The ‘My First’ album series from Naxos is the ideal springboard for a lifelong journey through classical music. Each selection is carefully tailored for younger listeners and includes famous tracks as well as unexpected gems. The booklet is full of information on every piece of music. Unique and imaginative, these CDs will open a door to a wonderful world that children and parents can discover together.

CONTENTS:

• My First CLASSICAL MUSIC Album
• My First MOZART Album
• My First BEETHOVEN Album
• My First TCHAIKOVSKY Album
• My First PIANO Album
• My First VIOLIN Album
• My First BALLET Album
• My First LULLABY Album
• My First ORCHESTRA Album

Having won a special prize for the best Mazurka interpretations during the 1955 International Warsaw Chopin Competition, it's no surprise that pianist Fou Ts'ong has a long-standing reputation for playing--guess what?--Chopin Mazurkas! I've never heard Fou's all-Mazurka Westminster LP, but his complete Mazurka cycle issued in 1993 by Sony Essential Classics now gains reissue thanks to Arkivmusic.com's on-demand reprint program.

Fou's forceful, creative Mazurka style commands attention. He dishes out lots of rubato and elongated beats, together with wide dynamic extremes and outsized accents. Yet somehow the interpretations rarely sound fragmented, and no matter how far out things get, you almost always can discern the Mazurka rhythm. What is more, Fou is not afraid to blur the pedal for coloristic and expressive purposes.

He's also fond of subjecting repeated phrases to subtle variations in nuance and touch (Op. 6 No. 1's main theme; Op. 7 No. 1's trills; Op. 63 No. 3's intense canonic dialogue; Op. 30 No. 4's dramatically contoured inner voices). Only occasionally does Fou's approach produce cloying results (Op. 17 No. 4 and Op. 68 No. 4).

The pianist also makes the most of transitional passages, be it a single, solitary upbeat or a quick succession of chords; Op. 24 No. 4, Op. 56 No. 3, and Op. 41 No. 2 are particularly striking in this regard. You easily can listen past the strident, harsh engineering, albeit not for long periods of time. That's just as well, since it's wisest to absorb Fou's multi-layered, hyper-detailed Mazurking in small doses.

Incidentally, Fou presents the Mazurkas in near-chronological order rather than according to opus, as is so often done. While Rubinstein's stereo and Ohlsson's digital Mazurka cycles remain safer, sonically superior versions of reference, Fou Ts'ong certainly casts individual and thought-provoking light on this repertoire.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Drawn from the worldwide catalog holdings of Sony Classical, which includes both the Columbia/CBS and RCA Victor label imprints, the SONY Classical Originals, SONY Classical Masters Singles and Box Sets, SONY Opera and Opera House series offer an extensive selection of highly desirable and collectible pressed import editions, smartly-designed and graphically-pleasing, featuring the most sought after recordings by the world's preeminent, legendary artists both past and present, with many titles newly re-mastered in 24bit High Resolution Audio.

*** This title is a reissue of a Japanese release with liner notes in Japanese. ***

MUSIC INSPIRED BY H?LDERLIN -

DVOR·K: STRING QUARTET NO 14

HANDEL: HARPSICHORD SUITES AN

THROUGH GILDED TRELLISES - A C

SCHUBERT: WANDERER FANTASY, ET

MAN WITH THE GOLDEN FLUTE

BERLIOZ: HAROLD EN ITALIE, LA

CHOEURS DE L'OPERA DE VIENNE -

DUOS FOR FLUTE & HARP SHIGENO

Selections recorded June and October, 1991 at the Jesus-Christ Kirche in Berlin and at Siemensvilla, Berlin.

REGER: PIANO MUSIC FOR FOUR HA

This is a real collector's piece. When I started to play my advance review copy, without any sleeve-notes for enlightenment, and heard the seductive strains of Gershwin's Lullaby (what a captivating little gem) greeting me across the room I thought what a good idea it was to compile a record of attractive shorter pieces designed to overcome the hypothetical man-in-the-street's fear of chamber music. But I soon realized that the record was fulfilling another more important service in gathering together a choice assortment of string quartet rareties conspicuous by their absence from the catalogue. Potential best-seller as it is, even the Gershwin piece wasn't exactly in 'hot' supply before. This Lullaby tied for first place in my affections with Puccini's I crisantemi, a short, early neglected piece he composed "in a night" after the death of Prince Amadeo, Duke of Savoy; with its typically sensuous nostalgia for all things loved and lost, it is no surprise to discover that its two leading themes were reincarnated in the last act of Manon Lescaut. Haydn's Andante and Minuet are of special interest as his last essay in the string quartet medium (eventually published as Op. 103). Though advancing years prevented him from completing the work in four movements, the Minuet is quite astonishingly highly charged and urgent. Mendelssohn's Andante (with variations) and Scherzo, both dating from his last year, were also probably intended as the middle movements of a complete work. Here it is not so much the slow movement as the Scherzo that captivates the ear, chiefly because of Mendelssohn's unerring success with elves and sprites all his life—they certainly abound here. Wolf's late Intermezzo has many moments of startling caprice and charm, but also some working-out patches that sound more laboured than anything from his unloved fellow citizen of Vienna, Brahms. The Juilliard Quartet put as much of their minds and hearts into the recital as if they were tackling late Beethoven. At first I thought the acoustics, or engineering, made their tone sound a bit wiry. But your ear soon tunes in.

