Fedoseyev/Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra.

Juon: Piano Quintet, Op. 33 - Kammersinfonie

Classical Music

Inspirales features works written and inspired by the great cellist-composers of the past, from Fitzenhagen and Popper through to Tortelier and Rostropovich. Zori himself has a contributed a dazzling "Carmeniana' based on Bizet's Carmen, and recorded here for the first time. Hailed by the renowned cellist Bernard Greenhouse to have 'all of the wonderful attributes of a young Emanuel Feuerman,'Hillel Zori has distinguished himself by winning coveted prizes in many international competitions, and enjoys a distinguished career as soloist as well as a member of the Israel Piano Trio.

Krommer, F.: Divertimento in F Major, Op. 96 / Piano Quarte

Edition Luigi Boccherini: Guitar Quintets

Classical Music

Le Petit Mort

Philippe Gaubert: Couleurs

RAWSTHORNE: Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2

Franck, Vierne & Kuerti: Cello Sonatas

In 2013, Florian Uhlig released a recording with French Piano Concertos and it received excellent reviews from critics all over the world and became one of that year's bestsellers. Uhlig is here again, accompanied by the German Radio Philharmonic under Pablo Gonzales - a collaboration which already made his first recording a massive success. This album contains again, piano concertos by Ravel and Francaix, which supplement the concertos of the 2013 album, and rarely performed and very imaginative works for piano and orchestra with concert character by Germaine Tailleferre and Nadia Boulanger. Tailleferre's Ballad for Piano and Orchestra passed through different phases from 1920 - 1922, starting as a pure orchestral work, then becoming a solo piece, and then finally as work with concerto character in the final version. Boulanger originates from a musical family and is famous for her pedagogical passion. Among the concertos on this album, her work was inspired by her idols Cesar Franck and Sergei Rachmaninov.

This album is the fifth and final installment of Maurice Ravel's Orchestral Works, bringing to a close the highly acclaimed cycle by the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart and its chief conductor Stephane Deneve. Ravel's opera L'enfant et les sortileges is the second of his two operas and is considered a neglected masterpiece. The libretto is by the famous French author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette.

Bach: The Harpsichord Partitas

Beethoven: Grand Trio, Op. 38 & Piano Quartet, Op. 16

Celtic Twilight

Hans Rosbaud was the chief conductor of the Southwest Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1948 until his death in 1962. He transformed the orchestra, later renamed as the SWR Symphony Orchestra Baden-Baden and Freiburg, into a leading European ensemble. His interests lay in both contemporary music and the classical and romantic symphonic repertoire. This new series from the SWR Classic label presents largely unpublished recordings by Rosbaud of classical and romantic repertoire, starting with overtures by Richard Wagner.

This programme is probably catchy enough to get the young listener off to an enthusiastic start.

This is one of a batch of CDs in the Naxos 'My First Album' series which founder Klaus Heymann declares "one of our most important projects with music for children". Each comrpises around 15 to 25 pieces of music selected as a gentle but inspiring introduction to the subject matter: in this case the violin repertory. Other volumes showcase Tchaikovsky, the lullaby, ballet, ‘classical music’ and so on. Virtually all the music consists of single movements drawn from larger works, with the average timing here just under the five-minute mark.
 
The CD booklets are attractively designed with youngsters in mind, with a fairy-tale-style pencil/pastel drawing on the cover and many smaller colourful ones on every page - violins feature prominently in this volume. Inside, after a brief introduction to the subject - "The violin is one of the most popular instruments the world over" and so on - each item on the disc is allotted a 'Keyword', ranging from the obvious to the odd, such as 'Thrilling', 'Dance', 'Goblins', 'Film' and 'Sting', and there follows a descriptive/explanatory paragraph, in straightforward language that should be intelligible to children as young as five or six, and unpatronising up to about ten or eleven. The texts enlarge on some of the things going on in the music, either as heard in the instruments or, if the work is programmatic, in the story itself, generally with a mention of the mood of the piece and usually alerting the child to some detail or other.
 
The blurb states that the booklet "is full of information on every piece of music", but that is a bit of an exaggeration. For a start, only the composer's surname is given in the main text, whereas first names - likely to be of interest to younger children - and dates of birth and death are relegated to the small print at the back of the booklet. Unfortunately, there is not even the most cursory of biographical note on any of the composers - this seems an odd omission when the texts talk freely about them as if they were old friends to the reader. Such detail is certainly more relevant than the titles in their original languages, such as 'Danza Española' or 'Souvenir d'un Lieu Cher' - only some of which have in any case been supplied.
 
