Star soprano Sonya Yoncheva sings the towering role of Bellini's Norma – a priestess torn between love and duty – in a timeless tale of love and betrayal, set in a fanatically religious and war-torn modern society. The spectacular production by Àlex Olle for The Royal Opera also stars Joseph Calleja as Norma's former lover Pollione, leader of the forces occupying her country, Brindley Sherratt as her domineering father Oroveso, and Sonia Ganassi as Adalgisa, her greatest friend and unwitting rival in love. Royal Opera Music Director Antonio Pappano leads this superb cast, the Royal Opera Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in one of the greatest works of the bel canto repertory.

That is quite a coup! Sebastian Manz, ARD Music Competition winner and solo clarinettist of the SWR Symphony Orchestra, sums up the years he has devoted to the clarinet works of Carl Maria von Weber by presenting a complete recording of those works on a double album. Weber's two concertos for clarinet and orchestra, a Concertino, a Grand Duo Concertant, the Silvana Variations and a clarinet quintet represent some of the most important works for clarinet ever written, true masterpieces of the Romantic era. Weber's music also marks a milestone in the musical life of Sebastian Manz. In his youth, he heard a recording of the Second Clarinet Concerto - with jazzman Benny Goodman as soloist - and it was Goodman's energetic playing that convinced the young Sebastian Manz that nothing less than intensive engagement with his instrument would do. Like Goodman, who took a jazz musician's liberties with Weber's work, Sebastian Manz himself enhances the compositions with all the artistic devices at his disposal. In preparing for this recording, he made a close study of the score that belonged to Heinrich Joseph Baermann, the great clarinet virtuoso of his day, who kept up a close friendship with Carl Maria von Weber and was involved in the composition of the clarinet works from start to finish. The consequence was that Baermann prepared his own versions of the works, taken as standard by many clarinettists to this day. Not that Manz ever regarded that as an option! He has developed his own interpretations - resulting in an individual reading full of lightness and artistic invention. The comprehensive uniqueness on all levels of Sebastian Manz's recording has much to do with the circumstances under which it was produced. As solo clarinettist of SWR's Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart. Sebastian Manz was able to bring his own Stuttgart colleagues on board for the recordings - making a team that delves into the technical subtleties of Weber's works while also plumbing their emotional depths.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Boris Lyatoshynsky was the foremost Ukrainian composer of the twentieth century and his five symphonies are the cornerstone of the symphonic music of his country. The Fourth Symphony of 1963 met with immediate acclaim for its imaginative orchestration, while the Fifth Symphony is memorable for its use of Ukrainian folkloric material. This is the third of three discs comprising the complete Lyatoshynsky symphonies.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Ustvolskaya's music is dark, somber, even remote when a solitary voice holds sway. Her rejection of easily recognizable form suggests that, metaphorically, time is not a factor; as temporal references are acutely literai, the means to escape an oppressive time and place are found in spiritual, not social, values. Similarly, the chilling sparseness of textures becomes an emotionallandscape, scarred, sometimes painfully severe, where inner strength is necessary for survival. But there is, too, especially in the Duet For Violin And Piano, a sanctity of mood (shared with the later Shostakovich, when he was obsessed with death, and where, in his final works such as the Viola Sonata and Sonata For Violin And Piano, the influence of Ustvolskaya may be felt). ln moments like this, rare is the music where the human will is so immediate, so enduring.

Laszlo Lajtha is recognized, along with Bartok, Kodaly and Dohnanyi, as one of the great Hungarian composers of the first half of the twentieth century. He established his reputation as his country’s foremost symphnist but also showed a strong affinity for the stage, writing his one-act ballet Capriccio in 1944. Despite the darkness of the times the ballet is filled with light and set in the period around 1700, the age of Watteau. Taking commedia dell’arte as his model, Lajtha’s characterization brims with wit and elegance.

László Lajtha's passionate Third Symphony emerged from a fruitful period when the composer was based in London. Its origin was a film score for T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, the author grateful for a soundtrack to "elevate his words and thoughts". Lajtha's Fourth Symphony uses Hungarian musical idioms with wit and charm to bewitch the listener from the outset, its escapist joie de vivre belying the dark circumstances that surrounded its creation, while the Second Suite is based on a satirical ballet that uses Classical mythology to poke fun at fascist dictators.

