Farewell to New York

The "For Relaxation" series from RCA Victor offers music that, as the title suggests, creates an atmosphere of calm and serenity. Each disc in the series is dedicated to a single composer or instrument and features well known music of a tranquil, gentle nature. However, in addition to the familiar works, there are many pleasant surprises and unexpected selections all brilliantly performed by masters such as James Galway, Julian Bream, Pinchas Zukerman, and Gerhard Oppitz. Each album in the series is expertly programmed to set the appropriate mood of quiet reflection and, with the combination of superb music and exceptional performances, offers a truly pleasurable listening experience.
PIANO FOR RELAXATION offers works for solo piano from a variety of composers, all eloquently interpreted by Gerhard Oppitz. Edvard Grieg, with five selections including the dreamlike Notturno, is the most prominently featured composer on this compilation. Oppitz gives a graceful account of the Intermezzo in A by Johannes Brahms, also well represented with three additional pieces. The collection is rounded out by Oppitz's sensitive readings of works by Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, and others, including a haunting rendition of Ravel's 'Pavane pour une infante défunte.'

Guido Cantelli’s live recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra are exceptionally rare because the BBC seldom broadcast any of his concerts. ICA Classics released Cantelli’s live concert from the Edinburgh Festival in September 1954 on ICAC 5081 but there has been nothing else. Toscanini was Cantelli’s mentor and there is no doubt that he would have continued in the great conductor’s footsteps had he not been tragically killed in an air accident in Paris on the 24th November 1956. He was 36 years old. ICAC is proud to present Vladimir Jurowski’s recording of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty. It was recorded live in December 2013 with the ‘Svetlanov’ orchestra. Jurowski has already accumulated a large catalogue of recordings all of which have received great critical acclaim.

Classical Music

This release has been sourced from the Richard Itter archive. After twelve years of negotiation, ICA Classics has signed an exclusive long term agreement with the Lyrita Recorded Edition who are responsible for Richard Itter Trust. The collection is very important for collectors because it has never before been released. Despite there being a large number of Otto Klemperer recordings on the market, these Richard Itter tapes of live broadcasts from the Royal Festival Hall and the BBC’s Studios in Maida Vale between 1955 and 1956 have never, as far as is known, been released before. Klemperer was always more exciting when caught live and had added urgency as compared to his studio accounts, particularly at this time before his health deteriorated in later years. His Philharmonia concerts were hugely successful in the mid 50s when Walter Legge was looking to replace Herbert von Karajan who was in the process of leaving for the Berlin Philharmonic. As Richard Osborne states in his notes: “The winter of 1955-56 marked a new dawn for Klemperer.”

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REVIEWS:

Klemperer’s Mozart may sound a bit heavy-handed and brusque. On the other hand, the performances are refreshingly direct, projecting exemplary clarity of texture with the wind instruments really cutting through the orchestral tuttis to impressive effect. Likewise, the performance of Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 is really compelling, a good sense of structural cohesion working in tandem with great expressivity and rhythmic precision.

– BBC Music Magazine

Viewed overall, what we have here is the Klemperer we already know and love but granted wings and, trust me, you can tell the difference almost straight away.

– Gramophone

UN-BREAK MY HEART

LISZT: PIANO CONCERTOS 1 & 2,

BRUCKNER: TE DEUM, MASS NO 2

PAGANINI: VIOLIN CONCERTOS 1 &

The English composer David Hackbridge Johnson has been, until now, one of the best-kept secrets in music. He has built up a huge catalogue of works completely unknown even within the classical world. learning the orchestra from the inside, as a player, he has developed a confident and powerful language inherited in part from Brian, Copland, Janacek, Rubbra, Sibelius, Simpson, Tippett and other such masters. As these three pieces show, his music is capable of bold strokes of color and gripping dramatic gestures, expressed with a natural sense of symphonic architecture. Amazingly, he had heard almost none of his orchestral pieces before this recording was made in December, 2016. Paul Mann is a regular guest-conductor with many orchestras throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and the Far East. He is well known for his collaboration with the legendary rock group Deep Purple. This is the sixth recording for Toccata Classics.

