Shroud for a Nightingale is a compilation of the television drama music of British composer Richard Harvey. The title piece, Shroud for a Nightingale, is arguably the world’s best-known piece of viola music currently. Richard Harvey is a BAFTA Award-winning composer and musician. He is best known for his television and film soundtracks, and has scored more than 50 feature films in the USA, UK, and Europe.

BRAHMS: PIANO CONCERTO NO 2, 5

The eight exceptional pieces recorded here take the listener through the rapid evolution of the solo concerto for recorder. From the virtuosic writing of Vivaldi through the Concerto Grosso of Alessandro Scarlatti, to the sophisticated musicality of Sammartini and Naudot, all are brought together in this collection, and all present a solution to the problem of writing for the recorder’s soft, non-dynamic tone with orchestral accompaniment. Richard Harvey, British composer and conductor, directs the London Vivaldi Orchestra for this recording.

Liszt: Schubert Song Transcriptions

This disc includes both ADD and DDD recordings.

...Serkin's music-making is so vigorous and dynamic that it is hard not to warm to these exciting performances, which more than many of the others in this release convey some of the excitement of a live performance following an intensive period of preparation. Serkin's solo playing is as ever highly polished with fabulous command of keyboard, colour and phrasing... -- Gramophone reviewing the Mozart performances in the Sony Marlboro series

The cassette version of this recording is no longer available.

TCHAIKOVSKY, RACHMANINOV: PIAN

Sibelius's lines flow in a rich, warm glow of tone -- the whole concerto takes wings not, perhaps, as never before, but certainly as very seldom before. The Brahms is given a thorough-going romantic approach, full of feeling but also very carefully considered.

...[A] superlative version of the Sibelius... The performance Francescatti gives of the Sibelius is, technically, an impossible one: not even Heifetz plays the end of the first movement dead in tune, so it can't be done! but Francescatti does it. He also does everything else that can't be done with this concerto (as well, beginning to take things for granted, as everything that can); Sibelius's lines flow in a rich, warm glow of tone, his rhythms pulse, and, again, his chords are in tune. The orchestra are along with Francescatti, and they, too, have a rich quality of string tone and a pulsing rhythm; indeed the whole concerto takes wings not, perhaps, as never before, but certainly as very seldom before.

-- Gramophone [10/1965, reviewing the original LP release of the Sibelius]

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Francescatti himself is in splendid form. He has a bad patch just before the G major episode in the finale, but otherwise his intonation is good and his tone as sweet as ever. The slow movement is rather more expressive than usual, the finale rather more fiery. Much of the credit for this must go to the conductor, Leonard Bernstein, who can get from an orchestra a degree of rubato usually expected only of pianists playing Chopin. The orchestral introduction to the slow movement is an example. Some will find the way Bernstein points the end of each two-bar phrase too mannered for their taste, but, apart from the fact that it's clever to get an orchestra to phrase so sensitively, he certainly matches the style of the solo playing. In the first movement there are no tricks to interrupt the flow of the whole, and the music is played with impressive breadth and understanding. The cadenza is Joachim's. This is without doubt one of the best available versions of the Brahms Violin Concerto, and if you like a thorough-going romantic approach, full of feeling but also very carefully considered, this may well be the one you will like best.

-- Gramophone [12/1963, reviewing the original LP release of the Brahms]

Composer: Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

Performers:
Matthias Lingenfelder, violin
Jens Oppermann, violin
Stewart Eaton, viola
Andreas Arndt, violoncello






Track Listing:

Disc One:

String quartet op. 64 no. 1, Hob. III:65 in C major
1. Allegro moderato
2. Menuet. Allegretto ma non troppo - Trio
3. Allegretto scherzando
4. Finale. Presto

String quartet op. 64 no. 2, Hob. III:68 in B minor
5. Allegro spiritoso
6. Adagio ma non troppo
7. Menuet. Allegretto - Trio
8. Finale. Presto

String quartet op. 64 no. 3, Hob. III:67 in B flat major
9. Vivace assai
10. Adagio
11. Menuet. Allegretto - Trio
12. Finale. Allegro con spirito

Disc Two:

String quartet op. 64 no. 4, Hob. III:66 in G major
1. Allgro con brio
2. Menuett. Allegretto - Trio
3. Adagio. Cantabile e sostenuto
4. Finale. Presto

String quartet op. 64 no. 5, Hob. III:63 in D major
5. Allegro moderato
6. Adagio. Cantabile
7. Menuet. Allegretto - Trio
8. Finale. Vivace

String quartet op. 64 no. 6, Hob. III:64 in E flat major
9. Allegro
10. Andante
11. Menuet. Allegretto - Trio
12. Finale. Presto


Timing: 139.48

Casals was as much at home conducting as he was playing cello, and this performance is imbued with the same bold and emphatic shaping, vigorous rhythmic drive and concern for the overall musical shape of the work being performed.

