Among Liszt's operatic paraphrases and transcriptions, those based on Verdi operas constitute some of the composer/pianist's most effective and satisfying efforts in the genre. Since Claudio Arrau's reference recording of all seven can be had only as part of a boxed set, Naxos' excellent single-disc edition featuring Alexandre Dossin is all the more welcome. Like Arrau, Dossin is a big virtuoso who obtains huge sonorities without banging, and is not averse to underlining Liszt's expressive directives in red ink, with broad, rhetorical strokes.

At times Dossin's melodic pushing and pulling is a bit much (the Rigoletto Paraphrase's exposition), yet more than enough moments reveal the work of a caring keyboard master. For example, Dossin coaxes great tonal variety and emotional impact from the murky low-register passages in the Miserere from Il Trovatore. Also note the I Lombardi paraphrase's beautifully gilded arpeggios, Dossin's sense of long-lined control throughout the taxing left-hand octaves in Reminiscences De Boccanegra, or the way he conveys both power and luminosity in the Ernani paraphrase's bushels of chords. No doubt that Naxos' ample, detailed sonics enhance my observations. I hope that the label has further projects in store for this talented pianist.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Dvorák’s quartets number among the gems of their genre. A new recording by one and the same ensemble is long overdue, and the fact that the Vogler Quartet has taken on this gigantic task is very good luck indeed. The Vogler Quartet is a phenomenon. Its membership has remained unchanged since 1985, and over the years the individual and team talent of its musicians has secured them a place among the world’s top chamber ensembles.

PERFECT WEDDING

IBERIAN AND AFRICAN-BRAZILIAN MUSIC OF THE 17TH CENTURY

"Here is a beautiful young pianist with a superb Scriabin recital... Her performances are warm and intuitive and logical and completely non-rhetorical. The result is an extraordinary disclong journey into Scriabin’s increasingly sulfurous and mad world." -- Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News

"Wang manages to cut a diagonal path across Scriabin's output, largely drawing from lesser known pieces, including the waltzes, poems, and pieces in genres he visited no more than once or a couple of times. These are often treated as afterthoughts by pianists in the course recording of comprehensive Scriabin packages, in several cases that's all you'll ever find of such works on disc. However, Wang treats each as a distinct and separate case, and she spins the neglected Polonaise in B flat minor, Op. 21, into gold, relating it to the Russian tradition of the polonaise with its darker hues and more lumbering, rhythmic profile. She finds what's truly "satanic" about the Poème satanique, Op. 36, a work that often doesn't get very good performances because its uncharacteristically bright, major-key sound seems at odds with the title; however, in Wang's version it is clear that this piece comes from the dark side of Scriabin's musical universe. Speaking of which, her rendition of Vers la flamme — a piece Wang often plays in recital and is included on her debut — is everything one would want it to be: muted and gradually emergent at the start, white hot and ecstatic at the end." -- Dave Lewis, All Music Guide

"The booklet notes that Xiayin Wang provides for her Naxos Scriabin recital are as intelligent and insightful as her interpretations. The pianist's urbane, witty treatment of such Chopin-influenced fare as the D-flat and F minor Waltzes and the B-flat minor Polonaise convincingly transforms the younger composer into the ironist he never was and never would be. It makes me wonder how she'd enliven Scriabin's Mazurkas. Her taut, harmonically aware renditions of the Op. 32, Op. 34, Op. 36, and Op. 52 Poèmes fall agreeably on the ear, notwithstanding more drawn out, subjective, and sexy accounts to be savored (Pascal Amoyel on Calliope, for example). Appropriately fiery climaxes rivet attention in Flammes sombres and Vers la flamme, although much of the diffuse B minor Fantasie grows too loud too soon when compared to Alexander Melnikov's more diverse pacing and wider dynamic range. Overall, a fine disc that bodes well for future releases from this talented pianist." --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

"Having listened to this new release from pianist Xiayin Wang, I simply cannot imagine how or why I have managed to avoid Scriabin’s solo piano œuvre for so long. The music here, and Wang’s playing of it are of an exquisite beauty beyond description...Xiayin Wang seems to have a very special affinity for Scriabin’s music....A beautiful recital by an up-and-coming young artist, captured in excellent sound by Naxos’s recording team. Highly recommended." -- Jerry Dubins, Fanfare

Classical Music

If the career of the Bohemian composer Florian Leopold Gassmann, had not been cut cruelly short by his death resulting from a fall from a carriage, his name might be a good deal better known today for he was an accomplished composer.

