Classical Music

The Fitzwilliam Virginal book is one of the primary sources of keyboard music. The book, which is now housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, hails from the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods in England. This release features excerpts from the Fitzwilliam Virginal book from composers including Giovanni Picchi, Orlando Gibbons, John Bull, William Bird, and more. English conductor, organist, and harpsichordist Ton Koopman performs the works on this album. He was knighted in 2003, receiving the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and is currently a professor at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.

"•Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942), one of the most important Czech artists in the first half of the 20th century, came into contact with the Dadaists in Dresden after WWI. • For artists scarred by war, Dadaism reflected their attitude towards life which found expression in word and image as glaring derision, scorn and shameless provocation. In this climate, Schulhoff discovered American jazz. • The Piano Concerto, WV 66 is a wild blend of Impressionist, late-Romantic and jazz-inspired sounds and rhythms."

REVIEWS:

[Photoptosis] is usually considered Zimmermann's defining work but never has it sounded so raw-boned and unrelenting: kudos to the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz and Karl-Heinz Steffens for pulling off such a chancy, intrepid performance.

– Gramophone

The symphony is impressively taut and compact...Karl-Heinz Steffens's performance of Stille und Umkehr, Zimmermann's final orchestral work, reveals it to be a haunting and obsessive miniature masterpiece that is hard to forget.

– Guardian (UK)

This set includes 3 CDs and 1 DVD.



RACHMANINOFF Vespers . Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom 1 & • Georgi Robev, cond; Miroslav Popsavov, cond; 1 Bulgarian Natl Ch; Sofia Orthodox Ch 1 • CAPRICCIO 7010 (3 CDs: 173:21)


& DVD, “Mystery of the East” (75:00)


This Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was hailed as the longest version on records (18:6, where I misspelled the conductor’s name) and the Vigil (Vespers) was warmly received when new (20:1), so this makes a valuable coupling. The Liturgy has been offered in varying lengths because the litanies are repetitive but often abbreviated. The recently reissued Martin Best version (32:4) offered as much as could be fitted onto one CD. Popsavov, like Polyansky (16:6), Milkov (16:6), Kocsis (19:6), and Bruffy (20:4), requires two discs in order to extend the litanies and the Cherubic Hymn, which are drastically (some would say mercifully) abbreviated in the single-disc versions. Yet here Popsavov is 12 to 20 minutes longer than any of the other two-disc versions, so it is the logical choice if you want more than Best offers. Another reason to go for this one is the rich Slavic voices of the choir, so satisfying in this music. Best’s choir was as good as the non-Slavic choirs get, but this is extraordinary.


Robev’s Vespers was rated right next to the classic Sveshnikov version, high praise indeed. Like the Liturgy , it was issued without texts or translations, and it had the minor fault of titling the work “Russian Easter Vesper Mass,” both Easter and Mass being incorrect terms. In a box that costs little more than one full-priced single CD, it is no surprise that the texts are still lacking. If you are unfamiliar with the Orthodox liturgy, this is a serious lack, but if you can supply for the lack of texts, this has a claim on your attention for the extended length of the Divine Liturgy.


The DVD included here arrived more recently as a separate issue but never received a review. The two sections of the program were made in Tomsk (Siberia) and Sofia (Bulgaria) in May 2002, but the notes, which are abridged from the original booklet, write only about Tomsk. The city was built in 1604 and the monastery of Our Lady and St. Alexei was built at once. The city also has the tomb of Tsar Alexander I, who, after his reputed death in 1825, is widely believed to have lived in Tomsk as Feodor Kusmich. He died in 1864 (the Britannica of 1911 called him Fomich and gave his date of death incorrectly as 1870) and was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1984. The documentary 45-minute segment on Easter at Tomsk is narrated with a generic background of liturgical singing, while the 30-minute concert in Sofia (Hristov, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Kedrov) has the camera moving from the choir to the church interiors in familiar fashion. The Tomsk segment is expertly done, giving a real understanding of life in a Siberian city where the Orthodox faith appears to be strong. At the price, this is quite a generous offering.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber

Concerto Koln - today the name of this ensemble of young musicians is synonymous with a special way of performing music, mainly of the 16th and 17th centuries. With impressive skills, technique and drive they certainly open your ears to what you thought was boringly familiar by making it sound like it had never sounded before. There is no conductor, spontaneity in action and accepting responsibilities for the common goal are asked for and make for the ultimate result. Each interpretation is a unique event. Live concerts are adventures for eyes and ears. Music for Concerto Koln is an exciting adventure with every member participating creatively by using his imagination, liveliness and team spirit. On the present album, the ensemble presents works by Vivaldi, Bach and his sons, Kraus, Mozart, and more.

