This set includes 1 blu-ray audio CD playable on blu-ray players only and 1 standard CD playable on all CD players.

The two-time winner of the top Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, Del Sol String Quartet team up with didjeridu virtuoso Stephen Kent to bring to life the unique Complete String Quartets with Didjeridu by Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe. Elected an Australia National Trust Living Treasure in 2002, Sculthorpe’s output relates closely to Australia‘s social and physical climate and the Pacific Basin cultures. Since the mid 1980s, Kent pioneered the contemporary use of didjeridu in myriad associations and cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Sculthorpe passed away on Friday, August 8, 2014, at the age of 85. He was arguably Australia’s most famous composer. “His charm mixed with an instinct for austerity, spareness and an imagination for the sounds of a lonely Australian place created a uniquely distinctive musical voice,” said Peter McCallum of the Sydney Morning Herald. “Sculthorpe was the first Australian composer to create a distinctly Australian sound and style that communicated to a wide local and international audience [...] His genial influence on students and composers encouraged generations of composers to look inward rather than abroad to discover their own voice.”

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GRIGORY GINZBURG: His Early Recordings • Grigory Ginzburg (pn) • APR 5667 (Volume 1; 77:29); 5672 (Volume 2; 78:34); mono


Volume 1: BEETHOVEN/RUBINSTEIN Turkish March. LISZT Hungarian Rhapsodies : Nos. 10, 11. Les Cloches de Genève. Paganini Etudes: Nos. 3, 4, 5 . Venezia e Napoli. Rigoletto Paraphrase. LISZT/BUSONI Fantasia on The Marriage of Figaro. GINZBURG Transcription of Largo al factotum. BALAKIREV Islamey


Volume 2: BACH/BUSONI Toccata and Fugue in d. WEBER Rondo brillante in E?. SCHUMANN Paganini Etudes: Nos. 2, 3, 4. “Abegg” Variations. CHOPIN Impromptus: Nos. 1, 2, 3. Fantasy Impromptu . Polonaise in B?. Polonaise in A?. STRAUSS/GRUNFELD Voices of Spring. STRAUSS/SCHULZ-EVLER Concert Arabesque on The Blue Danube


These have to be among the greatest piano records ever made. Grigory Ginzburg (1904–61) was virtually an exact contemporary of another great Russian pianist, Vladimir Sofronitzky, and while neither was known in the West while alive, Sofronitzky has developed a somewhat wider reputation with the music-loving public than Ginzburg. After listening to these two CDs, and then following up with excellent volumes of live performance recordings on the Vox Aeterna label, it is clear to me that Ginzburg was one of the giants of the keyboard in the 20th century—different from, and at least the equal of, Sofronitzky.


Ginzburg was a student of Alexander Goldenweiser, one of the most significant of the Russian teachers of the first half of the 20th century. His early death prevented him from touring outside of Russia, because most of that happened after 1961. Some of his contemporaries, like Lev Oborin, lived into the 1970s and appeared in America and Europe. Gilels was born in 1916, but lived into the middle 1980s and had a big international career. Soviet artists before 1960 were buried, at least to the rest of us, inside Russia. And since they didn’t concertize in the West, neither did they record for any of the international labels—instead confining their recorded work to Melodiya. As more of this material comes out, we see what treasures were hidden behind the iron curtain. Among all those treasures, Ginzburg stands out.


What makes this piano playing so special? Just about everything. He makes the most difficult music sound easy—whether it is Liszt Paganini Etudes or his own transcription of Figaro’s “Largo al factotum” from The Barber of Seville , nothing seems to actually present any problem to his fingers. Every note is articulated with precisely the right weight and color; everything is in perfect proportion. His sense of balance between the poetic and the virtuosic is unique. He plays with flair and theatricality, but at the same time with a beauty of tone and purity of line that always touches as much as the virtuosity amazes. Even on these recordings, which date from the 1940s and 50s, the beauty of Ginzburg’s tone comes through (especially in Bryan Crimp’s superb transfers), and the remarkable variety of his dynamics is jaw-dropping. There seems to be an infinite number of variants of mezzo-piano , or piano , or forte . Listen to the repeated notes in Liszt’s La Campanella and you’ll be almost physically shocked at the clarity and evenness of the playing. Every single note is in place— completely in place. What is particularly unique about his playing is that he manages to have great fun with the showy elements of this music without a hint of vulgarity. The Liszt Hungarian Rhapsodies can easily be cheapened by over-indulging. Or they lose their character by a pianist taking them too seriously. Ginzburg does neither—all of the fun and flair that you would want is here, but at the same time a deeper beauty that one does not always encounter in this music. And if there is a pianist with a more vocal sense of singing line, of what a true cantabile is, I haven’t encountered him.


