Selections recorded January 30 and February 3, 1991.

The Arcadia Quartet reaches the penultimate release in it's acclaimed complete Weinberg string quartets series with this volume, featuring Quartets Nos 3, 9, and 14. As in previous volumes, the works are taken from contrasting periods of Weinberg's compositional development, and so present a varied programme that works in it's own right. Quartet No. 3, composed in 1944, could be considered as the first 'mature' quartet, and is set in three movements. The Ninth Quartet, composed in 1963, dates from his self-described 'starry decade', when his work was championed by a significant group of enthusiastic performers, including Emil Gilels, Leonid Kogan, Kirill Kondrashin, Rudolf Barshai, and the Borodin Quartet. Quartet No. 14 dates from 1978, three years after the death of Weinberg's great friend and mentor Shostakovich: a time when Weinberg was questioning and renewing his artistic identity. The album also includes the short Improvisation and Romance, from 1950.

The passage of time has perhaps been unkind to the English composer Maurice Greene. By 1730 he was one of the most senior musicians in England: Organist at St Paul's Cathedral, Organist and Composer to the Chapel Royal, and Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. When he was appointed Master of the King's Music, in 1735, he held every significant appointment in the Kingdom. Of course, the overwhelming presence of Handel in London at the time most certainly played a significant part in Greene's relative obscurity. His second attempt at oratorio, Jephtha, in 1737, marks the first successful foray by an Englishman in this genre. Brimming with attractively varied airs and choruses, powerfully emotive accompanied recitatives, and spirited orchestral movements, it is an engaging work. Taken from the Book of Judges, chapter 11, the account of Jephtha tells the story of a fearless Israelite warrior recalled from exile to fight for his people, a man not only of great valour but, as it transpires - thanks to an impulsive and fateful pledge - of profound honour, too, destined to assume his place as their worthy ruler. Christian Curnyn directs his Early Opera Company forces with a dazzling cast of soloists: Andrew Staples takes the part of Jephtha, joined by Mary Bevan, Michael Mofidian, and Jeremy Budd.

To follow shortly

To follow shortly

The Gramophone Award-winning Silesian Quartet present a double-album of the complete works for string quartet by compatriot Henryk Gorecki. All three of his numbered string quartets were written late in life - the first in 1988 - and all three were commissioned by the Kronos Quartet. The First Quartet is a single-movement work, based on a sixteenth-century song by Waclaw of Szamotuly. The Second, double the length of the First, is subtitled 'quasi una fantasia' and follows a classical four-movement form, subtly referencing Beethoven. Gorecki completed the Third Quartet (double the length of the Second!) after the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs had catapulted his music to much wider acclaim. It extends to five movements and is considered by many to be one of his greatest compositions. In the 1980s and 1990s, Gorecki composed several collections of choral songs. Five Kurpian Songs is based on folksongs from Kurpie, a region north-west of Warsaw. The composer himself suggested that these works would be effective when performed by a string quartet, and here the Silesian Quartet gives us the world premiere recording of that version.

Edward Gardner's Schubert cycle concludes with the 'Great' Symphony No. 9 in C major. Having (remarkably) composed a symphony a year between 1813 and 1818, the onset of syphilis and it's intrusive treatment seemed to shake the composer's confidence as a symphonist - the Ninth is the only symphony after those first six that he actually completed. This is attributed by many to a wonderful holiday with friends in the high Austrian Alps that seems to have re-ignited his enthusiasm. The nickname 'Great' may originally have arisen to distinguish it from the 'little' C major Symphony (No. 6), but is apt, as the Ninth is on so much greater a scale than any symphony before it, which can run to almost an hour in some performances. The soprano Mary Bevan joins Edward Gardner and the CBSO in a selection of orchestral songs that complete the album. One was orchestrated by Schubert himself, the others are settings by Britten, Berlioz, Brahms, and Reger.

