Towards the end of the 19th century, France saw a renaissance for chamber music, perpetuated not by popular demand but by the composers themselves. An early response to Saint-Saëns' initiative came from a former student, Gabriel Fauré, who completed his Violin Sonata in A Major and gave it the opus number 13, making it the first instrumental work in his official work list.

This second of Naxos' two-disc survey of Giorgio Federico Ghedini' complete piano music includes his largest-scale work for solo piano, the 1922 Sonata, an intimate and harmonically complex piece which emphasizes pianistic colour.

It is well known that Felix Mendelssohn’s sister Fanny was a highly talented musician, but fewer are familiar with the fact that there were two other musical siblings in the Mendelssohn family: Rebecka, a gifted singer, and Paul, a very competent amateur cellist. It is to Paul, a banker by profession, that we owe the existence of much of Felix’s music for the instrument, which in spite of Beethoven’s endeavours hadn’t yet become firmly established as a duo partner of the piano. Fitting comfortably on a single release, Mendelssohn’s works for cello and piano are here presented by Christian Poltera and Ronald Brautigam, who open with the Variations concertantes in D major, composed in 1829. Brautigam has recently released the composer’s Lieder ohne Worte, performing them on a copy of a piano by Pleyel from 1830, and plays the same instrument on the present disc. Meanwhile, Poltera has chosen to equip his 1711 Stradivarius cello with gut strings, and together the two musicians and their instruments create a sound which is both flexible, transparent and vigorous – ideal for Mendelssohn’s scores. The two substantial sonatas, composed in 1838 and 1843, are separated on the disc by a brief ‘Albumblatt’ and a Romance sans paroles in D major, the only ‘song without words’ that Mendelssohn wrote for two instruments rather than piano solo.

One of Prokofiev' best loved works today, Romeo and Juliet was initially declared 'impossible to dance to'.

Let me say it right off the bat: I absolutely loved this CD, and I’m betting that you will, too. I have been enthralled with Hindemith’s Kammermusik ever since I acquired the complete set of works collected under that title in Riccardo Chailly’s 1992 two-disc Decca release. Seven works in all make up the series. Six are essentially chamber concertos, each featuring a different solo instrument: piano in the op. 36/1, cello in the op. 36/2, violin in the op. 36/3, viola in the op. 36/4, viola d’amore in the op. 46/1, and organ in the op. 46/2. The seventh, op. 24/1, is for 12 solo instruments. That leaves the op. 24/2 for five wind instruments heard here, to which Hindemith gave the title Kleine Kammermusik. Technically speaking, it falls outside the set of seven the composer designated Kammermusik, but in style it shares much in common with its siblings. Written in 1922, it is a delightful thing, peppy, perky, and playful, with just enough of those Hindemithian sour notes thrown in to give the piece a lemony zest. The Six Bagatelles by György Ligeti (b. 1923) is a fairly early piece written between 1951 and 1953, while the composer was still living in Hungary. The work is based on six movements from Ligeti’s Musica ricercata, and is clearly indebted to neo-Classical models, particularly Bartók and Stravinsky. Do not expect anything like the later spatial and spectral tone-cluster music that made Ligeti famous in the West.

I am of two minds when it comes to Carl Nielsen (1865–1931). Hearing his name so often in hyphenation with Sibelius (like Debussy and Ravel), I could not imagine how or why anyone would pair these two composers who sounded to me so utterly different in style and musical speech. Moreover, I was (and still am) a Sibelian to the core, and I was mystified that Nielsen, who seemed quite the inferior of the two, could be held up as an equal. Well, that was a long time ago, and before I really applied myself to learning Nielsen’s music. I still believe that Sibelius was the greater of the two composers, but they are so different from one another that comparisons are not very instructive. I have long since come to appreciate Nielsen for the individual and special voice that was his.

His Wind Quintet, op. 43, from 1922, is testament to that unique voice. At nearly 25 minutes, it is a substantive and masterful work. The concluding Theme and Variations movement, especially, is not only a brilliant display of wind-writing technique, but really beautiful and moving music.