Acclaimed as America's premier post-classical string quartet, Ethel presents a power-packed, sonic snapshot of the group's life in New York City in it's latest album Heavy. It's only fitting that after 14 years of performing, commissioning, composing, collaborating and living in New York City, Ethel celebrates the composers from NYC's music community. Recorded over an 18 month period by Cornelius Dufallo (violin), Dorothy Lawson (cello), Mary Rowell (violin), and Ralph Farris (viola), Heavy features works by eight celebrated contemporary composers: Don Byron, John Halle, Julia Wolfe, John King, Raz Mesinai, David Lang, Kenji Bunch, and Marcelo Zarvos. The album follows an organic progression from Don Byron's intense, jazz-influenced "String Quartet No. 2: Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye" tracks to the engaging "Rounds" by Brazilian film composer Marcelo Zarvos. "Ethel has been playing most of these composers' works ever since the group's inception 14 years ago," says Ralph Farris, co-founder of Ethel. "These composers - this city - are so much a part of who we are as a group. This album serves as an homage to New York City, it's people, and it's music." "indefatigable and eclectic". - New York Times "vital and brilliant". - The New Yorker "fearless... pioneering" - Time Out New York.

Ninety-one years and a turn of century later, Alban Berg's String Quartet Op. 3 no longer shocks as it once did, but rather sounds more and more like an accessible piece of finely wrought chamber music. That's not to say it contains stretches of "Hum-um-umable melody" (to quote Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along), but with careful and repeated listening the ear discerns motifs and harmonic patterns where formerly there seemed naught but noise. Such revelations are greatly aided by the Leipzig String Quartet's generously romantic approach both to this and to the Lyric Suite. Its warm legato and passionate phrasing humanize and romanticize Berg's highly personal masterpieces, both created in connection with love affairs. This is in marked contrast to the Galimir Quartet's strident and angular performances on Vanguard, which place Berg more firmly in the epoch of the Second Viennese School. But the Leipzigers are capable of much fierce energy too, especially in the more explosive moments of the Lyric Suite, which they play with fearless alacrity.


The disc also includes Webern's brief (even for him) Three Pieces for String Quartet, featuring the ethereal singing of Christiane Oelze in the second piece, a setting of one of the composer's poems. At two minutes and ten seconds, it's over before you realize it, but even the much longer Berg works have this effect, thanks to the stunning Leipzig Quartet performances, recorded in top-drawer sound by MDG.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Johann Joachim Quantz was the most innovative performer and composer for the flute in the eighteenth century. He was also the teacher, composer and flute-maker to Frederick II, ‘The Great’, King of Prussia. Royal concerts were the principal venue for Quantz’s concertos where their constant invention and brilliance were intensified by his specially designed flutes. The A minor Concerto has only recently been retrieved from the Russian National Library in St Petersburg, whilst the G major’s cadenzas have been preserved, fully written-out, providing a valuable direct link to performance practices in Quantz’s time. Poignantly, Frederick himself completed the C minor Concerto after Quantz’s death.

Unfailingly enjoyable music, performance and recording.

The Avison Ensemble continue to do proud the composer whose name they bear. Having recorded his Opp. 3 and 4 (Naxos 8.557905-6 – see review) and Op.6 Concertos (Naxos 8.557553-4 – see Jonathan Woolf’s review and Johan van Veen’s review), Concerti after Geminiani (Divine Art DDA21210 – see review), the Op.9 and Op.10 Concerti Grossi (DDA21211) and his Concerti Grossi after D Scarlatti (DDA21213), they now turn their attention to the Op.1 Trio Sonatas and the Op.8 Keyboard Sonatas with accompaniments. I’m on record as offering high praise to DDA21211 – see review – and DDA21213 – see review – and Jonathan Woolf was also lavish in his praise for DDA21213 – see review.

