Recorded in: New Broadcasting House, Manchester 21,22 June 1995 Producer(s) Ralph Couzens Brian Pidgeon Sound Engineer(s) Don Hartridge

All tracks have been digitally mastered using 24-bit technology.

Recorded in: New Broadcasting House, Manchester 22-23 October 1998 Producer(s) Brian Pidgeon Mike George Sound Engineer(s) Stephen Rinker Richard Smoker (Assistant)

Classical Music

The acclaimed pianist Barry Douglas presents Volume 2 of his series devoted to solo piano works by Johannes Brahms. The wide breadth of repertoire encompasses works from Brahms’ early twenties to some of his final piano compositions and showcases Douglas’ immense musicality and technical acumen. Simply top-rate performances of Brahms.

Spanish music specialist and former Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Juanjo Mena continues the series La Música de España, which has seen the recording of some of the orchestral works of de Falla, Turina and Albéniz, with another important Spanish composer: Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga, nicknamed after his death as ‘the Spanish Mozart’.The orchestral overture to ‘Los esclavos felices’ (The Happy Slaves) is all that remains of the opera the child prodigy Arriaga wrote aged 14. When Arriaga moved to Paris to study under Fétis, Guérin and Baillot in 1821, he revised the overture, making changes to the instrumentation and removing a third theme group. It is the revised version heard on this recording. Air from Médée and Herminie form parts of the autograph volume ‘Ensayos lírico-dramáticos’ (Lyric-dramatic essays) that completes this release, here sung by one of Scandinavia’s most sought after concert singers, Berit Norbakken Solset. Tonally ambiguous Symphony in D minor (which begins and ends in D major) alongside the Overture in D major, which was written ‘without having learnt the principles of harmony’ are proof that Arriaga’s premature death aged 19 was a ‘sad loss to Basque music’.

" This brilliant new recording of Orff's Carmina Burana is a tragic memento of conductor Richard Hickox, who died in Novemeber at the age of sixty. This is a vibrant, dynamic performance of Orff's masterpiece recorded live in London's Barbican Centre. As usual with Chandos, engineering is first-rate, with perfect balances and wide dynamic range." -- Bob Benson, Classical CD Review

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Recorded live at the Barbican Centre in November 2007, Richard Hickox conducts Carl Orff's immensely popular dramatic cantata Carmina Burana with the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and soloists, Barry Banks, Laura Claycomb and Christopher Maltman.

MusicOMH.com wrote of the performance, "The London Symphony Orchestra performed the work with all the commitment and exuberance that one expects from them... The three soloists were outstanding, singing with a unified dynamic power and depth of expression that is rare to find today...Christopher Maltman's baritone is large, and he dramatically projected every emotion and quirk in the text." Classical Source said "Hickox and his forces certainly conveyed an appropriate sense of the dramatic...Maltman had the sense of the music and histrionic demands down to a tee... Banks provided strong characterization in the high tenor writing... Claycomb conveyed the vulnerability of the soprano's music."

Orff is reputed to have declared around the time of Carmina's first performance, 'Everything I have written to date, and which you have printed, can be destroyed. With Carmina Burana, my collected works begin.' He had a strong interest in theatrical presentations and conceived the work as a pageant. The idea came to Orff in 1935 when he encountered an edition of medieval songs edited by the poet Johann Schmeller. The vivid and colourful songs were those sung by the goliards - hedonistic students and traveling monks who celebrated their riotous pursuits in bawdy and profane poetry. The 24 'cantiones profanae' chosen by Orff were translated and the composer set them to music for three vocal soloists, three choirs and a large orchestra featuring triple woodwind, two pianos and no fewer than five percussionists. The score's combination of gloriously infectious vulgarity interspersed with moments of genuine beauty has assured it an unquestionable position as one of the most popular of all twentieth century choral works.

Includes work(s) by John Marsh. Ensemble: London Mozart Players. Conductor: Matthias Bamert.

Järvi encourages the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande to give of their very best and, abetted by excellently judged SACD sound, the results are biting, driving, refined and brilliantly exciting. A scintillating and often nightmarish ride.

– Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

A year on from the opener, this is a very generously filled second volume of Chandos's promising Raff symphony cycle. There are two previous recordings of the composer's eleven highly idiomatic, imaginative symphonies, long unjustly neglected by programmers and critics alike. The Bamberg Symphony Orchestra under Hans Stadlmair, recently released by Tudor in handy boxed set form (review, with further discographical information) is probably the critics' favourite, although it comes neither cheap nor without flaws. The forerunner was an early-Nineties series on Marco Polo with different orchestras, mainly from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, all but one under Urs Schneider: these are currently available from Naxos as mp3 downloads only (9.40248). In 2001 Naxos had the good idea of reissuing the Marco Polo recordings as physical discs under their own brand, but only two appeared (8.555411, 8.555491) and then the label either had a change of heart, or forgot.

