Sitkovetsky, Yulian: Art of Yulian Sitkovetsky (The), Vol. 1

ABEL GANCE'S NAPOLEON

This organ CD is always on the Gothic Records best-sellers list, year after year. With both popular and unusual works in his program, Cathedral Organist Donald Dumler strikes just the right balance of musical choices.

Both the Chancel and Grand Gallery Organs were built by Kilgen, and are controlled by two new "twin" five-manual consoles. With 177 stops and over 9,000 pipes, the organ is both a grand musical statement, and a priceless antique whose sounds evoke the ideals of organ building in the 1920's. - Gothic Records

The choir of All Saints Beverly Hills provides a superb sampling of the current state of contemporary Anglican hymnody. Included here are numerous familiar tunes with descants old and new, and a few first recordings as well Among the latter is a tune by Thomas Foster honoring organ builder, C. B. Fisk. The choir is beautifully accompanied by Craig Phillips on an organ refined by Manuel Rosales. - Gothic Records

As sparkling and invigorating a Swan Lake as anyone could wish, with the LSO in top form throughout and clearly enjoying themselves.

...The new recording from Michael Tilson Thomas doesn't include the added Prince Siegfried/Odile pas de deux..., but it has everything else in its favour and is fitted comfortably on to a pair of CDs. The break, however, comes in the middle of the "Danses des cygnes" divertissement, about seven minutes before the end of Act 2. The recording, made in Watford Town Hall, is first class in every way; full and vivid, nicely balanced with a fine concert-hall effect, and certainly spectacular in the climactic moments, which Tilson Thomas clearly relishes (and so do the brass and percussion, which are placed in convincing perspective). Without losing the rhythmic ballet feel, Tilson Thomas treats the score slightly more freely than the other conductors..., the ebb and flow of phrasing and tempo less determined by the demands of the theatre, more by the way he feels the music's natural flux. This is immediately demonstrated in the Introduction to Act I, with its opening languor, followed by a fairly swift accelerando to the climax and enormous energy from the strings in the Allegro giusto which opens the act. Indeed, the lively numbers (the motto vivace coda of the Act 1 pas de deux, for instance) are as sparkling and invigorating as anyone could wish.

The LSO are on top form throughout and clearly enjoying themselves. The string phrasing is warm and polished and the two string soloists, Alexander Barantschik (violin) and Douglas Cummings (cello) are splendid... [T]the LSO wind soloists offer much to seduce the ear and continually demonstrate the composer's wonderfully imaginative orchestral palette. -- Gramophone [4/1992]

MARLBORO FEST 40TH ANNIVERSARY

There is terrific atmosphere to this marvelous seasonal celebration of Praetorius works.

The Sony Vivarte box is a marvellous seasonal celebration heard through the works of the too-neglected German composer Michael Praetorius.

His polychoral ‘In dulci jubilo’ is magnificent here, and his astonishing variety takes us from the showy, echoing duets of ‘Ach mein Herre’ to the tender reverence of ‘Verleih uns Frieden’. Just occasionally the singers are overwhelmed by the busy instruments and by the acoustic (as in ‘Gelobt seist du’), but there is a terrific atmosphere to these performances.

-- Anthony Pryer, BBC Music Magazine

The Washington National Cathedral Choir (comprised of the Choir of Men and Boys, and the Choir of Men and Girls) is one of the few cathedral choirs in the United States with an affiliated school in the English Tradition—and this is their first recording on Gothic with their new director, Michael McCarthy. Appointed in 2003, McCarthy was the founding director of the London Oratory School Schola. The Schola recorded for the film scores of both The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the Harry Potter film series. McCarthy brings a fresh approach to Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols, and delightful readings of many other Christmas carols. One of America's finest Anglican choirs! - Gothic Records

Benjamin Britten: A Ceremony of Carols, Op. 28
Britten: A Hymn to the Virgin
Richard Rodney Bennett: Suanni
arr. Robert Lucas de Pearsall: In dulci jubilo
arr. John Stainer: What child is this
Kenneth Leighton: Lully lulla
arr. Sandys, Bramley & Stainer: I saw three ships
Morten Lauridsen: O magnum mysterium
John Rutter: There is a flower
Peter Warlock: Bethlehem Down
Peter Wishart: Alleluya! A new work is come on hand

"Urgently eloquent." -- Gramophone [4/1987]

"Concentrated expressive intensity." -- Gramophone [11/1990]

"The Wanderer Fantasy is one of Schubert's most striking architectural achievements, and Perahia's intellectually rewarding account of it offers a vivid portrayal of the music's constantly evolving thematic structure." -- Gramophone [10/1995]

MARLBORO FEST 40TH ANNIVERSARY

Includes work(s) by various composers. Ensemble: Niederaltaich Scholars. Conductor: Konrad Ruhland.

The worldwide revival of Compline, a late-night service dating from early Christian times, began with this choir and the vision of its founder, Peter Hallock. Today, hundreds of young people fill Saint Mark’s Cathedral (Seattle) every Sunday night to hear this choir, and they are joined by thousands who hear Compline over radio and the Internet.

