If it's the Quintet you want, then this RCA version is without question the one to have . . . . RCA offers Brahms's glorious Second Sextet in a performance that is as beautiful in detail as it is grandly conceived as a whole. Intonation may not be perfect but the fine sweep of it all is irresistible. Heifetz's three Hungarian Dances are a delightful makeweight. -- Gramophone

Maybe reviewers fuss too much about couplings, but in this case, with the Prelude a l'apresmidi dun faune these days extending the timings of virtually every Debussy issue, and with nearly two decades separating it from the later Jeux and La boite a joujoux, as well as it not being a ballet—oh, all right: it may have been conceived for the stage, and was choreographed (and vulgarized) by Nijinsky in 1912—surely a more enterprising choice in keeping with the theme would have been the contemporary and unjustly neglected ballet Khamma. With the standard of performance on offer here, that would indeed have formed a cherishable disc. As it happens, Tilson Thomas's Prelude is very fine: richly drawn and, compared to the recent versions from Boulez (DG) and Solti (Decca), traditionally drawn out, long-breathed and languorous. Overloud horns in the fourth bar would seem to forecast fog, not heat-haze; in other respects the balance (from EMI's Abbey Road Studio No. 1) is good, with integrated but focused solo strings, harps and antique cymbals.

"Toy-boxes are really towns in which the toys live like people" wrote Andre Helle who, in 1913, devised the scenario for La boite a joujoux (adding "or perhaps towns are just boxes in which people live like toys"). But Debussy made no attempt at meaningful symbolism; "something to amuse the children—nothing more" he said. In giving life to the wooden figures, and with its prominent role for piano, inevitably one's thoughts turn to Petrushka, far more dramatically effective, but hardly a children's story—well, not a child of 1913 anyway. Tilson Thomas is more artful than Torteher on Chandos: in the first tableau his doll dances her waltz with more look-at-me' allure and grace—Tortelier's rubato is comparatively (perhaps aptly) mechanical—and, after Punch has biffed the little soldier on the nose, an angrier captain pops his head out of the box. On the debit side, a wooden doll surely wouldn't pray as quietly as does the LSO clarinet in the following tableau after the battle (track 4, 4'45": the marking is only piano); the distant shepherd's piping in the third tableau is not really distant at all, and the flutes are too loud at the moment of embrace between the soldier and the doll at the end of the scene. Whilst I'm grumbling, Sony's notes don't include a synopsis—as entertainment, this music, unlike Jeux, is dependent on knowledge of the stage action (Chandos supply a detailed scenario). If forced to make a choice between the two, it would be Tilson Thomas; his is the more polished, confident and stylish account.

Perhaps Debussy was attracted to the idea of a children's ballet in 1913 to cleanse himself from the sins of Nijinsky's staging of his Prelude and Jeux (May 1912 and 1913 respectively). While enthusiastically welcoming Simon Rattle's Jeux (EMI), CH noted that the music's free-born invention was "sacrificed a little in favour of a richer romanticism". It could be argued, too, that Haitink (Philips) achieves his unrivalled clarity and delicacy at the expense of a degree of passion. I happen to feel that both, more successfully than Tilson Thomas, and in their quite different ways, achieve a special fantasy, and that contrejour lighting which Debussy was aiming at in his orchestration to oversimplify, it's a question of ensuring equal prominence for the woodwind. The LSO strings are unsteady in their opening four-bar chord (unusually played here as two plus two), but there's a line of accumulating energy from the main theme at fig. 51 (12'29") through to the climax at fig. 71 (16'23") which is less easy to feel in Rattle's and Haitink's accounts. With a slightly faster basic tempo this Jeux bears out Tilson Thomas's judgement, as he himself put it in GRAMOPHONE in February 1991, in knowing "what to hold on to and what to throw away".

