This disc comprises some of cinema’s most memorable musical moments, as chosen and arranged for four guitars by the members of the Aquarelle Guitar Quartet. Without music, movies would not be what they are today, and the Quartet here explores the full stylistic spectrum of the musical genre. ‘It is in the interpretation of this variety’, they explain, ‘that the guitar truly comes alive.’ Many, if not most, of the film scores represented on this disc are classics, and they have the awards to show for it. Music from the Academy Award-winning scores for Frida, Titanic, Schindler’s List, and Il postino rubs shoulders with ‘Minor Swing’ from Chocolat, the music to which received a Golden Globe for Best Original Score.

"...these skilled transcriptions and renditions are as good as they get in theor chosen medium ...this could well become something of a hit - music for all the family." *****
-- Colin Anderson - Time Out - 14 June 2012

NIELSEN Aladdin • Gennady Rozhdestvensky, cond; Mette Ejsing (alt); Guido Paevatalu (bar); Danish Natl SO & CCh • CHANDOS 10498 (79:34)


“It took some time for Nielsen to enter in the spirit of the oriental world in order to be able to compose original, suggestive music and not only imitations of folkloristic motifs,” writes Sussie Grevsen, in the liner notes to this release. There may be something in that to explain why the entirety of Aladdin —all 31 pieces, lasting a generous 79:34—is moderately underwhelming. Nielsen appears to have focused much of his efforts on providing musical backdrops; and while 13 of these cuts understandably have a low profile so as not to detract from text being recited in performance (omitted here), they don’t make for memorable listening. As much can be written, as well, of the Genie’s three separate minute-long utterances; a men’s chorus intoning a written text in unison on one note over a few spare, uninteresting chords adds little to the work. The incidental music is at its best, I think, in much of act III, which functions as exotically colored ballet music. Not coincidentally, it also furnished five out of the seven pieces included in the orchestral suite of excerpts Nielsen created. Elsewhere, however, the work usually fails to sustain interest on its own, and the sense of mystery and fantasy that underlies J. P. E. Hartmann’s score on the same subject is largely lacking.


That noted, if you do want all of Aladdin , this disc is the only way to currently acquire it. Rozhdestvensky and the Danish Natl SO recorded this back in 1993, and it’s been available ever since. There’s excellent pacing, and plenty of color when it’s required—though I still find Friedel/Aarhus SO (MSR Classics 1150; suite only) superior in creating organized chaos during the “Marketplace in Ispahan” sequence. Mette Ejsing is suave and affecting in her few selections, as is Guido Paevatalu, whom I liked so well in the eponymous role of Børresen’s The Royal Guest (dacapo 8.226020).


The new release is labeled “digitally remastered,” but I really can’t find any audio differences between this re-release and my original copy. The sound in any case is good, while Chandos provides full texts and translations. The price is lower, too, so this is the one to get, if you want it all.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

This is the fourth and final volume of colourful and highly appealing orchestral works by the Norwegian composer Johan Halvorsen.

Based on the Passacaille (Chaconne) from the Harpsichord Suite No. 7 in G minor by Handel, Halvorsen’s Passacaglia is a virtuosic duo for solo violin and viola, later made world famous by artists such as Leopold Auer and Jascha Heifetz. It starts as a simple arrangement of Handel’s original score, but after the presentation of the theme and the first three variations it gradually differs more and more, until it finally frees itself entirely from the original and becomes pure ‘Halvorsen’.

Halvorsen wrote extensively for the stage, and his lifelong fascination with ‘exotic’ elements in music is evident in the ‘Dance Scene’ from the incidental music to Knut Hamsun’s Queen Tamara, a historical play set in the Caucasus. In contrast, the Symphonic Intermezzo from the music to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson’s The King is presented in the form of a tone poem, its language strongly influenced by the musical universe of Liszt and Wagner.

Also on this disc is Halvorsen’s orchestration of Grieg’s piano piece Norwegian Bridal Procession. Other orchestral versions exist, among others by Frederick Delius, but in Grieg’s eyes only a native Norwegian could portray rural Norway in music without becoming too romantic or picturesque. Halvorsen’s lush, but non-idealising orchestration proved an immediate success, and at concerts and in the theatre over the next twenty-six years Halvorsen conducted the work at least 140 times.

He considered his Norwegian Fairy Tale Pictures to be one of his best works. The suite is vividly programmatic, drawn from music that he had written for a children’s comedy: violins portray the fairy tale hero, the flute plays the part of the abducted princess, while the villainous troll is represented by a motif in the bass.

TCHAIKOVSKY Swan Lake • Neeme Järvi, cond; James Ehnes (vn); Bergen PO • CHANDOS 5124(2) (2 SACDs: 154:41)

As has been noted in previous reviews of recordings of Tchaikovsky’s “complete” Swan Lake , there may well be as many different versions of the score as there have been productions of it. The problem is that Swan Lake is both the earliest (1875–1876) and the longest of the composer’s three great ballets, and it has had so many cooks adding their own ingredients, removing others, and generally revising the recipe that no one can say for sure what made up the original soufflé.

