DVORÁK Cypresses: 18 Songs for Voices and Piano (original version, 1865 1 ). Cypresses: 12 Songs for String Quartet (from original version, arr. Dvorák 2 ). Cypresses: 6 Songs for String Quartet (from original version, arr. Hans-Peter Dott 2 ) • 1 Marcus Ullmann (ten); 1 Martin Bruns (bar); 1 Andreas Frese (pn); 2 Bennewitz Qrt • HÄNSSLER 98641 (2 CDs: 81:05 Text and Translation)


Let me begin with just one swipe at Hänssler Classic, a label whose marketing practices I’ve questioned before. This entire program could fit onto a single CD. Discs of over 80 minutes, once rare, are now fairly common. A saving grace, however, is that as of now, mid-October 2012, ArkivMusic is selling the two-disc set for $26.99, which places it in the mid-price category on a per-disc basis. Hänssler is to be commended, however, for coming up with the idea of presenting Dvorák’s Cypresses complete in its original scoring as a song cycle for voices and piano, plus in its partial arrangement of 12 of the 18 songs for string quartet by the composer himself, and, in addition, in arrangements of the remaining six songs for string quartet by German composer Hans-Peter Dott (b. 1952). If anyone has done this before, it’s not reflected in any of the current listings I found. In fact, Dvorak’s string quartet arrangements far outnumber recordings of the song cycle.


Details of the song cycle’s path from composition to publication still remain a bit sketchy and open to some dispute. This much is known: Dvorák set the songs down on paper in 17 days between the 10th and 27th of July 1865. The 24-year-old composer was lovesick over one of his young pupils who didn’t share his feelings. So, like Mozart, Dvorák ended up settling for the girl’s younger sister, whom he eventually married. It’s hardly surprising then that the texts of the songs, taken from Cypresses: A Collection of Lyric and Epic Poems by Gustav Pfleger-Moravský, tell of unrequited love. Also generally agreed upon is that Dvorák intended eight of the songs—Nos. 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 13, 14, and 15—to be sung by a tenor, while the remaining 10 songs—Nos. 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, and 18—were intended to be taken by a baritone, which is the way they’re divvied up on the disc.


But here’s where things get a bit dicey. It took Dvorák another 23 years, during which he arranged, rearranged, and otherwise tinkered with the songs, before he sent them to Simrock for publication in 1888 with the title, not Cypresses , but Love Songs , to which the opus number 83 was assigned. Yet a 2012 program note from the Chamber Music Society of Williamsburg unequivocally states that “Dvorák chose never to publish the songs in their original form, but material from several of the songs cropped up in his first two symphonies and in his operas and other vocal works.” Clearly, the songs were published in 1888, but I’m guessing that the discrepancy hinges on the words “in their original form,” for according to the imslp.org catalog of Dvorák’s complete works, the songs that were actually published were all third and fourth revisions of the originals. Meanwhile, a year earlier the composer selected 12 of the songs—Nos. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 16, 17, and 18— and began reworking them for string quartet, keeping close to the original models. He made only some minor rhythmic adjustments, and only in one case did he change the key. He did, however, reorder the pieces in a different sequence from the original song cycle—6, 3, 2, 8, 12, 7, 9, 14, 4, 16, 17, 18—and titled his collection of quartet arrangements Echo of Songs . These were not published, however, until 1921, 17 years after Dvorák’s death.


This brings up another misunderstanding that has been perpetuated regarding Dvorák’s titling of both the published song cycle and the string quartet arrangements that remained unpublished in his lifetime. All Music Guide states that it was the composer himself who named the song cycle Cypresses , but as noted above, he didn’t. He titled it Love Songs . And as for the composer’s quartet arrangements of 12 of the songs, he called them, again as noted above, Echo of Songs . The only Cypresses Dvorák was familiar with, other than the trees, was the collection of poems so titled by Pfleger-Moravský. The Cypresses title was conferred upon the string quartet arrangements—and then only retroactively and by association with the songs—by the publisher of the string quartet cycle, Hudební matice umrlecké besedy, and/or the cycle’s editor, composer Josef Suk. Hans-Peter Dott surmises there are reasons Dvorák omitted the six songs—1, 5, 10, 11, 13, and 15—from his own quartet arrangements, but Dott doesn’t tells us what those reasons might have been. Instead, he decided to arrange them himself anyway, and they’re included as the last six tracks on disc 2, after Dvorák’s 12.