Raff's programmatic 'Lenore' Symphony has three further modern recordings. One comes from a local rival to Järvi's ensemble, the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, conducted by Nicholas Carthy. A satisfactory, rather than compelling recording, it was brought out by Italian label Dynamic (CDS 283) well over a decade ago, and there has been no sign of any kind of follow-up since. Another version is Yondani Butt's with the Philharmonia Orchestra on ASV (DCA 1000), one performance in a long line by this determinedly uncontroversial conductor of almost clinical neutrality.

Finally there is Matthias Bamert and the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra on Koch Schwann, re-released as 367932, but dogged by poor sound. As for Chandos, despite the fact its audio quality was not as good as the SACD/24-bit/96kHz tags – abetted by one or two prominent reviews – implied, the first release immediately became the new standard for the Second Symphony. This is above all for the fact that Järvi is such a fine all-round conductor and the Suisse Romande a pedigree orchestra with a definite aptitude for Raff-era music. Back at the same Swiss location, that slight lossy edge to the audio is still there on this latest disc, yet the Chandos sound is still much superior to all its predecessors', and despite the imperfections constitutes a further plus-point for Järvi's cycle.

On the other hand, no further incentive should be required when the offering is one of Raff's most memorable works, the tune-packed, masterfully orchestrated Fifth Symphony. He chooses to focus – and then expatiate - on the nervous drama of Gottfried Bürger's famous but second-rate poem 'Lenore', rather than on its cold-blooded religious mania. The story is similar to Dvo?ák's later cantata Svatební Košile, known in English as The Spectre's Bride, which was based on a similar-themed ballad by Karol Jaromír Erben. This is doubly pertinent: Raff shares Dvo?ák's intuitive feel for lyrical drama. In Bürger, the eponymous Lenore is duped and then effectively buried alive for thinking herself in a state of despair neglected by God, but Raff's final-movement 'ride into hell' is jauntily mesmeric and ends with an uplifting chorale – moving, but certainly diverging from the implications of Bürger's chilling poem.

It is worth noting here that Järvi's account is a full ten minutes faster than Stadlmair, Carthy and Schneider. This is interesting enough in itself, but these three were already seven or eight minutes quicker than Bernard Herrmann's pioneering recording with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1970 — (most recently available on Unicorn UKCD 2031, but originally funded by Herrmann himself. Järvi is taking Raff at his word with his astonishingly fast metronome markings, but those who have had their opinions as to how this work should sound coloured by more leisurely approaches will likely need time to get used to these tempos, and those many long in thrall to Herrmann's account may possibly never accept them. The third movement Marsch-Tempo in particular will raise many eyebrows: Raff asks for, and Järvi gives – where no one else seemingly dares - 160 beats per minute, a good 50% more than what would normally be expected from a march. Yet odd as it initially sounds, the speed is still well within the bounds of a military double march.

Järvi's programme is amplified by a selection of overtures from Raff's operas, plus one of his own transcriptions – his only such, in fact - the 'Abends' Rhapsody. One or two of these are take-them-or-leave-them works by comparison with the symphony, though their Rossini-meets-Beethoven idiom is undeniably attractive, and their realisation here by the ever-dependable Swiss Romandes elegantly winning. Best of the four extras is the most substantial, the 'King Alfred' overture. Scored for large orchestra, it is a dramatic tone poem in all but name. The notes describe it as "grandiose in design, comparable in sweep and scope to Wagner's recent overture to Tannhäuser". The Rhapsody itself is a lovely, moodily crepuscular work, over all too quickly.

As for the CD booklet, Chandos continue apace with their shrinking-font policy, their texts tiny islands of ink in blank paper seas, legibility further hampered by the greyish ink. Still, the notes themselves are usually excellent, as indeed those here by Avrohom Leichtling are - detailed, informative, enthusiastic, trilingual. Bürger's poem might usefully have been included, if only to make use of some of that blank space.

