Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

During the late 1930s the Great Depression was still raging. Kreisler, Heifetz, the young Menuhin, Szigeti and Milstein represented the topmost echelon of violinists in box office draw, followed by Elman, Huberman, Spalding, the young Ricci and Morini. Many a European violinistic luminary had made an American debut during the Depression years, hoping for success. Despite everything, the United States was still the Mecca for musical artists, in terms of financial reward. But in the face of intense competition only a violinist of the very highest qualifications - and one whose musical personality and character were in some measure different from those of the reigning elite - could hope to launch a top-level concertizing career. Such an artist was René Charles (Zino) Francescatti. At thirty-seven, he was already a fully seasoned performer when he made his American debut in November, 1939, playing the Paganini Concerto No.1 (complete version) with the New York Philharmonic. His rise to stardom had been long and arduous, but he was recognized eventually not only as the heir to Thibaud, once the 'greatest French violinist', but also as one of the world's leading violinists. Fellow-violinist Henry Roth said: 'As a bravura technician, Francescatti belongs in the first rank. And what is more important - he never sacrifices beauty of sound or sincerity of purpose in the interest of technical exhibitionism.' - This collection features never-before-released live performance recordings of favourite concertos and chamber works he excelled in.

Classical Music

Black is the color of the bile said to induce a state of gloom. In the form of "melancholia," it has become an allegory of the artistic imagination. The hour of melancholy strikes at night, when the sleep of reason brings forth it's monsters. This CD takes us on a foray into the land of shadows: it's compositions make remarkable use of light and shadow effects while simultaneously recalibrating the relationship between ensemble and soloist in unique ways. Michael Jarrell's arrangement of a violin concerto for chamber orchestra refracts the solo instrument's line through the prism of the ensemble. The tale told by Stefano Gervasoni's "lowered" concerto for double bass is only superficially about dolce far niente; his music is a nocturnal creature that gathers odd sound forms - until the alarm goes off. Taking an (early-morning) look in the mirror, the solo flute in Durand's "Ombre/Miroir" finds itself still faced with shadowy creatures as well. And finally, in Brian Ferneyhough's seven tableaux vivants, the angel of history appears: in verses of poet Charles Bernstein he shows his gloomy face.

BRAHMS: SYMPHONY NO 2, TRAGIC

This album received the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without Conductor).

Classical Music

This album received the 2005 Grammy Award for "Best Small Ensemble Performance (with or without Conductor)."

In 1937, Cincinnati's May Festival gave the world premiere of R. Nathaniel Dett's oratorio, "The Ordering of Moses", a 'Biblical Folk Scene' composed in 1932.  The event was broadcast live to the nation by NBC radio.  The present recording captures a thrilling 2014 concert of Dett's magnum opus, performed by four stellar vocal soloists, the May Festival Chorus, and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducted by James Conlon.

 REVIEWS:

Conlon leads the Cincinnati musicians in a performance of radiant intensity. The chorus are in glorious communal voice and the Cincinnati Symphony blend elegance with vitality. How is it possible that a work as soaring and powerful as R. Nathaniel Dett’s The Ordering of Moses could have languished for so long?

-- Gramophone

This is certainly a major milestone in African-American classical music—a fine piece, very well done!

-- American Record Guide

This brilliantly stirring 1937 oratorio receives its first commercial recording, live from Carnegie Hall. Excellent soloists with sensitive chorus and orchestra.

-- BBC Music Magazine

Let me say straight away that the Tokyo Quartet's set of the middle-period quartets is among the most impressive to have appeared in recent years. Although I would not necessarily recommend it in preference to the Vegh (Audivis Valois), the Talich (Calliope), or (in the case of the Rasumovsky Quartets) the Lindsay on ASV that have dominated the catalogue for so long, it is surely a set to reckon with. In terms of sheer technical perfection and ensemble it yields no ground to the Vermeer (Teldec), Orford (Delos), Alban Berg (EMI) or Guarneri (RCA). And their technical finesse, spot-on intonation and superb ensemble are all the more impressive for being at the service of the music. I started with the F major Rasumovsky, undoubtedly the greatest of the three, whose opening in the Tokyo's hands is magnificent in its breadth. They have a good feeling for the architecture and shape of each movement, and throughout the work they are fully aware of the depth of this music.

You may recall the hoary adage comparing a translation to a woman: if it is faithful, it is not beautiful, if it is beautiful, it is unfaithful. Similarly, if a performance sets greater store by beauty than fidelity, it risks gaining the former at the cost of the latter; if it sets its sights on truth first and beauty second, it stands to gain both. The Vegh and the Talich often risk beauty of finish in their search for truth. But at its best this sumptuously but truthfully recorded new issue has both ... I like it far more than any of the rival versions that have crossed the Atlantic in recent years.

