Classical Music

Nino Rota achieve international recognition primarily as a composer of film music. His most admired and enduring work in this field sprang from his collaboration with Federico Fellini. However, his orchestral music has recently undergone a reappraisal. Much of this music is rare on CD and this programme is unique. Recorded in: Teatro Massimo, Palermo, Italy 19-21 July 2002 Producer(s) Gian Andrea Lodovici Sound Engineer(s) Matteo Costa

Classical Music

Classical Music

Richard Hickox directs a star-studded cast in this fantastic new recording of two early operettas by Arthur Sullivan. 'Cox and Box' was first performed in 1866, when the composer was just twenty-four. It shared the bill with another operetta by writer W. S. Gilbert, and it is highly likely that this was how Arthur Sullivan and william Gilbert met. 'Trial by Jury', written as a commission for Richard D'Oyly Carte, was their second collaboration, and it was this project that Gilbert and Sullivan discovered their joint creative voice. New and exciting, it took British musical theatre by storm. Premiere recording of the original orchestration of 'Cox and Box' which Arthur Sullivan approved for use at the Savoy performance in 1894.

"Rheinberger is best known for his twenty organ sonatas. He studied in Munich and spent his working life there, developing a reputation as a teacher. His pupils included William Furtwängler and Engelbert Humperdinck. His organ sonatas have long been known to organists but it is only relatively recently that his choral music has come to prominence. He was a master of counterpoint, producing finely structured works full of graceful melodies. In style, the choral music of Brahms and Mendelssohn is never really far away.

His Mass in E flat for double choir was written in 1878. It comes from a period when Rheinberger was emerging from the influence of the Cecilian movement. The Gloria and Credo follow the Cecilian tenets with clear and straightforward setting of the text and little in the way of word-painting. But in the other movements of the mass he is freer, with many echoes of Venetian poly-choral techniques.

This new recording was made by two professional American choirs, the Phoenix Bach Choir and the Kansas City Chorale, conducted by Charles Bruffy. The two groups come together annually to record double choir works. The resulting ensemble is remarkably large, some forty-eight professional singers. They have a good clear focused sound, with a strong bright soprano line. They are recorded in a generous acoustic and the result captures well the ebb and flow of Rheinberger's music. Though the recording does seem to favour the high voices, I would have liked more bass.

Under Bruffy's direction the two choirs display remarkable cohesiveness of ensemble. His speeds are often quite relaxed, in such movements as the end of the Agnus Dei in the Mass I would have preferred a quicker tempo.

Bruffy and his ensemble couple the work with a selection of Rheinberger's motets. The lovely double choir Easter Hymn combines a setting of Victimae Paschale with Terra Tremuit. The four Six-voiced Motets are settings of extracts from the Psalms and sound the sort of grateful motets which should be in every good church choir's repertoire. The Drei Geistliche Gesange set sacred German poems. These are lovely works, well recorded and this collection should suit if you want to explore Rheinberger's choral music."

-- Robert Hugill, MusicWeb International

This is the world premiere recording of the complete version of 'Quo Vadis', Dyson's sumptuous choral epic of 1938. Dyson fervently believed in the English choral movement's need for practical, tuneful and lively music. 'Quo Vadis', with its colourful orchestration and fine melodies, demonstrates the effectiveness of this aesthetic approach. The soloists on this disc represent some of the finest singers around today. Recorded in: Brangwyn Hall, Swansea 11-14 December 2002 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Matthew Walker (Assistant)

REGES TERRAE • Nordic Voices • CHANDOS 5050 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 48:52 Text and Translation)


MANCHICOURT Reges terrae. Laudate Dominum. O virgo virginum. Missa Reges terrae: Agnus Dei. MORALES Regina caeli. Exaltata est. CLEMENS NON PAPA O magnum mysterium. GUERRERO Hei mihi Domine. GOMBERT Ego sum qui sum