...The lion's share of the release is taken up by five CDs with Casals conducting. The repertoire is solidly mainstream: Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8, Schubert's Fifth and Mendelssohn's Italian, and the Brahms Haydn Variations. These recordings are important if for no other reason than for documenting the work of one of the most powerful musical personalities of this century, who went on making music until his death in 1973 at the remarkable age of 96.

Casals was as much at home conducting as he was playing cello, and these performances are all imbued with the same characteristics as Casals's solo playing. They are very forthright with bold and emphatic shaping, vigorous rhythmic drive and concern for the overall musical shape of the work being performed. On the other hand, tempos are at times leisurely and there is a tendancy 'to enjoy the view'. This is very much an interpretative style more common to the first half of this century than the second. One feels that Casals is talking the same musical language as some of his great contemporaries such as Mengelberg and Furtwangler if without their personal idiosyncracies.

-- Gramophone [6/1991]
reviewing the Sony series of Marlboro 40th Anniversary CDs, which includes the present disc

NIELSEN, TAFFANEL: WIND QUINTE

With their expressive timbre and the technical excellence of the recording, the Auryn Quartet need not fear the competition, even though there is already a multitude of recordings in existence. Hartmut Leck, Klassik-heute There is no shortage of great and famous Beethoven Cycles, but there are no performances such as these. For me, this is now the set to beat. (Laurence Vittes)

This 2CD set represents the first release on TACET of what will ultimately become a complete recordings project of Domenico Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas. Pianist Christopf Ullrich, a prolific recording artist whose embarked on other projects of this or similar kinds, sets out in this extended journey with 30 Essercizi and 12 Sonatas.

As an old man Charles Koechlin wrote: "One of the most dreadful diseases of our day is the desire to be modern", but he was no starchy conservative. Far from it, in fact - Koechlin counted among his friends virtually all the leading French musicians of his day, old and young, adventurous and less so, and acknowledged and even assimilated all the trends. He was a big fan of the burgeoning Hollywood film industry - witness the many works or movements named after popular actresses - and became president of the Popular Music Federation in France.

He also wrote a fair bit for Adolphe Sax's recently-invented instrument, praising it in his academic writing as "a timbre that no other can replace". All such solo works in his corpus are brought together on this new bargain-priced triple CD from Brilliant Classics, one of a wave of recent releases featuring this most underrated of French composers' music.

In fact, although this set has much to recommend it musically, it is not quite the bargain it might have been. For one thing, there is a fair amount of 'recycling', from the piano and chamber orchestra versions of the two saxophone sonatinas to the Sept Pièces, originally intended for horn. More importantly, though, the array of recording dates and venues has thrown up some inconsistencies in sound quality. There is actually quite severe distortion towards the end of the Wind Septet, where the microphones just cannot cope with a combination of volume and high pitches. There is similar loss at the end of op.165bis, and a small amount in the flute during Epitaphe. Timpani's engineers, on their virtually simultaneous recording of the Septet (1C1193), show Brilliant how it should be done.

On the whole, however, considering that this release can be found on the internet, by the alert shopper, for around the same price as a single Naxos disc, these audio issues, once noted, may be worth disregarding for access to Koechlin's marvellous music, certainly until new recordings come along. After all, the aforementioned distortion only affects a few minutes' worth of music, and sound quality of the first two CDs is uniformly impressive. Capturing well both saxophone and piano is no simple task.

In any case, it is hard to imagine anyone not liking Koechlin's music, whether for saxophone or any other instruments: all of the late-period pieces heard here are immensely melodic and idiomatic, uncomplicated on the surface yet expressive of a considered intelligence that writes for listeners and performers as well as self. In this way he can be compared with Saint-Saëns, to whom he came to bear a physical likeness in later years - though with a much more impressive beard.

There are many highlights, such as the 24 Duos, which combine SATB instruments in various pairings. These should be required study for all saxophonists, yet they are far superior to mere didactics. Ditto the 15 Etudes, which are a collection of beautiful cameos rather than studies in the more academic sense. The 7 Pieces are even more strikingly memorable, like Koechlin's most popular Epitaphe: nostalgic, sometimes haunting works that are however "full of the visionary hope that leads to optimism, energy and joy as vital antidotes to the problems of everyday life", as annotator Robert Orledge aptly sums up the composer's music. It is worth noting that, unlike some, nowhere in any of these works does Koechlin make use of the platitudes and clichés of the jazz instrument.

As the CD cover implies, star of the show on these three discs is saxophonist David Brutti, who appears as soloist, as one half of the Duo Disecheis, a quarter of the Atem Saxophone Quartet and even in the ensemble of the Orchestra Città Aperta. His tonal colourings are lustrous and luxurious, his phrasing natural and gratifying. Running a close second is Filippo Farinelli, pianist or conductor on numerous tracks. The booklet notes are in English only, but informative and well written, supplemented by detailed biographies of all performers.

