Continuing their survey of all of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies in each and every one of their various versions, Markus Poschner and his team now tackle the original 1876 version of Bruckner’s arguably most popular symphony, the Fourth. “1876? Surely you mean 1874!” might the Bruckner-maven go. Well, actually, recent research has brought to light that Bruckner was still fiddling around with his first go at that work, but not so substantially that the changes amounted to a separate version or, for that matter, the 1878 second “standard” version. Paul Hawkshaw’s liner notes detail all the differences if you’re interested – but of course, one can also just enjoy the raw and fresh music of Bruckner’s expansive first ideas.

Martinů is a musical chameleon. On the one hand, there’s an unmistakable from to his output, on the other hand, he would adopt and adapt just about any style that happened to be en vogue or to his liking. These two one-act operas, presented on record for the first time in their respective versions, are a case in point. There’s that cracking little shocker that is Knife Tears (in its original French version), in which Martinů set an absurdist libretto to the sounds of Le Jazz Hot, Stravinsky, and anything in between. This is juxtaposed with the English version of his Comedy on the Bridge (the one that helped this work to brief fame), which is wildly different (if anything more in the style of Hanns Eisler), despite being separated by a mere seven years.

REVIEW:

Martinů’s short one-act operas make for a bright and entertaining double bill, and they receive bright and entertaining performances on this new recording from the Staatsoper Stuttgart under its music director Cornelius Meister. First up is Les larmes du couteau, a surreal farce from 1928 and the height of Martinů’s Paris period...A banjo strums drolly through the chamber-size score; there are the usual foxtrots and at one point the heroine Eléonore slides into a sultry and distinctly Weill-ish song to the moon. This is the first time, apparently, that the opera has been recorded with the original French text and Elena Tsallagova, as Eléonore, makes it sound effortless.

The Comedy on the Bridge is a more substantial proposition, composed as a Czech radio opera in 1935 but revised and staged in the USA in 1951 in the English version that is recorded here. Václav Klicpera’s plot – four characters, in wartime, are given permission to step on to a bridge but are forbidden from leaving it – must have had a personal resonance for the much-exiled Martinů. And yet the musical-dramatic world that he creates is recognisably kin to Smetana and Janáček: the bickering sweethearts, the querulous schoolmaster and the lyrical, dancing warmth that offsets what might otherwise have been a very black comedy indeed. The ensemble cast here sounds fresh and committed, enunciating clearly while Meister finds both the bite and the tenderness in Martinů’s lilting melodies and toytown march tunes. A little gem.

-- Gramophone

After collections celebrating the label’s 40th year that focused on sacred, orchestral, and chamber/soloist music, respectively, Capriccio’s fourth and last Anniversary Box now features the singing stars in the label’s history. There’s that pioneer of ‘counter-tenorism’, Jochen Kowalski, for example. We hear unexpected works from icons like Peter Schreier (with lute accompaniment) and Hermann Prey (singing Operetta music), Italian fare from Alfredo Kraus and Ramón Vargas, and Cecilia Bartoli – discovered and first recorded by Capriccio – in her first (and presumably only) Wagner role! Also opera rarities the kind with which Capriccio made a name for itself – with a cast that would have turned heads even at the finest opera houses.

Having written 11+ very fine romantic symphonies but never getting them played in concert? That’s Raff: Joachim Raff, sometime assistant and orchestrator to Franz Liszt. If the symphonies haven’t yet quite done the trick, maybe his a capella music will. It shows Raff at his most diverse and imaginative best. Vacillating between small-r republican liberalism and intellectual Catholicism, he wrote sacred works and secular political songs of awakening alike. Translated into music, this meant that he drew on the Romantic vernacular of the time but could combine it with his very own take on the Cecilian revival of renaissance polyphony in a way rivaled only decades later, by Hans Pfitzner.