What can I say about the Quintett Wien? These five musicians are more than masters of their craft; they come together as a perfectly blended ensemble that breathes as a single living organism. Truly magnificent. Nimbus captures them in an acoustic that is open and radiant, but not reverberant. I know that I will be playing this CD many times over.

Jerry Dubins, FANFARE

If you want to hear some very well-played Sarasate violin music, performed on a disc devoted solely to that composer's Spanish Dances, then this new release from Chinese violinist Tianwa Yang and Naxos will do the job splendidly. Yang was in her 17th year in 2004 when she recorded these stylish, dazzling showpieces--chamber works that also contain an inherent sensual, sultry physicality that requires a soloist with a keen sense of the rhythms and a true feeling for the passion--sometimes playful, sometimes athletic, sometimes erotic--embodied in these dances. Virtuoso they certainly are--and Yang delivers in this aspect of her performances; that is, her technique, which helped her win the prize of "Best Young Violinist in China" in 2004, is sharply developed, confident, and articulate.

Highlights include the energetic, triple-time Jota Aragonesa Op. 27, with its insistent down-beat, varied melodic twists and turns (including a section in harmonics), and sudden fiery outburst at the end. "Zapateado" (Spanish Dance Op. 23 No. 2) also is very exciting in terms of Yang's command of various bowing and fingering techniques--but this also is one place where she shows her occasional tendency to play under pitch, especially (and most unfortunately) on many of the harmonics (here and elsewhere). Because the pitch of unstopped harmonics (which many of these are) is determined by the tuning of the open string and cannot be altered simply by a fine finger adjustment, it suggests that Yang's violin was not always precisely in tune with the piano. At other times (in several places in the Op. 23 No. 1 ("Playera") an occasional note lies a bit flat at the end of a phrase, seemingly due to momentary inattentiveness, not to any fundamental failure of technique.


Aside from these spotty lapses, when you compare Yang's interpretations, which are basically solid and technically very impressive, with other versions, you realize the limitations of her emotional, experiential input to the pieces' expressive aspects. There's plenty of fire but not much heat; and there's undeniable vitality but the seductive, romantic spirit is missing.


For the most accomplished modern performances of many of the works on Yang's program, turn to James Ehnes' CBC recording, released the same year Yang's was made, which also includes works by Wieniawski. Ehnes seems to have thought more carefully about (or at least sensed) proper tempos relative to the particular nature of a given dance--his slower Playera, for instance, and considerably faster Jota Navarra and Zapateado, in each case ideally capturing the innate spirit of the dance in question. Ehnes also supplies the romantic depth and understanding these pieces need--a knowing turn of phrase, a clever shift of dynamics, a particular rhythmic emphasis here, a pulling away there. It's great stuff, and the Wieniawski selections are just as good.


The sound on the two discs also offers different choices--more edgy and gritty for Yang, making no compromise in presenting the instrument's natural character, and warmer, brighter, a bit more distant for Ehnes, yet no less realistic. Another consideration: Yang's program offers several works difficult or impossible to find elsewhere on disc.
--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Beneath the shimmering surface of Delius’s little-known violin sonatas are the latent exuberance and nostalgic rapture which have made his orchestral music so popular. Across the decades separating the B major Violin Sonata of 1892 from the Third Violin Sonata of 1930, Delius developed a unique musical language which leavened the post-Romantic heritage of Wagner with French Impressionism and European and Afro-American folk idioms; an intoxicating mix that moved Sir Thomas Beecham to call him ‘the last great apostle in our time of beauty and romance in music’.

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GALUPPI Keyboard Sonatas, Vol. 2: in B?, Illy 14 ; in d, Illy 2 ; in c, Illy 34 ; in C, Illy 27 ; in E?, Illy 24 ; in d, Illy 56 ; in D, Illy 1 • Matteo Napoli (pn) • NAXOS 8.572490 (68: 12)


Most people know Baldassare Galuppi (1706–85) as mainly a composer of opera, probably because he was certainly the major figure in Venice during the development of the opera buffa in the 1730s. He was, however, also well regarded as a keyboard player, and his music, mainly sonatas, was widely distributed throughout Europe even during his lifetime. Musicologist Hedda Illy catalogued more than 100 of them, but one and a half times as many other works for keyboard, including divertimentos, toccatas, and smaller pieces, have since turned up, making him one of the principal composers alongside predecessor Domenico Scarlatti.