Born in 1984, Krzysztof Meisinger is one of the most fascinating and charismatic classical guitar players of our time, his artistic development having benefited from the profound influence of such teachers and music authorities as Aniello Desiderio (Italy) and Christopher Parkening (USA). His talent compared to that of the pianist Piotr Anderszewski and fellow guitarist Pepe Romero, he has performed all over the globe. Nigel Simeone notes: 'Ranging from traditional songs to one of the leading flamenco composers of the present day, through music inspired by the sights and sounds of Spain from the 1700s to the early 1900s, Meisinger: The Spanish Album presents the guitar as the main protagonist in a programme of arrangements accompanied by strings and percussion: reworkings that are perhaps no more surprising than the music itself, much of it filtered through the creative imaginations of composers from Boccherini to Falla. The string accompaniments on this recording add warmth, colour, and sustaining harmonies to support the guitar, and to these have been added improvised percussion parts - from red-blooded castanets to the delicate, atmospheric sounds of bar chimes. Through all this, the guitar is the eloquent soloist, and the musical embodiment of Spain.'

Born in Belfast and raised in Greater Manchester, the world-renowned trombonist Peter Moore gained international attention at the age of twelve when, in 2008, he became the youngest winner of the competition BBC Young Musician. His early involvement in the brass band culture in Northern England was crucial to his rapid development. Appointed Co-Principal Trombone of the London Symphony Orchestra aged just eighteen, he departed after ten years to focus on his solo career. He has performed concertos with leading orchestras, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and given recitals at venues such as the Koninklijk Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall, in London, and Wiener Musikverein. This album celebrates Peter's life-long association with the brass band movement, with a diverse programme that includes major works such as Gordon Langford's Rhapsody (written for Don Lusher) and the world premiere recording of Simon Dobson's Shift - a trombone concerto written for Peter Moore. Peter also pays tribute to other great trombonists: Arthur Pryor was a soloist with the Souza band, whilst I'm Gettin' Sentimental over You was a huge hit for Tommy Dorsey.

Sinfonia of London and John Wilson start a new series of recordings of works by Sir William Walton with this album featuring Charlie Lovell-Jones as soloist in the Violin Concerto. Lovell-Jones has soloed with major orchestras internationally, broadcasting on radio and television. As leader of the multi-award-winning Sinfonia of London, he has performed at the BBC Proms and recorded numerous albums, and is the winner of a number of significant international competitions. Commissioned by Jascha Heifetz, the Concerto was premiered in 1939, in America, and was enthusiastically received. Inspired by Walton's friend and lover Alice Wimborne, the work is extremely lyrical and passionate in nature, sporting a wild, virtuosic Tarantella as the second movement. Alice was also a driving force behind the inception of Walton's first grand opera, Troilus and Cressida, composed over almost a decade, largely after her untimely death. Here we hear the four-movement orchestral suite compiled in 1987 by Christopher Palmer, at the instigation of Lady Walton and his lifelong publisher OUP. Walton's overture Portsmouth Point is the earliest work on the album, premiered in 1926.

John Wilson conducts a series of orchestral works of his mentor and friend Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, which now reaches Volume 5, featuring three works composed between 1973 and 1989. Son of professional musicians, Bennett demonstrated musical talent from an early age and went on to study with Howard Ferguson, Lennox Berkeley, and later Pierre Boulez. He produced more than 200 works for the concert hall, and fifty scores for film and television. He was also a writer and performer of jazz songs for fifty years. Immersed in the techniques of the European avant-garde via his contact with Boulez, he subsequently developed his own dramatic-abstract style. In later years, he adopted an increasingly tonal idiom. The Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned at the instigation of Brian Priestman, the British chief conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra. It's three-movement structure, closing with a dazzling set of variations, displays the modern orchestra as a virtuoso body of players. His rarely performed cello concerto Sonnets to Orpheus was written for the Edinburgh International Festival, and premiered by Heinrich Schiff. Diversions was a commission from the Haberdashers' Aske's Schools, in north London, to celebrate their tercentenary, in 1990. It was first played by the combined orchestras of all seven schools at a celebration concert in the Royal Festival Hall and the finished work is an exuberantly colourful set of symphonic variations based on the Scottish folksong 'Whistle and I'll come to you, my lad'.