– Byzantion, MusicWeb International

Neeme Jarvi conducts Christopher Palmer's version, preserving the film music to Ivan the Terrible. This re-issue offers this praised recording at Classics price. 'Christopher Palmer strikes again! It is undoubtedly one of the great film scores, and Jarvi more than does it justice with the help of impassioned singing and playing from all concerned.' CD Review

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

A Gramophone Disc of the Month



HOLST The Planets. 1 Beni Mora. Japanese Suite • Andrew Davis, cond; BBC PO; 1 Manchester CCh • CHANDOS CHSA 5086 (SACD: 78:25)


As unlikely as it seems, this appears to be the only SACD of Holst’s orchestral tour de force currently listed on ArkivMusic; another on Chesky, with Dennis Russell Davies conducting the Bruckner Orchestra of Linz, is available on British websites.


Both sonically—in two or five channels—and musically, this is a very impressive Planets . Certain labels have always had a distinctive sound, and this is especially true of Chandos. The sound of this disc is typical of Chandos’s best orchestral recordings: There is more sense of the hall—in this instance Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall—than on most other labels, a feature particularly evident in SACD mode, but the recording still is immediate enough to pack a real wallop. Listen, for example, to the organ pedal in “Saturn,” or the ffff full-organ glissando at the end of “Uranus.” The dynamic range in “Mars” is huge, and the offstage women’s voices in “Neptune” come from some unknown place. The BBC Philharmonic, surely among England’s top orchestras by now, plays superbly; “Mercury” is on the button, “Jupiter” polished rather than ragged as so often heard. The women of the Manchester Chamber Choir sing with pure tone and perfect intonation, again a refreshing change from most versions. Sir Andrew Davis, now a seasoned veteran, gives a reading of which Sir Adrian Boult would have been proud, atmospheric in “Venus,” light in “Mercury,” and monumental in “Saturn.” Put another way, “Mercury” is mercurial, “Saturn” saturnine, “Jupiter” jovial. This Planets would be a high recommendation in stereo; for multichannel listeners it’s a must.


This release is titled Holst: Orchestral Works, Volume 2 ; Volume 1, which turned out to be the final recording by the late Richard Hickox, included four ballet scores from late in Holst’s career. (The reviewer for a well-known British magazine cited the “splendid and fulsome sound” of that disc, perhaps illustrating Shaw’s observation that England and America are two countries separated by a common language.) According to Chandos’s Ralph Couzens, the series was to have culminated in The Planets , but the plan obviously had to be revised. Volume 1 was reviewed in Fanfare 32:6 by Peter J. Rabinowitz, who found some of the scores rather weak; I suspect that, rather than marking any decline in Holst’s creativity, the problem lies in the differences between the music Holst wrote for amateurs (including at least two of the works in Volume 1) and for professionals. The three works in the present volume were not only all written for professionals, but date from around the same time: The Planets was written in 1914–16, the Japanese Suite during the composition of The Planets , and Beni Mora (subtitled “Oriental Suite”) a bit earlier, in 1909–10. Of the two shorter suites, Beni Mora , inspired by a trip to Algeria, is the more interesting. The Japanese Suite was written for a Japanese dancer, who provided Holst with the themes; for once (in contrast to the Second Suite for Military Band and his many choral folk-song settings), the themes seem to limit Holst’s imagination, and the work lacks the vitality of Beni Mora.


The shade of Boult looms large over these performances; his recordings of the two shorter works for Lyrita (SRCD 222) still sound terrific, and are a bit more incisive than Davis’s mostly admirable readings. As for The Planets , of course, Boult was the conductor of the informal first performance in 1918, and his five recordings, particularly the two stereo versions for EMI—dating from 1966 and 1978!—are uniquely authoritative. But Davis’s interpretation is compelling in its own right, and Chandos’s sonics blow away even EMI’s fine sound. This SACD is superb both musically and sonically, and Davis’s grasp of Holst’s idiom bodes well for further volumes in Chandos’s Holst cycle. Highly recommended!


FANFARE: Richard A. Kaplan

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra playing under the baton of Richard Hickox, Delius’s palette of colours shines through once again. Hickox was indeed a sensitive and flexible Delian and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra responded passionately to him from the start: their collaboration began with famous performances of the first ever complete cycle of Vaughan Williams’s symphonies in London.

Especially in ‘The Walk to the Paradise Garden’ – a highlight here – the collection demonstrates the glittering qualities of Delius’s enchanting musical world, which evokes an atmosphere of serene pleasure in nature.

Highly recommended by the Penguin Guide in 1995, one year its recording.