After you have heard Ginzburg’s playing on these two discs, which consist entirely of shorter pieces, you might well want to go on to explore the five volumes of live performances released on Vox Aeterna. You can do an artist search at ArkivMusic to find them. Larger works such as Schumann’s Carnaval , Chopin sonatas, and Liszt concerti are available in that series.


I don’t think you can compare Ginzburg to any of the other Soviet-era pianists. He’s not Gilels, he’s not Richter, he’s not Lazar Berman. He is, in fact, Grigory Ginzburg, a pianist who, like any great artist, defines his own territory. We are indebted to APR for making these two discs available, and for the superb quality of the production. In addition to excellent transfers, Bryan Crimp provides illuminating, intelligent notes.


FANFARE: Henry Fogel

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Pianophiles should note immediately that this is a reissue of APR7029, first released around two decades ago, and that no new material has been added. If any unpublished takes exist, or if any unpublished recordings have survived, then that would deepen still further one’s appreciation of Kitain’s art. At the moment this seems unlikely – though far stranger things have cropped up in less promising circumstances, so we can but hope.

Kitain (1903-80) was an exact contemporary of Horowitz and was slightly younger than the incendiary Simon Barere. Bryan Crimp’s acknowledgement-preface in the booklet notes that standard reference books omit all mention of Kitain. I don’t know how much this has changed in the intervening 20 years but checking such staples as Harold C Schonberg, Kaiser, Lyle and even the Naxos A-Z of pianists boxed set fails to elicit a thing. So we are again reliant on Crimp’s own biographical outline in the handsome booklet for details of the rise and fall of this great pianist’s reputation.

Born in St Petersburg, he apparently so astonished Glazunov with his precocity that he won immediate entrance to the Conservatory. Soon he moved to Kiev, becoming a classmate of Horowitz, and studying with Felix Blumenfeld. The Kitain family fled Russia in 1923, Anatole winning a prize at the Liszt Piano Competition three years later – Annie Fischer won first place. He settled in France only for his life to be overtaken by upheaval yet again, moving to America when war broke out. Here there seem to have been a series of false starts, including performances under an alias, though he later gave admiringly reviewed recitals throughout the 1940s and 1950s. He made a series of LPs in the 1950s – one with his fiddle-playing brother, Robert. For MGM they recorded the sonatas by Brahms (Op.108) and Franck, and I’d certainly like to come across that disc.

What began with reluctance in 1936 – the Paris Columbia branch wasn’t keen to record him, but made two tests that were actually published – ended in some triumph as Kitain soon moved to record in the Abbey Road studios in London. Kitain was a bit of a first-take man from a quick look at the released matrix numbers. The Schumann Toccata, not surprisingly, necessitated retakes and the third take was used. Something odd seems to have gone on when he set down the Hungarian Dances of Brahms, where one side necessitated a retake a month later and a fifth take was used. Almost everything else, recorded between 1936 and 1939, was a first take.

Aside from a sense that he was naturally unfettered by studio constraints what impresses throughout is the naturalness of his phrasing and the sublimated virtuosity of a technique that allows him such freedoms as he takes. He is, in fact, not ‘free’ in the sense that he takes metrical liberties and even when he can seem idiosyncratic – perhaps in Chopin’s Scherzo in B minor – one senses the musical justification. The central section here shows his beautiful legato and sense of phrasing as the Etudes reveal his rhythmic and colouristic virtues. Whilst he is commanding in the C major, Op.10 No.7 he’s invariably controlled and though virtuosic in Liszt never for a moment crude. There are few exaggerations. He was keen to record the Brahms Dances and they are vitalising performances. His Russian repertoire is very valuable, given his background. There is great warmth and sensitivity in his Scriabin and one wishes he could have recorded more Rachmaninoff. A pity he was never asked to record his old teacher Blumenfeld’s Etude for the left hand, which Kitain played in recitals. However, the élan of the Strauss-Godowsky Fledermaus is something to be heard.