REVIEW:

Joseph Joachim Raff (1822–1882) was born in Lachen, Switzerland. Musically, he was largely self-taught. Musician friendships connected him with Hans von Bülow, Joseph Joachim, Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn. His extensive output includes more than 300 compositions, including 11 symphonies, 6 operas, several solo concertos, chamber music and also, to a more modest extent, choral music. The first compositions of this genre had impressed Liszt, who believed Raff had the potential for a composer of sacred music. But the latter did not follow his mentor with much enthusiasm. The critical Christian was not particularly interested in religion. But then, while rediscovering the catholic faith, he nevertheless took a liking to the idea and composed large choral works with orchestra and also the sacred pieces that can be heard on this CD, but which are preceded by the cycle of Zehn Gesänge. These are sung by the Basel Madrigalists very finely and lively, without pathos. And if the human voice and the manifold possibilities of the choir spurred Raff’s imagination very much, the Basler do justice to the extraordinary richness of color and the various moods of the songs very well.

The extent to which Raff exploited the entire choral sound spectrum in a differentiated manner is also shown by the sacred works, which are sung by the Basel choir very sensitively, but without incense. They hit the simple character of the works without neglecting their hymnal upswing or, where necessary, the spiritualized, divine expression. Technically, the choir sings at a very high level, lean, with suppleness and the best possible balance.

-- Pizzicato

In 1908, Maurice Maeterlinck wrote his play The Blue Bird (L’Oiseau bleu). Having proved a good source of operatic subjects before (Pelléas et Mélisande, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue), it is no surprise that composers jumped at the opportunity to write music to this latest. The French composer Albert Wolff made an opera of it that, though premiered at the MET, has since been forgotten. But even before that, in 1912, Max Reinhardt put it on as an adapted Christmas play in Berlin and he had none less than Engelbert Humperdinck write the incidental music to it. The music was never published until Steffen Tast found the score and salvaged it for us to hear. A sweet story and sweeter still music by Humperdinck newly discovered? Why, that’s in and of itself as though it was Christmas!

REVIEW:

Steffen Tast really deserves credit for restoring this work to the repertoire and for giving such a fine and dedicated traversal of the music. One only has to listen to the stately but regretful theme as the children take leave of their grandparents in the land of memories to get a sense of Mr Tast’s rapport with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin. This music bears a strong resemblance to Mahler, but just until the solo violin takes over with a sentimental theme that is lusciously played by the un-named concertmaster. Tast elegantly shapes the beautifully sketched musical themes for Bread, Fire, Water, and Milk, who all become characters in the play. The Rundfunkchor Berlin gets to briefly display their talents in a Christmas carol arranged in two parts, and then later in a wordless chorus for the expectant mothers welcoming their unborn children. Overall Tast skillfully reveals the richness of Humperdinck’s orchestration in an carefully judged reading of this important score.

-- MusicWeb International

Bruckner revised his Third Symphony more than any other: There are three manuscript versions, two published versions from within his lifetime, a separate manuscript of the Adagio, and surviving revision fragments from 1874, 1875, and 1876. In its first version (here recorded), it is Bruckner’s longest and most overtly Wagnerian symphony. When Brucknerian extraordinaire Robert Simpson got to study Nowak’s edition of this version in 1977, he threw his hitherto held opinions overboard and declared it an “achievement… progressively maimed in successive versions.” As part of this completist cycle, Markus Poschner will present the work in all states of pruning, but this is the obvious point to start at.

Around 1902 Leo Blech nabbed the subject of the “original romantic-comic magic” play by Viennese theater manager/actor/playwright Ferdinand Raimund, had it streamlined, and turned it into his fifth opera. A cantankerous misanthrope terrorizes family and servants with his paranoid mistrust. He’s only cured when faced with his own behavior courtesy of supernatural role reversal. Highbrow opera meets folksy farce with unexpectedly gorgeous, splendidly orchestrated music somewhere between Wagner and Humperdinck. The premiere at the Dresden Court Theater was a sensational success. Then all of Blech’s music was banned and once the Nazi horror was over, it never came back. Now you can hear what we missed.

REVIEW:

Based on a lighthearted Austrian folk play, the opera concerns a bad-tempered misanthrope whose family and servants are terrorized by his paranoid violence. When the mysterious Alpine King sends the misanthrope home, magically disguised as his own brother-in-law, the old curmudgeon witnesses the impact of his behavior and learns to mend his ways.

The prelude opens with ringing horns announcing a bracing theme that reappears throughout as a leitmotif for the supernatural Alpine King. Sweeping strings and harp give way to folkish interludes, ending in a pealing of trumpets. The story begins with an extended lyrical scene full of lively yodeling for the misanthrope’s daughter and her maid. It’s followed by a Tristan-esque duet for Marthe and her devoted lover.