This disc represents the second volume of what will eventually be a complete cycle of Galuppi’s sonatas, performed here on a modern Steinway piano, if the picture of Matteo Napoli on the back of the cover is accurate. Originally, the designations were probably far more generic, as in perform them on whatever keyboard instrument you might happen to have at hand. These are intimate chamber works, meant to provide entertainment in small private settings, and the publication of two sets of these in London between 1756 and 1759 was clearly aimed at the discerning amateur. That is not to say that the sonatas were simple or technically manageable by the intended performers. Rather, they explore a wide variety of styles and abilities that Galuppi no doubt absorbed during his long lifetime. In this particular set, arranged according to no real sequence or pattern, this variety is quite evident. Two of the works are in two movements, a sort of halfway house between the traditional Classical-period sonata and Scarlatti’s single-movement pieces. The first of these on the disc, in D Minor, opens with a lively set of motivic sequences that are spun out in Baroque fashion, making it clearly an early work. The second, also in D Minor, is more of a da chiesa form, with a lament first movement that has distinctive Neapolitan operatic roots in its emotional unfolding. The first seems made for harpsichord with its figuration, while the second might require a more nuanced instrument, such as a clavichord. The remainder are the usual three-movement format, all of which begin with a slow movement, followed by a lively Allegro, and concluding with some sort of stylized dance. In the sonatas in B? and C, Galuppi opens with a long lyrical theme above a flowing Alberti bass, simple and eloquent. In the turgid C-Minor sonata, the first movement is a cascade of scales and harmonic twists worthy of C. P. E. Bach. In the E?-sonata, he opens with a nocturne of Mozartean purity, lyrical and sinuous. The fast movements are usually highly virtuosic in their technical displays. In the D-Major sonata, the ever-changing figuration and chromatic lines are like a perpetual motion machine, shifting by phases (or phrases) in a Baroque manner using Classical era harmonies. The final movement of this sonata contains a theme and variations based upon a nice tune that Mozart probably would have killed to have. In the C-Minor sonata, this final movement is turned into a demented minuet, with the melody scurrying through scalar passages in between the block triple meter dance. All in all, these works show that Galuppi was cognizant of the evolution of style during his life and used it to best advantage.


Pianist Matteo Napoli is to be congratulated for persevering in this series, the first volume of which (Naxos 8.52263) I found quite stimulating. His playing is always finely nuanced, with expressive details emerging even during the most mechanical sequential passages. The works, most of which do not have much in the way of dynamic markings apparently, seem to fit quite well on the modern piano, though of course it would be great to have them also on instruments of that period. The piano, though, eliminates the need to determine just which keyboard instrument fits each sonata, perhaps a daunting task. But no matter; this disc is a must-have for those interested in 18th-century keyboard music, and I for one wait with anticipation for the next volume in the series.


FANFARE: Bertil van Boer

Classical Music

GLASS Concerto Fantasy for 2 timpanists and orchestra (arr. Lortz) 1. FAIROUZ Symphony No. 4, “In the Shadow of No Towers” 2 • Paul W. Popeil, cond; 1 Ji Hye Jung, 1 Gwendolyn Burgett (timpani); 2 J?nis Porietis (tpt); University of Kansas Wind Ens • NAXOS 8.573205 (57: 48)