Of Koechlin - whose Alsace-originating name is pronounced as if spelt Kéclin (rhyming with French 'né' and nasal 'vin') - British critic Wilfrid Mellers wrote that he counts "among the very select number of contemporary composers who really matter". For 1942 this was a particularly prescient remark, and it is high time he was allowed to take his rightful place in the pantheon alongside Fauré, Debussy, Ravel and Saint-Saëns.

– Byzantion, MusicWeb International

This is the first compendium of tracks from different TACET productions. For once, the main feature of this CD is not a musician, a composer or a musical theme. Instead, the star of the piece is: The condenser microphone. Something for music gourmets. (Scala)

SCHIEFERDECKER Triumph, Belial ist nun erleget. Auf, auf, mein Herz. In te Domine speravi. Weicht, ihr schwarzen Trauerwolken. Concertos: No. 9 in g; No. 13 in c • Simone Eckert, cond; Klaus Mertens (bs); Jan Kobow (ten); Hamburger Ratsmusik (period instruments) • CARUS 83.398 (62:18 Text and Translation)


For someone as obscure as Johann Christian Schieferdecker, a pupil of Buxtehude, he certainly has gotten his share of play recently. Not only has my colleague Michael Carter reviewed one of the concertos ( Fanfare 34:3) but another, Jerry Dubins, reviewed and recommended an entire disc of these instrumental works in a recent issue ( Fanfare 35:6) performed by the Elbipolis Hamburg period-instrument ensemble on Challenge. Both found them recommendable, though the latter seemed reticent on whether or not Schieferdecker represents a marvelous new rediscovery. This disc may not decide that issue, but I do find it curious that in the space of a very short time, a composer who was completely dissed by Johann Mattheson, the early chronicler of Hamburg music but who grew up practically as the blood brother of Reinhard Keiser, should suddenly emerge from shadows. Maybe it is something in the water in Hamburg, or maybe this relatively new period-instrument ensemble there decided that it was tired of the giants, C. P. E. Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann. Or maybe this is Schieferdecker’s 15 minutes of fame in the world of recorded music. Whatever the reason, we now have a selection of his compositions that demonstrates his ability and talent in the midst of other better-known figures.


Schieferdecker was, by any stretch of the imagination, a solid, well-educated, and talented composer. He was the son of an organist, attended school in Leipzig where he wrote his first operas, and returned to Hamburg to become a colleague of Telemann, Keiser, Mattheson, and Handel, toiling away in the opera house there. When Buxtehude sought a successor, it was Schieferdecker who was able to walk away with the job. Apparently he did not have the same qualms about marrying Buxtehude’s long-in-the-tooth daughter as his other friends, and when she died a couple of years later, he raised their child to continue the musical succession. As a composer, he was a chronological contemporary of Telemann (though he died in 1732, more than three decades before his colleague), but it is not clear exactly how much music he actually wrote. There were about a dozen operas written for Leipzig and Hamburg (all seemingly lost), and he certainly was active in Lübeck as Buxtehude’s successor, writing Abendmusik , pieces for organ, and in 1713 publishing a set of 12 Musicalische Concerte (probably best translated literally as “Musical Concerts,” rather than concertos, but in the insecure generic designation of the time indicating simply pieces—in this case each a rather conventional French suite). This disc, however, presents a somewhat old-fashioned throwback to the previous century in the form of the sacred concerto, which by the 18th century had long gone out of practice. These pieces, in reality sort of proto-cantatas each ending with a chorale, form a sort of halfway house between the traditional Baroque Lutheran cantata and the more amorphous Abendmusik , this defined as miniature movements of a contemplative nature. It is not known when he wrote the four pieces here, but the sparse setting of a voice and minimal string accompaniment with continuo may indicate that these are early works, possibly even about 1700. As these are the only ones that apparently have survived, the disc is filled out with two suites from the 1713 set, both of which were recorded on the aforementioned Challenge disc.


Three of these sacred concertos are in German, and one uses a Latin text that was often used as an offertory (the “In te Domine speravi” movement diverges from its other usage as the final portion of the Te Deum hymn). All are very much in the vein of Buxtehude, with the voice accompanied by a pair of violins and continuo. The Latin concerto omits one of the violin parts, in essence becoming a more common solo cantata. Many of the violin lines seem to remind one of Henry Purcell, with brief fanfares (such as in “Triumph, Belial ist nun erleget”) and the occasional use of the ground bass. But in that same concerto, the second aria, “Wenn die Bosheit,” reduces things to a continuo, lending a sort of Scarlatti feel. The chorales often use the solo voice in hymnlike fashion above some nice countermelodies in the violins, such as in the “Gott Vater” of Auf, auf mein Herz . The harmony can also be a bit gnarly, with unexpected twists and sudden non-sequitur chords shifting it momentarily. The finest example of this is in the opening aria of Weicht, ihr schwarzen Trauerwolken . And occasionally there is a rapid-fire parlando delivery of the text (“Sicut erat” in In te Domine speravi ) that brings to mind a sort of Baroque rap, telescoping the line on a single pitch in a way that is quite remarkable.


