Little did I know when in February I wrote about the Chandos version of this opera (ABR1019), based on an Adelaide Festival production, that an all-star recording, long needed, was so close at hand. That Australian version—John Culshaw's last production—had admirably clear recording as well as crisp orchestral playing, but it was seriously flawed in the singing. That alone would put the new CBS issue with its exceptionally strong trio of soloists into a different category, but the conducting of Lorin Maazel too transforms what I have always thought of as a piece too shortwinded dramatically, seriously lacking in detail of plot and characterization. Maazel with his incisive manner, which yet allows more rubato and more expressiveness than in some of his earlier Puccini recordings for CBS, makes one think of that shortwindedness as economy, a refreshing directness in telling the bald story (parallel with Giselle) of the girl who dies of love and as a spirit in the Black Forest clasps back her faithless (if repentant) lover in death. Here in other words, as Puccini's first operatic essay (in its final revision) is a piece which encapsulates a whole love affair within an hour, concentrating only on bare essentials.

Admirable as the orchestral ensemble was in the Chandos version, the playing of the National Philharmonic here is far subtler with the sharp syncopations characteristic of the piece (particularly in the cross-rhythms of the dances of the spirits, "La tregenda") punched home with much more bite. Maazel is excellent too in drawing out the individuality of the soloists without allowing self-indulgent phrasing of the kind which consistently marred the Australian performance. In Adelaide the soloists tried to make up for their vocal shortcomings by adopting an exaggeratedly grand manner, and the ease and assurance of Scotto, Domingo and Nucci here, as well as their vocal richness, transforms each Puccinian melody. The tunes still often sound more like Mascagni than genuine Puccini, but in this performance at least I find they catch readily in the mind, above all the love duet theme of the first scene which returns, suitably elaborated, at the beginning of the final duet when the spirit of Anna, the heroine, has declared that she is no longer love but revenge.

Though Scotto's voice as usual these days tends to spread at the top of the stave, this is one of the richest and warmest performances I have heard from her for some time, while Domingo as Roberto, rich and firm, manages to bring out the attractive anticipations of Des Grieux's music in Manon Lescaut. Leo Nucci as the hero's father avoids false melodrama in the set-piece aria of Act 2 immediately after the central symphonic interlude, with characteristic tone rather like Cappuccilli's. And if all this was not commendation enough, there is a delightful vignette from Tito Gobbi resonantly speaking the verses (omitted from the Chandos version) which come as a melodrama over the Prelude to Act 2 and then immediately before "La tregenda". The recording, not so sharply detailed as the Australian one, is yet far more spaciously atmospheric, with the chorus—the Ambrosians in excellent, incisive form—far more convincingly placed, not least in the eerie off-stage passages. I now want to see Le villi given on stage in a performance of comparable quality.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [5/1981]

With a collection of titles, if the programme is well played and recorded one can only come up with the usual line of "go ahead if this is the selection you want". Three out of the four overtures here are early ones and for myself, I must say that the mellow blend of the orchestration of the Prelude to Die Meistersinger was a considerable relief after the brashness of Rienzi. But that the playing is fine cannot be denied. The Philharmonia violins sing the "Prize Song" with a softly expressive silkiness of tone that is most beautiful. The quiet blend of the wind at the start of Tannhduser is equally good to hear, while when the "Pilgrims' Hymn" returns towards the end all bombast is avoided by the soft and deft violin figuration being so delicate that the woodwinds can also play softly, as well as quite swiftly. Maazel does allow the greatest expansiveness later on, as the music demands. Nor is there any lack of brilliance or zest in such a piece as the Dutchman Overture or in the final polacca of Rienzi; though there is a top B just before the final molts put stretto (bar 344) where violins and woodwind do take a split second to become unanimous (not such a niggling criticism as it may seem, since the note is quite long and is an important one at the top of a climax).

-- Gramophone [3/1980]

These performances are distinguished by their clean textures, rhythmic precision, and some spectacular high horn-playing. It would be hard to imagine performances of more freshness and conviction.

