Outstanding soloists: Donna Brown (Soprano), Gilles Cachemaille (Bass-Baritone) - A further reference recording of Helmuth Rilling and his Stuttgarter Ensembles Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium belonging to the series “Great Choral Works“ - „Brahms-singing with predictive dimension and forcefullness but in the same way deeply human in each phrase“ Fono Forum This "Requiem" is not based on the familiar text of the Catholic funeral mass, but is instead sensitively and knowledgably assembled from text from the Old and New Testaments by Brahms himself. Indeed, it was not his intention to pattern his Requiem after the Latin mass for the dead, nor to proclaim what he felt were false hopes for resurrection. Instead, “Ein deutsches Requiem” is a work of consolation for those left behind. This aspect is particularly emphasized in Helmuth Rilling’s moving interpretation. Donna Brown (soprano) and Gilles Cachemaille (baritone) are the outstanding vocal soloists, delivering well-profiled performances that are perfectly integrated into the overall balance of sound. Together with his regular collaborators, the Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Rilling delivers a performance full of gravitas that effectively reconciles the themes of death and mourning with a transcendent sense of spiritual consolation with a sense of immediacy seldom encountered in other performances.

The latest release in Hallé’s award winning Elgar Edition features the much anticipated studio recording of Sea Pictures, coupled with the lesser known tone poem Polonia and the five original Pomp and Circumstance Marches.

Premiered in 1899, shortly after the triumph of the Enigma Variations in London the previous month, Sea Pictures became an immediate hit (with two of the songs being performed with piano accompaniment for Queen Victoria at Balmoral two weeks after the premiere). The cycle of five songs for which Elgar selected a variety of poems from his wide knowledge of literature, features a range of masterly orchestral textures and stunning vocal settings.

The featured soloist is world renowned mezzo soprano Alice Coote, regarded as one of the leading artists of our day, equally famed on the great operatic stages as in concert and recital.

Polonia has long been overlooked but this recording will re-establish this highly engaging tone poem which quotes Polish tunes and Chopin, written as a tribute to Poland’s contribution to the Allied cause in the First World War, in a brilliantly orchestrated score.

Not all of the five original Pomp and Circumstance Marches are as universally well known as No.1 and No.4 and, although constructed on the same structural pattern, they display an extraordinary variety of character. These orchestral showcases are a perfect vehicle with which to display the technical and artistic skill of the Hallé under Elder.

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581

Heinrich Wilhelm Ernst (1812-65) was one of the leading musicians of his day, a friend of Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt and Mendelssohn, and for Joseph Joachim 'the greatest violinist I ever heard'. But the popular encore pieces by which Ernst is remembered today represent only a fraction of his output. This fifth CD - in series of seven presenting all his compositions for the first time - shows his mastery on large and small scale: the Polonaise and Variations on a Dutch Air are grand and brilliant compositions for the concert hall, and the sparkling operatic miniatures and tender arrangements are altogether more intimate.

Classical Music

Volume 4 of Bridge’s Fred Lerdahl series offers music composed over a span of four decades. Three recent pieces, Spirals, Three Diatonic Studies, and Imbrications, are recorded here for the first time and two earlier works, Wake and Fantasy Etudes, are re-issues. Spirals is scored for an orchestra of double woodwinds, two horns, two trumpets, percussion, piano, and strings. The two movements are of equal length, the first fast and brilliant, the second slow and lyrical. Three Diatonic Studies originated in a commission from the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival to write a variation based on the “Aria” of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Lerdahl later added two other diatonic studies to form the present suite. The brief Imbrications was written in 2001 in honor of the composer Andrew Imbrie’s 80th birthday. The inspiration for Wake came from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The work was composed at the request of the legendary soprano Bethany Beardslee and was composed while Lerdahl was in residence at the Marlboro Music Festival. Lerdahl composed Fantasy Etudes in 1985. The piece is in one movement and is scored, like Imbrications, for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and piano. The stunning performance here is by three-time Grammy-winning ensemble, eighth blackbird. Fred Lerdahl’s music is highly esteemed for having developed original harmonic syntaxes and formal processes, presented with expressive depth.

The recording of Eliott Carter's "Boston Concerto" on this album was nominated for the 2007 Grammy Award for "Best Classical Contemporary Composition."

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

One of the most difficult aspects in considering the works of a composer with a complex, characteristic (some might say hermetically sealed) style like Carter's is that there's always a temptation to take the lazy way out and just assert that, "Well, it all sounds like Carter, and if you like Carter then you'll like these pieces." And when the performances are as good as these clearly are the attractions of taking the easy option become all but overwhelming. Alas, for good or ill, critics are supposed to offer opinions not just about the quality of performance, but also regarding the works themselves when they are new. The problem with doing this successfully (or even plausibly) in Carter's case is that his music asks to be judged by its own standards, and probably the only person adequately qualified to say anything intelligent in this regard is Elliott Carter himself. Still, that's never stopped me before, and it's not going to now. Having lived with this disc for some time, here's the bottom line: not all of this music is equally good, but some if it is really enjoyable.