SALUT D’AMOUR • Matthew Jones (vn); Annabel Thwaite (pn) • SLEEVELESS 1006 (62:17)


GERSHWIN (arr. Heifetz) It Ain’t Necessarily So. MASSENET Méditation. CHOPIN Nocturnes: in c?; in D?. ELGAR Salut d’amour. FAURÉ (arr. Bachmann) Après un rêve. PONCE (arr. Heifetz) Estrellita. CASPI La Trenza. MONTI Czardas. SCHUBERT Impromptu in B?. HAHN Nocturne. IRELAND Cavatina. SIBELIUS Romance. KREISLER Praeludium and Allegro. TRADITIONAL (arr. Gover) Suo Gân


Serious-minded programmers (or, at least, programmers of a certain well-delineated stripe) almost banished short pieces, which had been the meat and potatoes of the recital program as well as of the recording industry, from stages and discs for about a generation. Now intrepid artists Matthew Jones and Annabel Thwaite have torn down the “Do Not Enter” signs and have risked their musical lives exploring the dangerous proscribed (politically incorrect?) repertoire that arguably ruined careers and reputations 50 years ago (but, of course, made them 50 years before that). And to their credit—or discredit—they play stylishly in Jascha Heifetz’s saucy transcription of George Gershwin’s song, It Ain’t Necessarily So —if not with Heifetz’s own dazzling aplomb, pleasantly excitingly at least. Jules Massenet’s Méditation may be the most beloved short piece ever played on the violin, and the duo plays it that way. The tone of Jones’s violin exhibits a sort of acidulous edge—just as did Aaron Rosand’s or Zino Francescatti’s, although in the cases of both those older violinists, the edge lent what they played a sort of sizzle that Jones’s playing lacks. Nathan Milstein made a very violinistic-sounding arrangement of Chopin’s Nocturne in C? Minor; and though that piece might have fit well in the program, Thwaite plays it as a piano solo—so sensitively and atmospherically that even violinists might be glad not to have heard the arrangement for violin. Jones and Thwaite realize much of the veiled emotion of Elgar’s popular miniature Salut d’amour as well as the quiet intensity of the beginning of Gabriel Fauré’s short piece, Après un rêve . Heifetz’s arrangement of Estrellita might have been his calling card, but Jones makes it his own as well in a reading that’s warmer and more tender.


The program includes some less well-known but no less effective interludes, of which Avshalom Caspi’s brooding miniature La Trenza proves to be the first example. Vittorio Monti’s Czardas , like Massenet’s Méditation , has been one of the most frequently heard of violin encores, penetrating the popular repertoire almost as deeply as the standard one. Jones remains faithful to the original version, but he plays it with gusto and appealing ethnic coloration. Thwaite takes Franz Schubert’s Impromptu as a piano solo, exhibiting a firm grasp of the piece’s shape and making the most of its growling lower registers. Reynaldo Hahn’s Nocturne, another of the less familiar cameos, sounds allusive and affecting in Jones’s reading, as does John Ireland’s Cavatina , a piece that may strike some listeners as perhaps a bit more effective than the vastly better known piece by the same name by Joachim Raff. Sibelius’s Romance provides yet another example of a relative unknown that fits perfectly into the program, and Jones invests it with melting warmth and insinuating subtlety. Chopin’s Nocturne in D? Major serves as the last of the Thwaite’s three effective piano solos.


Fritz Kreisler never recorded his own Praeludium and Allegro —by many accounts his very best short violin piece. Also, by Carl Flesch’s account, Kreisler didn’t take the Allegro particularly fast. And while the opening quarter notes may look bland on the page, violinists like Francescatti could bring them to life. So does Jones, who belts them out with the panache of Ethel Merman the first time and plays them almost tentatively the second. Like Kreisler himself, however, Jones makes no attempt to rush through the Allegro and deploys a variety of bow strokes to give extra personality to the perpetual motion. Following Francescatti in a way, he’s dazzling in the cadenza over a pedal point. The duo brings the program to a quiet conclusion with a Welsh lullaby, reflecting Jones’s ethnic origins.


If this isn’t the very CD of choice for a sojourn on a desert isle, I certainly wouldn’t use it as a Frisbee in that setting either. For its interesting repertoire, familiar and unfamiliar alike, for its sensitive and idiomatic performances, for its clear recorded sound, and, not least, for the novelty of including piano solos to punctuate it, Jones and Thwaite’s unpretentious but prepossessing recital should wear well after many, many hearings, whatever the venue. Strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Nigel & His 'Kennedy Collective' Play An Extended Instrumental Work In 6 Movements Based On 6 Hendrix Classics.

Tracks:
1. KENNEDY, NIGEL - THIRD STONE FROM THE SUN
2. KENNEDY, NIGEL - LITTLE WING
3. KENNEDY, NIGEL - 1983... (A MERIMAN I SHOULD TURN TO BE)
4. KENNEDY, NIGEL - DRIFTING
5. KENNEDY, NIGEL - FIRE
6. KENNEDY, NIGEL - PURPLE HAZE

..."Dance of the Firebird"...is much more nimble and airy in Leonard Bernstein's performance, possibly because the American opts for the better-known 1919 Suite which uses a reduced orchestration... Bernstein delivers a brilliant account of the score...