LISZT Années de pèlerinage • Louis Lortie (pn) • CHANDOS 10662 (2 CDs: 161:20)


There’s been no dearth of Années de pèlerinage recordings over the past year or so. Predictably, they range from the compelling (Libor Novacek, Années I and II, Landor 290 and 278; André Laplante, Années I, Analekta 29980), to the less good (Michael Korstick, Années I and II, cpo 777478 and 777585), to the deeply disappointing (Jerome Lowenthal, Années complete, Bridge 9307). The new, complete Années de pèlerinage of Louis Lortie, however, is in a class all its own. He approaches this summit of romanticism steeped in the music of Liszt (his recording of all the works for piano and orchestra, Chandos 10371, a collaboration during 1999–2000 with George Pehlivanian and the Residentie Orchestra of The Hague, is one of the finest). Lortie is a richly imaginative musician and a pianist of cultured refinement whose interpretations invariably tend toward understatement. These 26 pieces occupied Liszt for some 46 years and, along with the Sonata, are emblematic of his achievement as a piano composer. You get the sense that Lortie has long lived with the entire cycle, coming to know (and love) each of its components equally well. Add to this his unstinting identification with Liszt’s poetic message, and you have all the elements required for an Années de pèlerinage of tremendous freshness and originality.


Amid the Alpine landscapes of Book I, the Swiss Year, Lortie conjures uncluttered vistas and pristine atmosphere with unhurried tempos that give each phrase plenty of breathing room. The mini-triptych within the cycle, Au lac de Wallenstadt, Pastorale, and Au Bord d’une source, is painted in luminous colors, highlighted here and there with an exquisitely inflected tempo rubato . When the bucolic idyll is shattered by Orage, Lortie lets loose this implacable force of nature with phrasing that is so deftly shaped, pedaling so restrained, and dynamics so infinitely calibrated that each gust and cascading torrent seems audible. Vallée d’Obermann , the centerpiece of the Swiss Year, has been, at least in recent decades, the most frequently excerpted piece from the cycle. Divorced from context, and in spite of its formal interest, the Vallée has come to typify the 19th-century set piece, more creaking and tear-stained with each iteration. Lortie will have none of that. In a performance both masculine and heartfelt, we sense Obermann’s struggle toward spiritual rejuvenation through the majesty of nature. In place of a sob sister, we have a psychological drama, a genuine pilgrimage, at once gripping and imminently credible, that restores the dignity and stature of this wonderful piece.


Book II, the first of the two Italian Years, demonstrates Lortie’s success in both the scintillatingly intimate miniature and the implacable grandeur of the epic. The chaste refinement of color and line in Raphael’s Milan altarpiece are evoked in an ecstatic reading of Sposalizio. The three Sonnetti del Petrarca provide an interesting case of how the over-exposed can be imbued with new luster and meaning. Lortie achieves this with an unambiguous directness and simplicity of utterance. It is as though we hear Petrarch’s poems declaimed. The fioritura cadenzas emerge organically from the text, a piacere, each note beautifully articulated and perfectly suited to context. Moreover, the Sonnetti exemplify Lortie’s characteristic phrasing, always delineated by what can be maintained with human breath. The culmination of Book II, Après une lecture du Dante: Fantasia quasi Sonata , known as the Dante Sonata , is the longest piece of the entire cycle and far away the most technically challenging. The stentorian introduction draws on an unusually varied dynamic palette to set the stage for the drama that will unfold. In the Presto agitato assai , evoking the whirlwinds of the Inferno, Lortie maintains extraordinarily extended crescendi and decresecendi , drawing on an infinitely calibrated dynamic control and acute rhythmical inflection. Later, in the transition between the second statement of the redemption motif and the return to the infernal maelstrom, he uses the strategy again with stunning results. Over the course of a minute and 20 seconds, and through 22 note-filled measures covering more than two pages in the score, Lortie builds one long, seamless crescendo of overwhelming magnitude. At the return of the tremolando redemption motif in the piano’s upper registers, it sounds like shimmering violins. The final apotheosis seems a blaze of light, though here, as throughout the piece, there is no hint of overplaying or empty bombast. It might be added that in the Dante Sonata, and in pieces like the Chappelle de Guillaume Tell from Book I and Book III’s Sunt lacrymae rerum, where Liszt exploits the piano’s lowest register, it sounds as though the bottom-octave strings of Lortie’s Fazioli grand are a quarter mile long.