The works on the new set may not reach quite the heights of the Concertos after Geminiani and Scarlatti – go for those two sets first – but they are by no means negligible: unfailingly tuneful and well-constructed. The Op.1 pieces may well have had their origin as exercises when Avison was being tutored by Geminiani; if so, they are the work of a very competent and inspired pupil, by no means a slavish imitator of his mentor. Even when he adapted the keyboard works of Geminiani and Scarlatti, Avison did much more than merely orchestrate their music, just as Geminiani had done in orchestrating the music of his own mentor, Corelli.

The Op.1 Sonatas are advertised on their title page (reproduced in the well-documented Divine Art booklet) as ‘for two violins and a bass’. This makes them, in effect, Trio Sonatas in the manner of Corelli – indeed, they all follow the four-movement pattern of Corelli’s Sonate da chiesa, slow-fast-slow-fast, though it is unlikely that they were intended for church performance. The ‘bass’ is performed here on the cello and chest organ, making for a very full sound. I’m on record as preferring the cleaner sound of violin and harpsichord, without cello, in Corelli’s Op.5 Sonatas (Naxos 8.557799 – see review) but the fuller sound works well in Avison’s Op.1, making the music sound much closer to the Concerti Grossi on the Ensemble’s other recordings.

The Op.1 Sonatas are in a form transmitted from Corelli via Geminiani. By the date of the Op.8 Sonatas, however, the music of Rameau was becoming influential in England and Avison specifically mentions ‘Scarlatti, Rameau and Carlo-Bach’ (i.e. CPE Bach) alongside Geminiani in his ‘Advertisement’ for the set. The notes in the booklet very reasonably speculate that Avison knew Rameau’s Pièces de clavecin en concerts: he certainly praises the French composer for his ‘spirited Science’. Once again, however, whatever the degree of Rameau’s influence, Avison is no slavish imitator. I hear the influence of Scarlatti and, perhaps, even a foretaste of Boccherini in Sonata No.3 (trs.6-7).

The title page of Op.8 (again, reproduced in the booklet) described the works as ‘for the harpsichord with accompanyments for two violins and a violoncello’ and he specified that the string parts ‘being intended for Assistants only ... ought no where to overpower the Harpsichord.’ This brings me to my one reservation concerning the new recording. Whatever Avison’s intentions – reinforced by the fact that the harpsichord part is capable of being performed alone – the ‘Assistant’ strings do sometimes prove intrusive on the recording. This may well be an inherent problem in the music itself rather than one to be laid at the door of the performers or the engineers. Without suggesting that multi-miking or other trickery should have been employed, I should have thought it possible for the harpsichord part to be brought out more fully on a recording.

It’s a minor criticism and it didn’t spoil my enjoyment unduly. Otherwise I have nothing but praise for everything on these CDs. Music, performance and recording – preferably with a slight volume reduction from your normal setting – all contribute to a most enjoyable experience and the booklet is a model of its kind. As on the earlier recordings, there are no rough edges to the sound of the period instruments employed; this is early music without tears. I look forward now to the appearance of the Op.5 and Op.7 sonatas.

-- Brian Wilson, ClassicsToday.com

This series of DVDs features travel scenes accompanied by classical music.

This series of DVDs features travel scenes accompanied by classical music.

The Places

Mozart’s father Leopold settled in Salzburg in 1737 and in 1744 entered the service of the city’s ruling Prince-Archbishop as a violinist. The city underwent various changes of regime in the first years of the nineteenth century, but in 1825 Schubert could express his wonder at the fine churches and palaces of the place.

The Music

The music includes movements directly connected with Salzburg, compositions for distinguished local families, members of the Mozarts’ social circle, and works resulting from his visit in 1777-78 to Mannheim. Other compositions come from the remarkable final decade of Mozart’s life, when he was living in Vienna, culminating in the Lacrimosa from the unfinished Requiem of 1791, a movement that he is said to have tried to sing, with his friends, on his death-bed.

This series of DVDs features travel scenes accompanied by classical music.

MOZART IN-BETWEEN

Gabriel Fauré’s musical language bridges a gap between the romanticism of the 19th century and the new worlds of music which appeared in the 20th, employing subtle harmonic changes and a gift for melody to combine innovation with an entirely personal idiom. His First Piano Quartet is filled with characteristic French colour and lyricism, and the Piano Trio in D minor is a late work whose musical language is familiar from his songs. Both the Pavane and the popular Sicilienne express nostalgia for earlier times, and the short Pièce has great simplicity and charm.