So, there you have it: the complete song cycle, published in 1888 as Love Songs , Dvorák’s own string quartet arrangements he titled Echo of Song , published in 1921, and a recent arrangement by Dott of the remaining six songs—all on a two-disc set boldly titled “Cypresses,” with a stand of cypress trees pictured on the cover, a title Dvorák never gave to any of these pieces. I’m not sure he’d be amused. For millennia, the cypress tree has been associated with death and mourning—which is why it’s often found planted around cemeteries—not with the pain of rejected love, the subject of these songs. The music can be quite lovely, if a bit overly sentimental, but the singers and players exercise care not to succumb to some of its more self-pitying moments. While tenor Marcus Ullmann and baritone Martin Bruns deliver their respective songs with warmth of feeling and a good measure of tonal bloom, their voices are of a similarity of timbre and character that sometimes makes it difficult to distinguish which singer is performing which song without referring to the designated numbers in the notes.


When it comes to the string quartet arrangements, at least of the 12 made by the composer, there’s a good deal more in the way of competition, among which is a very fine reading by the Emerson Quartet. But not being familiar with every recording of the quartet versions listed, I can’t say whether any ensemble has previously included the additional six arrangements made by Dott, and Hänssler’s album note is not forthcoming on when Dott made them. If it was very recently, perhaps even for the Bennewitz Quartet and this recording, then this could be a first.


Neither the songs nor the quartet arrangements of them represent Dvorák at his best. One might even say that musically they are Dvorák before he blossomed into the Dvorák we know and love. All of the pieces are of sameness in tempo and mood, without much in the way of Dvorák’s later melodic inspiration or harmonic inventiveness to make any one of them particularly memorable. For that, of course, the singers and players are not to blame. So, recommended on the grounds that this may be the most complete recording of Dvorák’s “cypress”-based compositions collected together in a single set.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

Milton Babbitt remains a controversial figure on today's musical scene, with his ideas more frequently discussed than his music is actually listened to. This recording contains the premiere recordings of five Babbitt works that span a quarter of a century. The CD opens with a performance of Babbitt's exquisite Quatrains, sung by the brilliant young American soprano, Tony Arnold. Set to a text by a Babbitt favorite - John Hollander - Quatrains is a work of great delicacy and subtlety. Manifold Music shows Babbitt adapting his language to the organ in a most original manner. Exploiting the instrument's potential for colorful registration, Babbitt's demanding score is a spectacular workout for the hands and feet of organ virtuoso, Gregory D'Agostino. My Ends Are My Beginnings has, since its composition in 1978, been regarded by many as one of the most difficult to play works for a solo woodwind instrument. The work's dedicatee, Allen Blustine (long-time clarinetist for Speculum Musicae), gives a heroic reading of this 17 minute solo. Soli e Duettini is one of three works with this title. This work, for two guitars, is played by dedicatees William Anderson and Oren Fader. (This premiere recording was previously issued on Bridge 9042). The final work is Babbitt's just completed Swan Song No. 1. It is a remarkable composition for the unusual combination of flute, oboe, mandolin, guitar, violin and cello. CD annotator Matthias Kriesberg writes: "The experience of hearing Milton Babbitt, who for so long played off the boundaries of musical dimensions against one another, now rein in the extremes so dramatically as to focus the ear on the centered drama of calm voices interacting, is certainly extraordinary. But should we really be surprised? After all, there is a long, rich history of composers who, having definitively proven their ability to wrest music in an entirely new direction, turned their attention inward, ever inward, to contemplate that place, in the words of W.B. Yeats, "where all the ladders start."

Classical Music

SPIRITUAL RESISTANCE—MUSIC FROM THERESIENSTADT • Wolfgang Holzmair (bar); 1 Russell Ryan (pn) • BRIDGE 9280 (75:08)


ULLMANN Der Mensch und sein Tag. Der müde Soldat. 3 Songs, op. 37. 1 K. BERMAN 6 Reminiscences. HAAS 4 Songs after Words of Chinese Poetry. 1 KLEIN 3 Songs. 1 Lullaby. Z. SCHUL What Never Was. 1 KRÁSA 5 Songs, op. 4. 1 I. WEBER I Wander through Theresienstadt 1


The music of the composers who were imprisoned at the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt (Terezín in Czech)—Viktor Ullmann, Gideon Klein, Pavel Haas, Hans Krása, and several others—tends to be programmed together in concerts and recordings. Since each composer produced music under uniquely horrible shared circumstances, it seems fair to link the pieces composed at Theresienstadt together, but on the other hand, it is worth getting to know their individual styles separately. In any case, it is almost impossible to listen to any of their songs without interpreting the choice of texts, if not the music, for clues as to the composers’ suffering.