A few of the rarer examples here have a higher-than-average amount of surface noise and a few thumps, but they pass quickly. This skilfully compiled set is priced ‘as for one’. If you missed it before, you should get it now.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

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Rachmaninov, Prokofiev: Cello Sonatas / Russakovsky, Nicholson / Composer: Sergei Rachmaninov, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Prokofiev / Performer: Alexander Russakovsky, Amber Shay Nicholson / Number of Discs: 1. Cellist Alexander Russakovsky enjoys an international reputation as a performer and teacher. He has given master classes as far afield as Latin America and Taiwan, and in recent years has won first prize at the Angela and Maurice M. Clairmont Competition in Tel Aviv and the Performing Arts Foundation Competition in Santa Barbara. Pianist Amber Shay Nicholson won the 2001 Rachmaninoff Concerto No.3 competition at the Eastman School of Music; she is also a former member of the piano faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi. Recorded in 2012. This new recording brings together two great, but altogether different 20th century Cello Sonatas from Russia: the gorgeous and deeply romantic cello sonata by Rachmaninoff, of near-symphonic proportions, and the cello sonata by Prokofiev, a hybrid piece of his later period, a fascinating mixture of the romantic, the grotesque and the introspective side of the multi faceted composer. As interludes we hear arrangements of Tchaikovsky's ballet music from Sleeping Beauty, and the Sérénade Espagnole by Glazunov, a brilliant show piece. Beautiful, expressive and "Slavic" performances by Russian cellist Alexander Russakovsky.

David Goode continues his new series of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, played on the Metzler Söhne organ of Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge. David Goode has been Organist and Head of Keyboard at Eton College since 2005. He was a music scholar at Eton, and then organ scholar at King's College, Cambridge from 1991-1994, studying organ with David Sanger and, in Amsterdam, with Jacques van Oortmerssen. He made his Royal Festival Hall and Symphony Hall debuts in 2002, and played Bach's Art of Fugue in 2009. His past releases have received excellent reviews and have been highly praised.

Reger, M.: Organ Works, Vol. 3

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is by far the most famous son of the great composer Johann Sebastian Bach. CPE Bach composed a great deal of music for the clarinet as either a solo or chamber music instrument.; This release is the first recording of these pieces, which were either composed for the clarinet, or rewritten to make the clarinet the leading melodic instrument.; One of the most famous Italian clarinetists of our day, Luigi Magistrelli is a master at finding previously unknown clarinet music and bringing it to the fore. He performs these works beautiful

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REYNOLDS _Symphony [Myths]. 1 Whispers out of Time. 2 _Symphony [Vertigo] 3 • Kotaro Sato, cond; 1 Edwin London, cond; 2 Harvey Sollberger, cond; 3 Tokyo PO; 1 Cleveland CS; 2 La Jolla SO 3 • MODE 183 (73:51)


I recently read Roger Reynolds’s dense but engaging little book, Mind Models , a set of essays from 1972 concerning trends in advanced music. In retrospect, it’s quite impressive how much he got right about what would come to pass under the aesthetic/cultural impact of technology, communications, globalization. Reynolds (b. 1934), while probably most often typed as a modernist composer, composes a sort of music that isn’t written much here anymore. More important, it probably hasn’t ever been written much in America. What I mean by this is that Reynolds’s music is saturated with ideas , but not just ones about musical technique. Instead, it plays with concepts and artifacts from such points of departure as non-Western culture, literature, geography, architecture, science, to name a few. In this omnivorous intellectual curiosity, and his desire to distill these disparate sources into the common field of musical language, he bears more resemblance to European aesthetics than to American. (Not surprisingly, Xenakis was a friend. Reynolds also has a very close connection to Japanese art, traditional and contemporary, and Takemitsu was another close colleague.) The play of symbols , embodied in sonic gestures, is at the core of his work. While rigorously intellectual, his music isn’t particularly academic. Reynolds has always had a foot in experimentalism as much as modernism. To attempt such a synthesis is questing and risk-taking. And at its best the result has real power.