Shard, for solo guitar, is a zippy and appealing little two and a half minute trifle that, as the title implies, sounds like a piece of something bigger, but one with an edge to it. That something bigger (and edgier) turns out to be Luimen (the title is Dutch and means "whimsical moods"), of which Shard comprises the third of four continuous sections, albeit with additional instrumental commentary. The word "whimsical" aptly describes Luimen, and any composer worth his salt better have his tongue in his cheek when writing for an ensemble consisting of trumpet, trombone, harp, mandolin, guitar, and vibraphone. Why does Carter's style work so well here? Well, first of all, traditional tonality would almost inevitably force a composer into well-worn melodic and harmonic pathways hardly suited to such an unequal and strange assortment of instruments. The result would probably sound merely foolish, whereas Carter's music, with its layered approach to complex rhythms and other simultaneous musical happenings celebrates and exploits the timbral potential of just such an unbalanced instrumental grouping. Take for example the work's second section, in which lovely soft chords from muted brass, harp and vibraphone serve as a background to sudden plucks from the mandolin and guitar, or the very end of the whole work, which is exquisitely timed to produce a really humorous effect. In short, this piece delivers the goods, and does so with a smile.


The same, alas, can't be said for Tempo e tempi, a song cycle set to various Italian poems and scored for voice, oboe/English horn, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, and cello. Here the means must be at least somewhat more traditional because the point of any song cycle is the expressive enhancement of the text through music (which is the not the same thing as mere musical illustration, mind you). Three of the songs, "A Dove", with its softly warbling clarinet, "Sunken Oboe" (the musical potential is obvious), and "The Poet's Secret", with its luminous accompaniment, accomplish this goal. The remaining five, whatever private meaning they may hold for the composer, sound as if he could have been setting excerpts from the Manhattan yellow pages, for all their expressive specificity. He's also let down by a recording that places everyone, including soprano Susan Narucki, too close to the microphones, resulting in flat aural perspectives and tonal monotony (though everything else on this disc sounds great). And let's face it, you really can't place any work with lots of solo oboe (no matter how fine the player) far enough away from the microphones, can you?


That leaves us with the celebrated Eight Pieces for Four Timpani. This seminal work, beloved of percussionists, belongs as much in the practice room as it does in the concert hall. Carter himself requests that no more than four of these brief studies ever be played at one time, recognizing the potential for aural fatigue. Daniel Druckman accommodates their metrical and polyrhythmic complexities with virtuoso flair, and he's recorded clearly enough so that the music never turns into mud. Curiously, their interest being primarily rhythmic, these pieces make pretty easy listening for anyone who enjoys virtuoso drumming or music with a certain primal quality. Our Western tradition is filled with works in which an amazing sophistication of technique evokes ancient or primitive ritual music (think of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring or Les Noces, Varèse's Amériques, Ginastera's Popol Vuh, or Cage's Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano), and Carter's timpani pieces fall squarely into this tradition, however personal the actual idiom.


So there you have it! Now well into his 90s, Carter continues to write challenging, stimulating music, and to enjoy the enthusiastic support and loyalty of a tremendously talented group of musicians, not least the members of Speculum Musicae. The fact that he employs a highly evolved and complex personal style with limited broad appeal should not, in the final analysis, excuse anyone--supporters, detractors, or even music critics (who ideally should belong to neither category)--from taking each work as it comes and giving it due consideration accordingly. I may be wrong, but I seriously doubt he'd want it any other way. It should also come as no surprise that not everything he writes is equally good. After all, he may be the Grand Old Man of the American avant-garde, but in all other respects he's only human, and so is his music when you come right down to it. [3/4/2002]
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

The works for violoncello solo recorded and compiled on this CD by Friedrich Gauwerky are reference works for John Cage's unusual way of composing. Apart from the tones, Cage also helped to put the varied forms of silence on the musical map: In John Cage's "Concert for Piano and Orchestra", the western art work, score, exploded: The work is composed in individual parts whose execution is freed of every constraint. Each part is even conceived as an autonomous work, e.g. like "Solo for Cello". "59 1/2 Seconds", one of his "time-length pieces", ranks among Cage's most radical "graphic" compositions. Stars become notes or noises in "Atlas Eclipticalis" - again without a score. With the "Variations I", written for any number of people using any sort and number of sound-producing means, Cage's composition reached the outmost limit on the way to absolute indetermination. But, if one hears "Etudes Boréales" for cello solo, however, one experiences that it is a piece whose status can only be compared with J.S. Bach's cello compositions. A critic wrote about Friedrich Gauwerky: "... a virtuoso with far-sightedness, good taste, amazing technique, and a captivating instrument." (Lutz Lesle: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik)

Rubinstein Collection, Vol. 77

Classical Music

Classical Music

What we call silence is for me comparable to a dense knot of noise, frequencies, and sounds," says Rebecca Saunders. "From this surface of apparent silence I try to draw out and mould sound and colour." Samuel Beckett's works have become very important for the composer. Therein lies, perhaps, a certain parallel to Rebecca Saunders's more recent music: in the increasing sparseness of a language that gradually shuts out the inessential and ornamental. "Stirrings Still" is a music that seems to be inside and outside at once - both mobile sound sculpture and a journey beneath the surface of the sound waves, into the interior of a sound that suddenly seems more distant yet more intense. "Such and much more such the hubbub in his mind so-called till nothing left from deep within but only ever fainter oh to end," Beckett writes at the end of his "Stirrings Still". "Oh all to end.