But the most remarkable feature of this outstanding recording is the third Année . Its seven pieces represent a distillation of Liszt’s late style and inhabit psychological realms seldom traversed by other 19th-century composers. A number of pianists who recorded the first two books simply don’t venture into the third, and those who have seem confounded sooner or later. Lortie, on the other hand, has plumbed the depths of these strange yet deeply artistic creations, developing interpretations that are remarkable in sharpness of focus and clarity of expression. The best-known of the set, Les Jeux d’eau à la Villa d’Este, combines the utmost delicacy and refinement with a disarming simplicity. Phrases are sculpted with unerring proportion and contour. The villa’s hundred fountains sparkle and splash in a virtuoso display of exquisitely understated pianistic finesse. Nor are the implications of Liszt’s Biblical reference to the waters of everlasting life neglected; a sense of ecstatic spirituality pervades the whole as though it were a sacrament in sound. Musically speaking, the Marche funèbre for the Emperor Maximillian, with its dark impasto and difficult transitions, is one of the most challenging pieces in the set. But what has remained a puzzle in many otherwise creditable performances of the third Année is compellingly deciphered by Lortie. Liszt’s idiosyncratic rhetoric is rendered comprehensible, including the problematic fortissimo trionfante in F?-Major that in so many other readings simply falls flat. Book III opens with Angelus , a prayer to the guardian angels, and closes with Sursum corda , “lift up your hearts,” a reference to the preface to the canon of the Mass. The blend of intuition, intellect, and philosophical insight Lortie brings to Sursum corda , with its prismatic harmonies undulating over the fixed anchor of a pedal point on E, creates a mighty culmination of the cycle.


On this recording, Venezia e Napoli , the supplement to Book II, is placed at the end of the recording, following the stylistically distant third Année . It is an interesting choice, which casts Venezia e Napoli as a sort of encore to the entire cycle, bringing us back to earth after the lofty metaphysics of Book III. Incidentally, the Tarantella is fierce. The recording was made during three days last November at Potton Hall, Dunwich, Suffolk, and the Chandos engineers captured the sound of Lortie’s Fazioli grand brilliantly.


This Années de pèlerinage is unquestionably one of the finest releases thus far during the Liszt bicentennial. Time will tell, but it also may be the finest recording of the work to date. Not to be missed.


FANFARE: Patrick Rucker


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Louis Lortie's survey of the complete Années de Pèlerinage adds up to his finest Liszt playing on disc. The interpretations abound with new-found reserves of virtuosic flair and poetic sensitivity. You hear both of these qualities in the opening piece, La chapelle de Guillaume Tell, where Lortie varies the murmuring tremolo chords with subtle nuances yet doesn't hold back in the climactic Allegro vivace. You hear similar textural variety and heightened drama throughout Aux cypres de la Villa d'Este II.

In both Orage and the Dante sonata Lortie's superb technique enables him to articulate the long stretches of octaves in shapely legato lines that are executed with minimum pedal. This similarly applies to the ferocity and momentum Lortie generates in Vallée d'Obermann's peroration. Whereas pianists like Claudio Arrau and Muza Rubackyté take their time to savor Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este's jet-spray arpeggiated figures, Lortie's comparable accuracy and finesse reveals them in a lighter, more playful manifestation. Lortie's well-judged tempo relationships create unity and momentum in Venezia e Napoli's Tarantella, but I prefer Marc-André Hamelin's almost offhanded panache and astounding repeated-note technique. While Chandos' slightly diffuse and distant sonics don't match Rubackyté's Lyrinx release for detail and warmth, they do reflect Lortie's robust sonority as one might experience it in a small concert hall. Strongly recommended.

--Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

Written at the height of the era of "Soviet Realism" in the USSR, when composers were being criticized or banned for music deemed "formalistic", Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Symphony No. 3 embraces the dictum of positiveness that called for an avoidance of the cerebral qualities of Western art music and urged the embrace of Russian folk song to be incorporated into symphonic works, the latter actually being a pre-revolutionary tradition held over from Czarist times. Though written to please the cultural commissars and endowed with melodic ideas of immediate appeal and directness, the work also has a darker undercurrent that surfaces from time to time, especially in the more militant and rhythmically driven last movement. This gives the symphony an unusually wide aesthetic range from a light pops concert atmosphere to occasionally stark, serious expression.

Suite No. 4 from the ballet "The Golden Key", a puppet ballet loosely based on Pinocchio is also tuneful and of interest for its somewhat eccentric dances, (a "Cricket" dance consists of little less than a minute of a single, rhythmically odd, continuously repeated hopping motive,) as well as folk-like dances with a rustic quality. If Weinberg in these works had been a Western composer of that era the music would often be considered light pops concert fare with bright, straight-forward tunefulness, not unlike popular movie or TV music, yet at times there is a darker undercurrent that occasionally surfaces. We know from other Weinberg works that he was capable of music of considerable emotional depth. This occasional faint uneasiness might have been sensed in these otherwise tuneful works, for Weinberg himself withdrew his Third Symphony before the premiere to correct "errors" and later edited and revised it and the ballet, though eventually accepted by a Soviet dance company was not staged. Both were performed some ten years later and after Stalin's death. Interesting, eccentric and appealing music that comes from living through a dangerous period.

