Lera Auerbach’s music has been compared to that of Shostakovich, and with good reason. She remains committed to a fresh use of tonality, without denying herself the full resources of modern technique. The 24 Preludes for cello and piano follow the traditional journey through all the major and minor keys. There are passionate adagios, a sardonic reference to the Magic Flute Overture (Prelude No. 14), waltzes, scherzos, laments, and giddy allegros. The scoring for cello and piano is clever and handled with a keen ear for color and timbre.

Best of all, the performances are sensational. Auerbach is a superb pianist, and she handles her own frequently virtuosic writing with aplomb. Ani Aznavoorian plays a mean cello, both here and in the Cello Sonata. As Auerbach points out in her notes, the two instruments are equal partners in this latter work, a gripping emotional outpouring that concludes with a lament marked “with extreme intensity”. The preceding third movement is a wild toccata that recalls similar moments in Shostakovich’s Eighth quartet and Eighth symphony. Auerbach also makes evocative use of microtones both here and occasionally in the preludes as well. It’s an interesting addition to her expressive arsenal, particularly when they appear in a tonal context.

The program concludes with a brief Postlude for cello and piano, actually a “deconstruction” of the twelfth Prelude. Grim and eerie, it closes the program on a note of mysterious unease. The sonics are gorgeous, with perfect balances and a very realistic perspective. Fans of good contemporary chamber music will want to own this; it repays repeated listening and reveals Auerbach as a true force in today’s music.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

NOTABLE WOMEN • Lincoln Trio • CEDILLE 126 (67:20)


AUERBACH Piano Trio. GARROP Seven. HIGDON Piano Trio. SCHWENDINGER C’e La Luna Questa Sera? THOMAS Moon Jig. TOWER Trio Cavany


The Lincoln Trio is touring the United States, Europe, South America, and Asia with the selections played on this compact disc. Of the six women composers whose works they chose to record, two are very well known and their music is often played by symphony orchestras and chamber groups. Jennifer Higdon has won both a Pulitzer Prize and a Grammy, while Joan Tower, who has been composing for more than 50 years, is widely accepted as one of this country’s most important living composers. Still, a recording that holds only compositions by women is highly unusual. Higdon and Tower have made fine contributions in any case and their music deserves to be in everyone’s collection. Higdon’s Piano Trio has two movements, titled “Pale Yellow” and “Fiery Red.” Anyone who has ever painted will enjoy the evocation of these very different colors. The yellow has a great deal of white in it and its music as played by the Lincoln Trio is lyrical and tuneful with pastel values. The red, on the other hand, is all but too hot to handle. Its dissonance is controlled savagery. There is another recording of this piece on Naxos, but it was made live and the sound is not nearly as clear and present as on the Cedille disc.


Tower is represented by her trio cleverly called Cavany. It was co-commissioned by the La Jolla Music Festival in California, the Virginia Arts Festival, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. Since it was a three-way co-commission, it has a three-note motif. It sounds simple but it actually requires considerable virtuosity from each of the able players. The resulting music is accessible and has already started to enter the repertoire.


Lesser-known composers on this CD include the wildly inventive, Russian-born Lera Auerbach, who now composes in New York City. Stacy Garrop’s Seven was written in memory of her father. Laura Elise Schwendinger’s C’e La Luna Questa Sera? makes the listener wonder if it will be safe to walk in the moonlight, while Augusta Read Thomas’s Moon Jig is an invitation to dance into the night.


This compact disc was produced and engineered by Grammy Award-winner Judith Sherman. The sound is clear, the balances seem natural, and the sound of the trio is close to what you would hear if you were listening to them play in a small hall with good acoustics. This is the premiere recording of the works by Tower and Schwendinger. The Lincoln Trio plays all these pieces with exquisite taste, so this disc would be an important addition to any library.


FANFARE: Maria Nockin

Robert Starer's K'li zemer concerto will be a surprise to anyone who associates the term with weddings and bar mitzvahs. Actually the Yiddish klezmer (instrumental musician) is a contraction of k'li zemer, which, translated literally from the Hebrew, means "instrument of song". That is precisely what Starer makes of the clarinet in this beautifully melodic work (quite a surprise given the composer's usual acerbic style). The tunes, all of Starer's invention, are based on Eastern European Jewish music, and each provides a rich harmonic framework for the clarinet's wonderfully virtuosic explorations.