The generally known and accepted facts are these: The ballet, with original choreography by Julius Reisinger, was staged for the first time in February, 1877 by the Bolshoi Ballet at Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater. It was not well received; audience and critics alike felt it was too long and convoluted, its music too heavy, and its libretto, adapted from a story by a German author, an affront to Russian sensibilities. And thus began the tinkering and tampering. By the time the work was revived in 1895 by the Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theater there was new choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, along with major musical revisions to the score by the Imperial Theater’s conductor and composer, Riccardo Drigo. It should be noted that by the time of the 1895 revival, Tchaikovsky was dead and had no hand in the new performing version. Tchaikovsky and Drigo had worked together previously, but according to accounts, they didn’t agree on much of anything and their relationship was strained.

The upshot of all this is that there is no definitive Swan Lake . It was no longer a ballet by one composer, but rather a group effort; and you know the saying about a camel being a horse designed by a committee. It’s important to bear this in mind when considering the various recordings of Swan Lake that claim to be complete, for the drastic differences in timings cannot be explained by mere tempo differences alone. There have to be other factors involved, such as omission of some movements, cuts to others, and/or reliance on differing versions/editions. Let’s look at the timings of several well-known recordings, sorted in order by duration.

Conductor	Orchestra	Label	Timing
Valery Gergiev	St. Petersburg Mariinsky O	Decca	106.59
Antál Dorati	Minneapolis SO	Mercury	131:41
Felix Slatkin	St. Louis SO	RCA	141:00
Mikhail Pletnev	Russian National O	Ondine	142.52
Dmitri Yablonsky	Russian State SO	Naxos	148:38
Michael Tilson Thomas	London SO	Sony	149:05
Mark Ermler	Royal Opera House O	Conifer	153.03
André Previn	London SO	EMI	153:02
Charles Dutoit	Montréal SO	Decca	153:56
Neeme Järvi	Bergen PO	Chandos	154:41
Wolfgang Sawallisch	Philadelphia O	EMI	158:45

Right off the bat, I need to offer a disclaimer: My personal familiarity with the above-listed recordings is limited to only four of them—Gergiev, Pletnev, Yablonsky, and now this new one by Järvi. Of the four, Gergiev’s version is the worst in terms of the hatchet job it does on the score. Movements are reordered—for example, the act I Waltz has been moved to act III and its ending abridged—and it’s full of egregious cuts—some 40 minutes of music are sacrificed. Gergiev’s Swan Lake is presumptively based on the Mariinsky performing version; i.e., the above-mentioned Drigo edition prepared for the 1895 St. Petersburg revival.

Looking at Pletnev’s timing of 142:52 vs. Yablonsky’s 148:58 and Järvi’s 154:41, it seems pretty obvious that that while tempo differences over the course of two and a half hours could account for the difference of approximately six minutes between Pletnev and Yablonsky and, in turn, between Yablonsky and Järvi, they’re unlikely to be the cause of the approximately 12-minute difference between Pletnev and Järvi.

Upon closer examination of all three recordings, what I found was that Yablonsky and Järvi both include two often dropped numbers from act III, the Pas de deux that was written after the fact specifically for Anna Sobeshchanskaya, and the “Danse Russe,” added specifically for Pelageya Karpakova. Pletnev omits these two additions, as do a number of others. Whether they should be included or not is a rather complex question.

Ballerinas of the day were not much different from their opera diva counterparts in terms of their egos. They had no shame when it came to demanding custom cadenzas to show off their voices or, in the case of danseuses, their fancy footwork and frilly tutus. The story surrounding Sobeshchanskaya and her Pas de deux is especially messy and borders on scandal. Originally picked to dance the lead role of Odette (the Swan) for the 1877 premiere, Sobeshchanskaya was ignominiously dropped from the cast at the last minute when a high-placed government official with whom she’d had a dalliance accused her of having taken expensive jewelry from him and then pawned it when she married a fellow danseur. On the spur of the moment, she was replaced by Pelageya Karpakova. Sobeshchanskaya survived the indignity and went on to dance the title role when the ballet was staged again a month later with no greater success than at its premiere.

But the intrigue didn’t end there. The ballerina made no bones about the fact that she hated both the choreography and the music, and so off she went to St. Petersburg, where she engaged Petipa to choreograph a new Pas de deux for her that would replace the third act’s Grand pas. Petipa complied and choreographed the new number to music, not by Tchaikovsky, but by Ludwig Minkus, the Imperial Ballet’s composer in residence.