For an important project, there is some surprising inconsistency or rashness in the language used in the notes. It is no good a child knowing that "Carmen is the world's most famous opera" or that a cor anglais "sounds like a dark oboe" if (s)he has no idea what an opera is or an oboe sounds like. "Can you hear the birds fluttering on the violin?" is likely to be understood literally by younger children. To describe the cimbalom as an instrument that "sounds a bit like a very old piano" is facile. The remark that "Schindler's List [...] is about the story of the Jews in World War II" is crass, inaccurate and semi-literate. As for that film's title theme - "incredibly sad music"? Nostalgic, touching, introspective - but surely not "incredibly sad", except perhaps for those who have seen the film.
 
The back of the booklet is the place to go for details of performers, rightly judged this time to be of little importance to nascent listeners, but a necessary reference for parents wishing to delve further into the music, whether on their child's behalf or perhaps - why not - for themselves. Yet the recordings drawn on for these compilations are not really the best ones to look out for, nor even the cheapest anymore. For the first batch of discs at least Naxos have drawn widely on their back catalogue bargain basement, meaning that performances tend to be rarely more than fair-to-middling, whilst the recordings themselves, some over twenty years old, can show their age in their thin or tinny quality, always most noticeable in the orchestral tracks.
 
That said, this CD is the best of the bunch so far - most of the performances are perfectly serviceable and the chamber recordings, of which there are many on this album, sound decidedly less lossy. Moreover, it is also true that the intended audiences are neither hardcore audiophiles nor zealous collectors but ordinary children, who will probably not notice anyway! Still, there seems no obvious reason why Naxos did not use newer, better recordings across the board.

Asking a six-year-old to sit through seventy-five minutes of any music is a tall order. Even a few minutes of less immediate material might induce premature boredom, in which case other or at least shorter Mozart and Beethoven might have been included instead, and a different Tchaikovsky melody. In smaller servings, this programme is probably catchy enough to get the young listener off to an enthusiastic start, yet it is difficult to discount the idea that those selecting the music and writing the notes could have thought a bit harder.
 
-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

String Quartet Wedding Music

SPOHR: String Quintets Nos. 5 and 6

SPOHR: String Quintets Nos. 3 and 4

Includes work(s) by Francisco Tarrega. Soloists: Andrés Segovia, Regino Sainz de la Maza.

Lillian Fuchs (1903–1991) was considered the “first lady of the viola,” and enjoyed a very successful career as a performer, composer, and teacher. Her students at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music became the elite players of the viola in the US and her influence is still very much alive, 14 years after her death. The Bach suites that she recorded in the beginning of the 1950s were received with unanimous praise by her contemporaries, but since then they have disappeared from the market, and have become collectors’ items. So I was piqued to find out what the fuss was all about.

Yes, it is a dated performance in many senses. Fuchs plays with the kind of unrelenting legato that we would bash in any aspiring musician of today. Her interpretation is overly Romantic, phrases long, and breaths almost non-existent. Yet, I could not stop listening, and after the first CD ended, I was still curious to hear more. Why was that? Part of the reason is the lush, flexible sound produced by the artist, the interesting inflections, the unerring sense of direction, the overall technical achievement. Notable also is the very spare use of vibrato, pointing to a more “modern” conception (that is, one which is closer to our notions about authentic-performance practices) than was the norm at the time. But the main reason is that intangible charisma, the star quality that makes us follow every mood change, every nuance in dynamics, every twist in the musical plot.

...I was left with the sensation of having shared a unique moment, of the kind that transcends fashion or trends, and that can rightfully be called a legendary performance.

Laura Rónai, FANFARE

Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) was a Lithuanian-born violinist, who is considered by many music scholars to have been the greatest violinist of all time. He moved to the United States as a teenager, where his Carnegie Hall debut was famously well-received. A virtuoso since childhood, Fritz Kreisler, another leading twentieth century violinist, wrote upon hearing Heifetz’s debut: “We might as well take our fiddles and break them across our knees.” This is the second volume from DOREMI of monumental 1940s historic broadcasts of Jascha Heifetz, made at the pinnacle of his artistry. This is their first release, and this album was awarded a coveted Diapason d’Or award in France.

Daniel Shafran, Vol. 2: Bach's 6 Suites for Cello Solo