The most remarkable of [these works] are the two minor-key symphonies that reflect the influence of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") movement in German literature of the time: the impassioned No. 39 in G minor with its four horns, which inspired similar works in the same key by J. C. Bach, Vanhal and Mozart, and the sombre No, 49 in F minor, known as La passione and the last and greatest of Haydn's symphonies in the form of the sonata do chiesa (with the slow movement placed first). Of the other four works, No. 38 in C - in Haydn's festive manner - with trumpets and drums and C alto horns, is particularly striking not least because of its stunning, concertonle oboe solo in the finale, probably written, as H. C. Robbins Landon suggests in the accompanying booklet, to show oft the Esterházy orchestra's new oboist Vittorino Colombazzo. No. 59 in A, known as the Fire for reasons that remain obscure, is full of excitement and dramatic surprises, such as the totally unexpected entry of the oboes and horns two-thirds of the way through the slow movement, and the extraordinary fortissimo horn call that interrupts the return of the main theme a few bars later. No. 35 in B flat is on the whole a sunny, exuberant work, though with an unexpected outburst of passionate counterpoint in the first movement's development section; and No. 58 in F has an almost chamber-musical intimacy and boasts an amusing menuet alla zoppa ("Limping Minuet") that frames a dark-hued Trio that sounds, in Landon's words,, "rather as if a group of slightly sinister Gypsies had suddently entered the feast".

The performances are distinguished by their clean textures, rhythmic precision and nice feeling for tempo; there is a tasteful, and never obtrusive, harpsichord continuo and some spectacular high horn-playing. Perhaps the two minor-key symphonies could do with rather more weight and intensity, but on the whole it would be hard to imagine performances of more freshness and conviction. Even the tendency towards short-breathed phrases in the slow movements and to vibrato-less bulges in the string playing seem less noticeable than before. The recording is every bit as vivid as were the earlier ones [released on Saga Records, now unavailable]—and that is high praise.

-- Gramophone [7/1982]

For those who specifically want a CD of trio sonatas by J. S. Bach & Sons and who prefer stylish playing on modern instruments to the extremes of unabashed Romanticizing or outand-out authenticity, this may be an attractive prospect. As MM observed, the Sonata by Carl Philipp Emanuel is particularly fine, and the unfinished Larghetto of Wilhelm Friedemann's is distinctly haunting.

Jean-Pierre Rampal's flute sound falls gratefully on the ear, more so than the harpsichord continuo or than Isaac Stern's violin. The latter has a slightly fierce, synthetic quality which negates the many sensitive touches in the playing. On CD at least balance is less sympathetic to the flute in the J. S. and C. P. E. works than in Johann Christoph Friedrich's Sonata, whose galante charms are helped along by an attractive fortepiano continuo.

-- Gramophone [11/1985]

"Urgently eloquent." -- Gramophone [4/1987]

"Concentrated expressive intensity." -- Gramophone [11/1990]

"The Wanderer Fantasy is one of Schubert's most striking architectural achievements, and Perahia's intellectually rewarding account of it offers a vivid portrayal of the music's constantly evolving thematic structure." -- Gramophone [10/1995]

At his best, Serkin's driving energy, fierce intelligence, and his unfailing lucidity of touch produced recordings that do that rare thing: they transcend the medium. This is one such.

Serkin is said to have disliked recording and his legacy is mixed, technically and artistically. Yet, at best, his driving energy, his fierce intelligence, his quick mind, and (until comparatively recently) his unfailing lucidity of touch often produced recordings that do that rare thing: they transcend the medium.

One such recording is his 1968 Cleveland account of Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto which Sony have recently reissued...coupled with another Serkin speciality, Richard Strauss's Burleske for piano and orchestra. Serkin "at the peak of his form, emotionally, intellectually, and technically" is how Trevor Harvey described the performance in these columns in May 1969 and I wouldn't disagree with that. From the piano's first entry it is evident that we are in the presence of a musical plain-dealer who is something more besides. The touch is plain but never monochrome, resolute but never harsh. There are miracles of dynamic shading yet dynamic changes that are elementally swift and steep. Above all, there is a revelatory way with rhythm, full of potency and drive in quicker music, and turning the more reflective passages into slow sustained acts of transcendental enquiry. As a reading this has something of Arrau's weight and profundity (Philips D 420 702-2PSL, 11/87) matched to Curzon's lyricism and sense of forward drive (Decca D 417 641-2DH, 10/87, also conducted by Szell). It is not better than either but it has some of the best qualities of both. There are those, it must be said, who are distracted by Serkin's stamping pedalwork and by breathing that has Serkin, like Arrau, cross-hatching the lie of a phrase with his own peculiar form of musical emphysema. Such things don't worry me unduly. You can't expect a man to go up the north face of the Eiger, silently, in carpet-slippers; and, in the slow movement, I find the counterpointing of Serkin's stressful breathing, with the sublimely conjured and spun melody that floats from it, to be a moving re-enactment of the composer's own recalcitrance in the face of the brute marble out of which this concerto is sculpted.

Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra are, needless to say, superb accompanists, and the sound is excellent in an appropriately forthright way, with pianissimos that are not so much pianissimo as properly hushed and innig. I don't agree with the reviewer who found Serkin's account of the Strauss Burleske to be lacking in poetry. Rather, it glints; it is sharp and witty. Above all, the performance redeems the work from its principal failing: the sense it can give of being marginally but fatally over length... [I]f you want a truly worthy memorial of this great pianist from the current batch, there is absolutely no doubt that the Brahms/Strauss disc is the one to have.

-- Gramophone [7/1991]

It's refreshing and invigorating to have a taut unyielding view of a fine score. This recording should win converts among those who still regard Puccini as merely soft and sentimental.

Rather as I expected, the reissue of Lorin Maazel's three recent recordings of Puccini's one-acters as a co-ordinated box of the Trittico sharply brings out the conductor's distinctive approach. It is an approach which is typified by the very start of Gianni Schicchi, where there is an almost Stravinskian sharpness in the ostinato rhythms. Generally Maazel's concessions to romantic expressiveness are calculated rather than obviously warm. This degree of severity has the merit of underlining the musical cogency of all three pieces, splendid examples of Puccini's mastery at his high maturity, and Suor Angelica—wrongly regarded for far too long as a limp piece of sentimentality —benefits just as much as either of the others with the succeeding climaxes spaced in carefully balanced relationship.

The snag is that particularly with CBS's somewhat close recording balance, the atmospheric qualities of each opera—which some Puccinians would regard as among their highest merits—are underplayed. When I first reviewed Il tabarro, this absence of essential atmosphere made me give a less charitable review than I would now. Hearing it in context with the other performances, it is refreshing and invigorating to have a taut and relatively unyielding view of a fine score, even while one misses the dark evocations of the scene under a bridge of the Seine in Paris, which other versions so vividly capture.

The other gain from hearing the performances together is to have the dominance of Renata Scotto reinforced in both It tabarro and Suor Angelica. In Il tabarro neither Placido Domingo as Luigi (not quite in his warmest voice) nor Ingvar Wixell as the bargemaster Michele (rather too gritty-toned as recorded) is exactly a cipher, but Renata Scotto consistently focuses the centre of involvement with her dramatic and finely detailed singing.

In Gianni Schicchi the central pivot is provided of course by the contribution of the veteran Tito Gobbi, and though there may be some signs of the voice not being as young as it was, it is a deeply satisfying performance, as fine in its way as the classic one he recorded for HMV 20 years earlier. That HMV version is included in the boxed reissue set of Il trittico which appeared two years ago (SLS5066, 10/76), with all three operas given marvellous performances but with very dated recording and only Schicchi in stereo. The Decca set under Gardelli (SET 236-8, 12/62) is more idiomatic in performance than this Maazel CBS issue, and the sixties recording is amazingly bright and full for its age. But the new issue, controversial as it may be in some ways, is certainly refreshing, and should in particular win converts among those who still regard Puccini as merely soft and sentimental.

-- Gramophone [8/1978, reviewing the LP release of Il Trittico]

Having admitted to only qualified enthusiasm for Dame Kiri's recent CD albums of popular repertoire and folk-songs, it is a pleasure to recommend this programme of Verdi and Puccini arias without reservation. The beautiful voice has never sounded better and the clear well-balanced recording allows us to hear the expressive pointing of meaning and characterization to perfection. Orchestral sound too is excellent, though slightly set back in relation to the ideally perspectived voice.