When news of this change reached Tchaikovsky, he was miffed; his ego was probably bigger than Sobeshchanskaya’s. How dare she?! He was the composer, and he alone should take credit (or discredit) for the music. After some smoothing of his ruffled feathers, Tchaikovsky agreed to compose the music himself for Petipa’s new Pas de deux , but there was a problem. Tchaikovsky’s new music didn’t synch up with Petipa’s choreography, and Sobeshchanskaya, now back in Moscow, wasn’t about to travel back to St. Petersburg to go through the whole exercise again. She didn’t seem to care much one way or the other about the music, but she was adamant about keeping Petipa’s choreographed number. How exactly Tchaikovsky was prevailed upon to discard his newly composed music and essentially start over, this time following the outlines and rhythmic steps of Minkus’s music is not explained, but that’s what Tchaikovsky did. So, this particular episode apparently had a satisfactory ending for all involved, except, I suspect, for Minkus who surely must have felt put out. The original Grand pas with music by Tchaikovsky was replaced by Sobeshchanskaya’s Pas de deux with music first by Minkus and then by Tchaikovsky.

Based on the foregoing, it would seem that there is every reason to include this number in complete performances of the ballet, yet many conductors, Pletnev among them, don’t. The situation regarding the “Danse Russe” (Russian Dance) is much simpler and appears to be the reverse; it’s one of deletion rather than addition. It was composed for and included in the original 1877 version of the score danced by Karpakova, the premiere’s last-minute substitute for Sobeshchanskaya. The number was then removed for subsequent performances in which Sobeshchanskaya took over the role, for reasons one can easily guess. If two competing sopranos could bitch-slap each other on stage during a production of a Handel opera, there was no telling what professional jealousy might provoke between two rival ballerinas.

This describes only some of the butchery that turned Tchaikovsky’s finely feathered swan into a plucked chicken. It’s well to remember, however, that Swan Lake was not only the composer’s first completed ballet, it was really his first major stage undertaking to survive the ravages of time, even if not entirely intact. He was working on his opera Eugene Onegin at the same time, his first opera to achieve success; and though there had been earlier operatic efforts— The Voyevoda, Undina, The Oprichnik , and Vakula the Smith —they were either destroyed by the composer, recycled, later revised, or didn’t stir much interest at the time. Thus, at 37, Tchaikovsky’s greatest works still lay ahead of him, and he had yet to achieve the self-confidence that fame would bring him to be able to just say no to those who would mess with his music.

Neeme Järvi’s Swan Lake follows his Sleeping Beauty , reviewed in 36:5. I would expect to see a Nutcracker in the near future, perhaps timed to coincide with Christmas (I’m writing this in November 2013). My only objection to Järvi’s Sleeping Beauty was his somewhat business-like approach, which struck me as missing some of the music’s fairy magic. But the Bergen Philharmonic’s polished playing, James Ehnes’s ravishing violin solos, and Chandos’s thrilling multi-channel SACD recording offered much allure.

On relistening to that release, and in listening to this present one, in which Järvi, Ehnes, the Bergen orchestra, and Chandos repeat their earlier accomplishment, it occurred to me that my criticism of Järvi wasn’t entirely fair. There are two ways to conduct a ballet performance for a strictly audio recording. You can approach it as a concert work, in which case you will tend to emphasize the melodic, harmonic, and structural elements of the score, or you can approach it as a suite of dances, in which case you will emphasize the music’s rhythmic and terpsichorean aspects. Järvi falls into the former camp, and there’s nothing wrong in that, as long as he’s not directing a live production of the actual ballet, in which tempo, pacing, and phrasing need to be molded more flexibly to accommodate the movements of the dancers.

I can’t say absolutely that this is the most authoritatively complete Swan Lake on record, though in taking up the original 1877 score and including additional material supplied by Tchaikovsky himself for subsequent performances, Järvi gives us a version that’s certainly more complete than are a number of others. What I can say is that of the four recordings of the score with which I’m familiar, Järvi’s would now be my first choice, and taking all other factors into account—superb playing by the Bergen Philharmonic, James Ehnes’s beguiling solo violin contributions, and a killer recording—I’d extrapolate from this that Järvi’s Swan Lake is now the one to have.

FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Classical Music

SAINT-SAËNS Samson et Dalila: Bacchanale. Le Rouet d’Omphale. Phaëton. Danse macabre. La Jeunesse d’Hercule. Suite algérienne: Marche militaire française. La Princesse jaune: Overture. Une nuit à Lisbonne. Spartacus. Marche du couronnement • Neeme Järvi, cond; Royal Scottish Nat’l O • CHANDOS 5104 (SACD: 77:40)


Here in spectacular multichannel surround sound is a brand-new recording of all four Saint-Saëns tone poems plus a stewpot of shorter orchestral works, some of them popular favorites, others, less widely known.