Past praise of previously released volumes included in this set:

Italian Concertos - Durante, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Leo

This is a set that you can’t afford to pass up. Sensible size—17 players—sane tempos, and sure technique distinguish these performances by Concerto Köln under its leader for this collection, Werner Ehrhardt.

– Fanfare

Gossec: Symphonies / Werner, Concerto Koln

The two central works, each in three movements, are exceptionally compact while remaining gently amiable. This lively music heard in lively music-making. It draws on an amiable personality who mines both serene dignity and regal grace.

– MusicWeb International

Since the revival of so-called Entartete Musik in the 1990s, interest in Karl Ignaz Weigl’s music has grown but he still remains a largely unknown figure to most listeners. Weigl was born in Vienna in February 1881 and had private composition lessons with Alexander Zemlinsky, a family friend. By the early-1920s, Weigl was an established figure in the musical landscape of Vienna and it was probably for this reason that he was approached by the one-armed pianist Paul Wittgenstein to compose a left-hand piano concerto. Paul’s family fortune enabled him to commission some of the most eminent composers of the day to write works specially for him: Korngold, Britten, Hindemith, Prokofiev, Ravel, Franz Schmidt, Richard Strauss and Karl Weigl.

Unfortunately, for reasons unknown, Wittgenstein failed to perform Weigl’s concerto. Thus it was that the concerto received its belated premiere in 2002 in Vienna by Florian Krumpöck, the soloist on the present recording. Despite his no doubt discouraging experience with Wittgenstein, Weigl returned to the concerto medium four years later with a violin concerto.

It can be hoped that recordings such as the present one will help to further draw attention to his large and varied output which may yet contribute to the repertoire it was designed to enrich. - Capriccio

This world premiere recording of Schmidt's Notre Dame is dominated not by Paris or Quasimodo, but by Esmeralda, played by Gwyneth Jones. She is the center of the stories which make up the plot and the Esmeralda motif is the principal theme of the opera.

'Mar�a de Buenos Aires brought me inner peace, a partial serenity that has changed my way of approaching music. I reached the zenith of my musical life at the time. (Astor Piazzolla) Piazzolla himself equated Mar�a to the tango and it's historical ups and downs; and this is probably also the primary aid to understanding the reception of the contents of the piece. Next to that, there is also a musical diction that is entirely unique in the second half of the 20th century, indeed in the New Music scene as a whole. 'I learnt something: to be patient, to be self-critical, to co-ordinate reflection with passion. Now I am told: 'That is a different Piazzolla', but that is not the case. I am the same man, but I have reached a synthesis'. (Astor Piazzolla)

OPERA ARIAS • Ramón Vargas (ten); Riccardo Frizza, cond; Budapest SO • CAPRICCIO 5165 (48:01)


PONCHIELLI La Gioconda: Cielo e mar. VERDI Simon Boccanegra: O inferno!…Cielo pietoso. I due Foscari: Notte!…perpetua notte. BOITO Mefistofele: Dai campi, dai prati; Giunto sul passo estremo. PUCCINI Tosca: Recondita armonia; E lucevan le stelle. Turandot: Nessun dorma. CILEA L’Arlesiana: E la solita storia. GOUNOD Faust: Salut, demeure. MASSENET Werther: Pourquoi ma réveiller. BERLIOZ La damnation de Faust: Nature immense!


In my review of Piotr Becza?a’s Verdi aria recital in this issue, I complained not only of his tone, which tends to be on the wiry side, but moreso of his tendency to belt everything without subtlety or interpretation, often sounding as if he were at the end of his tether. One encounters no such problems with Ramón Vargas who, as I’ve said in the past, is the Jussi Björling of the modern day. Like Björling, Vargas has an interesting and immediately recognizable voice, superb in its placement, breath control, and highly musical in phrasing; and, even more than Björling, Vargas is a consistently interesting and intense interpreter. Yes, there are Björling performances that are indeed beyond compare: the 1949 Met Manon Lescaut, his studio recording of Pagliacci, and the 1959 Met Cavalleria rusticana, but in so many others he is just a gorgeous voice singing beautifully. Vargas is, and remains, a more consistent interpreter.