This recording honors the musical craft of Peter Hallock and Richard Proulx, who wrote much of the music sung by this choir since its founding in the mid-1950s. - Gothic Records

LEONARD BERNSTEIN - THE ROYAL

One can share in a more carefree expression of joy here. Many fine conductors have presided over these traditional Strauss tributes, but none with such élan as the late Carlos Kleiber. The music swings and sways in terpsichorean ecstasy. Kleiber appears blissful as he inscribes elegant arcs with his baton, and the players beam.

-- Gramophone [4/2008]

Georgy Sviridov (1915–98) has been hailed as the most important composer of choral music of the 20th c. He saw himself as part of the thousand-year continuum of Russian culture, giving its resonance full expression in the monumental choral cycle Hymns and Prayers, written 1987-97; he completed it only weeks before he died. Extraordinarily beautiful and profoundly moving, Hymns and Prayers is perhaps the most important Russian choral composition since the liturgies of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov. The Credo Chamber Choir, based in Kyiv, Ukraine, was founded in April 2002.

...A must-have... I implied earlier that very little of Agricola’s sacred music has hitherto been available. In fact, this is the first ever recording to include his Mass music. Under the invented title Missa Guazzabuglio (a word meaning hotchpotch or mishmash) van Nevel has assembled individual movements from different Masses, after the fashion of his ‘La Dissection d’un Homme Arme’...

Van Nevel is easily as eccentric as Agricola ever was, and while the singers of the Huelgas Ensemble cope admirably with even his most bizarre directions, some ideas seem to be almost beyond the pale. He claims that fully vocal performance of the instrumental music is at least plausible. In the case of the six-voice Fortuna desperata (now, with at least four recordings, a staple of the Agricola repertoire) one can hardly disagree, but to hear the soprano clambering up two-and-a-half octaves in semiquavers (Dung aultre amet) forces admiration and disbelief in equal measure... The amazing thing is that the singers’ sheer athleticism and musicality lends such dotty notions an air of plausibility. More than that, they confirm the growing perception of Agricola as a composer of the very first rank. I have no hesitation in singling out [this recording] among this year’s high points.

-- Fabrice Fitch, Gramophone [9/1999}

WILLEM MENGELBERG CONDUCTS TCH

SYMPHONY FOR RICHARD III ENNI

LIGETI: CELLO CONCERTO, PIANO

BEETHOVEN: COMPLETE VIOLIN SON

Like Ravel's piano originals that he subsequently orchestrated, Rachmaninov's two-piano version of Symphonic Dances sounds like a note-exact replica of the later symphonic score. Essentially the only thing missing is the chance to marvel at the composer's remarkable powers of orchestration. However, in compensation you get the enhanced clarity of textures that allows for fine delineation of all the intricate inner voices, especially as realized by Emanuel Ax and Yefim Bronfman, who beautifully elucidate Rachmaninov's winding, winsome, and wondrous tunes. However, if you're like me, you can't help but pine for the missing percussion in the outer movements, and no piano ever could imitate the snarling brass crescendos that open movement II. Nonetheless, Ax and Bronfman make this Symphonic Dances a refreshingly alternative listening experience--as do Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire, though their faster speeds and self-conscious bravura make their performance more of a virtuoso showcase, something that also can be said for their Suite No. 2 with its breathless Waltz. Ax and Bronfman at least allow you to clearly discern all the notes in their noticeably less-excited rendition. But no need to worry: you get just as caught up in their potent projection of Rachmaninov's lush harmonies.


Later, Ax and Bronfman conjure up a startlingly vivid impression of church bells in the joyfully clangorous finale of the disc-ending Suite No. 1. All of this is faithfully and powerfully rendered by Sony's recording, which leaves adequate space around the instruments to make a cohesive, three-dimensional sound image (though not enough for satisfyingly deep bass). In sum, a gorgeously played and generous program (it would have filled two LPs in the '70s). Recommended for Rachmaninov lovers and piano fans alike.
--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com

Chopin, Debiles & Tchaikovsky: Ballet Music

TCHAIKOVSKY: SYMPHONY NO 5, SE

For the complete Mandarin, Boulez is still the safest bet.

-- Gramophone [10/1993]

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It is nothing less than intriguing to find Pierre Boulez's whole interpretative personality significantly modified—at least on the evidence of this disc—by contact with the orchestra which for so many years Leonard Bernstein directed. Granted that two of Bartok's more abrasive works can never sound exactly gentle, these are interpretations that so far from following the pattern of diamond precision and emotional austerity we associate with Boulez in Britain, lean towards romantic expressiveness.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [1/1973, reviewing Miraculous Mandarin on LP, CBS 73031]

Clara Haskil's Salzburg recital from August 8, 1957, is familiar from the pianist's Philips studio versions--but these live traversals are preferable. Haskil's sonority, for one, benefits from a closer mike pickup that conveys the full measure of the Romanian pianist's gutsy, musicianly playing. Her angular passagework in the wonderful Mozart C major Sonata K. 330 is more controlled than in her Philips recording. Likewise, the biting, woodwind-like left hand lines in the Scherzo of Beethoven's E-flat major Sonata Op. 31 No. 3 swagger with more conviction. Oddly, she omits the first movement repeat honored in her two studio versions. There's also a greater degree of risk as well as accuracy in this live Schubert B-flat Sonata--a performance filled to the brim with touching lyricism and tensile strength. A tip of the hat, then, to Music and Arts for making this material available in very good mono broadcast sound. Haskil may have had a saintly reputation, but as a pianist she was one tough cookie! --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com