Over the course of five years, between 1872 and 1877, Saint-Saëns composed four tone poems, three of them drawn from Greek mythology: Le Rouet d’Omphale, Phaëton , and La Jeunesse d’Hercule . The fourth, though third in order of composition, and most famous is Danse macabre , a romantic horror that trades Greek gods for gamboling ghouls.


Omphale’s Spinning Wheel is often said to be the very first French tone poem, though note author Roger Nichols points out that Franck beat Saint-Saëns to the punch by almost a quarter of a century with his symphonic poem Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne of 1848. According to Saint-Saëns’s own preface to the score, the subject of the story is feminine seduction and the triumphant struggle of weakness against strength. To atone for a murder Hercules is ordered by the goddess Hera to serve as a slave to the Lydian Queen, Omphale. Nichols spares the reader the more indelicate description of the emasculated and feminized Hercules kneeling and spinning at the Queen’s feet clad in women’s clothing. In light of Saint-Saëns’s fetish for hosting lavish parties dressed in drag, one has to wonder if the legend of Hercules and Omphale didn’t hold some special fascination for him.


Phaëton , Saint-Saëns’s second tone poem, flirts with the subject of father-son relationships and the sometimes tragic consequences that result when the boy grows old enough to challenge the paternal authority figure. Phaëton , son of Helios the sun god, seeks to prove his manhood by piloting the sun chariot across the heavens. So, in effect, he takes the family Ford out for a spin. But he’s not yet the man he thinks he is. Losing control of the chariot’s horses, he draws the sun too close to the earth. To prevent the solar express from crashing and wreaking further catastrophe, Zeus strikes it with a thunderbolt, incinerating the vehicle and killing Phaëton in the process. A sidebar to the story is that the chariot’s near-miss trajectory across the Sahara scorched the land and explains why the Ethiopians are black.


Next we have Saint-Saëns’s answer to Berlioz’s witches, Mussorgsky’s demons, and Liszt’s diableries, the Danse macabre . But leave it to Saint-Saëns to paint his portrait of the dancing dead, to paraphrase Ogden Nash’s verse, as skeletons in the museum hall gathering at midnight for a ball. The scordatura-tuned violin, xylophone, contorted Dies irae , and android-like rhythmic repetitions caused quite a stir, prompting Debussy, one of Saint-Saëns’s most outspoken critics, to declare years later that the piece gave him hope that Saint-Saëns was a very great composer after all.


The three foregoing tone poems are among Saint-Saëns’s more frequently heard and recorded works and, in fact, a number of recordings, some more recent than others, have included two of them in one combination or another on the same disc. Less often does one find all three, and only one other recording I’m familiar with—a composite Saint-Saëns collection assembled from one or more other releases featuring Charles Dutoit leading the Philharmonia and Royal Philharmonic orchestras—includes the composer’s fourth and final tone poem as well. Having stripped Hercules of his manhood in Omphale’s Spinning Wheel , Saint-Saëns rehabilitates him in La Jeunesse d’Hercule . Both dramatically and musically, the work is the weakest of the four, which no doubt explains its poor showing in the listings. The story, if it can be called that, involves no action but is rather a depiction of the young hero’s internal philosophical struggle in choosing between a life of pleasure-seeking and a life of virtue. He chooses the latter. It has been noted that the Lisztian tone poem model was a strong influence on Saint-Saëns’s score.


The remaining pieces that fill out the disc are, in some cases quite well known, like the Bacchanal from the composer’s opera Samson et Dalila and the Marche militaire française , which comes from the Suite algérienne . Other pieces are not well known at all but are hardly insubstantial. The Spartacus overture, for example, is a 13-minute score that was written in 1863 but remained unpublished until 1900. It’s a stand-alone grand concert overture that contains some of Saint-Saëns’s most dramatically urgent music.


On a trip to Portugal in 1880, Saint-Saëns dashed off a one-act comic opera with a title that would no doubt offend today’s politically correct sensibilities, La Princesse jaune , about a Japanese princess transplanted through opera magic to the Netherlands. The Lisbon audience apparently loved it, and back in Paris the Opéra-Comique gave four performances of it before the curtain came down on it for good. I note a single recording of the work listed by ArkivMusic, a 1996 live performance from Lugano. Heard here is the six-minute overture to the opera, which provides a taste of what Saint-Saëns must have thought Japanese music sounded like. Don’t expect Puccini.


During the same visit that produced La Princesse jaune , Saint-Saëns scribbled out the three-and-a-half-minute musical watercolor Une nuit à Lisbonne , which he dedicated to Portuguese King Luiz.


The story behind the Marche du couronnement put me in mind of Thomas Beecham’s plaint about British orchestras employing so many third-rate conductors when there were so many second-rate English ones to choose from. Which raises the question, why would the Brits choose a French composer, Saint-Saëns, to write a march for the coronation of Edward VII? Apparently, they didn’t. Saint-Saëns took it entirely upon himself to compose the piece, which, according to the program note, caused a flurry of diplomatic activity at the ambassadorial level between the two countries. For the march, Saint-Saëns borrowed a tune from his opera Henry VIII . If you shouldn’t expect Puccini in Saint-Saëns’s La Princesse jaune , don’t expect Elgar in his Coronation March.