That being said, it was evident to me when listening to this CD that some of these arias were recorded on different days from the rest of the album, particularly the opening “Cielo e mar.” Here, although Vargas does not sound at the end of his tether, he does show some evidence of vocal strain. The voice simply didn’t come out well that day, and thus in this aria he compares more to the Björling of 1957-60, when vocal strain came and went in his voice due to increasing heart problems. Vargas sounds similarly a bit rough in “Recondita armonia” from Tosca. But he is simply magnificent, refulgent in tone and interesting in his phrasing, throughout the Simon Boccanegra aria, and his performances of the two Mefistofele arias are even more sensitively phrased than Caruso’s. “E la solita storia” is an extraordinarily difficult aria to sing, not because of its demands on vocal range as much as for its demands on sensitivity of expression. Björling, to me, got a D+ for his recorded performance of it (he even stuck in an extra belted high note at the end), whereas young Nicolai Gedda gets an A- (not quite as firm of voice as he later became, but sensitive to text throughout). Vargas gets a C+ from me, better than Björling but not nearly as fine as Gedda: The soft phrasing at the end of the second verse is superb, and redeems his earlier loudness.


Another difficult aria to pull off is “Salut, demeure.” I’ve heard hundreds of uninteresting versions (including all of Björling’s, but also Gedda’s, Caruso’s, etc.) and only two really great ones, Georges Thill and Jerry Hadley. Again, Vargas falls somewhere in between these two extremes. He does try to bring some interpretive qualities to the text, but is not as consistently sensitive or fascinating as Thill or Hadley. I did not appreciate the full-voiced, belted high C, although he does round off the aria with some exquisite soft singing. “E lucevan le stelle” gets its usual over-wrought interpretation here. On the other hand, Werther’s “Pourquoi ma réveiller” is sung with both superbly controlled drama and superb phrasing, an excellent version. I was most curious to hear Vargas sing “Nature immense!,” an aria that I would not personally associate with him. Vargas brings his own brand of Latin temperament to this quintessentially French aria, but being Berlioz, this is not at all out of place. I liked it very much, so much so that I wish he would record the whole piece, perhaps with a mezzo of the quality of Susan Graham.


The tenor aria from Verdi’s early opera I due Foscari is obscure enough that, unless you are a fan of the opera, you probably won’t know it well, but Vargas invests it with middle-period-Verdian intensity and thus makes something interesting out of it. He wraps up his recital with the omnipresent (nowadays) “Nessun dorma,” and here he even surpasses Björling in his sensitivity of phrasing, rounding off many phrases with exquisite diminuendos, and never sounds strained beyond his limits in the climaxes.


Despite my enthusiasm for Vargas in general, I cannot say much in favor of Frizza’s conducting. His phrasing was, to my ears, consistently plodding, lumpy, and uninteresting. Compared to him, Nils Grevillius (the conductor on most of Björling’s 78-rpm recordings) was Toscanini. Nevertheless, I hope I have made it clear that in general I am very enthusiastic about this recital.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

J. C. F. BACH Pygmalion. 1 Die Amerikanerin. 2 Ino 2 • Hermann Max, cond; Barbara Schlick (sop); 2 Harry van der Kamp (bs); 1 Das Kleine Konzert (period instruments) • CAPRICCIO 5015 (73:23 Text and Translation)


Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach was the eldest surviving son of Johann Sebastian Bach and his second wife, Anna Magdalena. In 1750, at only 17 years of age, he accepted an appointment as a chamber musician to the cultivated court of Count Wilhelm of Schaumburg-Lippe in Bückeburg, where he remained until his death in 1795. In 1759, he was promoted to concertmaster, which made him director of the court music. The Count’s musical taste tended to the Italian style, to which Friedrich Bach had to adapt the north German style he had learned from his father. The music on this disc sounds much like the early Classical vocal music of his brother Johann Christian and of the early Mozart.


The three solo cantatas on this disc, also referred to as “monodramas,” are vocally attractive and well constructed. Bach’s response to the dramatic opportunities provided in two of the cantatas makes me wonder what he would have done with an operatic text. Two of these works present familiar stories. In Pygmalion , the sculptor carves an image in the shape of his sister (a theme ripe for modern psychoanalysts) that he begs Venus to bring to life, which request is eventually granted. The centerpiece of the work is an 11-minute movement combining recitative, accompanied recitative, and arioso as Pygmalion entreats and curses the goddess, fears the consequences as the ground shakes and lightening flashes, and imagines his wish has been granted. Harry van der Kamp is equal to the musical and dramatic challenges of the work, with a beautiful voice strong throughout its range.