Overall, there are few overt references to the Holocaust. Most of the texts are poetic or philosophical, and the music is most likely what these composers would have written in any circumstance. It was the act itself of composing that represented their remarkable self-assertion. The title of this recital by baritone Wolfgang Holzmair and pianist Russell Ryan, “Spritual Resistance,” refers to this and consists mostly of songs composed in Theresienstadt.   


The program opens with Pavel Haas’s Four Songs after Words of Chinese Poetry , set to Czech texts with a recurring theme of yearning for home. His fellow composers at Terezín successfully urged Haas, who was severely depressed, to try to compose, and these songs comprise the few results. Somewhat like his teacher, Janá?ek, Haas liked to use compact motives made up of very close intervals. The piano part in particular often moves in a repetitive, crab-like fashion that communicates a feeling of being trapped. The four songs form a true cycle, and are given a strong and understanding performance by Holzmair and Ryan. Holzmair’s Czech is good, and he darkens his light baritone to suit the range and mood of the music. Haas’s songs were premiered at Terezín by Karel Berman, an inmate who survived and became a leading singer at Prague’s National Theater after the war. If there is such a thing as a definitive performance, Berman’s recording of the Four Songs , released in 1993 on Channel Classics, qualifies. He not only survived the war but his bass baritone voice proved to be exceptionally durable, still rich and resonant decades after his first performance of Haas’s songs.


Berman turned to composition only twice, and it might have been interesting if Holzmair had included his song cycle Rosebuds on this disc. His other composition, for solo piano, was published in 1993 with the complicated title: Suite “Reminiscences” 1938–45. It is a kind of musical diary that originally consisted of three musical impressions of Terezín. After the war, Berman added five other movements to create a fuller portrait of his life’s events. (The late Joža Karas, author of Music in Terezín , once told me that it was at his suggestion that Berman added these movements.)The suite moves in an emotional arc from its folk-like, lyrical opening movements (“Youth” and “Home”) toward greater dissonance and discord in the movements concerning Terezín and Berman’s near death. Pieces like “Auschwitz—Corpse Factory” and “Typhus at the Kauffering Concentration Camp” are the only music on the disc that makes direct reference to the Holocaust, but they are like faint pencil sketches that only hint at the horrors. The final movement, “New Life,” contains a polka and quotes earlier lyrical material. Pianist Russell Ryan performs movements from the suite interspersed between groups of songs, but he omits two of the suite’s movements, the first, “Youth,” and the seventh, “Alone, Alone,” its happiest and most despairing sections respectively. Christopher Hailey’s otherwise thorough liner notes fail to mention these omissions. Programming these pieces as a series of interludes between songs may work well in concert, but here it lessens the impact of Berman’s suite, as does Ryan’s understated playing, which has too little flexibility in some of the lyrical passages and provides too little drama in the disturbing ones.


Hans Krása is best known as the composer of the children’s opera Brundibar . His sophisticated Five Songs , op. 4, composed before his imprisonment, have imaginative melodic lines and nimble word-setting, especially in the final song, set to a text by the clever German poet Christian Morgenstern, and is engagingly sung by Holzmair. Viktor Ullmann’s Der Mensch und sein Tag is a cycle of 12 songs set to aphoristic German texts by Hans Günther Adler, a Terezín inmate who survived and preserved Ullmann’s manuscripts in England. The poetry is contemplative, and Ullmann excelled at composing lyrical melodies in a free, atonal style. Holzmair is at his very best in introspective material and he sings them with great sensitivity. The Three Songs , op. 37, by Ullmann were revised at Terezín, and employ marching music in a sardonic Mahlerian manner. Gideon Klein’s Three Songs , op. 1 (in Czech), were composed in 1940 prior to his imprisonment, and they were already the work of a skilled composer. Klein (1919–1945) was a child prodigy and considered the composer from the Terezín group most likely to have had a major career, had he lived. The songs inhabit the same harmonic, expressive world as the music of Alban Berg. Along with Ullmann’s Der müde Soldat , they represent the disc’s most adventurous music. Klein’s moving version of a Hebrew lullaby sets a simple folk song against troubled, complex harmony. The little-known Zikmund Schul is represented by one touching German song. Ilse Weber was a children’s author, not a composer, and Holzmair recites her poem Ich Wandre Durch Theresienstadt.