- Greg La Traille, ArkivMusic.com

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WEINBERG Symphony No. 3. The Golden Key: Suite No. 4 • Thord Svedlund, cond; Gothenburg SO • CHANDOS 5089 (49:53)


Mieczyslaw Weinberg found it easier than most composers in the late 1940s and early 1950s to comply with the vague yet dangerously contradictory goals of the Zhdanov Doctrine. He had a naturally lyrical gift, a clear sense of structure, and an ability to write simply, with complete focus. Paying uncomplicated tribute to folk music without a hint of condescension was easy for him, though of course it came easier in smaller forms than larger ones. That was why a plethora of such works as the Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes , the Polish Themes, Serenade for Orchestra , and Fantasy for Cello and Orchestra , along with various concertinos and sonatinas grace Weinberg’s list of compositions at that time. But the Symphony No. 3 was a bid for popularity in a big, mainstream work. It was not to get a chance to grow an audience, unfortunately, as Stalin’s paranoia over Jews (and Poles, Ukrainians, and just about every other group he could imagine) denied Weinberg a performance. It had to await the so-called “cultural thaw” under Krushchev for its debut in 1960. I can find no other currently available recordings of the work.


The Symphony No. 3 is very much of its time and place, as you’d expect. The dissonant elements of the First Symphony, the gritty anguish of the Second, the complexities of counterpoint and the emotional ambiguity of both, are nowhere to be found. The work is formally non-programmatic, but it’s all to easy to hear the “youth” theme (a standard formula in many composers’ Soviet pieces of the period, a naively cheerful melody with a flattened seventh and little else to offer the world) in the first movement and the minor-key, slightly dissonant obstacles it faces as a tribute to the Young Soviet Facing the Tide of Obstruction and Overcoming. To Weinberg’s credit, his youth theme is the most graceful I’ve heard, and his orchestral writing is a delight throughout. The attractive Scherzo includes a Polish mazurka, along with a few fine examples of counterpoint imbedded as folk improvisation, while the Adagio is a threnody displaying Khachaturian’s gift for emotional directness without descending into mawkishness: pathos, not bathos. The finale returns to the battlefield of the opening Allegro, with curious overtones of Shostakovich’s Fifth and Sixth. It ends not with the triumphalism one might expect, but with a grim “soldiering on” attitude that doesn’t quite fit with or summarize everything that’s gone before.


The ballet The Golden Key was finished in 1955, two years after Stalin’s sudden death (and Weinberg’s resultant freedom from prison). The satirical tale of the puppet lovers Burattino and Malvina, who after facing several animal and human antagonists encourage the other puppets to revolt, would seem tailor-made for the composer’s talents, but Weinberg found it surprisingly difficult to gain acceptance for the score. When the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theater finally accepted it in 1955, it took another seven years before staging The Golden Key —and then, only with a largely reworked scenario. Weinberg, like Prokofiev, knew the value of a good ballet suite, and he wrote four in 1964 that accessed music from the original and the revised versions. This, the fourth suite (presumably others will appear in future releases in this series), is a tuneful delight. My favorites are the dance of the two animal villains, Alice the Fox and Basilio(!) the Cat, a nose-thumbing, heavily accented folk piece; and “The Pursuit,” with its nod at Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.


Thord Svedlund is in strong form on this release, emphasizing orchestral color, clarity, and internal balance. He doesn’t miss any of the humor in the Third Symphony’s Scherzo or several of the ballet’s dances, but also doesn’t shortchange the emotional appeal of the former’s Adagio and the latter’s Elegy. The Gothenberg musicians play with delicacy and character. This certainly isn’t the most representative disc of Weinberg to come down the musical pike, as more attention is finally paid to this excellent composer, but it may prove to be the one with the greatest overall appeal to general classical listeners. My only reservation is the short timing. At less than 50 minutes, was there nothing else Weinberg composed for orchestra that could have been included?


Regardless, definitely recommended.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal


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This latest CD volume from Chandos makes for another outstanding contribution to their unique survey of Weinberg’s symphonies and pleasure is diffused only slightly by the short playing time.

