov combines deeply personal playing, brilliant technical command, and a seductive tonal palette reminiscent of an earlier era of virtuosi. Primakov's new account of both of the Chopin Concertos was recorded in May of 2008 with the Odense Symphony Orchestra directed by British conductor Paul Mann. Bridge Records is pleased to announce that Vassily Primakov has been signed to make a series of new recordings including upcoming recordings of Chopin Mazurkas; a Tchaikovsky disc with the Sonata, Op. 37, and The Seasons, Op. 37A, and a Mozart Concerto disc with the Concerto in B-flat Major, K. 595; and the Concerto in C Minor, K. 491, with the Odense Symphony Orchestra conducted by Scott Yoo. This new Chopin disc presents Primakov's first concerto recordings.

The Cuban-American virtuoso Horacio Gutiérrez is a legendary figure in the piano world. After taking the Silver Medal at the 1970 Tchaikovsky International Competition, Gutiérrez embarked on an international touring career that saw performances with nearly all of the world's great orchestras and conductors including Maazel, Rostropovich, Masur, Levine, Rozhdestvensky, Ormandy, Gergiev, Ozawa, Previn, Leinsdorf, Tennstedt, Ashkenazy, Barenboim and numerous others. Gutiérrez has recorded very infrequently, and these new recordings reveal a great poet-virtuoso at the height of his musical powers.