Der Amerikanerin has nothing whatsoever to do with the United States. Originally entitled A Moor’s Song , it is described as a “lyric picture” and is a song of longing for a lost maiden named Saide. It was published in 1776 with the title The American Girl , perhaps in tribute to the American colonies’ declaration of independence from Britain. Although not dramatic, it contains an agreeable flow of lovely Italianate melody. Ino , on the other hand, returns to the dramatic realm of Pygmalion . Ino, the sister of Semele, has fled from her husband Athamas, who has been driven mad by Hera as part of her revenge on the family of Semele for Semele’s affair with Zeus. Athamas has killed one of the couple’s sons and is seeking to kill the other. Ino, driven to a cliff, jumps into the sea, where she is saved by Poseidon and she and her son are turned into sea gods. Barbara Schlick sings both cantatas with technical aplomb, but is less alive to the dramatic possibilities of Ino than she could be.


Hermann Max and Das Kleine Konzert, familiar from many recordings, contribute their usual excellent services. This reissued recording, offered at midprice, is well worth acquiring.


FANFARE: Ron Salemi

WELLESZ Piano Concerto , op. 49 1; Violin Concerto , op. 84 2 • 1 Margarete Babinsky (piano); 2 David Frühwirt (vn); Roger Epple, cond; RSO Berlin • CAPRICCIO 5027 (53:15)


Egon Wellesz, born in Vienna in 1885, is among the group of composers of “degenerate art” who survived the Nazi era physically, but not artistically. Like Braunfels, Zeisl, Mittler, or to a lesser degree Hartmann, his music died twice: once when the Nazis declared it “degenerate” and forced him into emigration, then again when the heavily subsidized postwar arts scene thought him not “degenerate” enough—too tonal, too beholden to music rather than organized sound. Even the many, many honors he received in the 50s, 60s, and 70s—in that sense he was luckier than many a colleague with a similar fate—smacked of guilt and placation, not genuine interest in his œuvre.


Wellesz was taught by Guido Adler (also Webern’s professor), became one of the first private students of Schoenberg, and later Schoenberg’s first biographer. In 1974 he died a CBO scholar in Oxford but was buried in his unappreciative home town, Vienna.


On this disc, further exploring “lost” 20th-century repertoire, Capriccio presents a piano concerto that decidedly, finally, doesn’t remind me of Ravel’s! Not that I don’t adore Ravel’s piano concertos to pieces; I do. It’s just that it started to seem like a strange running joke how anything from Zeisl to von Einem ( Fanfare 33:6) to Krenz ( Fanfare 33:2) seemed to remind of Ravel’s G-Major work. Wellesz doesn’t, partly because of his bold writing for piano and a more reticent orchestral part. From the first movement’s unhurried orchestral introduction over an impatient, then calming piano part, to the sudden spunk that picks up at around the two-minute mark, there is little that would immediately, much less invariably, remind one of any other composer. The virtuosic spikes that the pianist traverses, meanwhile, don’t just strike me as jazzy because I am listening to it (and writing this) as I am at a jazz festival in Bolzano, between gigs in this medieval town in South Tyrol. Pianistic ruminations and short orchestra exclamation marks take turns, with much of the material given to the solo piano. The five-minute, unintrusive slow second movement has the ability to just flit by if you don’t pay attention. The orchestra attempts to wax lyrically; the piano interrupts with coy runs. The third movement takes over stealthily with another slow introduction before virtuosity breaks through once again, pulling through to the end with some rambunctiousness and grand gestures. All together the work is not, to my ears, as wholly marvelous a discovery as Eric Zeisl’s (cpo 777226), to mention just an even more obscure work from a composer with a similar-enough biography. But it’s well worth listening to if concertos in general, and that lost period of music in particular, are of interest to you.


The same verdict stands for the Violin Concerto from 1961—even though it is considerably different in style. If you know Wellesz’s symphonies (also on cpo), you will have noticed a distinct break between the essentially late-Romantic symphonies Nos. 1 through 4 and the more explicitly modern Nos. 5 through 8. Wellesz called his Violin Concerto the brother of his Fifth Symphony and that is reflected by a greater—belated, if you will—incorporation of some elements of the serialist school. All movements are based on the same material, albeit a situation that Wellesz claimed to have discovered only after the fact.