-- Erik Levi, BBC Music Magazine [reviewing the Firebird Suite]

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Bernstein treats Scheherazade as the "Symphonic Suite" it's billed as, barely pausing between movements—the old Columbia LP has no bands on either side. This was the kind of personalized, excitable interpretation that made Bernstein beloved to many, though it won't be to everyone's taste... His shaping of the violin and cello statements of the theme in "The Young Prince and the Young Princess" is exquisite. The violin solos are played warmly and effectively by John Corigliano (the composer's father and, for 23 years, concertmaster of the Philharmonic.)... It's difficult to imagine Bernstein devotees not having these performances already. But for others who have missed them in their various incarnations, or want to replace aging LPs—don't deny yourself some considerable pleasure.

-- Andrew Quint, FANFARE [5/1999, reviewing Scheherazade]

The ensemble Hamburger Ratsmusik, under the direction of Simone Eckert has recorded five songs from Luther for Advent and Christmas. These pieces have been arranged by various composers from the Reformation era and they captivate through their diversity in different instrumental and vocal combinations. Vom Himmel hoch is one of the most famous songs by Martin Luther and is still sung today at Christmas time.

Since its founding in 1985, the Dallas Wind Symphony, led by Artistic Director and Conductor Jerry Junkin, has become one of the world’s top professional wind ensembles, providing a standard against which other bands measure excellence. Soaring lyricism, especially in the solo trumpet part, characterizes each of the three richly scored lyrical sections of Fisher Tull’s Rhapsody for Trumpet and Band (1980), which surround two faster, more technically demanding portions of the work. Harry Begian (1921-2010) created the transcription of the first movement of Reinhold Glière’s Concerto for Coloratura Soprano for a 1983 University of Illinois Symphonic Band concert. The movement is characteristically Russian, full of long, brooding phrases juxtaposed against upwardly spinning melodies. Receiving its world premiere recording, Brett William Dietz’s Redshift is full of color, contrast and fast-paced drama. The work contains a great amount of interplay between the trumpet soloist and ensemble, and prominently features the percussion section. Two additional works, Rachmaninov’s Vocalise and a second by Fisher Tull (Concerto No. 2 for Trumpet and Band), round out this disc.

ROBERT CRAFT CONDUCTS UNDER TH

RHAPSODY IN BLUE

The organ of the minster in the Benedictine Abbey of Zwiefalten was built in the fifties by the Biberach organ builder company Reiser. On this recording Franz L�rch presents the instrument with works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Liszt, C�sar Franck and L�on Bo�llmann.

Praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. The Daedalus Quartet has won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music, most notably the compositions of Elliott Carter, George Perle, György Kurtág and György Ligeti.

This release is volume 1 in a series devoted to the string quartets of George Perle (1915 - 2009).

"The sound and surface of his music is marked by a relative simplicity which is actually the underpinning of a rich and complex language based on principles he has developed and which owe much to the thinking of Bartók, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Berg. He has eschewed serialism, however, and his compositional approach is one which differs fundamentally from most post–Schoenbergian practice." - Paul Lansky, Princeton University

The Lieder project is a co-operative charitable project between SWR2 (Southwest German Broadcasting Company), Carus, over 100 performing artists and now more than 300 children. Following the highly successful "Lullabies" and "Folk songs", SWR2 and Carus have now turned to the German "Children's songs" ("Kinderlieder"). All of the recordings are being released successively as lieder collections in 3 attractive CD boxes. Each box includes a comprehensive book with lied texts and source information.

Classical Music

Continuing their ongoing series with Resonus, the Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, Fifth Avenue, New York and conductor John Scott release this compelling programme of choral works by Henry Purcell which also features the acclaimed New York period ensemble Concert Royal. Recorded on period instruments, this collection of sacred works by Henry Purcell features some of the composer’s best-known choral works framed by the large scale works O sing unto the Lord, Z44 and the Te Deum in D major, Z232. Completing this collection is the organ Voluntary in G major, Z720, in a striking performance by John Scott.

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 - Mendelssohn: The

The Queen’s Six release their third album on the Resonus Classics label with a scintillating and varied programme of music for Christmas. Both modern and traditional carols feature alongside a selection of lighter and contemplative evocations of the festive season. The Queen’s Six bring their trademark flair to this broad range of arrangements for men’s voices, with works from the Renaissance to the present day, including a tribute to the life of the inimitable David Willcocks - forever associated with the Christmas season - and new works by Thomas Hewitt Jones, Richard Madden & Matthew Coleridge.