A fine recital of 20th century music for flute and piano by English composers including some rare pieces, all melodic and memorable. A special recording as it features the traditional "English" wooden flute rather than the metal flute now more prevalent. It's warm tone embellishes these works even more.

WORKS FOR PIANOFORTE

Classical Music

REVIEW:

These three violin concertos appear at a time when the music of the wider Classical Period--composers aside from Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven--is garnering more attention than ever before. Labels like Naxos and its publishing affiliate, Artaria, are digging up, printing and recording large swaths of repertoire and proving just how high the standard of quality was during this epoch. Joseph Boulogne, a.k.a. the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, has always had a certain following, as much owing to his colorful life as warrior, statesman, and violin virtuoso of mixed-race parentage as to his gifts as a composer. These violin concertos may not be terribly adventurous formally, but they reveal an extremely cultured mind with a genuine gift for melody. They flow beautifully.

Each concerto has essentially the same form: a quick first movement, a central Andante or Largo, and a Rondeau finale in moderate tempo with a racy minor-key episode in the middle. While full of effective display for the solo instrument, they are not "virtuoso" works in the sense that the finales offer the most show-stopping moments. As in classical symphonies, the first movements are the most highly developed, and consequently the most difficult for the soloist, while those following offer a steady relaxation. Rapid figurations and wild bouts of frantic passagework are less important than a fine, singing tone and a cultivated sense of style.

In this last respect, the works find an ideal advocate in Takako Nishizaki. She plays each work with an elegance and fastidiousness that never becomes merely fussy or precludes a natural simplicity of expression. She masters the music's more virtuosic passages with ease, but makes the strongest impression at moments such as those in the opening movement of the Op. 5, No. 2 concerto where the composer expects absolute purity of intonation in very high-lying, exposed passages. Here, and at other similar moments, Nishizaki's sweet tone, tastefully controlled vibrato, and accuracy of pitch pay generous dividends. Of course, there's more to this music than mere cuteness, and Nishizaki certainly enjoys those special excursions, such as the "minore" sections of all three finales (Op. 8 in particular), which call for some serious fiddling in a more rugged, folk-style.

Still, it's the lovely slow movements that may linger most in your memory, particularly that of the C major concerto, with its Mozartean divided violas. Nishizaki adds her own entirely apt, brief cadenzas towards the end of each--the only places in these works that clearly encourage improvisation. Helmut Müller-Brühl and the Cologne Chamber Orchestra offer vigorous support, though for my taste the harpsichord continuo sounds too prominent (the music doesn't really require it at all), and Naxos' recording, though richly sonorous and very well-balanced between soloist and orchestra, puts a slight glare on Nishizaki's upper register. Still, this isn't serious enough to preclude a strong recommendation for the Chevalier's finely crafted music, especially when it's played with such obvious care and affection.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

It’s remarkable that The Diary of Anne Frank has not been the subject for a major choral work until this thoughtful and often moving setting of selected texts (the original version premiered in London in 2005, conducted by Leonard Slatkin) by English composer James Whitbourn and librettist Melanie Challenger. Material from the ultra-famous diary has been used for an oft-performed opera/mono-drama (by Grigori Frid), a song cycle, numerous individual songs, and of course as the basis for a famous play and movie, but never for a vocal work of this form (a kind of choral-song cycle/cantata/tone poem) or scope (14 musical sections lasting a total of 70 minutes).

A convincing argument could be made that Anne Frank’s diary doesn’t need musical treatment; it works just fine on its own. Its prose (translated from Dutch to English) does not readily fall into musical phrases; neither do those phrases, beautiful as they often are, suggest handy poetic rhythms. Rather, the power of Anne Frank’s writing lies in the fact of its unadorned simplicity and heartfelt expression, which needs no embellishment or commentary. That said, Whitbourn, who is a first-rate composer for voices, has seen fit (been inspired) to attempt to enliven and enrich some of those revered words with music, and Annelies (Anne Frank’s full, original name was Annelies Marie Frank) is the result.