The performance by the group Hamburger Ratsmusik is extremely good. They are all on pitch, handle the twisting and turning violin lines with ease, and there is a nice pacing by viol player Simone Eckert, who also conducts the ensemble. Their sensitive playing is the reason some of the odder moments do not become musical parodies, but rather demonstrate Schieferdecker’s sometimes unique compositional method. Klaus Mertens, of course, does his usual stellar job. This is just the sort of music he excels in, and his flexible bass handles the composer’s often unusual melodic contours perfectly. Tenor Jan Kobow, too, does an outstanding job in his one outing, the Latin concerto, being nicely on pitch and cognizant of the compositional peculiarities.


Echoing my colleague, I sincerely doubt that Schieferdecker is the next Baroque sensation on the horizon. For one thing, there isn’t that much left, barring a rediscovery of the lost operas or some other archival treasure trove. For another, the music is perhaps too quirky in terms of substance and style compared with his other Hamburg compatriots, all of whom went on to achieve major status in the musical world. But what remains as on this disc offers enough unusual variety to be worth a listen, and given that the performance here by the Ratsmusik is solid and well done, one would not go astray by including this in one’s collection.


FANFARE: Bertil van Boer

Erika Haase continues her ambitious project of recording the most significant etudes of piano literature. This time she has tackled the etudes by Franz Liszt. The daredevil difficulties for the pianist playing these works are legend. She masters them with bravura and enriches them with her own highly sensitive musical note.

This is not an historical recording. Yet mysteriously the music is performed in an interpretation which is historically authentic down to the last detail. The key to this mystery is: The original performer was present at the recent recording session, but not physically: The music is heard on a modern Steinway. Never has music stored in the Welte-Mignon system sounded so "right" or so good. Thanks to TACET's much-praised recording technique, and because the Welte-Mignon memory system and sound production mechanism have now been newly adjusted for the first time by the leading expert in the field - and are thus able to meet TACET's requirements. (Welte-Mignon was invented in 1904.) the Welte-Mignon mystery can now speak to US without distortion.

Paul Wittgenstein's many commissions for piano left-hand (he lost his right arm during the First World War) significantly enriched the twentiethcentury's musical repertoire, and Sony's superb CD bears witness to two of the finest. Both date from the inter-war years, Korngold's Suite being a product of 1930 and Schmidt's Quintet - one of three that he composed for Wittgenstein - from 1926. It is of course easy, with hindsight, to appreciate the abundant virtues of both pieces, even though back in the 1930s Nazi ideology drew a spurious racial barrier between Korngold's supposed 'degeneracy' and Schmidt's 'healthy' inheritance of the Brahms-Reger tradition.

This ludicrous mock-crisis is tellingly exemplified by listening first to Korngold's sensual "Lied" (the Suite's fourth movement), the musical equivalent of death by chocolate, then to the homely tones - no less lovely in their way - of Schmidt's Adagio. Both tug insistently at the heart-strings, but they are very different. Korngold also gives us a purple-hued waltz and a pungent "Groteske" with a buttermilk centre. His is a music ripe to bursting point, though it is also wickedly subtle and immensely clever. Schmidt's first movement has a second set that could easily have strayed from an undiscovered Brahms sextet, with piano writing that is unexpectedly prophetic of Bartók's Third Concerto. His third movement opens like a Brahms piano miniature, and continues in the manner of Reger. Both works feature delightful finales, Korngold's being a set of variations on a tender theme.

Sony's stellar line-up gives Schmidt's Quintet the outing of its life: even now, I can't wait to replay the two middle movements. Fleisher's beautifully graded playing is granted affectionate support from Silverstein and his colleagues, supple but sweet-centred and very well balanced.

– Gramophone [9/1998]

Kultur SPIEGEL, January 2005: "There are good pianists, there are grandiose pianists and there is Evgeni Koroliov: In each recording the Russian pianist, who hitherto was mainly to be heard playing Bach, sets new standards. With Debussy he competes with champions such as Gieseking or Michelangelo - and triumphs: this round of portraits of atmosphere, hovering wonderfully between jest and seriousness, has never before sounded so expressive or transparent."

Classical Music

SALON MUSIC OF THE 19TH CENTUR

Classical Music

Classical Music