This is mainly a fun disc, but a useful one as well in gathering together all four of Saint-Saëns’s tone poems, plus a generous selection of some of his less familiar orchestral works. It’s also distinguished by outstanding playing from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra brilliantly led by veteran conductor Neeme Järvi, and as an added bonus, it’s recorded in stunning multichannel sound. Enthusiastically recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Reviews:

It’s very fitting that during the four-year period when we continue to commemorate the centenary of World War I there should be a new and long overdue recording of Morning Heroes. Sir Arthur Bliss volunteered for the army in August 1914 and he served with distinction in the trenches in war-time France. He was wounded at the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and in 1918 he was gassed at Cambrai. All this, and the carnage he witnessed all around him, made an ineradicable impression on him. However the most grievous blow was the loss of his younger brother, Kennard, who was killed in action on 28 September 1916 at Thiepval; he was just 24. After the war was over Bliss returned to France to find his brother’s grave but this pilgrimage failed to lay Kennard's ghost. In his notes for the earlier recording of Morning Heroes by Sir Charles Groves, Felix Aprahamian writes that Bliss began to suffer from nightmares in 1928; these must have been a manifestation of the psychological effects of the war. Finally, the opportunity came to commemorate his brother with a commission for a major choral work for the 1930 Norwich Festival. The result was Morning Heroes, scored for orator, chorus and orchestra. Bliss himself conducted the first performance. The score is dedicated ‘To the memory of my brother Francis Kennard Bliss and all other comrades killed in battle.’

Morning Heroes is an ambitious score and its construction is rather unusual in that two of its five movements are for orator with orchestra – though, as we shall see, the accompaniment in the second spoken movement is sparse indeed. A choral finale follows the second spoken section; together these two sections constitute the fifth movement. In the centre of the work are three movements for chorus and orchestra. Bliss assembled an anthology of texts; his sources include Homer’s epic Greek poem, The Iliad; Whitman’s Drum Taps; the eighth century Chinese poet, Li Tai Po; and poems by two twentieth century poets, Wilfred Owen and Robert Nichols.

Bliss’s scoring – if we can call it that – is astonishingly original and imaginative here. There is virtually no accompaniment to the orator’s recitation save for timpani rumbling ominously in the background like distant, menacing guns. Only once – at “Exposed!” – do the drums play loudly and that’s terrifying. What a masterstroke it is for Bliss to reintroduce the orchestra as the orator recites Owens last line, “Why speak they not of comrades that went under?” The woodwind play melancholy, lilting material from the first movement and the effect is very moving. The chorus then sing Robert Nichols’ Dawn on the Somme. The music begins quietly, almost like a hymn, but gradually the intensity increases as Nichols’ ‘morning heroes’ are saluted. If this music sounds like a glorification of heroism then who better than Bliss to write in this vein? After all he had been through he was surely entitled to celebrate heroism. Yet the work ends on a subdued, pensive note and that too feels eminently right.

Morning Heroes is a work of great stature and I find it very moving indeed. There’s no doubt at all that this new Davis recording is now a clear first choice for this fine score.

The “filler” is interesting – and relevant. Bliss wrote Hymn to Apollo in 1926 in gratitude to Pierre Monteux for his early championship of A Colour Symphony. Indeed, it was Monteux who gave the first performance, with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It seems that very early on Bliss was dissatisfied with the work but he didn’t get round to revising it until 1964. Sir Andrew offers the original version of the score, recording it for the first time.

This is a splendid disc. The performance standard is extremely high and Ralph Couzens’ engineering is excellent. Similarly excellent are the notes by Andrew Burn. Bliss devotees should acquire this as a matter of urgency and other collectors are strongly urged to hear this eloquent musical commemoration of the fallen of World War I. On this evidence Sir Andrew Davis appears to be a doughty champion of Bliss. I hope he may record more of his music in the future: might we hope, at last, for a modern recording of The Beatitudes?

– MusicWeb International (John Quinn)

This new recording is a revelation for its clarity (notably of the composer's vivid orchestral palette and imaginative choral writing), coherence and sheer emotional intensity.

– Gramophone

Sir Andrew Davis's performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus surpasses Sir Charles Groves's fine 1974 EMI Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra account with urgent tempos, choral singing of full tone and incisive attack, eloquent orchestral playing, and an excellent, open recording.