Paul Schoenfield's long-standing desire "to create entertaining music that could be played at Hassidic gatherings as well as the concert hall" finds fulfillment in his Klezmer Rondos--a concerto for flute, tenor, and orchestra. The opening's raucous band music comes to an abrupt stop as the flute's sustained high note introduces the plaintive main theme. After a series of contentious exchanges between flute (skillfully rendered by Scott Goff) and orchestra, the band music returns, this time halted by the tenor's sustained high note, which in turn becomes Schoenfield's setting of the Yiddish poem Mirele (sung with wit and tenderness by Alberto Mizrahi). It's a marvelously effective piece that, although steeped in elements of Jewish ritual, can be enjoyed by all listeners.


Next come two brief pieces by Jacob Weinberg, The Maypole and Canzonetta, which are colorful explorations of Yiddish and Hassidic folk melodies, while Abraham Ellstein's tuneful Hassidic Dance for clarinet and orchestra presents a rhapsodic evocation of traditional Jewish ceremonies.


The final piece, Osvaldo Golijov's Rocketekya, scored for clarinet, violin, electric viola, and contrabass, is closest to what most listeners will know as Klezmer--a high-spirited, rhythmically and melodically exotic celebration. David Krakauer's highly imaginative and technically assured playing greatly enlivens the clarinet works, while Gerard Schwarz leads energetic and sensitive accompaniments with both the Seattle and Barcelona orchestras. The recordings all have fine presence, clarity, and impact.
--Victor Carr Jr, ClassicsToday.com

Click here to view all available releases in the Milken Archive Series at ArkivMusic.

Christmas Around the World

Bach: The Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080

Trio Settecento, the “superlative Chicago-based early music ensemble” (Gramophone) presents Italian Baroque composer Francesco Maria Veracini’s monumental Opus 2 Sonate Accademiche for violin and continuo. It’s a cosmopolitan collection of 12 sonatas of breathtaking scope and pan-European influences – a set of sonatas unlike any other of the era. Veracini’s Sonate Accedemiche is both an homage to his fellow-countryman Arcangelo Corelli and an original masterpiece in its own right.

Billboard chart-topping violinist Rachel Barton Pine, “one of the rare mainstream performers with a total grasp of Baroque style and embellishment” (Fanfare) and her colleagues in Trio Settecento, cellist John Mark Rozendaal, and harpsichordist David Schrader, bring their “refreshing, life-enhancing Baroque playing” (Chicago Tribune) to these sonatas infused with melodies imported from Scotland, Dalmatia, Poland, the Canary Islands, and rural France.

The title of this release, Wunderkammer, is named for the “Cabinet of Curiosities” that was frequently found in the home of a seventeenth-century German aristocrat. The cabinet held some sort of private museum collection. For this album, Acronym has found a great deal of previously unrecorded sonatas composed by forgotten composers.Like the Wunderkammer of German aristocracy, many of these works contain eccentricities, irregularities, and curiosities. Composers featured on this recording include Samuel Capricornus, Adam Drese, Johann Philipp Krieger, Andreas Oswald, Antonio Bertali, Daniel Eberlin, Philipp Jakob Rittler, Georg Piscator, Alessandro Poglietti, and Clemens Thieme.

BERTALI 13 Sonatas • Acronym • OLDE FOCUS 901 (63: 59)


Antonio Bertali (1605–1669) is one of those many composers from the Italian States who achieved prominence at the 17th-century Viennese courts of the Holy Roman Emperors. All of the rulers preferred the musical world of late 16th- and early 17th-century Italy, and their various musical directors provided many works along these stylistic lines. Bertali, who assumed the office of Kapellmeister followed Giovanni Valentini’s death in 1649, was especially known for his operas and church music, but his sonatas recall those of Uccellini, Merula, Marini, and Castello. That’s to say, they are a succession of dances, recitatives, fast movements in imitative counterpoint, and slow arias over ostinato basses. They are attractive, distinctive pieces that haven’t lacked for champions in the recent past, though Acronym claims first recordings for six of the sonatas heard on his release.