The playing by the Gothenburgers is exemplary. This is early Weinberg - at least the Third Symphony is. It's a 30-plus minute, four movement, B minor piece written in 1950 and revised in 1959. The first movement sports a tickling forward-pressing motif. This is clothed sweetly, at first, but the atmosphere becomes gradually more determined and warlike-heroic with a sideways glance at Shostakovich's Leningrad. It's extremely exciting and might be thought of as comparable to the first symphonies of Sviridov and Dvarionas among others. It is not as belligerent as these other examples; certainly the sweet oboe pastoral (I 6:20) is far more gentle than anything found in those other works. Something of dancing snowflakes in this but also of warm pine forests. A chill sets in towards the end of the movement. There's a playful sprinting and flittering allegro giocoso and this can be contrasted with a potently sustained and meditative gloom. There’s tenderness in the Adagio (III) which is almost as long as the first movement. The clarinet solos have a plangently woody bubble and the theme seems a byway off the Volga Boatmen’s Song. This ends in a becalmed murmur from the strings. The finale returns to the implacably sturdy fast-pulsed mood of the heroic first movement. This is a splendidly rich recording with a nice throaty roar to the brass.

This revised version of the Symphony was premiered by Aleksandr Gauk conducting the All-Union Radio and TV Symphony Orchestra in Moscow on 23 March 1960.

The Golden Key was a ballet written in 1954-55 to a fairy fable scenario by Aleksey Tolstoy (1882-1945). In this format the music was premiered on 10 June 1962. Two years later Weinberg extracted for suites of which this is the last. The music is full of Petrushkan character, gawky, winningly elegiac (tr. 6 with its oboe singer), impudently Respighian (tr. 7) and ruthlessly driven (The Rat). The final Pursuit movement combines iterative obsessional onrush with an innocence absent from the assaults of the Symphony’s first and final movements

Every part of this production shouts quality. The notes are by David Fanning whose knowledge of the music and the era must be second to none. Svedlund knows the Weinberg works well having already recorded many of them so he is a reliable and inspired guide

If you enjoy Russian music of the mid and first half of the last century then you need to hear this. It's by no means garish poster material and its depth and accessible grip may surprise.

– Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International

Alongside its ongoing much-lauded Copland series, the BBC Philharmonic embarks on a new American journey, this time with its chief guest conductor, John Storgards. Known as ‘the bad boy of music,’ George Antheil began his career with a reputation as an enfant terrible, composing shockingly avant-garde works such as his every popular Ballet mecanique, inspired by the dynamism and dissonances of Stravinsky’s early ballets. Although he is well established on the film music scene, too, it is his symphonic output-sampled here- that today survives in the concert hall. This new series documents the evolution of his musical style, which moved towards a fundamentally tonal and melody-based idiom, Antheil joining the growing ranks of famous US symphonists. The war-inspired Fourth Symphony and ‘joyous’ Fifth clearly represent this compositional shift, breaking with what the composer called the ‘now passe’ modernism. Also here is the premiere recording of the Texas-inspired Over the Plains, memorable for its allusions to cowboy music and offering some unexpectedly dramatic and atmospheric twists along the way.

This two-CD set offers all the works that Prokofiev wrote for the violin as solo instrument. One of the most sought-after and acclaimed virtuoso violinists today, James Ehnes is accompanied by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Gianandrea Noseda and by the pianist Andrew Armstrong, with whom he has previously made a number of highly acclaimed Chandos recordings. The distinguished Amy Schwartz Moretti joins him in the Sonata for Two Violins.- Chandos

Reviews

Orchestral Choice "... James Ehnes’s particular combination of matchless virtuosity, sweet tone, flowing tempi and interpretative restraint suits all this music down to the ground... the contribution of the BBC Philharmonic is distinguished throughout ... Strongly recommended." David Gutman - Gramophone magazine - October 2013

“Wow. Everything works here. James Ehnes rarely disappoints, and the playing on this beautifully recorded two-disc set is immaculate. It’s not just the musicality, the remarkable ability to give shape and colour to the thorniest solo writing, but his modesty – he’s a player who knows exactly when to step back and let collaborators take the spotlight… Unmissable.” Graham Rickson – theartsdesk.com – 28 September 2013

"... Ehnes and his pianist give performances worthy of the giants (Oistrakh and Richter) for whom their parts were conceived." Hugh Canning - The Sunday Times - 8 September 2013