Whitbourn states that Annelies is “a commemorative work” both for Anne and for “those voiceless millions who shared her fate.” The intent of the librettist was to focus on Anne’s keen observations of people, of events in her immediate environment and of the world beyond, and of her own situation and longed-for destiny. The order of presentation of the text selections is not chronological (the first one is from April, 1944, only a few months before the inhabitants of the Annexe were found by the Nazis and taken away); rather the selections are organized to capture the essence of Anne’s thoughts, feelings, and character independent of time, which at some point ceased to have the same relevance for her as for those not confined as she was, separated from the normal measurements of life and progress.

Setting English prose, especially of the un-self-conscious variety, to music is not easy—it usually comes off sounding unnatural, contrived, forced. Melodies go off in weird directions, misled by irregular rhythms and jagged inflections. Britten and Menotti got it absolutely right; Whitbourn, while very often successful, doesn’t always join them. When you have to set words such as, “I started packing my important belongings. The first thing was my diary…”, or, “We arrived at the Prinsengracht, led through the long passage and up the wooden staircase to the Annexe…”, you need to think of the realization as speech, not as some remote, detached musical expression. But here, passages like this seem contrived to “fit” rather than to illuminate the thought or idea of the speaker.

One problem for me was the choice of soprano for the solo passages. Arianna Zukerman unquestionably has a beautiful voice, but her big sound and operatic style, especially in this chamber version of the work, and her somewhat detached delivery of the texts seemed at odds with the sincere, uninhibited voice of the teenage Anne. In fact, for me the best parts of the work were those featuring the chorus.

There also are some misleading contextual issues that at least on the surface seem unnecessary. One is the point in the score titled “Passing of time”, a quote from a diary entry in January, 1944. Here, the text simply says “The years went by. There’s a saying: ‘Time heals all wounds,’ that’s how it was for me.” From this we have no way of knowing that in her diary, what Anne was actually referring to was her experience of love for a boy, before the war, but in this context we’re led to believe that it was some vague reference to her endless days spent in the confined, oppressive world hiding in the Annexe. Later in the work, in lines quoted from February, 1944, we hear of Anne’s desire to “fulfill my longing at last…” But the important lines telling us what this longing is are omitted. We’re led to believe that it refers to something about spring, but actually she is talking about how she is “longing—really longing—for everything: conversation, freedom, friends, being alone.” She even longs—”to cry!”

Apart from these pointed reservations, I have to say that Whitbourn does a wonderful job finding musical contexts and expressive techniques to realize them. He uses his chamber instruments (violin, cello, piano, clarinet) well, sometimes calling them to create the sounds of traditional Jewish music, at others to paint a mood, whether of gloom or levity, contemplation or exuberance or apprehension. And his writing for unaccompanied voices, which constitutes a large part of the score, is superb; there are so many moments of happy inspiration throughout that you easily glide past the less shining sections.

Some of the more affecting sections come near the end of the work: the beautiful hymn-like tune on “Ich danke dir für all das Gute…” (Anne included this German text, which she said at the conclusion of her prayers each night, in the diary on March 7, 1944); the eerily captivating choral/instrumental evocation of the scene of the Annexe residents’ discovery, capture, and rude departure for Westerbork and the concentration camps (“The capture and the concentration camp”); the following a cappella chorale based on verses from the Psalms and from Lamentations.

I actually wished that the work had ended there—by now it had effectively made its point, shining its light on several of this remarkable teenage girl’s all-too-briefly lived moments of insight, despair, longing, eloquence, and most of all, of hope, doomed yet more desirable, more sustaining than the alternative. At this point, it just seemed fitting to leave us to ponder the true, harsh end, enhanced by the open, bitter chords of this chorale and the final words (“The young and the old lie on the ground; the maids and young men are fallen”, from Lamentations). However, it’s also easy to understand Whitbourn and Challenger’s decision to instead leave us with the words and image of the more positive, optimistic Anne, whose spirit rose above and outlived all the evil that surrounded her: “As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you’ll know you’re pure within.” These words understandably may inspire us and make us feel better (nothing wrong with that), but, as Anne’s observations should vividly remind us, we still cannot escape from who we are as humans, what we’ve done, and why these things that happened to Anne and millions of others, in one form or another, keep happening.

-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com