All of these songs are composed with considerable craft and inspiration and they repay repeated listening. Much of the material has almost never been recorded before, making this an extremely valuable release. At this stage of his career, Holzmair is a consummate Lieder singer with impeccable phrasing and German diction. He reminds me of Ernst Haefliger or Gerard Souzay, master singers who compensated for somewhat unlovely vocal quality at times with good breath control, fine legato, and overall musical intelligence.


Incidentally, Holzmair and Russell Ryan can be heard along with the exciting mezzo-soprano Hermine Haselböck on another recent Bridge release of songs by Schreker, and Haselböck is also featured on an excellent new Bridge CD of songs by Zemlinsky. Thanks to this fine American label for their commitment to making all of this obscure (and beautiful) German Lieder available in first-rate performances and excellent sound.


FANFARE: Paul Orgel

Classical Music

Hänssler CLASSIC is proud to present Helmuth Rilling's landmark recording of the complete Bach Cantatas in a new, specially-price collector's edition. Rilling was the first conductor to ever record the complete Bach cantatas and still, 25 years after they were first released in celebration of the Bach tercentennial in 1985, they remain the standard by which all other interpretations are judged.

Praise for some of the original recordings that make up this set:

Complete Cantatas
"There is no question as to the excellence and distinction of many of Rilling's soloists, which feature a number of famous Bach specialists of the last quartet of a century...Rilling has proved a pragmatist in matters of historical performance practice; he adopts brisk tempos and light accents at times, but allows himself considerable expressive and agogic freedom." – Penguin Guide [2003/4 Edition]

In particular, Rilling's unaffectedly musical, period-performance-influenced but undogmatic approach seems designed to sustain long-term listener satisfaction. He's so strong in the basic qualities that matter most. For example, he has the best soloists of any major series of Bach vocal works--names like Arlene Auger, Juliane Banse, Matthias Goerne, Christophe Prégardien, Christine Schäfer--the list reads like a "who's who" of major late-20th-century singers. The choral singing also is uniformly superb.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Christmas Cantatas
The intensity of colour and expression in these works is stunning – the surging, brass-capped elation of Unser Mund sei voll Lachens, so full of the simple joy of the Christian message, the searching meditation on temptation in Selig ist der Mann, the seemingly bottomless well of spiritual sustenance plumbed in the chorale conclusions. Rilling’s performances (on modern instruments) are neatly tailored and naturally benevolent in nature, buoyant with the wholesomeness and warmth that this great music so frequently emanates. There is simply no better way of celebrating a musical Christmas.

– Terry Blain, BBC Music Magazine

Secular Cantatas
I'm not sure whether Helmuth Rilling has acquired a reputation for seriousness, though his recorded legacy—crowned by his complete Bach sacred cantatas series—has tended toward music of high purpose; for a primarily choral conductor, it couldn't be otherwise. Nevertheless, he shows a light touch on this disc that is in keeping with this music's intent to entertain. Rilling continues to buck trends. His instruments are modern, and his choir is relatively large (49 voices) but always precise and flexible. He does not always forsake velocity, as collectors of the sacred cantatas series will recall: Pales's wonderful second aria and its appended instrumental interlude skip smartly along. "Sheep" obeys the speed limit, but just barely. As usual, Rilling has assembled a splendid set of young soloists, who not only sing well but also get with the action.

– George Chien, Fanfare

This well filled CD (79 minutes) contain the complete transcriptions for piano that Rachmaninoff made of compositions of various composers. Being a celebrated pianist and a genius composer, Rachmaninoff didn’t literally transcribe, but added his own unique pianistic and compositional features to them, creating as much his own masterwork as is the original. Ranging from Bach (3 movements from the Violin Partita in E), through transcriptions of his own and Tachikovsky’s songs, Mendelssohn’s Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream of hair-raising difficulty, he ends with fashionable transcriptions of Kreisler’s Liebesleid and Liebesfreud, a pianistic tour de force and favourite encore.

As a substantial bonus Alexander Ghindin plays the complete Moments Musicaux Op. 16. Ghindin, one of Russia’s foremost young pianists, has the true Rachmaninoff feeling, a mix of melancholy and grandeur, playing with stunning virtuosity and panache. Alexander Korsantia, born in 1965 in Tiblisi, Georgia, won first prize at the prestigious Arthur Rubinstein Competition in 1995. He has an active international concert career, and is based in Boston, USA.