Classical CD of the Week "... Ehnes is joined by Amy Schwartz Moretti for an electrifying performance of the duo sonata... In their mix of lyricism and sharpe-edged rhythmic and harmonic piquancy. Ehnes and Moretti are absolutely spot on in defining the music’s character. This is playing that truly grabs you by the scruff of the neck and commands attention... For the two concertos Ehnes teams up again with an orchestra and conductor he knows well - the BBC Philharmonic and Gianandrea Noseda - who yield apt, complimentary shades of colouring, both brilliant and pungent, to match Ehnes’s superb artistry." ***** Geoffrey Norris - The Daily Telegraph - 28 September 2013

"... the sound is terrific, and given the excellence of the performance throughout, and the convenience of having all of these works ’under one roof’. as it were, there’s no reason to put off acquiring this set..." Raymond S Tuttle - International Record Review - October 2013

"... Prokofiev wrote tuneful music, rich and rhythmic, and James Ehnes is outstanding in bringing this attractive music to life." Peter Spaull - Liverpool Post - 19 September 2013

Vernon Handley has a great flair for getting the best out of unusual late-romantic music such as this, particularly when it has a Celtic flavour. He secures excellent playing from the Ulster Orchestra, and the recording is beautifully clear and sonorous. -- Gramophone

Following his recent acclaimed recordings of Haydn and Beethoven Sonatas, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet turns from the Classical to the Romantic era, and the works of Schumann. The programme is built around the Grand Sonata (no.3). This impressive, large-scale work was originally composed in 1834, later revised in 1853 and eventually premiered (6 years after the composer's death) by Schumann's young protégé Johannes Brahms. Jean-Efflam first discovered the work though a recording by Vladimir Horovitz in the 1980s, and got to play it to and discuss the work with Horowitz in Paris in 1985. Like Horovitz before him, Jean-Efflam combines elements from both the original and revised versions of the work on this recording. Bavouzet has chosen to couple this with another early work - the "Faschinsschwank aus Wein" - and then the much later work the "Drei Fantasiestücke". He closes with the "Gesange der Frühe" which were among the last compositions that Schumann wrote before his attempted suicide and incarceration in February 1854. As always with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's albums, the booklet features an insightful personal note by the performer.

Classical Music

Simon Standage is particularly renowned for his Telemann recordings with Collegium Musicum 90. The repertoire here is especially vivacious and rich in melodic invention with the doubling of oboes and bassoons used to striking effect. Telemann's penchant for colour is strongly evident in the Burlesque de Quixotte. Collegium 90 is regarded as one of today's premiere early music groups and regularly receive outstanding reviews for their Chaconne recordings. Recorded in: All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London 29-31 July 2002 Producer(s) Nicholas Anderson Sound Engineer(s) Jonathan Cooper Michael Common (Assistant)

This is a project very close to the heart of the BBC Philharmonic's Principal Conductor, Gianandre Noseda. From the moment of his appointment to the BBC Philharmonic he spoke of his ambition to record the works of the twentieth century composer and fellow Italian Luigi Dallapiccola. The young counductor's reputation grows with every recording and receives consistently glowing write-ups in the press. It is hoped that with such distinguished and sympathetic advocacy, the music of Dallapiccola will achieve the worldwide recognition that it deserves.

Chandos Movies is one of the best known film music labels in the industry, and has received tremendous critical acclaim. The series is especially associated with the conductor Rumon Gamba, whose undertstanding and enthusiasm for the form shines through. Vaughan Williams's film music ranks amongst the very finest ever written, and this CD contains some excellent examples. What makes this disc so important is that some of the material has never been recorded before, music which has been painstakingly assembled by Chandos' in-house arranger and music researcher, Stephen Hogger. The result is a hugely important release which will be of interest to both film music buffs and fans of Vaughan Williams.

This CD of works by comparatively unknown composer Johann Adolph Scheibe was well received on its original release, and is now available at mid-price for the first time. This is the only available recording of this repertoire. Scheibe is an interesting representative of the period between baroque and classicism. He broke with what he believed to be the starchy superficiality of the baroque style and strove, in his work, for a new directness and simplicity. His music, with its emphasis on melody, anticipates classicism and even hints at romanticism. Recorded in: Danish Radio Concert Hall, Copenhagen 8-9 February and 16-17 August 1993 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Peter Hanke Sound Engineer(s) Peter Bo Nielsen

Classical Music

Sergei Taneyev's music, written in the late nineteenth-century romantic tradition, is well-crafted, attractively scored and tuneful. Polyansky and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra are renowned for their recordings of Russian repertoire and have made many acclaimed recordings for Chandos. Both symphonies receive their premiere recordings with this release.