Pablo de Sarasate was born in Pamplona, Spain, and became an acclaimed virtuoso of the violin by the tender age of twelve. The child prodigy was sent away to study at the Paris Conservatoire, and Sarasate spent the rest of his life in Paris. In demand nationally and internationally as a soloist, he was the dedicatee of a large number of important concertos by composers ranging from Max Bruch to Henryk Wieniawski. Lalo's Symphonie espagnole was composed for Sarasate, who gave the Paris premiere, in 1875. The work is laid out in five movements and bristles with Spanish themes, rhythms, and influences, which were very much the vogue in France at that time. Also composed for Sarasate, Saint-Saens' Third Violin Concerto was composed in 1880. Written in his usual clear, refined, almost classical style, the work has endured as the most played of his three violin concertos. The album is completed with Sarasate's own fantasia on Bizet's Carmen - a virtuosic tour de force for the soloist, brilliantly played here by James Ehnes.

Trio Gaspard continues it's acclaimed series of Haydn Trios with this programme of middle and later quartets, designed to be played (and enjoyed) as a standalone programme. As with the previous volumes, the trio include the world premier recording of a piece commissioned to compliment the Haydn's work - in this instance, Trance, by Sally Beamish. The performers note: we should like to highlight just a few examples of the ways in which the inventiveness of his musical materials continues to astound us. The Trio in B flat major for example, opens with a striking combination of opposites: a legato falling scale beginning from what was the highest note on Haydn's piano (F) and a rising arpeggio in short staccato notes climbing up from the bass. After two bars the elements swap places, the staccato arpeggio rising up in the right hand of the piano, while the legato elements continue in the bass. Together, these four bars form a perfectly balanced opening phrase. The character of this beginning feels completely natural and beguilingly elegant, yet it already contains all the main elements out of which Haydn goes on expertly to craft the rest of the movement. In the second movement of this trio, the song-like theme at the beginning is presented with an accompanying bass line. However, Haydn instructs the pianist to play both lines with 'the left hand alone' - a seeming finger-twister which actually lies surprisingly comfortably in the hand. It is an audacious idea and pianistically unique in Haydn's keyboard music.

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



ELGAR (completed/orch Payne) Symphony No. 3. So many true princesses who have gone. 1 Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6 • Richard Hickox, cond; Adrian Partington Singers; 1 BBC Natl O of Wales • CHANDOS 5057 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 70:18)


I never thought it would come to this, but I am beginning to think of Anthony Payne’s realization of Elgar’s sketches for a Third Symphony as my favorite among the three. This didn’t happen suddenly, but over time, and largely thanks to Paul Daniel’s recording—to me the best of the three readings of Andrew Davis, Daniel, and Colin Davis—I have come to realize the enormous fertility of ideas that Elgar packed into those sloppy scraps of manuscript. Payne has worked a wonder, maybe the best reconstruction of a work in the last 100 years, and while we still fight over the inclusion of Mahler’s 10th in the canon, this Elgar No. 3 seems to have been accepted almost from the beginning.


So what has Hickox done to change the landscape? Quite a lot, actually. Though the Colin Davis recording had the wonderfully rejuvenated LSO at its disposal, I have never been happy with the sound that LSO Live conjures up for their releases, though there are certainly some outstanding recordings in that estimable series. It is true that their SACD issues help with the sound somewhat, but not terribly much. Davis’s reading is a good one, convincing to be sure, but not I fear as good as the excellent Daniel, who seems to me to galvanize his forces in a more solid and coherent presentation. (For a pro and con opinion on the Colin Davis, see Peter J. Rabinowitz and Bernard Jacobson in Fanfare 26:2.) But now we have Hickox, whose credentials in Elgar are formidable, even though he has been accused of soft-pedaling the emotional core of the composer. He gives us a performance nearly as adept and astute as the Daniel, and in superior, excellently recorded DSD surround sound (though the Naxos issue is nothing to sneeze at). While I think the BBC Orchestra of Wales a fine band, they don’t quite come up to the finesse of Daniel’s Bournemouth Symphony, which in turn doesn’t quite match Colin Davis’s LSO. But all three are close enough, and the BBC Welsh put on quite a show here, especially in the haunting and ruminative third movement.