Includes work(s) by Sir Lennox Berkeley. Ensemble: Maggini String Quartet.

This live La Forza del Destino by Giuseppe Verdi from Firenze, Italy in June 1956 stars a young and dynamic tenor Giuseppe di Stefano near the beginning of a brilliant, decades-long stage career and Renata Tebaldi, a lyric soprano blessed with one of the most gorgeous and forthright voices in 20th century opera, and in all likelihood in operatic history. The mezzo-soprano Fedora Barbieri is always a welcome presence in Italian opera recordings of this period. Gabriele Santini conducts the Orchestra e Coro del Teatro Comunale di Firenze.

Lolli: Sonatas for Violin and Basso Continuo

• This and future releases of the new DYNAMIC budget-price series will feature the most important works of Locatelli, Vivialdi, Paganini, and others in a major survey of their most significant virtuosic works for violin. • Italian violinist Luca Fanfoni's discography includes several previous Dynamic releases • NY debut 2002 – Carnegie Hall • Luca Fanfoni is violin professor at the Parma Conservatory

Now in his creative maturity, the Catalan composer Benet Casablanca's has a growing interest in the sensuality of sound. Seven Scenes from Hamlet, one of his best-known works, is a theatrical mosaic of images inspired by Shakespeare' play. The Epigram.

The Codex Faenza (Faenza, Biblioteca Comunale 117) abbreviated as "(I-FZc 117)", and sometimes known as Codex Bonadies, is a late 15th-century musical manuscript containing some of the oldest preserved keyboard music along with additional vocal pieces. The manuscript is still held at the Biblioteca Comunale de Faenza, near Ravenna, but facsimiles are held in other libraries in Italy and overseas.

The Brook Street Band celebrates its 20th anniversary as a champion of the music of Handel with another imaginative album that completes the ensemble’s survey of Handel’s Trio Sonatas for violins and continuo. A bonus is an arrangement for two violins and basso continuo of the overture to Handel’s oratorio, Esther.

One may rightly claim that Johann Baptist Vanhal (1739-1813), who traced his roots to Bohemia, was one of the most productive composers of the 18th c. + He wrote a total of 1,377 (!) works; sixty string quartets having appeared in print through to 1787, with thirty-six others in manuscript or documented in catalogue entries. + Quantity aside, Vanhal quite early gained fame with the quality of his works. + For CPO, the Lotus String Quartet, which gained notice with its triumph at the Int’l Chamber Music Competition in Osaka, Japan in 1994, interprets a selection of these quartets.

Since recordings of Albéric Magnard’s hefty 1904 Op. 18 piano trio are few and far between, any new contender is bound to get attention. On balance, violinist Geneviève Laurenceau, cellist Maximilian Hornung, and pianist Oliver Triendl give us the most consistently satisfying version from both sonic and interpretive perspectives.

The sprawling first movement’s potentially murky low-lying passages emerge with uncommon textural clarity, while the pages and pages encompassing obsessive dotted rhythms of the Schubert and Schumann finale ilk unfold in long paragraphs that never bog down. The musicians sensitively address the Chantant movement’s delicacy and subtle harmonic sleights-of-hand and balance the huge climaxes so that the soaring string melodies and sweeping piano arpeggios interact rather than compete.

If the Valse isn’t ideally lightfooted, I still appreciate the pointed contrapuntal repartée and timbrally differentiated pizzicatos. By contrast, the finale is both forceful and transparent, characterized by the performers’ intelligently contoured counterpoint. They also avoid the easy temptation to inflate the chorale-like final pages with false grandiosity.

Laurenceau and Triendl more than hold their own among the Violin Sonata’s (relatively) more extensive catalog choices. They effortlessly and insightfully navigate the music’s formidable technical demands and acres of textural thickness. Listen, for example, to the inner voices and bass lines coaxed out of the long slow movement’s cascades of descending piano arpeggios, and notice the scrutiny with which Laurenceau and Triendl handle the compact and complex Scherzo’s imitative passages. Colorful shaping also helps to intensify the finale’s fugal writing. After such a workout, you’d expect a big ending payoff. But no, Magnard again goes for the quiet close. In other words, no immediate standing ovation! However, I heartily applaud these excellent performances of underrated works that both deserve and reward any serious music lover’s attention.