Act II opens with an infectious, folksy trio for a carpenter and his family. It’s pure Humperdinck, and musically witty, too. His subsequent apostrophe to peace and quiet as he settles down in his solitary, newfound home is reminiscent of Hans Sachs’s Flieder monologue. The imposing central encounter between the misanthrope and the Alpine King echoes Alberich and the Wanderer in Siegfried, while their pact to trade places suggests Gunther’s blood-brotherhood oath from Götterdämmerung. If these are lofty comparisons, Blech is not undeserving. His music is good, often very good, skillfully orchestrated and full of memorable tunes. If there is a fault, it’s in Act III. Despite its comic potential, the outcome is too obvious from the start, lowering the dramatic stakes.

Musically, everything is first rate here, with the Sinfonieorchester Aachen (from Blech’s hometown) delivering a thoroughly idiomatic reading of this lively score under the baton of its British music director, Christopher Ward. And the cast is uniformly strong. With his gnarly baritone, Ronan Collett is excellent as the Alpine King, offsetting his nobility with a hint of danger. His fellow baritone Hrólfur Saemundsson is a characterful Rappelkopf, if a trifle woolly at the top.

Sonja Gornik and Anne-Aurore Cochet are outstanding as the practical yet lovelorn Marthe and the flighty, devil-may-care Lieschen. Their voices—Gornik’s warmer and darker, Cochet’s more the classic soubrette—blend magically in duet. As their respective lovers, Tilmann Unger has a bright, thrusting heldentenor that makes a convincing paramour out of the ardent Hans, while Hyunhan Hwang, with a lighter, more lyrical instrument, is perfect for the feckless Habakuk.

The recording is supplemented by two decent but too rum-ti-tum military marches written as German propaganda in 1915. Several operas by composers better known as conductors have come to light recently. On this showing, Blech is one of the more accomplished.

After being forced out of his Soviet-occupied home in Bukovina (Chernivtsi), Radu Paladi was an exceptional, extraordinary talent, whether as a composer, pianist, conductor, or lecturer. In the 1950s, a time that was politically as well as artistically particularly tricky, Radu Paladi managed to find his artistic path and own distinctive voice, incorporating and elevating Romanian folklore in his highly elaborate compositional technique to fascinating effect. His music, combining depth, brilliance, and vitality, spoke to listeners with an immediacy that made hearing his music an exhilarating experience.

REVIEW:

Radu Paladi (1927-2013) was an important musical personality in Romania—as a composer, conductor, interpreter, and pedagogue.

We are dealing here with very expressive music that focuses on emotion.

The piano concerto, with Oliver Triendl as soloist, starts like a whirlwind, and all the musicians put their full energy into this at times ecstatic bundle of music. A wonderful contrast is provided by the second movement, a lament in which soloist and orchestra listen very delicately into the silence. Eugene Tzigane stretches the tension to bursting point and shapes the climax of the movement passionately and stirringly. The finale, in turn, is a single bubbling fountain of virtuosity and tonal brilliance.

No less expressive is the Violin Concerto from 2002, which begins with a moving elegy that suddenly leads into an orchestral outcry. Here, too, the performers live the music with every fiber of their souls, especially again in the slow middle movement. There is a little wink in the finale with the surprising reminiscence of Vivaldi’s Seasons as well as lively folk dances, brilliantly played by Nina Karmon.

The two concerti are accompanied by Eugene Tzigane’s colorful and rousing interpretation of the symphonic suite ‘Das Zauberflötchen’.

-- Fanfare

Capriccio continues to celebrate its 40th anniversary with this retrospective of some of the greatest instrumental recordings in its catalog. The keyboard mavens: Ton Koopman in Bach-Senior, the great Christine Schornsheim in Bach-Sons Concertos, and Tzimon Barto, the muscular master of the soft touch, in Brahms. Wind-aces Burkhard Glaetzner (oboe), Eckart Haupt (flute), and Reinhold Friedrich (trumpet) playing baroque and classical period masters. The trusty Petersen Quartet and the inquisitive Linos Ensemble, who have always been an essential element of the repertoire exploration that soon became Capriccio’s hallmark, and the arch-musician Tabea Zimmermann and Vladimir Spivakov representing true highlights among the high strings. A generous and tasty synopsis of what this plucky label is about!