– BBC Music Magazine

Two of the most popular romantic Russian piano works from the mid-1870s are heard on this new album from the celebrated Barry Douglas. Lyricism lies at the heart of the twelve movements of Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Seasons’ (1875-76), commissioned by the periodical Nouvelliste to appear monthly, accompanied by poetic epigraphs. Tchaikovsky got his servant to remind him of his duty on a certain day in the month, and composed each piece in a single sitting. Each reflects characteristics of a different month, the style is simple, the mood introspective. While the poetic aspect of The Seasons was prompted by the individual musical contributions, ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ (1874) was provoked by a visit which Mussorgsky made to an exhibition of sketches and paintings by his late friend Viktor Hartmann. The technically demanding memorial, a popular genre in Russian romanticism, is here played thoughtfully and sympathetically by Barry Douglas.

REVIEWS:

Musorgsky’s magnum opus requires pianism of dazzling virtuoso panache, and here Douglas is really in his element. His supreme technical ease and tonal control when the notes start flying – as in the ‘Ballet of the Chicks in their Shells’, ‘Limoges’, and (especially) ‘Baba Yaga’ – brings a special sense of frisson.

– BBC Music Magazine

I don’t know how long he has had these works in his repertoire but they sound like old friends, well played-in. Few performances of Pictures have been imbued with such musical and textual integrity; each section is deftly characterised; the full tonal and dynamic range of the piano brought appropriately to bear.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

Classical Music

Beethoven has always been a part of the concert repertoire of exclusive Chandos artist Louis Lortie, and it rose again to the top of his agenda as he prepared to complete his recorded cycle of the composer's sonatas earlier this year. Sonatas Nos 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31 and 32, newly recorded, will be released for the first time as part of a box set of the entire canon, which will be available at the bargain price of 9 CDs for the price of 3. This box set of the complete piano sonatas is a must for all lovers of Beethoven and great piano playing. The compositions are bold and beautiful, challenging, witty and fresh. They seem to encompass all aspects of human sensibility and aspiration, and the superb playing of Louis Lortie takes the music to another level. His recording of the composer's 'Eroica' Variations, which won an Edison Award, was described by Gramophone in glowing terms: 'His account... is spacious and magisterial, virile yet sensitive, and the wide range of dynamic nuance and keyboard colour is there to illumine Beethoven's textures and not highlight the artist's pianism. He succeeds in communicating the power of Beethoven's imagination: the part-writing in the fugue emerges with a masterly clarity, and is beautifully weighted and balanced.' Highlights among the new recordings are that of the sublime Sonata No. 30, composed in 1820 - 22, which displays all the characteristics of Beethoven's last creative phase: rich harmonic structures, a fascination with intricate counterpoint, and a strict adherence to classical and baroque forms. Also worthy of a separate mention is Sonata No. 22, a veritable study in contrasts. Its two complementary themes - a gracious, dignified 'feminine' theme resembling a minuet, and a stamping, assertive, 'masculine' theme - gradually influence one another in the course of the movement until they become thoroughly integrated and combined in the final passages.

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REVIEWS:

Time and again a faultless pianistic sheen and mastery are allied to the finest musical perception. Here, surely, is vital and living proof that you can maintain an individual and distinctive voice while remaining scrupulously true to the composer. Nothing is forced or rushed, everything is subtly nuanced and phrased beneath an outwardly urbane surface. These are performances to treasure and revisit.

– Gramophone

Lortie seems less interested in metaphysical profundity than in textural stylishness; spending enough time with this set to grasp Lortie's aims and insights is nevertheless genuinely rewarding.

– BBC Music Magazine

Berlioz wrote his own text for L'Enfance du Christ, which he composed in 1853 and 1854. It was first performed at the Salle Herz, Paris on 10 December 1854, with Berlioz conducting. He described the work as a Trilogie sacrée. The first of it's three sections depicts King Herod ordering the massacre of all newborn children in Judaea; the second shows Mary, Joseph, and Jesus setting out for Egypt to avoid the slaughter, having been warned by angels; and the final section portrays their arrival in the Egyptian town of Saïs where they are given refuge by a family of Ishmaelites. Berlioz was not religious as an adult but remained all his life susceptible to the beauty of the religious music that had enraptured him as a child. Sir Andrew Davis conducts the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and MSO Chorus and an outstanding team of soloists in this Surround Sound SACD recording.

After a "sublime" (BBC Music) complete set of Schubert’s violin sonatas with Piers Lane, Tasmin Little joins Martin Roscoe in this recording of the complete violin sonatas by Beethoven.

In all, Beethoven wrote ten sonatas for piano and violin, and seems not to have entertained ideas for other works in this genre. All but one may be regarded as early works: only Op. 96, in G major, which was composed almost a decade after the last of the other nine, does not fall into this category. As a group, then, the violin sonatas do not offer a conspectus of Beethoven’s stylistic development such as we find in the string quartets, piano sonatas, symphonies, and even cello sonatas. But each work is a masterpiece in its own right, original, full of vitality, idiomatic for both the pianist and violinist who are equal-ranking participants in the ensemble, and executed with consummate compositional skill.