-- John Borwick, Gramophone [5/1985]

Rudolf Serkin's gaunt tone and impassioned phrasing, along with Eugene Ormandy's robust, alert support, have long distinguished this 1964 recording of Schumann's A minor concerto as one of the catalog's finest.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com [reviewing Sony 93908]

A marvelously vivid recording that matches the freshness and immediacy of the music.

The King's strength as a performer is said to have been in Adagios (though there is evidence enough that this did not betoken lack of finger dexterity), and his own piece on this pleasant record is well able to hold its own with many another wind concerto of the day. This may tell us something about what was then a genuine musical vernacular; but such arguments aside, one can take pleasure in observing the contrast, one at the same time separating and unifying, between Frederick and his two companion composers. Quantz's Concerto is a nice, brisk piece with no nonsense about it. Rampal, with his particular gift for eighteenth-century flute music, deals with it admirably, pointing its highlights, touching on its bright rhythms without affectation, gracefully outlining the slow movement's melody without overstating claims. However, Benda's work shows what the differences are between a gifted amateur, a gifted professional and a composer of real individuality all working within the same idiom. The opening Allegro con brio has real brio, with an undercurrent of tensions that are present in another way in the warm, heartfelt Adagio un poco Andante; the finale is a little more conventional, but makes a bright ending to a most attractive work. No wonder poor Fritz preferred this civilized and humane discourse to the military ravings of his tyrannical father.

The recording matches the freshness and immediacy of the music. Rampal is set close, but the sound is marvellously vivid, and the subtle range of his tonguings in particular is caught as an expressive part of the music. The accompaniments are doubtless influenced by Rampal's own long experience in music of this period: they are as crisp and intelligent as his own playing.

-- Gramophone [3/1987]

If Maurizio Arena's lively and sympathetic account of Adriana Lecouvreur for RCA demonstrates that the opera still has stageworthy potential, and not just as a vehicle for an old-fashioned prima donna (for to tell the truth his donna, Raina Kabaivanska, is a rather small-scale Adriana, the voice not always under perfect control), James Levine's sumptuous CBS reading makes an even stronger case for it, and his donna is decidedly prima. It is Levine's Adriana Lecouvreur as much as Renata Scotto's, indeed, and some listeners may find his affectionate moulding of the score, his underlining of its every expressive detail and his leisurely speeds (he adds a full 15 minutes to Arena's timing) rather over-done.

His approach strikes me as an admirable one, rooted in a real love for the score (he has a distinct talent for making you think again about supposedly second-rate Italian operas: he is a first-rate conductor of Zandonai, for example) and in great consideration for his singers. I suspect that Kabaivanska would have made more of the title-role with support from Levine's supple phrasing, so well attuned to the way Cilea's phrases lie for the voice and to a singer's need to breathe, to approach a climactic note at the voice's own pace. Scotto certainly responds to this, and makes a part that might have seemed a size too large for her (there are one or two brief moments of strain) thoroughly her own, with a range that extends from caressed murmur to splendidly melodramatic hauteur.

Domingo is in ardent voice and fills out the rather thinly sketched Maurizio admirably (Arena's elegant tenor, Alberto Cupido, is rather over-parted) and both baritones, Milnes for Levine and Arena's Attilio d'Orazi make a sympathetic figure of the soft-hearted Michonnet. Obraztsova's fans will not mind too much that she makes the haughty Princesse de Bouillon sound like Azucena or Ulrica (one quite expects her to offer balefully to tell Adriana's fortune) but Arena's Alexandrina Milcheva, a very similar Slavonic voice, does much the same. nut this opera stands or falls on whether the soprano can convince you that she is both a grande dame and touchingly vulnerable, and on whether the conductor realizes how much more than an accompanist he needs to be (Cilea was a cunning builder of dramatic tension, and an imaginative orchestrator). On both counts this set succeeds finely, and it is beautifully recorded.

-- Gramophone [3/1990]

If there is one sensation aroused today in the listener to Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari's operas it is delight: How attractive they are! The composer seems to have achieved the perfect unity of straightforward Italianate lyricism and the orchestral style of the German school. His operas are supreme examples of eclecticism in the best sense of the term...