This collection of 16th-century polyphony is subtitled “Music from the time of Charles V,” but only one of the composers, Gombert, ever worked at the imperial chapel. His motet was recorded recently by Philip Cave (24:1). But all of them moved in the orbit of Spain and the Low Countries that constituted the emperor’s stamping ground. Manchicourt is the central person here, his selections distributed throughout the program. Two of his motets were included in Paul van Nevel’s disc (21:1), and the third was on Edith Ho’s second disc (30:3), but his Missa Reges terrae has not been recorded complete. Guerrero’s motet was included in a program by James O’Donnell (21:3). The two motets by Morales are not common, for while Exaltata est was made by Wolfgang Schäfer (13:3), the Regina caeli is not the same as a setting made by James O’Donnell (17:3). A real find is Clemens non Papa’s motet, which also seems to be a first recording, sadly overlooked until now.


The ensemble of six mixed voices was formed in Norway a decade ago. They give strong interpretations of the music. The moods are varied and the group is involved throughout. There were two sessions two years apart, with a change of mezzos in the process, but the credits are detailed and the ensemble is pictured once with each mezzo. While we hear so many discs from the provinces focused on local repertoire, this is a refreshing example of Norwegians singing repertoire from another part of Europe. It arouses curiosity about their next program.


FANFARE: J. F. Weber
This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

Classical Music

Rustem Hayroudinoff follows up the critical success of his recent disc of Rachmaninov's complete Preludes for solo piano with this recording of Rachmaninov's complete works for cello and piano. He is joined on this disc by Alexander Ivashkin, one of today's most distinguished cellists, who has made an enormous contribution to the Chandos catalogue with his benchmark recordings of his native Russian repertoire. Recorded in: St Michael's Church, Highgate, London 2-4 April 2003 Producer(s) Rachel Smith Sound Engineer(s) Jonathan Cooper Michael Common (Assistant)

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

" There is no pianist better equipped to carry the Billy Mayerl revival forward than Eric Parkin—unless it is Mayerl himself, whose 78s are not as available in transfers as they should be...He employs the strict rhythm arising from dance music which the composer often specifies, he understands the piano style—lyrical but fairly dry, and he plays with real musicianship without apology for music which makes friends through being easy on the ear. ...Parkin's delivery is as polished as a fine Mozart player: every phrase feels just right...these are stylish and ideally satisfying interpretations: Mayerl enthusiasts will need all three volumes"
- Peter Dickinson, GRAMOPHONE

Billy Mayerl was one of the most brilliant figures in British musical life between the two World Wars – a kind of English Scott Joplin of the novelty rag, a King of Syncopation as composer, pianist, educator and celebrity. His compositions include novelties deriving from ragtime as well as more lyrical pieces which place him in the English tradition of Edward German or Eric Coates, but also of Cyril Scott, John Ireland or early Frank Bridge. In the decades after his death, his reputation went into a decline. The 1990s saw a revival of interest in his work. His centenary was marked with a spate of recordings, largely from Eric Parkin, and Mayerl was a Radio 3 Composer of the Week in December 2002.

These immensely popular recordings are available now at mid-price.

Mayerl’s playing reached a vast audience in solo spots during broadcasts by the Savoy Havana Band in the early twenties and it was so popular that there were demands from both amateurs and professionals for instruction in fashionable modern syncopation. In 1926, therefore, Mayerl left the Savoy and opened the Billy Mayerl School of Music which flourished until the Second World War. His recordings are now classics, astonishing as live performances in the days when 78s did not allow for the editing assumed today. But Eric Parkin comes as close as anyone to the style, and his experience as a performer of both classical and popular music goes back to the time when Mayerl was still alive.