Reviews:

One is very much aware of two distinct personalities, each with plenty to say about this music. There's even a sense of friendly rivalry - and all to the good. Little's expressive style is generous and extrovert, Roscoe's at times more inward looking…this is an impressive achievement, and beautifully recorded.

– BBC Music Magazine

Little and Roscoe come across as being very attuned to one another. The particular brand of fantasy in the Kreutzer suits them particularly well, and from its Bachian solo-violin opening onwards there's a real fire to the first movement.

– Gramophone

CELLO CTO

The unjustly neglected and often dissident music of Ruth Gipps is with this album finding all the resonance it deserves by Rumon Gamba and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, having already championed many British composers from the twentieth century with their series devoted to British Tone Poems and Overtures from the British Isles. While, not surprisingly, there are echoes of the most popular composers of the time – Sibelius, Walton, and Vaughan Williams – the music is notable for its personal voice, confident conception, and vivid writing for the orchestra. Gipps herself actually felt her best works were those for orchestra. In a programme of contrasting impressions and emotions, Symphonies Nos 2 and 4, the former inspired by the Second World War, offer an approachable tuneful idiom. They are complemented by the lyrical, shorter Song for Orchestra and the early tone poem Knight in Armour, premiered at the last Night of the Proms in 1942.

Mozart: Serenades Nos. 11-12

On this new release, the Schubert Ensemble returns with a program that has been in its repertoire for many years, the piano quartets by Saint-Saëns and Chausson. From Saint-Saëns' witty and elegant Quartet in B-Flat Major to Chausson's relatively unknown, rhapsodic, and full-blooded Quartet in A major, the thrity-year old Schubert Ensemble reveals two extremes of the French romantic repertoire and here offers a rare, attractive and diverse program.

Like the roughly contemporaneous Noche oscura and Quattro inni sacri, composed round 1950, the superb Coro di morti is one of the most extraordinary statements of the art of Petrassi at the beginning of the 1940s. It remains one of the most admired and frequently performed of his compositions. According to Cardinal Andrea Lanza, the work, composed and premiered during the Second World War, reveals a marked ‘opposition in discourse... between the solitude of man and the destruction surrounding him’, all of which is clearly relayed in the harrowing contrast between relaxed choral lines on the one hand and solid conglomeration of instruments on the other.

The Partita is one of the earliest works Petrassi composed, yet one of his most famous and still-performed. It achieves explosive brilliance and shows the composer’s precocious and accomplished control of orchestral technique. - Chandos

Edward Gardner's Mendelssohn in Birmingham series continues with a recording of Overtures. As with the previous volumes, a reduced size CBSO join Gardner in Birmingham Town's Hall, where Mendelssohn himself conducted many of the UK premieres of his own orchestral works. The majority of works in the programme were written as concert overtures, spanning the length of Mendelssohn's career from the early Midsummer Night's Dream composed when he was just 16 though to 'Ruy Blas' written towards the end of his lifetime. Two of these overtures were written as the opening movements of larger works: 'St Paul', his first great Oratorio from 1836, and his overture to 'Athalie', incidental music written for Racine's play. The Trumpet Overture is the earliest work here, written possibly to precede a performance of Handel's Israel in Egypt, and allegedly Mendelssohn's father's favourite piece!

With this new volume, Barry Douglas once again weaves a magic web with Celtic tunes that have been handed down from generation to generation. His playing is entwined sometimes with new material composed by his musical companions, internationally renowned for their fearless explorations and interpretations of Scottish music. There is an old Irish proverb that translates into “There may be five versions of every story but there are twelve interpretations of each song.” This sentiment reflects an acknowledgement that each artist makes his or her own song out of material that has been handed down. The result is a beautiful, wistful celebration of melodic riches. Praise for Barry’s previous album of Celtic music includes: “Barry Douglas is to be applauded for these arrangements and his direct communication skills. This music means a lot to him and that shows in his performances… The playing, recording (clear and immediate) and musical content are all first class. It was probably a refreshing change for Mr. Douglas to move out of the highbrow arena for a short while and record something different from his usual fare. This is a lovely disc.” (musicweb-international.com)

Rizzi and his superb Welsh Opera forces now grace the Janacek canon.

This is the fifth Janácek opera in Chandos’s Opera in English series, and with vivid, well separated sound, balancing the voices in front of the orchestra, the first impression is how clear the words are from the singers of the Welsh National Opera production on which the recording is based. This is a very welcome companion to the outstanding English version of The Makropulos Case (4/07) conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.