The closest Leo Blech (1880–1959) gets to fame these days is being mistaken for Ernest Bloch. Actually, some might still remember his seminal work as an opera conductor in Berlin, where he worked for almost half a century (except for the Nazi years, when he lived in exile, avoiding a far worse fate). But his compositions – either operas or involving the voice in some other way – have disappeared from the repertoire. What a shame, because his music is, while less probing than that of his contemporary Bloch’s, very much charming in the style of, say, Humperdinck or Rheinberger. This release constitutes the first part of an upcoming celebration of Blech by Capriccio, which will later release a 2-CD recording of his opera The Alpine King and the Misanthrope.

REVIEW:

In the times we are living through, the music of Leo Blech recorded for this CD could be characterized as eco-music. The majority of the works describe nature in an idyllic, idealized state, as we wish it back only too gladly.

Now Leo Blech had to contend with quite different problems during his lifetime. As a celebrated conductor with Jewish roots, he was ostracized by the Nazis in the mid-1930s, was forced into retirement and went into exile.

For Leo Blech, music and nature were undoubtedly a refuge to a peaceful world. This is reflected in his compositions, beginning on this recording with Waldwanderung, an atmospheric contemplation of nature interpreted by the Aachen Symphony Orchestra under Christopher Ward with fine texture, lyrical wind choir and delicate string sounds.

Overall, we are dealing with extremely sensitive interpretations. Especially in the works with vocal instrumentation, Christopher Ward lets the orchestra sing and the great potential of the wonderful melodies come to full fruition.

The symphonic poem Die Nonne, on the other hand, is gripping and highly dramatic. The historical and emotional connection with Leo Blech, who was born in Aachen, repeatedly drives the entire ensemble to committed interpretations. In the end, the result is a coherent and noble homage to the composer Leo Blech

-- Pizzicato

Sándor Végh, the “arch musician”, was one of those few conductors who possessed that musical je ne sais quoi. Whatever he touched – especially with his Salzburg Camerata – it was always musical, light, exciting. Showing that in music the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that phrasing and sparkle go a long way, he made even the least of Mozart’s Gebrauchsmusik sound like works of flaming genius. This box proves, if it needed proving, that these skills applied to other music, too, from the rest of the First Viennese School to the Second Viennese School and beyond. His Schubert Symphonies are pure classical joy, his Transfigured Night late-Romantic gorgeousness-become-manifest, his Bartók an idiomatically simpatico dreamboat.

REVIEWS:

It is twenty-five years since Sándor Végh’s death and this commemorative box set forms a fitting tribute to him, ranging across music from the Classical era to the mid-20C. Capriccio here presents eight composers on six discs providing six and a half hours of music as testimony to his versatility and artistry.

-- MusicWeb International

Even with such frequently recorded works as those compiled in this edition—they are reissues, of course—one cannot help but be interested in these interpretations, which show a variety of works that Sándor Végh enjoyed conducting.

The Schubert symphonies are particularly well performed, with Végh conducting them in a spiritedly upbeat manner and with incisive rhythm.

Also noteworthy are the recordings of Haydn’s Seven Last Words, Schoenberg’s Transfigured Night, and the works by Bartok and Stravinsky. This begins with a convincing choice of tempo, the ideal breath impulse, the emphasis and is furthered by the care of the tone, the spontaneous way in which the music is played together and an exemplary transparency.

-- Pizzicato

Music by the marvelous, criminally underrated composer and “Aural Alchemist” Charles Koechlin is always a discovery and invariably. “Koechlin can daub with notes as Seurat daubed with bright pigments on canvas [he] could, whenever he wished, bathe his music in the impressionist glories of Debussy and Ravel or give it the delicacy of Fauré and then toughen it up with some Roussel-like grinding rhythms.” (Robert Reilly)

Koechlin is an impressionist dreamboat. With a title like The Seven Stars Symphony (the seven are Douglas Fairbanks, Lilian Harvey, Greta Garbo, Clara Bow, Marlene Dietrich, Emil Jannings and Charlie Chaplin) and following so closely on the heels of the equally enchanting Vers la voûte étoilée (Toward the Vault of the Stars), you’d think the work was some spectacular colorist bonanza of celestial ambitions. Actually, it’s Koechlin’s ode to his favorite film characters as portrayed by these actors – but no less bewitching for it.