-- Gramophone [11/1992]

Classical Music

Two of Van Cliburn's greatest recordings, featuring the legendary pianist performing with Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Historic performances.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

BEETHOVEN, MOZART: CONCERTOS

THE ROYAL EDITION - NIELSEN: S

MOZART LEGENDARY INTERPRETATIO

MOZART: VIOLIN CONCERTOS YUZU

Classical Music

Seasons

Morton Feldman (1926-1987) was and remains one of the giants of the "John Cage generation" of contemporary composers (if fact, he and Cage were friends). Feldman broke free of the serial school (Babbit, Boulez, etc.) and its adherents, and found more of an influence in the detail modern painters (such as Philip Guston, for whom he wrote and named a four-hour piece). It's this sense of detail that marks Feldman's later music: how long a flutist could breathe, how long before a note from a piano decays into nothingness.
In some respects, CRIPPLED SYMMETRY is "minimalist" in that the melodic fragments are brief and repeeated, yet it sounds nothing like Philip Glass or Steve Reich. Feldman's approach recalls the spare, spacious sound of Anton Webern and the piano music of Erik Satie, with the subtle repetition forming symmetry an almost imperceptible asymmetry. This 87-minute piece, for a trio of flute, piano and percussion, is gentle though not lulling or ambient (though it may certainly achieve that effect)--there is an elemental sense of tension to it. It's as if Feldman were trying to capture the sight AND sound of a snowflake melting in slow motion. CRIPPLED SYMMETRY is powerful and demanding music, but is so quiet and unassuming you may not notice.
REVIEWS:
International Record Review (4/00, p.52) - "...Feldman deals with sound, slowing the listener's attention-span until the merest gnat's crotchet of variation registers as a...seismic shift. His figures oscillate like the visual fields created by the giant canvases of Rothko or Newman..."
Billboard (11/27/99) - Recommended

Classical Music

This release explores the field of vocal music, and lieder in particular. The lieder recital no longer seems to be such a self-evident feature of musical life as it once was, but at the Salzburg Festival it always had a special place of its own, and that place has certainly been due in part to the presence of “leading lights” of the music scene. Looking back to the most recent decades, we see that like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau before her, there was nobody in the Eighties and Nineties who could so captivate the audience at a lieder recital, with a dramatic art and a wealth of vocal resources that defied comparison, as the inimitable Jessye Norman. All who can consider themselves lucky to have caught her in those years, doing what she did best of all, will count themselves equally fortunate – no less than new enthusiasts coming fresh to her work – to discover (or renew acquaintance with) an additional programme by the diva, sensitively accompanied by James Levine, effortlessly superb and impeccably quadrilingual in Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and – with their high “repertoire value” – the rarity of Schoenberg’s Brettl-Lieder, Viennese rather than modern.

Classical Music

GRIEG: HISTORIC CHAMBER MUSIC

Classical Music

Classical Music

Includes son(s) for vln and pno by Ludwig van Beethoven. Soloists: Pamela Frank, Claude Frank.

Ernst Krenek’s seven piano concertos – four for solo piano, one for two pianos, one with violin and one with organ – is one of the major concerto-series of the twentieth century, but perhaps also the least familiar. This second installment in their first complete recording reveals breath-taking bravura writing – in the virtuoso piano technique, the dazzling orchestration and the stylistic integration of serialism and good-natured recollection of Viennese tradition. Mikhail Korzhev is a pianist that “projects strength, atmosphere and the ability to tangle even the knottiest passages…” (International Record Review). He is equally active as a solo recitalist, performer with various chamber groups, a soloist with orchestras, and as a recording artist. The first installment in this series received enthusiastic reviews in Gramophone, Diapason, and many other sources, and instantly made it to the shortlist of best new releases by Sunday Times (London) and Fanfare magazine.