As for the ensemble, it performs with a rich, full-bodied sound in unison, as I remarked on its almost concurrent release of Pezel’s Opus Musicum Sonatarum Praestantissimarum Senis Instrumentis Instructum (Olde Focus 903). That precision is especially welcome in the faster movements, and the ensemble catches some of the extravagant “take stage” expressivity in the more freely phrased of the recitatives. However, in solo passages, at least one of the violinists (four are named collectively, but never separately) has an unappealingly thin tone and occasional difficulties with going off pitch. They’re not quite as adverse to vibrato here as they are on that Pezel release, but they come close: I counted only two brief uses apiece of slow and fast vibrato applied in the first six of the 13 sonatas. It would at least help with the tonal issues, as would other experiments with violin color that were written about at the time.


Overall, then, this is an enjoyable release, mitigated by anemic tone and pitch issues in some of the solo passagework. Consider as well Quicksilver’s Stile Moderno , which includes one of Bertali’s sonatas, along with many by his contemporaries (Acis 72546). Sadly, Andrew Manze’s tribute to Biagio Marini, Curiose e Moderne Inventioni , is no longer in print on Harmonia Mundi HMX 2907175, though his recording of Uccelini’s sonatas (Harmonia Mundi 907196) still is. All three albums provide a mix of first-rate playing and stylistic sensibility in much the same kind of music.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

The English composer Gustav Holst served for many years as director of music at St Paul' Girls' School in London, and it was for the pupils there that he wrote his St Paul' Suite, his most famous work for amateurs.

The years 1898-1900 for Elgar saw the composition of The Dream of Gerontius which represented a new style of oratorio in which a continuous musical flow replaced the customary division into separate arias and choruses. He embarked seriously on The Apostles in 1902 and the first performance took place in October of the following year at the Birmingham Festival conducted by Hans Richter. Elgar himself conducted performances in 1914 and again in 1922 in Canterbury Cathedral where this performance was given. As with Handel's Messiah Elgar's work was to have been in three parts, though it soon became apparent that it was going to be far too long for one oratorio, and the third part became the starting point for The Kingdom. This piece grew in its turn and the project became one for three oratorios; the first The Apostles, concerned with the apostles' relationship with the earthly Jesus, the second, The Kingdom, with the period after the crucifixion and the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the third, which never came to be written, on Judgment and the Life Everlasting. Another influence is to be found in Wagner who built up his scores from a pattern of leit-motifs. In his analysis of The Apostles, Jaeger identified and named about sixty such themes, though he came under criticism from Ernest Newman (a leading Wagner authority) for being too obsessional in this respect, and even Elgar himself felt that Jaeger had taken this aspect of the work further than was really justified, since the themes, while being a strong structural element in the music, lacked the immediately identifiable symbolism of Wagner's motifs. The two composers' compositional methods were very different: Wagner completed his libretto first, allocating fragments of melody to particular ideas and incorporating them into the score at significant moments, for Elgar the musical development was pre-eminent he was by nature a symphonic, rather than an operatic composer.

Gra?yna Bacewicz (1909-69) constantly sought ways to develop her style, and it is this continuous line of development that is perfectly exemplified in her series of string quartets. String Quartet No. 2 was premièred in 1943 in challenging circumstances but attests to her positive spirit. The prize-winning String Quartet No. 4 is one of her most performed works, perfectly balancing formal complexity, approachable themes and harmonic sophistication. The powerful and intense String Quartet No. 5 is a compositional tour de force. Volume 1 can be heard on Naxos 8.572806.

VIRTUOSO TIMPANI CONCERTOS Composer(s): Georg Druschetzky; Johann Carl Christian Fischer; Christoph Graupner; Johann Melchior Molter; André Danican Philidor; Jacques Philidor Artist(s): Dresden Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra; Alexander Peter

"Born to a Korean mother and an American father in the U.S., Jackiw is known here as the grandson of the famous late writer Pi Cheon-deuk. He began playing the violin at age four and pursued joint degrees at Harvard University and the New England Conservatory. In 2002, he received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant...when the 24-year-old Stefan Jackiw chose the sonatas for his recording debut (under the Sony Classical label with veteran producer Steven Epstein), one had to wonder how he would tackle the pieces.