The opening piece on this CD, Philip Glass’s Concerto Fantasy for two timpanists and orchestra, is heard here in an arrangement for wind band by Mark Lortz, band director at Stevenson University in Maryland. The transcription, from what I can tell (not knowing the original), seems quite fine, crafted with an excellent ear for texture and style. The problem, as usual, is with Glass’s music itself. Although this piece is not as heavily repetitious as most of the composer’s famous works from the 1970s and 80s, it still relies on repetition to make its point, and in this case the “point” is hammered home by the incessant banging of our two timpanists, Jung and Burgett. Let me put it this way: if you really enjoy Benny Goodman’s old arrangement of Sing, Sing, Sing, with Gene Krupa’s interminable tom-tom banging, you’ll love this Concerto. Glass regales us at the outset with a motif that sounds for all the world like the opening of Lalo Schifrin’s Mission: Impossible theme, interspersed with phrases from the Burt Bacharach song Promises, Promises. The second movement retreats from the sound barrier somewhat, but here the music sounded to me reminiscent of such iconic Glass works as Khayanaquatsi. Our two drummers recede somewhat from the sound barrier here, but the pattern they are drumming remains repetitious. The five-minute “cadenza” for the timpanists finally varies the beat a little, making some allusions to jazz, but not quite enough to hold the listener’s attention. (As comedian Stan Freberg once quipped on one of his records, “That’s close enough for jazz!”) Here, too, the timpanists are joined by xylophone for a real percussion funfest. In the third movement, the syncopation continues, but this time in typical Glassian style. Despite the use of some flatted thirds, this music reminded me of a section from Hydrogen Jukebox.


By contrast, Mohammed Fairouz’s Fourth Symphony, based on a “serious” comic book by Art Spiegelman bearing the title In the Shadow of No Towers, is a masterpiece (this is a world premiere recording). Fairouz has managed to capture the horror of the moment and its aftermath without wallowing in mawkish self-pity. Perhaps the liner notes’ descriptions of the four movements will convey to the reader the quality of the music. The first, titled “The New Normal,” shows a family’s interaction with television before, during, and after the events of September 11, 2001. Fairouz manages to suggest the twin towers collapsing by clashing rising woodwind scales with explosive brass chords, but before this Fairouz captures the feeling of unease with quiet music scored in close harmonics that often border on the eerie, and after their collapse returns to the opening material briefly before exploding again, then continuing in what the composer refers to as “a cold and quick funeral march.” The reader may feel from this verbal description that such a manipulation of musical material and emotional response seems calculated or even predictable, but such is not the case. This is damn fine and extremely creative music; not a single bar sounds formulaic, even if one is told and knows in advance what is “coming” in the music. Fairouz introduces themes that are sometimes developed and at other times juxtaposed with other themes; he keeps the listener off balance not with the sound explosions but with the silences in between.


The second movement, “Notes of a Heartbroken Narcissist,” is based on Spiegelman’s cartoon panels of a self-absorbed yuppie deciding how to comb his facial hair and turning into a rodent. It begins at a volume so low that at first I thought that my CD player had stopped working, with players scraping coins across suspended cymbals. The subcontra ranges of both brass and piano continue the gloomy mood. (Personal footnote: the day after 9/11, I went to work in shock, like everyone else in America. Talking to the young minister of a local church, I told her that what went through my mind was the plight of Olivier Messiaen and his fellow-prisoners during World War II, the four of them—all musicians—not knowing if they or the world would survive those horrible years, and Messiaen’s reaction by writing the Quartet for the End of Time. The minister’s reaction was a bit like the narcissist and his beard: “I just don’t know how to rock and roll any more!”) As annotator Paul R. Laird puts it, what emerges from this movement is not the yuppie’s narcissism but a very “heartfelt lament for those who died in the attack.”


The third movement, “One Nation Under Two Flags,” was Spiegelman’s reaction to the divisive split in America during the following years: the United “Red Zone” and “Blue Zone” of America. In Fairouz’s score, neither one is really treated sympathetically. The Red Zone is represented by shrill jingoistic music, the Blue Zone by music that is “just plain angry.” (Art Spiegelman referred to it as “a martial schizo-scherzo.” I call it modern-day Charles Ives.) Once again, Fairouz keeps you guessing as to how the music will play out. A quiet passage for clarinets and soft solo trumpet over piano comes almost as a shock in the midst of the chaos.