The year 2010 marked a century since the London String Quartet, known affectionately as the LSQ, gave its first concerts. Britain's leading chamber ensemble for two decades, it was equally well known in America, where it competed on equal terms with the Flonzaley Quartet: in 1925 leading American critic Olin Downes hailed 'the finest quartet playing that has been heard this Winter in New York'. The LSQ gave many premières, made myriad records and at different times included Albert Sammons and William Primrose. That almost no trace of the group remained in the catalogues in its centenary year was sad but easily explicable. Much of its recorded output was produced by the acoustic process; and often the music was abridged because the Columbia Graphophone Company was not fully committed to chamber music until around 1923. One can still enjoy those old discs, which represent the best of the neat, unfussy British string style; and some of them are reproduced here. But the five programmes performed at the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1951, issued here for the first time, inevitably give a better idea of the LSQ's capabilities: for one thing, they are played straight through, before a sympathetic audience, rather than being done in a sterile studio by the old stop-start 78rpm method.

While still in his twenties, Cyril Scott was perceived as one of the pre-eminent avant-garde musicians of his generation. He was championed by such luminaries as Henry Wood and Thomas Beecham and his advocacy of the latest techniques briefly gave him a wide acquaintance with some of the leading musicians of the day, including Ravel and Debussy. He became known as one of the 'Frankfurt Gang', that group of young composers who studied at the Hoch'sche Konservatorium and included such contemporaries as Roger Quilter, Norman O'Neill and Percy Grainger. After the First World War, however, he found himself increasingly at odds with the prevailing idioms of the day and became persona non grata with the musical establishment, which contributed to his lack of recognition as a serious composer in subsequent decades. Scott wrote more than two dozen substantial chamber works and although some of his early chamber music has been revived from time to time, with the exception of the Clarinet Quintet this selection receives its premiere recording. The earliest work on the programme is Piano Trio No. 1 of 1920, but the disc significantly celebrates the chamber music composed after the Second World War, exemplifying Scott's late style. The second Piano Trio dates from 1951 as does the one-movement Clarinet Quintet, inspired by the playing of Gervase de Payer who gave its first performance. The largest work, the Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano, is in three movements including a beautiful Intermezzo labelled Adagio espressivo. The Gould Piano Trio is joined by Mia Cooper and David Adams, and by the clarinettist Robert Plane, recognised for his 'outstanding musicianship' (The Musical Times).

Here Joseph Haydn's music is revealed as the perfect expression of truth. And the Auryn's performance of his string quartets is exactly as it should be: vigorous, beautiful to listen to, and full of feeling. A rediscovery both of sheer beauty and intellectual development.

Composer: Joseph Haydn (1732 - 1809)

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


Track Listing:
Disc One:
1. String quartet op. 1 No. 1, Hoboken III:1 in B flat Major: Presto
2. Minuet - Minuet secondo - Minuet primo da Capo
3. Adagio
4. Minuet - Trio - Minuet da Capo
5. Finale. Presto
6. String quartet op. 1 No. 2, Hoboken III:2 in E flat Major Allegro molto
7. Minuet - Trio - Minuet da Capo
8. Adagio
9. Minuet - Trio - Minuet da Capo
10. Finale. Presto
11. String quartet op. 1 No. 3, Hoboken III:3 in D Major Adagio
12. Menuet - Trio - Menuet da Capo
13. (Scherzo). Presto
14. Menuet - Trio - Menuet da Capo
15. (Finale). Presto J
Disc Two:
1. String quartet op. 1 No. 4, Hoboken III:4 in G Major Presto
2. Minuet - Trio - Minuet da Capo
3. Adagio
4. Minuet - Trio - Minuet da Capo
5. Finale. Presto
6. String quartet op. 1 No. 0, Hoboken II:6 in E flat Major Presto
7. Menuet - Trio - Menuet da Capo
8. Adagio
9. Menuet - Trio - Menuet da Capo
10. (Finale). Presto
11. String quartet op. 1 No. 6, Hoboken III:6 in C Major Presto assai
12. Minuet - Trio - Minuet da Capo
13. Adagio
14. Minuet - Trio - Minuet da Capo
15. Finale. Allegro


Timing: 97:54