"The third sonata I just played is a dark, fiery work; the first is introspective, nostalgic; the second is open-hearted and very loving. It's an interesting and contrasting set," Jackiw told reporters in Seoul about his reasons for choosing Brahms. He had already demonstrated his talent through solos with local orchestras and with the explosively popular chamber ensemble Ditto. But how did he attempt to depict an old man's spiritual struggle to grow ``anxious flowers'' ? harnessing one's gifts to artistic ends, just as flowers bloom in full glory just before they wilt?

"For me certainly some parts are more difficult than others. The first sonata is especially more elusive than the others; it's not as dramatic or open as the others. It is about an old man looking back at his youth, and it's tricky to capture that," Jackiw said after playing the third sonata.

In his playing, both live and recorded, Jackiw makes the violin sing. Poeticism takes flight ? with both youthful exuberance and a certain timelessness ? soaring from unapologetically beautiful, balletic lyricism to lighthearted caprice and red-blooded vigor that ignites dazzling furies."

- Lee Hyo-won, from review in The Korea Times

"Stefan has a young violinist's fire and energy but also maturity, rare depth and understanding." - Max Levinson, pianist on this recording.

"Jackiw possesses a slender, silvery tone well suited to Brahms's intimate lyricism, and his pianist, Max Levinson, proved an equally idiomatic partner." - The Miami Sun Herald

Terry Riley's In C is a democratic work in which every player makes his or her own decisions about how often to play the 53 brief motifs of which the score consists.

For it to work each player must listen intently and react instantly. Every performance will sound rather different for that reason, and because any number of players, using any form of melody instrument, may take part.

In two senses this might be regarded as a happy medium of a performance: Riley's own, on New Albion, uses about 30 players and lasts for an hour and a quarter; while Piano Circus on Argo, who use three types of piano, two harpischords and vibraphone, take barely 20 minutes, no doubt partly because because they accommodate Terry Riley's Six Pianos on the same disc. Bang on a Can, with some doublings, use four bowed and three plucked strings, two woodwind, piano and four tuned percussion, and their reading seems neither protracted nor contracted at 46 minutes. Obviously the more players are involved the longer it is likely to take, but by the same token the textures at any given point are likely to be richer. The sound is fairly bassy, and for that reason whenever the doublebass player decides to repeat one motif for a minute or so it is likely to assume something like a soloistic prominence, thus to become less 'democratic', but for the most part the instruments are well chosen to ensure a lively texture and a fluid continuum of change.

In C makes addicts of some listeners, while others cannot bear to listen to it and its unvarying pulse of octave C's for more than a minute or two. I am betwixt and between, not wanting to listen to it very often, but not wanting to be without a recording of it. If there are other listeners of that kind, and I suspect there are quite a few, this betwixt and between performance should suit them very nicely; it is closely, head-ringingly recorded.

-- Michael Oliver, Gramophone

PEZEL Alphabet Sonatas • Acronym • OLDE FOCUS 903 (75: 15)


Pezel’s Opus Musicum Sonatarum Praestantissimarum Senis Instrumentis Instructum , or “Musical Publication of the Finest Sonatas for Old/Revered Instruments,” was published in Frankfurt in 1686. It may well have been a joint commission from all of the members of the ancient Six Cities’ Alliance, for a handsome sum was paid for it by each: Bautzen, Görlitz, Lauban, Kamenz, Löbau, and Zittau. (Pezel himself was then employed as Stadtmusikant , or director of instrumental music, in Bautzen, a prestigious post in what was at the time a decent-sized metropolis.) The work consists of 24 sonatas given alphabetical names, such as Sonata Abella in G Major, and Sonata Bacca in D Minor. In addition, there is a final Sonata Ciacona that features an eight-chord bass ostinato in its ripieno sections, which is doubled and extended again by a further four chords for concertato statements. It’s a fairly massive single movement of its variational type for its time and place, though such things were more common in Elizabethan keyboard music.


The Alphabet Sonatas themselves are actually proto-sonatas, meaning that they’re a grab bag of movements strung together, often in the same key. They descend from the first wave of violinist-composers who emerged from the late 16th century courts of the Sforza who ruled Milan, and the Este who ruled Ferrara. But where those Italian sonatas mixed dances, highly imitative contrapuntal movements, and dramatic recitative, often with highly chromatic harmonic progressions, Pezel’s sonatas include homophonic dances, less complex examples of counterpoint, and the occasional voluntary, all of it less venturesome harmonically. The composer’s previous experience as a Kunstgeiger (city-employed fiddler) and later Stadtpfeifer (member of a typical loud ensemble, with cornetts and sackbuts) in Leipzig can be heard in the distinctively instrumental character of wind, brass, or strings in various movements; though the work was published in seven string parts, with continuo furnished by bassoon and an unspecified additional instrument.