The last movement, “Anniversaries,” is based on Spiegelman’s pictorial description of clocks that restarted on September 12 yet seemed to resemble a ticking “time-bomb that occasionally explodes,” after which the ghostly image of the twin towers grows larger than life before fading away. Here, Fairouz does indeed rely on the gimmick of a ticking clock sound as the underlying motif for the movement, but once again his inner ear for harmonic movement and sound color are astonishing. He almost makes of the wind ensemble something entirely different than what we are used to: the sounds that emerge sometimes resemble a harmonium, at other times an organ. It is the musical equivalent of the relentless march of time against a backdrop of horror brought, kicking and screaming, into our lives.


In praising the varied moods of the Fairouz Symphony, one must give special credit to the University of Kansas Woodwind Ensemble and their director, Paul Popeil. This is playing on an extraordinarily high level of a work that is technically and emotionally demanding from start to finish.


A split review, then. It almost seems unfair that so trivial a work as the Glass Concerto is paired on this disc with an incredible masterpiece. It’s rather like putting someone’s Variations on “Blue Suede Shoes” on the same disc with the Górecki Third Symphony. Yet I must urge you to acquire this disc for the Fairouz work. You simply won’t believe how brilliant it is.


FANFARE: Lynn René Bayley

Classical Music

PIAZZOLLA La muerte del ángel. Melodía en la menor. Tango en la menor. Milonga sin palabras. María de Buenos Aires: Fuga y misterio; Yo soy María 1. Ave María. Oblivion. 1 Aire de la zamba niña. Le Grand Tango. Libertango • Tomas Cotik, 1 Glenn Basham (vn); Tao Lin (pn) • NAXOS 8.573166 (59:35)


Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla (1921–1992) was an Argentine bandoneon player and composer who revolutionized tango music. He brought it from its beginnings as a 19th- and early 20th-century dance to its zenith as modern music for the concert hall. His concept of nuevo tango combined it with elements of jazz and classical music. Fanfare readers already know violinist Thomas Cotik and pianist Tao Lin for their Centaur recording of Schubert. Of course, they take in a completely different approach to the tangos on Naxos. Whereas their Schubert was smooth and silky, their Piazzolla is edgy, sexy, and raw. Cotik and Lin take us from Piazzolla’s Tanguano of 1951 to his 1986 description of a girl performing the Zamba, a native Argentine dance. In between, they document some of the myriad changes in the composer’s musical palette. His fast and rhythmic The Death of the Angel was incidental music for a 1962 play that ended with the angel dying after his fight with a devil. In 1965 a new muse, Norma, tempted the composer who was in the process of divorcing. He thinks of Norma in his smooth Melody in A Minor, but refers to her as poison. The operetta Maria de Buenos Aires is one of Piazzolla’s best-known works. It was performed at Long Beach Opera in California in 2012. The two pieces played here accompany Maria’s wandering through the city of Buenos Aires, first as a streetwalker and later as a ghost. It is during the second stroll that we hear some of the composer’s most evocative music, played by the two violins and piano that accompany her. Glenn Basham of the University of Miami’s Frost Institute plays the second fiddle with a singing tone. Libertango is Piazzolla’s example of the new music of the 1970s. He intertwined rock and jazz influences with melodic tango and came up with a new and most viable form of concert music. By this time, the tango that had once been a dance from the wrong side of town had matured into modern classical music that would soon be played by symphony orchestras all over the world. Tango’s relative, the milonga, has come along with it, adding a bit of spice to the confection from Argentina.


In 1982, Piazzolla wrote his elegant Grand Tango and sent it to the great Russian cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich. The cellist did not recognize his name and set it aside. When he did eventually look at it, he was astonished at the composer’s talent, but it was not until eight years later that he premiered the work. Sofia Gubaidulina arranged the version heard here. The instrumental Ave Maria and the pleasant milonga Oblivion are pieces that Piazzolla wrote for the 1984 Italian film Henry V . The next year he began to write pieces detailing the history of tango from bordello dance music to international concert specialty. He follows its rise to the café, the nightclub, and the 1980s concert hall. Some of the music is sultry while other works are fast, rhythmic, and ornamented to show the exquisite virtuosity of Cotik and Lin. They finish with a rousing dance called Libertango . It is a perfect finale for this CD of catchy, toe-tapping music. Many other artists have recorded Piazzolla’s works, but not with violin and piano. The sound on this disc is clear and the performances precise. I think that lovers of tango music will definitely want this fascinating disc.