These three orchestral works listed in the headnote date from 1990, 1988, and 1987, respectively. (It’s a sad commentary on our culture that it appears to have taken two decades to get them to a commercial recording.) All three works aspire to a sort of stately grandeur and mystery. Great sweeping gestures occur, which we can’t really anticipate nor explain, yet they are usually satisfying. Movements trail off into silence abruptly. At times the music seems frozen harmonically, yet there may be several layers of detailed and often fast activity occurring simultaneously. Indeed the predominant rhythmic sense here I would call geological , with bands of sonic activity slipping and grating against one another like tectonic plates.


Symphony [Myths] fits the above description well, drawing its inspiration from two pairs of seaside rocks that serve as shrines in Japan and Greece. The music seems appropriately elemental in its sound. Whispers out of Time is for string orchestra (with a concertino quartet), and relates to a John Ashbery poem about a self-portrait by the 16th-century artist Parmigianino, itself a portrayal of the artist in the reflection of a concave mirror (this begins to give a sense of the layers of meaning and reference which inform Reynolds’s work). It’s a dark, mysterious, imagistic work, with the titles of its movements taken from lines in Ashbery’s poem (“Like a wave breaking on a rock” really sounds like such, with successive sound-crashes and resultant spray). It also uses shards of the Beethoven “Les Adieux” Sonata and the Mahler Ninth Symphony, which increase the elegiac quotient and suffuse it with a more tonal veneer.


Only Symphony [Vertigo] doesn’t quite work for me. Its distinctive technique is the use throughout of a prerecorded part made of computer-processed piano sounds, derived from improvisations by Reynolds’s colleague Cecil Lytle. The result is the only work that sounds a little modernist generic, with its mix of electroacoustic and acoustic, its somewhat more strident gestures, and often-discontinuous flow. Some will find this exciting for the use of the technology and the interaction of the different worlds of sounds. I enjoy the composer’s risk-taking here, but the gamble doesn’t quite pay off.


But overall, this is an excellent portrait of a composer of great imaginative, aesthetic ambition. The performances are committed, though at times feel not as fully shaped as one might like, considering the wealth of detail that needs to be balanced to pull off the works’ desired impact. This is not for everyone, but I recommend it as an important, questing voice in the American scene. There is a real mind, heart, and ear at work here. Yes, it’s not easily ingratiating, but who said we should never work for our aesthetic pleasures?


FANFARE: Robert Carl

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Ottorino Respighi is best known for his exuberant and expansive orchestral works, such as the Roman Trilogy, but he was also an important composer of chamber and salon music. His musical education began with him learning violin and piano as a child, and for the first 20 years of his career as a composer he only wrote for these instruments. He was an accomplished violinist, and his mastery of the instrument manifests itself in the idiomatic violin-writing heard in the works on this disc.

Respighi's violin sonatas demonstrate the astonishingly wide range of his musical interests and the influences on his style: from early music, through German Romanticism, to impressionist tone colours. They are also a showcase for his remarkable gift for melody. The D minor Sonata dates from Respighi's early period and contrasts lively and energetic outer movements with a gentle yet passionate Adagio. The B minor Sonata, composed 20 years later, is a grander, more intense and dramatic work, and is testimony to the mature Respighi's command of chamber music. The two violin sonatas are complemented by the Six Pieces for violin and piano: these elegant and charming works show the lighter side of Respighi.

These works are performed by award-winning violinist Fabio Paggioro and acclaimed pianist Massimiliano Ferrati, who has been praised by the Corriere della Sera for his "highly refined sound [that] turns to magic".

Other information:
- Ottorino Respighi, gone into music history as a sorcerer of colourful orchestration, wrote a substantial oeuvre of chamber music works. A virtuoso violinist himself, he wrote two violin sonatas, which offer vintage Respighi: an eclectic use of various styles, from modal early music, through romantic pathos, to impressionistic colour experiments.
- Both sonatas require the highest technical and musical command from both players, and violinist Fabio Paggioro and pianist Massimiliano Ferrati do them full justice: committed and passionate music making!
- Contains liner notes and artist biographies.
- Fabio Paggioro performs on a Vincentus Postiglione violin (Naples, 1899).