– Joan Chissell, Gramophone [1/1975, reviewing these performances on LP]

Robert Mann, violin; Earl Carlyss, violin; Raphael Hillyer, viola; Claus Adam, cello.

The program chosen for this album strongly reflects not only the taste of the Juilliard Quartet but also vividly illustrates how the miniature in music has continued to appeal to composers of varied background throughout the centuries.

Of the several works by Sofia Gubaidulina released on disc in the past year, I was most affected by the problematically entitled Rejoice!—joined on disc with an equally taut rendering of Shostakovich's Ode to Desolation.

-- Edward Strickland, FANFARE [Want List, 1990]


The background to Sofia Gubaidulina's Rejoice!...is in the spiritual lessons of Grigory Skovoroda, an eighteenth-century Ukrainian philosopher and religious thinker. These supply the sub-titles (rather Messiaen-like in resonance) of each of the five movements. The composer herself cautions, "It should not be assumed that I wanted to illustrate the theme of joy in my music... the religious theme is experienced metaphorically." It is meant to be experienced musically as well, through the juxtaposition of "normal" sounds and harmonics: "The possibility for string instruments to derive pitches of various heights at one and the same place on the string can be experienced in music as the transition to another plane of existence. And that is joy"... Rejoice! is certainly not short of atmospheric ideas. The opening violin meditation gently evokes a stillness in the mind...

Kremer and Ma perform with mastery and dedication... Shostakovich's last quartet is a bold and thought-provoking coupling... Despair! might be an appropriate sub-title were that the state of mind not so obvious anyway. The players have to somehow to call up the blackest images and then suppress them, they have to play as though with their thoughts elsewhere and yet with no loss of control, to enter regions where time is frozen. In all this Kremer and his colleagues succeed admirably, although perhaps because this is a public performance they make slight concession to conventional expressiveness which they might not allow if playing for themselves – nuances creep into the blank opening "Elegy" and in the excruciating "Serenade" the second violin cannot resist adding a vibrato his partners ruthlessly avoid. On the whole though, the music can take the intensity these fine musicians bring to it and the overall impression is moving and convincing.

-- Gramophone

Sony Classical is delighted to present this program of wonderfully vivid and original works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. As the Juilliard String Quartet celebrates its 70th anniversary, it has created a new recording that reflects the traditions of the past and the values of the future. Bringing together Beethoven, Davidovsky, and Bartók on one disc is a perfect representation of the quartet’s principles over the course of its entire history. As it has done so often in its public performances, the quartet weaves together the many complex and engaging qualities that are epitomized in the three works on this disc.

-----

REVIEW:

Recorded in 2017 to mark its 70th anniversary year, the Juilliard Quartet’s most recent release reflects the ensemble’s decades-long mandate to champion new works, and also revisits two Juilliard repertoire staples. Mario Davidovsky’s Fragments (String Quartet No. 6) typifies this composer’s propensity for jagged dissonant phrases that morph into long sustained tones, soft clouds of high-register chords, petulant ponticello effects, and murmuring trills that provide a backdrop for bold melodic gestures. It’s the kind of music that’s long been associated with the Juilliard Quartet, and the current lineup delivers the goods, fusing rhythmic rigor and coloristic fantasy to convincing effect.

It’s interesting how the astringent sonorities and motoric drive the players bring to Beethoven’s “Serioso” quartet are conceptually similar to the Juilliard’s earlier stereo RCA Victor and 1981 CBS Masterworks recordings. The main difference is that the first violinist in the 2017 recording, Joseph Lin, is not averse to employing a wide range of vibrato and discreet portamentos, in contrast to the late founding first violinist Robert Mann’s leaner, tauter style. The Allegretto movement in particular features a wide array of personal nuance and inflection, yet never at the expense of ensemble congruity. Much as I appreciate the group’s thrusting dotted rhythms in the Allegro assai Vivace movement, they arguably push too hard to make their point. In this respect I prefer the equally exciting yet lither, cleaner Quartetto Italiano interpretation.

Before hearing the Juilliard’s newest Bartók First quartet, I listened again to the 1950, 1963, and 1981 Robert Mann-led recordings. In essence, the execution grows increasingly effortless and the response to the composer’s expressive directives becomes more simplified and refined over time. The present recording, however, brilliantly restores the music’s fervent intensity and youthful ambition. In the first movement, for example, you’ll note violist Roger Tapping virtually foaming at the mouth in the molto appassionato passage (four measures after rehearsal number 6 in the Boosey & Hawkes score), making the most out of the rapid diminuendos. The Allegretto’s opening duets (viola and cello together, followed by the violins) gain character and point by virtue of the 2017 incarnation’s meticulous attention to issues of articulation; you really hear distinctions between slurs, slurred staccatos, underlined notes, accented notes, and so forth. And listen to cellist Astrid Schween’s explosive, full-bodied solo in the transitional introduction to the finale; she plays as if her life depended on it, in contrast to 1963’s cooler-headed Claus Adam.