FANFARE: Maria Nockin

Franz Xaver Gebel’s biographer Ernst Stöckl reported that while there were at least three Gebel string quartets, he was familiar with but one, the published Quartet in D major. Despite persistent research in Russian libraries, he was unable to find the others mentioned in contemporary discussions about concerts. Recently however, the sheet music for the Quartet in E-flat major, printed in Moscow around 1840, where Gebel spent the remainder of his life after 1817, was found in a German library. The Hoffmeister Quartet performs these rarely heard, little-known early-Romantic gems.

The irresistible Boulanger Trio, composed of pianist Karla Haltenwanger, violinist Birgit Erz, and cellist Ilona Kindt have won a number of prizes worldwide and built an excellent reputation in the chamber music community. In addition to their traditional repertoire like the Shostakovich here presented, the Trio are in demand as interpreters of modern composers like Peteris Vasks, whose "Episodi e Canto perpetuo" grace this disc.

Includes work(s) by Rebecca Clarke. Soloists: Philip Dukes, Sophia Rahman.

Classical Music

Back in my college days my music-loving friends and I would amuse ourselves perusing the letters section of Gramophone magazine, and every so often a desperately worded appeal would turn up, lamenting the "dearth of Rubbra symphony recordings." Now it wasn't as if people were lining up for Rubbra symphonies the way they lined up for the launch of, say, the I-Pod, but if the orchestral works weren't exactly thick on the field, the quartets never even made it to the letters section at all (that I noticed). Perhaps they should have; they are fine, if imperfect works.

Rubbra should have been a "natural" for the quartet medium: a gifted contrapuntist and a composer of great seriousness, even nobility, this would seem to be just his cup of tea. However, as with the symphonies, Rubbra's ability to construct his first movements and adagios effectively (and often quite beautifully here) is compromised by his helplessness with finales. His feeling for music was rhetorical rather than dramatic, and in Quartets Nos. 1 and 3 the last movements (of three) disappoint, with the former's being too short and the latter's too light. In the Fourth quartet, which has only two movements, Rubbra wisely says "the heck with it" and places the adagio last.

The Maggini Quartet has made many excellent recordings of the English quartet repertoire for Naxos, and this one is no exception. They bring plenty of expressive intensity to those heartfelt adagios, and phrase Rubbra's intertwining contrapuntal lines with winning clarity, while avoiding excessive density. The engineering is also very good: unobtrusive and natural. This music is well worth getting to know, even if Rubbra's relentless earnestness sometimes seems to overwhelm his inspiration.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

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Classical Music

Carolyn Sampson and Iestyn Davies have collaborated on many occasions in the field of Baroque opera and oratorio, but on this occasion they venture into a somewhat different territory. In the company of Joseph Middleton, they have been exploring the Lieder for one and two voices of Mendelssohn and Schumann, combining them with songs and duets by Roger Quilter. And even though the disc actually opens with a set of Purcell songs – repertoire which both singers have previously made their mark in – they are here performed with the piano accompaniments realized by Benjamin Britten, turning them into something quite new and different. ‘Creamy’, ‘luminous’ and ‘supple’ are words that often appear in reviews about both Carolyn Sampson and Iestyn Davies, and in these duets they achieve a marvellous blend as well as the utmost precision. They are aided in this by Joseph Middleton, described in The Telegraph (UK) as an ‘unfailingly sensitive accompanist’.

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Includes work(s) for piano by Ludwig van Beethoven. Soloist: Alfred Brendel.

With this recording of a selection of Franz Liszt’s music for violin and piano, Ulf Wallin and Roland Pöntinen aim at expanding our understanding of the prolific composer whose style, especially later, evolved in a manner far ahead of its time. Liszt composed his first music for violin and piano as early as 1832, returning to this instrumental combination throughout his life. Some of the pieces are re-workings of earlier compositions. In the early Grand Duo concertant pure virtuosity and the joy of playing are to the fore, but in the late works Liszt takes us on a journey into his own innermost soul.