REVIEW:

The Basel Symphony Orchestra’s performance under Ariane Matiakh has a wonderful lithe elegance, which matches the beauty and refinement of Koechlin’s writing in every respect.

-- The Guardian (UK)

Charles Koechlin was a prolific composer with a list of works encompassing more than 200 opus numbers. His interest in film stars resulted in several compositions, the most spectacular being The Seven Stars’ Symphony written in 1933. He was a skilled orchestrator as evidenced in this work. He employs a gigantic orchestra, comprising substantially expanded woodwind and brass sections, including an alto saxophone, a large assortment of percussion, and in the third movement, an Ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument, invented just a few years before the work was written. Stylistically there are influences from most French composers, from Berlioz and Fauré (who was his teacher) to a modernist like Messiaen. Formally it isn’t a symphony, rather an orchestral suite in seven movements, each movement a portrait of a famous actor in Hollywood at the time the suite was composed, but all of them are still well-known today. His interest in movies emanated from the then quite recent arrival of the sound film, when he saw The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings.

That [Lilian Harvey] was the ageing composer’s dream-girl, is clear from the second movement of the symphony: jolly and charming, light-toned music with glittering flutes creating an aura around her. It is the shortest movement, lasting just over two minutes. The contrast between Harvey and the cool and mysterious Greta Garbo is striking. This is slow, almost melancholy music, and the use of the Ondes Martenot with its eerie glissandi paints a picture of an icy Nordic princess...Clara Bow['s] movement is racy and full of life – the scherzo of the symphony, and the finale is rather boisterous, presumably illustrating the hectic stream of fan letters – in January 1929 she received 45,000 letters!

...Marlene Dietrich is still well-remembered...Her movement is slow and beautiful with a deep clarinet solo featured. It is a set of variations on a theme that is built on the letters of her name. [Emil] Jannings’ movement is dramatic and dark, and the end is gloomy. The final movement is devoted to Charlie Chaplin, and it is by far the longest, occupying more than one third of the total playing time of over forty-three minutes. Though it refers to some of his merry pranks in silent movies like Gold Fever and Circus, a surprisingly large part of the movement is contemplative and chamber-music like, transparently orchestrated.

This effort by Sinfonieorchester Basel under Ariane Matiakh fills the need [for new recordings] admirably. The playing is excellent and the recording very good. Whether the work is the masterpiece some pundits maintain is another question. Koechlin’s masterly orchestration cannot be called in question, and that is reason enough to wallow in the music...This issue is well worth getting to know.

--MusicWeb International (Göran Forsling)

Hans Winterberg grew up in Prague where he was one of a whole cadre of composers in the new Czech musical tradition. He is one of the few Jewish composers who survived the terror of World War II. His tale of survival is complicated and involved him, as a Czech Jew, having to seek refuge in post-war Germany, whereas contemporaries and colleagues like Viktor Ullmann, Erwin Schulhoff, and Hans Krása died in the concentration camps. He saw his music as “a bridge” between the Slavic East and the West and admitted at one point that his musical starting point was Schoenberg. Audibly more present than Schoenberg, however, is a central European Impressionism, synthesized with complex rhythms.

REVIEWS:

Of these three works, the concerto is the most engaging. With the other two, you can respect the composer’s integrity and firmness in not compromising his vision. That said, they’re best appreciated by dedicated fans of 20th Century modernism as their dense, fragmented, dissonant textures aren’t easy to take straight. The performances sound accomplished. Pianist Jonathan Powell contributes not only a strong reading of a difficult work, but also enlightening program notes on the work itself.

-- American Record Guide

Of its time: the three works here date from 1936 (the First Symphony), 1948 (the first of three piano concertos) and 1966 (Rhythmophonie, a very up-to-the-mark title). Always tonally based at root, the works reflected Winterberg’s stylistic preoccupations and enthusiasms, whether Schoenbergian expressionism in the rather fine symphony, a beguiling mix of neoclassicism and romanticism in the concerto – which deserves to be a hit in this marvelous account by Jonathan Powell – or the slightly self-conscious modernism of Rhythmophonie. The last-named is longer than the symphony and concerto combined, a tour de force, rather choreographic in effect. Its slightly abrupt conclusion is typical of the composer.

-- Gramophone