As to why Pezel would give his sonatas feminine names drawn from Greco-Roman history and mythology: Like many academics since the late Middle Ages, he relished showing off knowledge garnered from the Attic Greeks and Romans. So the Sonata Dejanira refers to the tragically unconfident woman who was married to Heracles, while the Sonata Quinquatria highlights the Roman festival held in honor of the goddess Minerva. None of this has any bearing on the music itself.


Acronym is a string ensemble formed in 2012 specifically for this CD project. But as only nine of its 12 members perform here, and other projects including tours are underway, we can safely assume the group has taken on a life separate from Pezel’s work. It was still common enough during Pezel’s lifetime for music to be performed in any variety of arrangements, reduced or augmented, as circumstances warranted. Here, the continuo is provided by either of two performers who handle the honors for theorbo and guitar, and harpsichord and organ, while there’s some trading off among viols and violas—as Pezel didn’t specify da bracchia or da gamba.


The performances of the livelier dance movements have a fine rhythmic bounce, especially the start of the Sonata Nabathea. Any unison playing on this release has a rich, full sound. Individual instrumentalists can at times display an unattractive tone, however, made more evident because none of the performers use vibrato. (As Sergiu Luca once told me, just because you don’t use vibrato doesn’t mean you have to display an ugly tone. Quite the opposite. You don’t have vibrato to cover for you, and have to work to improve your sound.) The Sonata Ciacona exposes this mercilessly, with a very occasional note tonally off-center. Most of the playing aside from this is first-rate, while tempos are varied and well-sustained. There’s an attractive legato in slower movements, and a judicious amount of accenting on both the beat and at cadences.


A final word or 111 about the liner notes. Written by one of Acronym’s musicians, they evidently draw upon some historians of Leipzig who are very much of the Annales School, emphasizing cultural matters by way of source studies in surviving town hall records, legal documents, etc. It’s a pleasure to read someone take such joy in relating more than the usual born/educated/married/died information, right down to the social distinctions between the various music guilds: the Kunstgeigeren, Stadtpfeiferen , lowly Bierfiedlers , and the haughty trumpet players, the top-of-the-heap Kammeradschaft —even to mentioning the brawls on record that resulted when some Stadtpfeiferen employed trombones provocatively shaped and played like trumpets, but with alternative names.


All in all, these are successful readings of attractive music. Recommended.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, and SONY Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible EU (Germany) pressed import editions, smartly designed and graphically pleasing, featuring the most sought-after recordings by the world's preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.

The Ahn Trio's latest CD, LULLABY FOR MY FAVORITE INSOMNIAC, is a showcase for this vibrant and original music. Lucia, Angella and Maria thrive on dissolving the barriers between art forms. They have fused their work with that of dancers, pop singers, DJs, painters, installation artists, photographers, lighting designers, ecologists, and even kite makers. LULLABY FOR MY FAVORITE INSOMNIAC features original acoustic and electronica / ambient arranged 5-minute works by David Bowie & Pat Metheny, Michael Nyman, Kenji Bunch, Astor Piazzolla and more.

With these marvelous performances of the three Brahms violin sonatas, Nikolaj Znaider hits his artistic stride, abetted by Yefim Bronfman's impeccable piano partnership. The G major seemingly begins out of nowhere in darkness, then gradually takes on brighter colors as Znaider opens up his tone. The canonic interaction between violin and piano unfolds with gentle yet enlivening lack of effort, as does all of the composer's cross-rhythmic phrasing. Sample, if you can, Bronfman's solo introduction to the slow movement, and also notice how he admirably avoids other pianists' tendencies to push forward in climaxes by allowing the bass lines time to resonate and breathe in strict tempo. The A major sonata proves equally winning in a tender, lyrically inflected interpretation where even the softest, most delicate moments never go the least bit slack.