-- ClassicsToday.com

Garsington Opera, celebrating its 25th anniversary season in June-July 2014, releases its first commercially available recording, the rare Rossini opera Maometto secondo. Recorded live at Garsington Opera’s universally acclaimed 2013 performances – the first-ever fully staged production of Maometto secondo in the UK – the 3-CD set is stylishly packaged in a 100-page hardbound book, complete with synopsis, essay and libretto in Italian with English translations.

Set in the 15th century, Rossini’s hugely ambitious undertaking depicts the Turkish Sultan Maometto’s siege of the Venetian outpost of Negroponte and his ultimate defeat. The superb international cast is led by the suitably menacing bass-baritone Darren Jeffery in the title role, with American soprano Siân Davies in her European debut as his anguished daughter Anna, Australian mezzo Caitlin Hulcup as the general Calbo, and tenor Paul Nilon as the Venetian Governor. The assured baton of David Parry conducting the Garsington Opera Orchestra and Chorus highlights the brilliant and dramatic score.

This outstanding release mirrors Garsington Opera’s exceptional artistic standards presented in the spectacular, award-winning Pavilion, set in the extraordinarily beautiful Buckinghamshire countryside. - Avie

Even before meeting they were dedicating hours of practice to Liszt’s Mephisto Waltzes. An international solo piano competition was coming up, and the two young pianists were scheduled to vie against each other with this work. Twenty-five years and dozens of successful competitions later, the same two pianists sat down opposite each other at two grand pianos to perform not as rivals but as a renowned duo. “We have decided to dedicate this CD recording to Franz Liszt’s original works for two pianos and to his versions of his own solo piano compositions for two pianos” (Genova & Dimitrov Piano Duo).

The Brook Street Band burst onto the scene in 2003 with their Avie debut, the world premiere recording of Handel’s “Oxford” Water Music, which earned the period-instrument ensemble an Editor’s Choice from Gramophone. Now, the all-girl group presents their first recording of the music of J.S. Bach, adapting his Organ Sonatas to their own instrumentation of two violins, harpsichord, and cello.

“The smartest new baroque band around … if you need instant sunshine, play this disc.” — The Times

“In 1912, when my second quartet was performed in Berlin, a tumult arose in the audience that was not far from a tussle. On the one side, shouts of amazement; on the other side, expressions of displeasure and boos. Even Schönberg, who attaches special value to flops, was envious of me because of this flop.” “…our generation too has fought for its ideals and had to wait long and often still is waiting to receive honest and full recognition of its efforts to produce a new musical language, which very often again became the basis for the new aspirations of the younger generation.” These words were not written by an anarchistic innovator but by the euphonious late romanticist Josef Suk. His second string quartet, however, is surely the most ambitious and ‘most modern’ work he penned. In the field of chamber music it also ranks as his most important. For cpo the Minguet Quartet has recorded Suk’s complete œuvre for string quartet – with Matthias Kirschnereit joining them for the early piano quintet.

Ammann

Classical Music

This selection was recorded at Raveningham Church, Raveningham, Norfolk, England and St. Mary-at-Hill Church. London, England.

Classical Music

The Cypress String Quartet completes their cycle of the genre’s greatest oeuvre with a two-album set of Beethoven’s six ground-breaking quartets, Op. 18, alongside a reissue of their previously self-released recording of the late quartets. For the past several seasons, the Cypresses have immersed themselves in performing Beethoven on tours throughout the U.S. and Europe as well as recording all 16 works plus the “Grande Fugue” (Große Fuge). The completion of their Beethoven cycle is a fitting celebration of the Bay Area-based ensemble’s 20th anniversary, as well as their valedictory season.

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REVIEW:

The Cypress Quartet’s Beethoven readings have numerous virtues. The interpretations are well thought through, and the group’s beauty of tone and unanimity of ensemble are unfailing.

– MusicWeb International