Carlo Rizzi, who conducted the live performances for WNO, is a comparably persuasive Janácek interpreter. It is fascinating to compare this version with Mackerras’s Decca recording (12/05) with the Vienna Philharmonic and an excellent, mainly Czech cast, Elisabeth Söderström taking the title-role. If that recording is marginally richer and weightier than the new Chandos, the strings of WNO play with comparable refinement. Rizzi’s interpretation in all three acts is a degree more urgent, with speeds consistently faster, no doubt reflecting his experience of conducting it live.

As in the English Makropulos Case, the principal singer is Cheryl Barker, fresh, clear and powerful, more girlish-sounding than Söderström. Jane Henschel is outstanding as Marfa Kabanova, the rich widow who persecutes her daughter-in-law, wonderfully rich and firm throughout her range. The three tenor roles are exceptionally well taken, even if the contrasts between Robert Brubaker as Boris, Peter Wedd as Kudryash and Peter Hoare as Tichon, husband of Katya and son of Marfa, are not ideally marked. Gwynne Howell as the merchant Dikoi, uncle of Boris, is also excellent.

The old Norman Tucker translation is used with some minor amendments by Rodney Blumer, nom de plume of critic Rodney Milnes, with words admirably clear throughout, adding to the dramatic impact of the piece. Another outstanding issue in the Opera in English series.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [12/2007]

These are outstanding performances, as good or better than the composer's own. Edward Gardner tears into the Four Sea Interludes with uninhibited excitement. It's great to hear the high violins and flutes in "Dawn" swooping and soaring like the gulls that they're supposed to be evoking. "Sunday Morning" has an infectious bounce, while "Moonlight" casts a rapt stillness abruptly shattered by perhaps the most vicious storm on disc. It's one of those versions you will listen to and say, "Finally, that's the way it should go!"

The suite from Gloriana is still a comparative rarity, which is a pity, as the music really is first-rate Britten. But then, so is the opera; why anyone cares that it flopped at its premiere is beyond me (the Queen allegedly was not amused, as if her opinion matters). The Lute Song is very nicely sung by Robert Murray, but the version for oboe rather than voice strikes me as more appropriate within the context of the symphonic suite as a whole. Granted, Britten used Peter Pears, but that was an opportunity for him to give his partner something to do while on tour.

Finally, there's the Cello Symphony: a tough, somewhat gnarly work that receives a performance every bit as fine as Britten/Rostropovich, which still remains the benchmark version. Paul Watkins and Gardner somehow make music out of the low, grotty opening, pacing the movement as unerringly as did Britten himself. The finale works its way up to a wonderfully life-affirming conclusion, and Watkins does a wonderful job with the lengthy preceding cadenza. In short, this release is a major entry in the Britten discography, and the sonics are every bit the equal of the interpretations.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Classical Music

Classical Music

Given Tasmin Little’s previous explorations in the studio, it must have been tricky to construct a well-balanced series of British sonatas to record for Chandos. She’s well-known for her Elgar, Delius and Bax, naturally, but there is a body of repertoire she hasn’t yet recorded and her contract has allowed her to investigate more widely. This second disc of her series shows the fruits of that search, not least in the case of John Ireland’s Sonata No.1, the big work here.

In a thoughtful booklet note Little recounts that she had only just got to know the Ireland – not such a surprise as the companion A minor is the preferred port of call. She negotiates its moods, reflections, and tempo adjustments with great skill, abetted by Piers Lane’s astute pianism, and he clearly enjoys the slow movement’s rolled chords and those moments in the finale that sounds like one of Ireland’s impressionist piano miniatures. Ireland himself probably wouldn’t have approved of their tempi - he was a curmudgeon about spaced chords and preferred loftier tempos. Listening to his own recording with Frederick Grinke in 1945 (Dutton CDLX7103) rather makes the point, as they are nearly three minutes slower than the Little-Lane duo.

The duo has known the early Bridge Sonata for a good while now – and it’s not to be confused with the larger and later work. The H39 Sonata dates from 1904 and survives as a torso with the second of its two movements completed by Paul Hindmarsh. The duo plays it with a rich tone. There are, in particular, some finely executed dynamics in the second movement. Arthur Bliss’s own early Sonata, written around 1914-16, was dedicated to Lady Elgar and was edited for performance by Rupert Marshall-Luck in 2010. He indeed gave it the first recording with Matthew Rickard (EMR CD001). The Little-Lane duo is a touch slower and brings out the music’s largely unsullied lyricism and nostalgia with great conviction. The little March motif and the VW-like songfulness coalesce in a sunset close of some real beauty.

RVW himself is represented by his Two Pieces, written at roughly the same time as the Bliss. The Pastorale is the pick, tender and folkloric. The disc ends with William Lloyd Webber’s The Gardens at Eastwell, a premiere recording. It’s a thorough charmer, dolce espressivo, as noted.

This is a classy disc, with fine booklet notes – except for the misspelling of Marjorie Hayward’s surname – and a generously warm acoustic, which precisely reflects the nature of the music-making.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)