The work manages to suggest density while retaining clear lines, and it is—at four movements—considerably more expansive than the Piano Concerto. After its premiere it was favorably compared to Berg (which it obliquely refers to) and Schoenberg. I don’t hear the beauty in it that I hear in the Berg (which, it should be pointed out, benefits from the advantage of far greater exposure, familiarity, and tons of wonderful recordings). It also seems less austere than Schoenberg’s concerto. Listeners who can just be brought to enjoy or accept the harmonic language of the Piano Concerto will find the Violin Concerto less attractive; tougher listening. But with some good will they should be able to access that work, too … especially via the Andante sostenuto, the fourth and last movement which, a terse and frenzied cadenza apart, has repose and considerable lyricism to offer. The violin part in the first movement has a good deal of electric, buzzing moments that are highly enjoyable. For getting to know the composer Wellesz, I’d start with the symphonies, but if they have turned you on already, then his two full-size concertos will be a mandatory expansion pack.


I know it must be frustrating for soloists or ensemble musicians when their work is done away with in one sentence, only because they are not famous enough to have pre-impressed the critic. This kindly dismissal usually takes place with adjectives like “adequate” or “perfectly acceptable.” Unfortunately for lack of comparison, knowledge of the score, and any immediately sensed enthusiasm about the playing (as in the Wetzler recording— Fanfare 33:4—for example), that’s exactly what I’ll have to do. Certainly the soloists Margarete Babinsky, David Frühwirt, or the Berlin RSO under Roger Epple don’t stand in the way of enjoyment.


FANFARE: Jens F. Laurson

Commissioned in 1885 by Great Britain, Anton Dvorak’s The Spectre’s Bride had huge success immediately upon its premiere. The story is of a girl whose dead lover returns to lead her from her home, forcing her to leave behind her prayer book, rosary, and cross. When she is led to his open grave, she flees and is eventually saved by some churchgoers. At the premiere, Dvorak conducted a 400-voice choir and an orchestra consisting of 150 musicians. Many performances across Europe and in the United States followed, cementing Dvorak’s prominence and popularity across the English-speaking world. Dvorak himself wrote: “I just cannot tell you how much these British honor and like me! Everywhere, they are writing and talking about me, saying I am the lion of this year’s musical season in London.” Here the work is performed by the Wiener Singakademie and the Orf Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Cornelius Meister.

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Simona Šaturová is pure and innocent as the girl but thrills when she throttles up. Pavol Breslik is smooth and eager as her ghostly spouse, Adam Plachetka sage-like as the narrator. A nice little discovery.

– Gramophone

There could be the dramatic skeleton of an opera lurking beneath the cantata veneer of The Spectre’s Bride, a work based on a poem about a young girl who is abducted by a ghost she believes to be the spirit of her lover. There are shapely solo contributions from the ORF orchestra, and certainly some very fine expressive singing from soprano Simona Šaturová as the girl and tenor Pavol Breslik as the spectre.

– Guardian (UK)

Among his contemporary countrymen, the Russian Alexander Mosolov (1900-73) certainly underwent one of the most individual of developments. However unknown most of his compositions have remained during and after the Soviet Union and abroad, then and since, a single piece has ensured that his name has stayed lastingly present - the Iron Foundry from the ballet "Steel" (1926/27). It clearly ran contrary to the demands of 'Socialist Realism', gradually becoming established in the post-revolutionary Soviet Union and finally declared the official dogma by the authorities in 1932. Whereas the state demanded a kind of music that was easy to receive and could be directly accepted by broad sections of the population, some young composers saw themselves facing the challenge of keeping pace with the international avant-garde and adding a separate Russian and Soviet form. Also active as a music official, Mosolov quickly found recognition within the young Moscow music scene. He soon worked for the Assoc. Of Contemporary Music (ASM) and got to know many foreign colleagues, whose works were performed in Russia at the time not least due to his efforts, including Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith, Alfredo Casella, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger

Trade Mark "Bad Boy" - After all the experimental episodes the audience has faced in the field of New Music in recent decades, today the oeuvre of George Antheil will be welcomed with a great deal of sympathy and many a friendly smile. The American knew full well not only how to meet the expectations of an audience "prepared to protest", but also how even to challenge them more overtly. An excellent example is the Jazz Symphony, written in 1925, shortly after George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, that bursting the limits of the customary listening experiences of teh age in a similar way to e.g. Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps of 1913.

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REVIEW:

Thanks in large part to Karl-Heinz Steffens’s interpretation, I’d argue that A Jazz Symphony, despite its blatant references to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, are woven inextricably into the music’s narrative structure. Steffens underscores the work’s unifying characteristics rather than emphasizing its incongruities.

Pianist Frank Dupree’s finely chiseled performance in the First Piano Concerto maintains a tighter grip overall than any of his rivals.

– Gramophone