The musicians take the D minor's first movement at an animated Allegro that still manages to convey the music's brooding, somewhat mysterious underside. In the eloquent Adagio, Znaider's long-lined command suggests a bow with no end, while Znaider and Bronfman bring astute voice leading and relative sobriety to the third movement--a valid alternative to more impulsive and animated accounts (Mullova/Anderszewski, for example). Control and clarity define the pair's way with the finale, although the rollicking momentum they generate does not quite match the irresistible, kinetic abandon with which Suk/Katchen, Dumay/Pires, and Heifetz/Kapell have spoiled at least one reviewer named Distler! They conclude with an impassioned, intelligently parsed rendition of the "F.A.E Sonata" Scherzo. RCA's detailed, beautifully balanced engineering further enhances my highest recommendation.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Recording information: ORF Funkhaus, Großer Sendesaal, Vienna, Austria (06/04/2008-06/06/2008); ORF Funkhaus, Großer Sendesaal, Vienna, Austria (09/17/2008).

"The subject here is the early life of Mahatma Gandhi and the text is a selection of verses from the Bhagavadgita, sung in the original Sanskrit and used as another strad in the complex repetitive web of sound. The result is undeniably powerful. The recording is spectacular."

-- Penguine Guide [2003/4 Edition]

You know how animal conservationists say that it's essential to cull the over-populated deer herds every so often so as to make life better and less competitive for the remaining animals? Well, this is similar to what I do every two or three years to my persistently-proliferating stock of Vivaldi Four Seasons recordings. The active catalog now lists more than 200 versions; about a dozen is the limit of both my shelf-space and sensibility. So this new one arrives and, well, it's Joshua Bell and the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, so it's likely to be worth a listen, and perhaps a place on that already over-populated shelf.

Of course, Sony already has a perfectly wonderful period-instrument Four Seasons with Giuliano Carmignola, and then there's the very fine modern-instrument Anne-Sophie Mutter rendition on DG, with an identical coupling no less, which like this one weirdly neglects to mention the Tartini sonata on the disc front cover or spine(!)--and we've yet to touch on other respectable versions by Fabio Biondi (Virgin) or Gil Shaham (also DG)--and no doubt you've already got your own favorite(s).

Ultimately none of this matters. If you're a Joshua Bell and/or Vivaldi fan, or if you've just arrived on planet Earth and therefore haven't yet acquired your first Four Seasons recording, you only have to consider whether these performances are distinctive and authoritative and exciting enough to move them from the store shelves to yours. The answer is unequivocally "yes".

Bell is one of the more consistently tasteful, sensitive, anti-self-indulgent violin virtuosos on the scene today, and as such he delivers these inherently flashy concertos with a refreshingly straightforward approach that scorches and sizzles without ever falling prey to pyrotechnic vulgarity. Bell and his first-rate partners--bravo to harpsichordist John Constable!--just make beautiful music out of Vivaldi's conceptions, and their efforts are as gripping as we expect from musicians of this caliber. The final, hair-raising Allegro of "Spring"--brought to vivid, room-filling life by the superb engineering--is just one example. Aficionados of the Tartini sonata will be interested to hear Bell's own little cadenza along with his occasional personal ornamentations, which confirm this performance's distinctive character as well as Bell's technical and interpretive artistry.

This music is so familiar and its technical demands so mainstream these days that any of today's better-trained violinists could deliver a respectable rendition--of any Vivaldi concerto for that matter. But Bell's assured performances and exceptionally vibrant sonics move this recording into the top tier--and I'm already eying my shelf to see which current occupant will have to be sacrificed.

--David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

Chopin turned the Scherzo into a new form of piano composition: an independent virtuoso work which he laced with drama, Polish folk song, tranquility and nuance. With their rhythmic lilt and filigree ornamentation the Impromptus are infused with Romantic freedom, while the Allegro de concert, Op. 46 was originally conceived as a movement for a projected piano concerto but was instead revised for solo piano. Mao Fujita was awarded Second Prize at the 16th International Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019. A laureate of numerous national and international competitions such as the World Classic in Taiwan (2010, first prize in the junior section), the Rosario Marciano International Piano Competition in Vienna (Austria, 2013), the Zhuhai International Mozart Competition for Young Musicians (2015), the Gina Bachauer International Young Artists Piano Competition in (USA, 2016) and many others. In 2017 he won the first prize as well as three special prizes at the Concours International de Piano Clara Haskil in Switzerland. In October 2019, Fujita made his UK debut with the Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev, which was critically acclaimed by The Times. Immediately following this success, he made his debut in Seoul and Moscow. Mao Fujita has recorded several albums under the Naxos Japan label, which include woks by Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, Liszt and Prokofiev, among others.

SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET

This recording features the rare version of this score with baritone replacing the mezzo-soprano. Sony Music have released this CD to mark the company’s centenary.

Review:

"Nagano brings to the listener the full depth and breadth to this lapidary score in which the realism of nature and the outdoors speaks with forceful impact from the concert platform."

The story goes that Mahler did not dare to call Das Lied von der Erde a symphony, for fear that being his Ninth it would also be his last as it was also for Beethoven and Bruckner. Even so, he entitled it: “Symphony for tenor, contralto (or baritone) and orchestra” but did not call it “Symphony No. 9”. It is this seemingly hybrid form that makes Das Lied the epitome of Mahler’s two poles: song and symphony. The hybrid form drew from him some of his most masterful music as it did with Richard Strauss some forty years later in Vier letzte Lieder.

What are those qualities, those ‘basic elements’ of Mahler’s sound-world that captivate people today? It’s an intriguing question. After all these elements are the driving force behind the continuing popularity of the music in concert-halls and on record and the vital spark that gives life and momentum to “Mahler Societies” worldwide: Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Malaysia, New York, Toronto and Vienna. Those elements involve an ingenious combination of early twentieth-century polyphony, late-Romantic pentatonic monumentalism and his ability to recapitulate the “yin and yang” of life. His music has the potential to amaze even a century later.

Das Lied reflects the composer’s perception of time, of life and nature, and demonstrates a peculiar affinity with the arabesques of Orientalism. Contemporaries like Debussy, Ravel, Puccini and Stravinsky were equally seduced by the East. However Mahler made music speak in a language never spoken before - a link to the extremes of humanity, the passage of time, and the wonder of nature woven into the notated score. Mahler redefined music as had Bach, Beethoven and Berlioz centuries before him.

With the aid of sound engineers Jeremy Tusz and Carl Talbot Nagano brings to the listener the full depth and breadth to this lapidary score in which the realism of nature and the outdoors speaks with forceful impact from the concert platform. The first song “The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrow” (sung by the tenor) ranges from exhilaration to terror. It includes a remarkable passage accentuated by the OSM evoking an animal howling in the moonlight over the grave. It anticipates Schoenberg’s expressionist art. The second song “The Lonely one in Autumn” (sung by baritone) is in D minor, a key laden with autumn tints supported by the veiled, damped sonorities of the violin ostinato and a lyrical solo oboe line by Theodore Baskin. Nagano's flexible tempi allow the performers full expression of their solo entries. His understanding of the philosophical tone of the original Chinese poems has, I am sure, contributed to the musical drama. Listen to his way with the extremes of existential anguish in the three songs “Of Beauty”, “The Drunkard in Spring”, and “The Farewell” (sung by tenor, baritone, tenor). Nagano’s understanding of Mahler’s music is like fitting hands into a pair of perfect gloves.

Surprisingly, what is marvelous throughout this recording is not the grandeur or boldness of the sound, but Nagano’s keen perception of softness. Through quietude and suggestion Mahler makes his greatest impact. For example, the poetic depiction of an autumn landscape in transition toward winter becomes a metaphor for the passing of life. The music becomes a stimulus to trigger memories of the beauty of the earth and of nature, enhancing ones memories of the coniferous and deciduous forests and the serene sounds of meandering river creeks. “The Farewell” (sung by baritone), lasting 29:07, impresses just as vividly as all that has preceded it. This encloses a great funeral march, and when the soloist engages in the words of the final verse, the orchestra intensifies the emotional scale of the text: “everywhere the lovely earth blossoms forth in spring and grows green anew … for ever.” Death is a fact, and this is what Das Lied is about. For this reason, the work has been called "one of Mahler’s surest claims to immortality as a composer.”