Mayerl was swept up in an endless round of touring shows, music halls and broadcasts, which never gave him time to record more than a small proportion of his output which totalled some 300 separate pieces apart from eighteen studies and over 120 transcriptions. Almost half of the latter were done for teaching purposes and appeared in the Billy Mayerl Club Magazine, which clocked up more than 2000 member subscribers between 1934 and 1939. They are ingenious recreations of popular songs in Mayerl’s own personal piano style. Mayerl also wrote scores for several frothy West End musical comedies in the 1930s, including many successful songs. There are also orchestral pieces, not all scored by Mayerl, which confirm his place somewhere between the English pastoral tradition and the Ealing studio film music of the period. During his lifetime there were distinctions between dance music, jazz, light music and the classical scene, which his work confusingly overlapped. Now crossover is legitimate; Mayerl has been taken up by a variety of pianists, usually classical, not all of whom can cope with this technical demands; and at last his delightful music is recognised and accepted on its own terms.

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

Svendsen is undergoing a mini-renaissance at the moment. CPO and Naxos have devoted some volumes to his symphonic and orchestral compositions, and now Chandos comes along with the first volume (of four) in its orchestral series.

One thing for which Svendsen has always been saluted is his masterful orchestration. It’s rich but not upholstered, characterful without being garish. In most respects it’s perfectly suited to his material. That in the first volume is well selected to show the variety of source material available to him, and almost everything was written in the 1870s, around the time when the composer was in his mid 30s.

Karneval in Paris is genial and high-spirited. Looking at the score over the composer’s shoulder a friend said to him; ‘It looks amusing’ and sauntered off. Indeed, it is amusing in its capricious and romantic moments, and the friend – Richard Wagner, no less – was perfectly right. Svendsen always paces his paragraphs with perception, and here, as elsewhere, one feels the music just the perfect length. I would only add that the work seems to me more Carnival than Parisian. Efficient, taut but not especially emotive Romeo and Juliet demonstrates Svendsen’s professional skills. It doesn’t draw out much in the way of sub-surface depths but is assuredly competent. A wholly different work is the Fest-Polonaise of 1873. This is a big, swaggering affair, brassy and percussion-rich with an eye for lissom decorative writing too.

Another of his bigger ten-minute studies is Zorahayda derived from a story by Washington Irving on a Moorish theme. This is one of Svenden’s ‘legendary’ topics, and his wistful, superbly illustrative response is one of the finest things here. There’s a role for solo violin, and plenty of fertile and imaginative colour and atmosphere. Neeme Järvi directs with apt sympathy. I wonder if anyone remembers the old LP recording of this made by Grüner-Higge with the Oslo Philharmonic?

The two Norwegian Rhapsodies are by turn bucolic, avuncular and stirring – and the leisurely central panel of the Second is especially lovely. Träume is arranged from Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder whilst The Girl’s Sunday on the Mountain Pasture (Sæterjentens Søndag) is a newly harmonised version of an original by Ole Bull. Another tiny example of the warmth of his timbral imagination comes in the shape of the folk song Last year I was Herding Mountain Goats (I Fjol gjætt’e Gjeitinn).

Thus several facets of Svendsen’s art can be appreciated here; legend, tone poem, orchestrations, folksongs, rhapsodies, and a juicy polonaise. The recordings bloom very nicely and the Bergen orchestra plays with polish and enthusiasm. These are pretty much front-runners now, but the historically minded should still hang on to that Odd Grüner-Hegge disc as well as Øivin Fjeldstad’s Oslo recordings of Svendsen’s music. Outclassed sonically, they still rank high in the discography, but CD-minded listeners will be delighted with the new Chandos series.

-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International

Recorded in: St Jude on the Hill, Hampstead, London 7-8 April 1987, 27-28 November 1987, 16-17 December 1988, 19-22 June 1989, 9-10 October 1989, 8-9 November 1990 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Ralph Couzens Tim Oldham Sound Engineer(s) Ralph Couzens Richard Lee Ben Connellan (Assistant) Janet Middlebrook (Assistant) Peter Newble (Assistant) Peter Sheldon (Assistant) Philip Couzens (Assistant)