VISÉE La Musique de la Chambre du Roy, Vol. 1 • Manuel Staropoli (rcr, Baroque fl); Massimo Marchese (thb); Christiano Contadin (vdg) • BRILLIANT 94154 (55:22)


VISÉE La Musique de la Chambre du Roy, Vol. 2 • Manuel Staropoli (rcr, Baroque fl); Massimo Marchese (thb); Rosita Ippolito (vdg); Manuel Tomadin (hpd) • BRILLIANT 94437 (54:29)


After the pointed polemical exchange I recently had with two letter writers over a previous review of a disc of music by Robert de Visée (see issue 37:3 for the exchange and 37:1 for the review that prompted it), one might think I would shy away from reviewing another Visée CD anytime soon. However, these two discs arrived, and I am happy to review them. Here I will not revisit points of that controversy, except to state that on the hotly contested issues of de Visée’s conjectured birth and death dates, these two releases opt for c. 1655–1733.


Between them, these two discs present the 10 suites that comprise the composer’s third and final published compilation of his works, the Pièces de théorbe et de luth mises en partition, dessus et basse from 1716. Each suite consists of five or six movements, most commonly consisting of an allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue, and gavotte, with an initial prelude added in some instances. There are occasional substitutions: e.g., a menuet or rondeau replaces a gigue or gavotte. As the movement titles indicate, these are mostly dances of a slower, more stately character, set to music of elegant gravity and reflectiveness. The emphasis throughout is on atmosphere, not virtuoso display.


To my knowledge, these two releases constitute the first integral recording of these suites, and so they are welcome on that ground alone. That said, the music appears here in an idiosyncratic guise. As the anthology title states, these pieces were conceived by the composer for performance on the theorbo or lute; but here they are arranged for recorder and basso continuo, with (irony of ironies) the theorbo present as part of the supporting accompaniment. Of course, it was common practice for such pieces to be adapted to and played on various solo instruments; but the booklet notes rather stretch the point in ignoring the publication title and asserting instead that “in the frontispiece de Visée does not specify any particular instrument, which leaves plenty of leeway in the choice of the solo instrument.” (With more justification, they also cite an Avertissement attributed to Visée that preceded the original publication, which suggested harpsichord, viola da gamba, and violin as suitable instruments for the dessus part.)


The notes further explain that for the second CD, a harpsichord was added to the basso continuo ensemble in order to “widen the range of timbre, and thereby gratify the listener with greater variety.” For further variety, three different recorders (treble, descant, and bass) are employed, and the harpsichord gets a couple of solo turns as well. The discs also include three additional brief pieces, “Les Sylvains de Couperin,” “Entrée d’Apollon” and a Chaconne, that are performed on solo theorbo.


Whatever one makes of the issue of instrumentation, these are nonetheless stylish and winning performances in their chosen guise. While partisans of theorbo, lute, or guitar may be disappointed or chagrined, fans of the recorder and lovers of Baroque dance music in general can rejoice. The recorded sound balances all the instruments well; the booklet notes are somewhat skimpy on the composers and the works themselves, but provide extensive biographical notes on the performers along with photos. Finally, the price certainly is right; duly recommended.


FANFARE: James A. Altena

This album presents the bassoon used in duo and trio arrangements, and centers around the often-neglected Bassoon Trio WoO37 by Beethoven. Along with Beethoven’s bassoon trio, this release also features Devienne’s Sonata in C for flute and bassoon, Donizetti’s Trio in F for flute, bassoon and piano, and Morlacchi’sDuetto concertato for flute, bassoon and piano on the motif of Maestro Verdi. Performing these works are Italian soloists Massimo Data, Mario Carbotta, and Piero Barbareschi.

It was not until the 20th century that the viola became the object of truly serious attention as a solo instrument. Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) – himself an excellent violist – was largely responsible for rescuing the instrument from relative oblivion. This CD features a selection of his viola sonatas composed during Europe’s interwar decades. Violist Luca Sanzò and pianist Maurizio Paciariello are both in-demand contemporary music interpreters as well as conservatoire professors in their native Italy.