Second, the success of this recording owes much to the soloists – tenor Klaus Florian Vogt and baritone Christian Gerhaher. Gerhaher is well suited to the exotic East and his versatile voice is apt to the heart-felt arabesques of the melodic line. But the especial miracle of this performance comes with Vogt's intelligent and relaxed account of the daunting tenor songs. This score has left many a tenor red in the face and struggling to be heard over the welter of orchestral sound. Vogt projects well with a fine and even somewhat baritonal quality. He scales the heights of the text with ease and never seems to strain. His range of expression adroitly conveys the depiction of young people on green and white porcelain and the extrovert vehemence of the springtime drunkard. Yet he also accommodates witty irony amid lightly inflected rhythms. If his voice is well stewarded and not overtaxed Vogt could be one of the great heldentenors of his generation. The attractions of these two singers complement Nagano’s incisive way with the score.

Nagano is one of the few conductors to record this work in one of its rarer versions with a baritone as partner to the tenor in place of the more usual contralto - often sung by a mezzo. He follows in the footsteps of Leonard Bernstein’s infamous 1966 legendary recording with James King and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (reviewed here) and Bernard Haitink’s 1985 Mahlerfest recording with Ben Heppner and Thomas Hampson. More recently we have had Kenneth Slowik’s unique 2003 interpretation of the Schönberg-Riehm chamber transcription with John Elwes and Russel Braun and Michael Tilson Thomas’s revered 2007 recording with Stuart Skelton and Thomas Hampson (reviewed here). One minor downside is that listeners will have to get the text of these poems elsewhere although note-writer Dujka Smoje provides an excellent analysis of each poem in her notes.

This 2009 recording will surely be remembered for long, as one of the quintessential recordings that brought Mahler’s bleeding Weltschmerz to full expressive power.

One final thought and recommendation. Do try listening to your favorite recording of this work in a nearby forest. It really helps to distil the fundamental earthly elements Mahler hoped to convey. You’ll be surprised how satisfying this can be.

- Patrick P.L. Lam, MusicWeb Interantional

* The "must-have" 1959 stereo recording of the studio cast.
* Features unseen photos & in-depth liner notes.
* Bonus tracks (listed below)

"For all the extraordinary textures that are in it, it plays more like a musical comedy than any of the other successful Rodgers and Hammerstein shows." - Ted Chapin, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization

When Oscar Hammerstein visited his friend Joseph Fields during the filming of South Pacific for 20th Century-Fox, Fields mentioned he was in the process of acquiring the rights to The Flower Drum Song, a novel by C. Y. Lee. Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, it told the story of a young Chinese-American man torn between his own leanings and his desire to comply with his father’s rigorous, traditional teachings. Intrigued, Hammerstein read the book and immediately saw in it the gem for a new musical. Richard Rodgers also warmed to the idea and the two soon joined Fields as co-librettist and began work on it. The music Rodgers wrote reflected some of the traditions of old China, mixed with the brasher aspects of American culture; his approach found an echo in Hammerstein’s lyrics, which were modeled after Asian poetry on the one hand and contemporary American lingo on the other. As a result, Flower Drum Song emerged as perhaps the team's best-integrated work.

Flower Drum Song
Music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, directed by Gene Kelly, orchestration by Robert Russell Bennett.

The noted cast includes:

Miyoshi Umeki as Mei Li the Mail-Order Bride
Pat Suzuki, already famous for her popular song releases, as Linda Low, a nightclub singer
Arabella Hong as Helen Chao, a seamstress and best friend of Linda Low
Jack Soo, who later appeared in the ABC sitcom Barney Miller, portrayed Frankie Wing, Nightclub Emcee
Ed Kennedy as Wang Ta, the young man torn between love and tradition.
Juanita Hall, who earlier sang the role of Bloody Mary in the film South Pacific, portrayed Madam Liang
Larry Storch, who later appeared on TV’s F Troop, portrayed Sammy Fong
Keye Luke, a veteran Hollywood film actor famous as Charlie Chan's rambunctious "Number One Son" portrayed conservative Mr. Wang, the family patriarch.

This entire 1959 production was directed by Gene Kelly with choreography by Carol Haney.

Bonus tracks (listed below) feature arrangements of songs from Flower Drum Song sung by Florence Henderson, Pat Suzuki and Sandra Church recorded just after the premiere in 1958 and 1959.