In sum, the Juilliard String Quartet remains an American institution characterized by stability, integrity, and the capacity to honor tradition and embrace change at the same time.

– ClassicsTodday (Jed Distler)

The most internationally acclaimed opera composer of Brazil, hailed by Verdi as a “real musical genius”, Antonio Gomes is today all but forgotten outside his native country (where the brilliant overture to Il Guarany is regarded as a national artistic treasure). The opera itself is known largely from books and from a recording by Caruso and Destinn of the love duet at the end of Act 1. After the enthusiastic reception in Rio of a couple of his operas, Gomes, who came from a family of modest musicians, was awarded a grant enabling him to study in Milan. There he wrote Il Guarany, which was produced at La Scala in 1870 with huge success.

The story is set in sixteenth-century Brazil and deals with the love of Cecilia, daughter of the Portuguese nobleman Don Antonio, and the ‘noble savage’ Pery, chieftain of the Indian tribe of Guarany (who eventually accepts baptism). They are threatened both by the hostility of the cannibal Aimore tribe and by Spanish adventurers led by Gonzales, who has designs on the silver mine owned by Antonio and on Cecilia. The opera ends spectacularly a la Meyerbeer when Antonio, to save his daughter, blows up his castle with himself and his enemies in it. The work is categorized as an ‘opera-ballet’, but, at least in this performance, there is no music for dancing.

So Italianized was Gomes that except for a very few bars there is no real local colour: indeed Cecilia’s first aria, rich in coloratura, is a polacca! Overall the music, for Indians and whites alike, is purely Italian, similar to middle-period Verdi, but the atmospheric orchestration is far more adventurous and inventive – one example being the sinister opening to Act 2. Highlights other than the duet mentioned are Pery’s aria at the start of Act 2, a jaunty adventurer’s song by Gonzales, Cecilia’s Act 2 soliloquy (which however leads to a rather conventional ballad with quasi-guitar accompaniment), and the duet scene for the lovers in the savages’ camp. The stars of this performance, given before an excited but discriminating audience, are Domingo himself in the title-role – ardent and committed (though, as elsewhere, he will not alter the intensity of his projection for asides), Villarroel on the most brilliantly stunning form I have heard her, and the capable and intelligent Alvarez; too many of the others are afflicted with tiresome wobbles. Both chorus and orchestra are excellent, and John Neschling (who I think has not come our way before) invests the whole with a real dramatic sense. Those who like full-blooded romantic opera should not miss this.

-- Lionel Salter, Gramophone [5/1996]

Neidich plays on a modern reconstruction of an 1810 clarinet, Levin on an 1825 piano, and the gains are naturally most evident in the work which gives the closest ear to sonorities, Weber's Grand duo concertani. He wrote it for himself and his much-admired friend Heinrich Baermann, and it is not a clarinet sonata but exactly what it says, music for two virtuosos. The lighter piano textures are of great benefit in those passages where there is a danger of a modern piano overwhelming the clarinet. This is striking in the slow movement (where a long solo passage for the piano is also built into the music), but also in some of the dizzy figuration in the finale where the piano's right-hand speeds along in thirds beside the clarinet, especially with the piano taking the upper third. The virtuosity seems to hold no terrors for these skilled players, and they bring a suitably Weberian note of sinister darkness to the Andante and a witty flash to the final Rondo. The phrases are often very long: close recording means that Neidich's snatched breaths are very audible, and so are puffs in the middle of phrases suggesting that, unusually for a clarinettist, he is using the technique of 'circular breathing' (refilling the lungs through the nose while continuing to play with the reservoir of air in the mouth).

Danzi's Sonata is an amiable piece that shares with Weber's Duo an interest in giving the two partners equality by occasionally silencing the clarinet. It is charmingly invented, though not as forward-looking in manner as some of his music. Mendelssohn's Sonata is a good deal less evenly inspired than much of the music written in his dazzling teens, with some empty passagework that seems to be on automatic pilot in the outer movements contrasting with striking developmental sections where the composer takes the controls again. Much the most remarkable movement is the Andante, a curiously haunting little song first played on unaccompanied clarinet and charmingly deployed throughout the movement.

-- JW, Gramophone [9/1995] Review of Sony 64302

LACHNER, RHEINBERGER: NONETS

OPERA FANTASIES ENSEMBLE WIEN

BACH: ITALIAN CONCERTO, PARTIT

BERLITZ PASSPORT - THE MUSIC O

BERLITZ PASSPORT - THE MUSIC O