(The Secret of Susanna), first performed at the Hofoper, Munich, on November 4, 1909, was outwardly a departure from the composer's usual eighteenth-century settings, but in fact it is clearly modelled after Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona with its three roles for soprano, baritone, and mime servant. The overture "in miniature" is a masterpiece of engagin melody and marvelously controlled counterpoint - each of the four themes upon which it is built are able to hold their own when played separately, yet work perfectly when played together in the coda.

Here and there during the course of his one-act opera, one may recall Donizetti - as in the piano solo that returns as the duet finale - or wagner, Liszt, Debussy - a faun flits about the tobacco smoke as the clarinet weaves its sinuos chromatic arabesques during Susanna's aria - and others, but in no way can this score be construed as derivative. The harmony is predominantly diatonic, enriched when necessary with Wagnerian chromaticism. Nevertheless, unlike the music of Humperdinck, Wilhelm Kienzl or Alexander von Fielitz, to name but three of the many Wagnerite composers, it is free of the pervasive flavor of Bayreuth. On the other hand we do not come away from hearing the music with the impression that Wolf-Ferrari was a follower of twilight Verdi - though the excitement ad panache of Falstaff is there - Massenet, or a rival of Puccini or Richard Strauss. Clearly Wolf-Ferrari set out on his own mission; he was influenced by many, but a disciple of none; he was inspired by the past but sought to beautify the present. above all, for all his eclecticism, ermanno Wolf-Ferrari remained his own man.

- Barrymore Laurence Scherer
excerpted from album liner notes

Akhnaten, Philip Glass's third opera, is a work of relatively compact dimensions but with all the qualities of epic about it. More a history than a story, it tells in Glass's characteristically elliptical fashion of the rise and fall of Akhnaten, sun-worshipper and monotheist, the 'man of religion' who complements in Glass's opera-trilogy the 'man of science' in Einstein on the Beach, and Gandhi, 'man of politics' in Satyagraha. Instead of a libretto there are texts and documents recovered by the Egyptologists, sung or spoken against an endlessly flowing line of orchestral background that symbolizes the passage of time.

Characters as such barely exist, indeed the very notion of 'characterization' is quite inapplicable to the elusive figures who pass through the music like ghosts or shadows. Religious fervour always excepted, everything is drained of human detail and emotion. Even the Act 2 duet between Akhnaten and Nefertiti has all the passion of a pair of scarab beetles mating, indeed, it comes as no surprise to find that the words of this domestic exchange are the same ones used just minutes earlier to address the sun-god Aten. Such is the manner of this solemn, ritualistic work. Decades pass; religions are set up and topple; always the orchestra, the ultimate protagonist, throbs underneath with its almost seamless weft of minor-mode arpeggios. Like Satie's Socrate, another piece of 'white music' and a score to which Akhnaten owes a great deal, this is a statuesque work of such earnestness that the term 'opera', with its implication of drama, fails to communicate the nature of the conception.

Akhnaten contains some of Glass's very best music. The Act I funeral scene, almost anthropo-logically observed with its terrifying drumming and the wild trumpet that accompanies the male chorus at the climax of the procession, strikes a chilling note from which the atmosphere never recovers. The final scene, sung wordlessly by the ghosts of Akhnaten, his wife and his mother in the ruins of their city, haunts the mind long after the music has ceased to play. Strangest and most wonderful of all is the ''Hymn to the Sun'', sung by Akhnaten himself at the centre of the opera, and addressed to the audience in its own language—English was chosen for the recording. It is one of the very few moments when we are invited to participate in Akhnaten's private world of belief, and with Glass's mesmeric music it's difficult not to be drawn in completely and utterly.

Success in the performance of Akhnaten relies more upon the orchestra than on voices, and here the Stuttgart State Opera (which commissioned the work) does a superb job. With relatively limited scope for interpretation, the soloists are to be judged more for the nature of their voices than for what they put into the playing of their parts, and in this regard I was slightly disappointed only by Paul Esswood, whose tense, tight-toned singing of the title-role turns Akhnaten into a colder, more remote figure than he need have been. The chorus is marvellous. Documentation, vital for an understanding of the story, is more than adequate, with full texts and translations from the Egyptian and Hebrew.

-- Gramophone, 02/1998