Classical Music

Classical Music

The best thing about the Caruso legend is that it's more than true. If you've never heard him, whatever you have heard about him can't do justice to how good he really was: the golden bigness of the voice, the dramatic genius and generosity of spirit that he projected. Fortunately, as the first vocal superstar of the Victrola age, he made hundreds of recordings that survive to give substance to the legend.
CARUSO IN LOVE combines favorite opera arias by Verdi, Puccini, and Donizetti with popular love songs of the period, including one by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, Caruso's friend and the composer of 'I Pagliacci.' The excellent transfers of these 78 rpm sides made for Victor between 1906 and 1920 are the result of the epic remastering project RCA undertook in the early '80s to represent the entire Caruso legacy with the best possible sound.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This selection contains both ADD and DDD recordings.

Classical Music

Classical Music

That Vladimir Horowitz begins this 1981 recital with six sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti seems to be much more than the default of chronological programming. At this late stage in his career, before an outsized audience, the "last Romantic" appears before an adoring public with clean, unfussy, and elegantly shaped interpretations of Baroque pieces conceived for the harpsichord.
He then leaps to Paris of the 1840s with the Chopin Ballade in F minor, thereby linking Scarlatti to the contrapuntal richness of late Chopin. Chopin went against the grain of public opinion in his championing of Scarlatti--a fact that did not escape Horowitz's attention. Indeed, Horowitz's balanced and richly textured reading of the Ballade compels the listener to hear it through the filter of Scarlatti.
This Scarlatti-Chopin connection seems to dictate the remainder of the recital, from the Liszt Ballade to the Chopin Waltz and the Rachmaninov Prelude. With the Rachmaninov, Horowitz is in Russia of the 20th century, and his idiomatic command of this music, from its fiery martial theme to its luxurious cantilena, and his flawless technique remain unrivalled.

Classical Music

Classical Music

IDIGITAL: LA MER,PRELUDE,FAUN

Very old - and yet completely new! Beethoven sonatas once again? Yes, once again. For the Austrian pianist Markus Schirmer really has something to say to Beethoven. The way Schirmer illuminates the text and places emphasis on certain aspects is very fresh and personal. A must? - Yes, a must!" (Wiener Zeitung)

Mozart: Violin Sonatas

Classical Music

These two wonderful quartets have been audiophile touchstones ever since the Amadeus Quartet (three of them, anyway) and Clifford Curzon recorded them for Decca in the 1950s. Those performances were full of personality, charm and fire, and the sound (at the time) seemed alive and rich in color (today, it sounds a little harsh and aggressive). Along the way there have been fine recordings by many illustrious ensembles, on both modern and original instruments, of which the best purely in terms of sound may have been the musically limpid RCA version with the Guarneri Quartet and Artur Rubinstein. Now, from the German audiophile label Tacet, comes a version that banishes the competition, combining the musical sparkle and sparkle of the early Decca version with the sumptuous sonic radiance of the RCA. The sound, in fact, is so clear and natural that it is like being in the room with the musicians. Operating at moderate speeds, the way the young Austrian pianist Markus Schirmer rolls out phrases as if they were pearls, the way he illuminates the music with a luminous inner elegance, and the way he occasionally adorns the music with ornaments of exceptional originality and delight, leaves no doubt that, for this one release at least, here is a major talent. This is not to say that the very excellent Gaede Trio takes a mere supporting role, for they play as gloriously as on their Tacet recordings of Mozart?s String Trio, KV 563, and their extremely gorgeous transcription of Bach?s Goldberg Variations. I reviewed the 44.1 CD version (numbered just plain 116), but it is hard to imagine anything more musically and sonically satisfying than this CD. Thomas Seedorf?s curious liner notes are quite endearing, especially in an English translation that seems like a gentle parody of German syntax. Ed.: I?ve just auditioned the surround DVD-A, and whether a listener would consider it more musically and sonically satisfying depends on how open they are to the alternative use of the acoustic space made by producer Andreas Spreer. He works from the idea that any sound-carrier is a synthetic product and feels that using the surround field to place the listener in the middle of the performance is more interesting and involving. Thus on the first of these quartets we have the viola at the center speaker, the piano on the right side, the violin on the left speaker and the cello on the left rear surround speaker. For the second quartet the violin/cello and the piano change places. Personally I?m beginning to get used to this, find it much more involving, and in fact find the standard frontal placement of instruments on other recordings a bit boring. But I can imagine some listeners might be freaked out. Laurence Vittes Total playing time: 54'51

BEST MOZART