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Classical Music

This is not just an anthology which works—it's a wow!

This is the sixteenth gala of the Richard Tucker Music Foundation—''a look at an era just gone by'', as conductor James Conlon calls it—recorded live before an enthusiastic audience. It starts with a great lift-off: America the Beautiful (no mention of its composer Samuel Augustus Ward, whose hymn is treated to a showbiz arrangement) sung by Leontyne Price. At the age of 63 she can still summon enough patriotic fervour to make non-Americans want to apply for citizenship papers on the spot! And she isn't the oldest performer by any means. Robert Merrill is ten years her senior and delivers Weill's ''September Song'' touchingly but with a maddening tendency to anticipate the beat.

Weill is also represented by the ecstatic virtuosity of the Ice-Cream Sextet from Street Scene, still fresh in one's memory from the ENO performances in London and the two recordings now available on Decca and TER. Then there are two settings of William Blake's ''Tiger! Tiger! burning bright'' (''Songs of Experience''). Virgil Thomson set the poem twice: this is the second of his Five Songs from William Blake written in 1951, but it is William Bolcom who brings the house down with his version for chanting chorus backed by a variety of orchestral percussion.

One of the most moving performances is Karen Holvik in Stephen Foster's immaculate Ah! May the red rose live alway, with piano (Steven Blier). More calculating, but equally polished nostalgia comes from Barber, especially ''Must the winter come so soon'' from Vanessa, hauntingly sung by Frederica von Stade, recently admired for her Melisande at Covent Garden. But also ''Give me my robe'' from Barber's Anthony and Cleopatra, sung with equal poignancy by Carol Vaness.

Tatiana Troyanos sings Copland's setting of Robert Lowry's ''At the river'' with impressive, quiet dignity. Bernstein is the only composer who gets in three times—the Collegiate Chorale is on form for the first of the Chichester Psalms; Jerry Hadley sings ''Maria''; and there's an ensemble from Candide. Finally, in case you didn't sign on for US citizenship, Marilyn Horne gives a truly commanding performance of Berlin's classic God bless America. This is not just an anthology which works—it's a wow!

-- Peter Dickinson, Gramophone [6/1993]

Dvorák: Piano Quintet in A, Op. 81; Artur Rubinstein, piano; Guarneri Quartet. RCA Gold Seal 6263-2.

Artur Rubinstein was a youthful 84 when he sat down with the Guarneri players in the spring of 1971 for this recording of the Dvo?ák quintet. His lovely tone and lively phrasing, the clarity of the textures that emerged under his hands, and most of all the instinct he possessed for the singing line, proved infectious and spurred his colleagues to one of their best efforts on record. The sound, while not the best, has good presence. – Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection.

Includes sonata(s) in d major by Luigi Boccherini. Soloists: Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky.

Fred Lerdahl is one of the least known among “major” American composers. Lerdahl’s music is greatly admired by cognoscenti, and his theoretical writings are among the most important of the latter 20th century, but his music remains less known to the general public, perhaps because of its non-doctrinaire stance. A Lerdahl composition might at any moment be tonal or atonal, it might luxuriate in Lerdahl’s rich melodic and harmonic gifts, or it might make reference to various musics of our past. Pulitzer prize-winning composer Paul Moravec writes that: “The deep, fresh, inspired music of Fred Lerdahl is a beacon for listeners making their way forward through the millenium’s strange and wonderful landscape of the imagination. Organic images express the way in which Lerdahl’s music seems so right as it unfolds in time, giving the impression of inexorability.” Time After Time, a Pulitzer prize finalist, is for the familiar ‘Pierrot plus percussion’ formation. In two movements, the eighteen and a half minute composition employs spiral forms, in which simple ideas become elaborated and more complex with each cycle. Marches for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano is a phantasmagoria of over-laid march-like ideas. One can feel the presence of Sousa and Mahler, lurking in the wings as Lerdahl creates an overall mood that veers between humor and fervent instrumental brilliance. Lerdahl's Oboe Quartet was composed for La Fenice, the ensemble that performs it here. Led by the superb oboist Peggy Pearson, the quartet integrates the oboe into the ensemble in a single 13 minute movement whose overall mood is playful with occasional dark undertones. Waves for chamber orchestra simply must be heard to be believed. Given a stunningly controlled reading by the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, this recording is a re-mastered release of the out-of-print Deutsche Grammophon recording.

Rubinstein Collection, Vol. 48: Chopin: Polonaises

Classical Music

Includes God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen; O Holy Night Arturo Sandoval and the Canadian Brass Jazz All-Stars; Sleigh Ride Medley; Little Drummer Boy; the Toy Trumpet Canadian Brass, and more. 18 tracks.

Classical Music