Herbert Blomstedt's Beethoven cycle with the Staatskapelle Dresden is one of the great ones, as much for the magnificent playing of this finest of all German orchestras as for Blomstedt's effortlessly musical interpretations. The only possible weak link here might be the first movement of the Fifth, which lacks the sheer intensity that, say, Carlos Kleiber brings to it. On the other hand, Blomstedt's more emotionally balanced conception is so well realized that I'm inclined to give him credit for bringing off an unconventional interpretation, particularly as the remainder of the symphony lacks for nothing in excitement or sheer power.

Highlights of this cycle are many: a grand and glorious Eroica, a lithe and lyrical Second and Fourth, a pellucid Sixth with luminous wind playing, an exciting Ninth sporting fantastically buoyant strings in the Scherzo and a marvelously well sung finale, and a transcendentally great performance of the Seventh, with rip-roaring horns and perfect pacing throughout. The recordings, made in Dresden's Lucaskirche in the late 1970s and early '80s, put a silvery sheen around the players (winds especially) and strike an excellent balance between clarity and warmth. At the Brilliant Classics price, you can't afford not to own this set. [6/23/2002]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
reviewing this set previously released as Brilliant 99927

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Beethoven's nine symphonies -- composed between 1800 and 1824 -- are true cornerstones of the classical canon. Marking an irrefutable turning point in the history of music, they transformed audiences' expectations of the symphony and influenced the genre's future development through their experimental, dramatic and expressive weight. Conductors have long been drawn to the profundity of these works: a complete cycle of Beethoven symphonies is viewed as one of the ultimate challenges in the repertoire, and the performances in this set are undoubtedly among the greatest to have been recorded, illuminating the skill of the Staatskapelle Dresden and Herbert Blomstedt, one of the most distinguished conductors of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The symphonies trace Beethoven's development as a composer, from the earlier works that document his emergence from the Viennese tradition, through to his experimental and critically divisive late style. Particularly famed for its landmark status in the history of music is the 'Eroica' Symphony (No.3), notable for its innovative approach to sonata form and embodiment of Beethoven's 'heroic' style. Also included are the legendary Symphony No.5, known for its distinctive opening motif and rigorous large-scale structure, the dramatic 'Pastoral' Symphony, and the sophisticated Seventh Symphony. The collection is, of course, concluded by the monumental Symphony No.9 -- known as the 'Choral' Symphony because of its ground-breaking, transcendent finale, sung here by the Dresden State Opera Chorus and a group of acclaimed soloists.

Over 30 years after their initial release, these recordings have remained one of the ultimate Beethoven symphony cycles, a testament to the quality of the performances and Blomstedt's interpretations. Brought together in a set of excellent value, this 5-disc collection is a must-have addition to the libraries of classical music fans, old and new.

Other information:
- Recordings made in Lucaskirche, Dresden, 1975--1980

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The voluminous oeuvre of Fritz Kreisler for violin and piano includes many themes of composers from the Baroque to the beginning of the twentieth century and pieces composed by the great violinist himself. We were especially interested in the last category, from which the three Viennese dances Liebesleid, Liebesfreud and Schon Rosmarin are the most famous ones. For this album we chose to record the complete collection of original pieces, no adaptations of other composers. When composing the list of original pieces we had concerns about two pieces not being sure that they are purely Kreisler. The theme of the Rondino in the style of Beethoven could possibly be a lost piece for winds, but we could not find any proof of that. In the Grave, in the style of Friedemann Bach it was also impossible to find the hand of Bach. Thus we included these pieces. The most curious piece on this album is the song, Op. 6. We found it in a collection of works where it seemed untouched. Until now we have found no recording or even a record of a performance. Be it so, we recorded thi smelancholy little piece as a premiere. With this recording, we tried to follow as many notes he made regarding bowings and finger positions. Violin playing has changed since the time of Kreisler and the knowledge of period style performances influences the way we play. Inevitably, our own ideas and taste also influence the way we perfrom on the album.

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