-- Robert Layton, Gramophone [3/1992]

From Heaven to Hell" The music of the angels as a euphonious affair is a relatively recent notion. In the Old Testament, the polyphonic praise of God was imagined as an overpowering roar. Martin Smolka's "Rush (Hour in Celestial Streets)" comes closer to this older concept with it's after-work traffic jam, though he also takes a detour through microtonality to write entirely new harmonies. On earth, light music celebrates a joyous resurrection in a very special "music machine" in Mauricio Kagel's "Orchestrion-Straat". And with his "Racconto dall'Inferno" (tale from hell"), Louis Andriessen sides both with and against Dante, submitting evidence that hell does have a sound-and that anyone caught in it's repetitive loops will find it difficult to escape. "We're on the highway to hell.

TOSCANINI COLLECTION VOL 6 - B

The theremin is the only instrument that can produce sounds without being touched. The hands of the performer dance in the air. Invented in the 1920s, the theremin did not really achieve a breakthrough in the following decades. On "Touch! Don't Touch!" Lydia Kavina and Barbara Buchholz pick up the thread of theremin history with new compositions. Eight German and Russian composers were commissioned to write pieces for two theremins and instrumental ensemble. They followed the maxim that there should be no limits to the sound; everything should be possible. The result is this marvellous CD.

Schwerin Brass Collegium's new release features a mixture of well-known carols and traditional arrangements of Renaissance and Baroque seasonal music. Also included are tasteful transcriptions of popular works such as Corelli's Christmas Concerto as well as interludes for the organ, played by the renowned organist Jan Ernst.

Classical Music

The focus of the pieces by Alvin Lucier on this CD is on the phenomena of resonance - sympathetic vibration - in many variations. "Time and again I find myself having to pare away any musical gestures in a work in order to uncover the true idea in a piece," says Alvin Lucier. The composer knows which ideas he wants to liberate. But the process of causing the environment to resound is always a collaborative, interactive project. It needs someone who is creatively engaged, even obsessed, to make Lucier's music of ideas a music of the ears. Someone of precisely the type found in this production - Matthias Kaul.

LAWES: THE ROYAL CONSORT JACO

WAGNER: ORCHESTRAL MUSIC BOUL

Martin, F.: Trio Sur Des Melodies Populaires Irlandaises / B

Classical Music

PROKOFIEV: PIANO SONATAS NOS 2

Just how masterly Szell was as a Straussian is demonstrated in all three of these items, recorded in 1960 and 1961. By then Szell had built the Cleveland Orchestra into what was regularly described very fairly — as the finest in America. These performances with a slight reservation over the hectic opening of Don Juan bear out not just what tautness and precision of ensemble the orchestra were achieving, but the thrusting emotional intensity. Szell as a person was one of the most daunting of conductors, chilling anyone around him; he certainly had musical fires within him, a point I never doubted in the conversations I had with him in his last years. I am glad that the One of the century's great cellists, Pierre Fournier, in Don Quixote accompanied by George Szell Photo 11 m 1' booklet-note includes memories from the horn player, Myron Bloom, bearing out what feelings there were behind the chilly facade.

Bloom, one of the greatest of American horn players, promoted by Szell to be first horn in Cleveland in 1955, a year after he joined the orchestra, is also very well celebrated here. I was sorry when after Szell's death and Maazel's succession, he was persuaded to go to the Orchestre de Paris to sort out their horn section, for he made far too few solo recordings, and in Cleveland he might have made many more. This one of the Horn Concerto No. 1 is marvellous at bringing out the enormous range of dynamic and tone colour Bloom had at his command. In the outer movements lightness and agility are wonderfully contrasted with heroic power, and in the central slow movement the impact of the braying.fortissinio in the middle section is all the greater when set against such gentle poetry in the outer sections.

The other artist here celebrated is of course the cellist, Pierre Fournier, who made this version of Don Quixote several years before recording it with Karajan in Berlin for DG. The contrasts are fascinating, for against my expectation Fournier is freer in his rubato with Szell, who prefers more flowing speeds than Karajan, making this a noble portrait, the more intense for not being so expansive. The opening of Don Juan, as I said, is hectic in its pursuit of brilliance, but very quickly Szell finds the same combination of opulence and urgency that marks the rest of the disc. A most welcome historic reissue, very well transferred, with sound both warm and detailed.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [2/1998]

Brahms, J.: Trio in A Minor, Op. 114 / Clarinet Sonata No. 1