So, there you have it. I would not sacrifice Daniel, but I have a feeling that this Chandos may become my recording of choice because of the superior soundstage and beautiful depth and richness of the recorded image. I find myself paying more attention to this work while listening to this recording than any of the others, and Hickox conjures up some magical playing, virile, sensitive, robust, exciting, and all of those other contradictory terms we can apply when listening to almost any Elgar symphony.


But there is a little more; we know that Elgar planned a series of six Pomp and Circumstance marches, yet the sixth was locked away in sketches found both in the British Library and the Royal School of Church Music. The Elgar Will Trust asked Payne to assemble and complete the work in 2005, and it was premiered in 2006 by the BBC Symphony under Andrew Davis. It is a bit of a strange bird in its melodies, but definitely Elgarian, and those fans of the composer will have to have this release, the first recording ever. So many true princesses who have gone is a memorial ode by Poet Laureate John Masefield, originally set to music for the Sir Alfred Gilbert monument to the Queen Mother, Queen Alexandra. The music was meant for band, but all that survives is a sketch for voices and piano. Payne set this piece for orchestra at the 2002 Aldeburgh Festival. It is an interesting work, though by no means the greatest Elgar you may ever hear.


But this Third Symphony just might be. Highly recommended.


FANFARE: Steven E. Ritter

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



From the first bar, you know that this brilliant Chinese-American pianist is the business...she leads from the front throughout to exhilarating effect. If you do not have a recording of the Tchaikovsky, then this is up with the very best; likewise the Khachaturian. Paired together, it’s a no-brainer.

– Gramophone

Tchaikovsky’s second piano concerto No. 2 has never been as popular as his first, and listening to Peter Donohoe, Rudolf Barshai and the Bournemouth Symphony in the former makes such neglect seem almost criminal.

To begin with, it’s worth pointing out that the version played by Xiayin Wang – and by Donohoe and Hough – is the original one. The pianist, composer and conductor Alexander Siloti altered the Andante: in fact the violin and cello solos were removed altogether. The score he published in 1897 also included cuts and changes elsewhere. The Khachaturian concerto is another piece that’s been sidelined in recent years; ArkivMusic list just 15 versions in the current catalog.

The pianist Xiayin Wang, who is new to me, has done well in the concert hall. She certainly makes a good impression at the start of the Tchaikovsky; as for Oundjian, his progress may seem a little sedate after Barshai’s cracking pace. The advantage of a more leisurely approach is that the Scottish band's playing is far more secure than that of their English counterparts. As if that weren't praise enough, the piano is much better balanced and the overall sound - engineered by Ralph Couzens and Jonathan Cooper - is first class.

One has to marvel at Wang's exemplary technique, especially in the concerto's bravura sections; however, she's at her thoughtful, eloquent best in the quieter, more lyrical ones. The lovely, clear piano sound is an added attraction.

Maya Iwabuchi on violin and Aleksei Kiseliov on cello don't eclipse Barshai's illustrious pair; that said, they’re still pure of line and ravishing of tone. Indeed, this RSNO performance has an inner glow that’s most beguiling. Any caveats? Well, the narrative thread is a little hard to discern at times. Then again, it almost snaps in Barshai and Donohoe's wild, coruscating finale. The RSNO aren’t pushed quite so much, and that makes for an orderly yet satisfyingly propulsive sign-off. Both Donohoe and Hough are wonderfully compelling musicians, and their accounts of Tchaikovsky's Op. 44 are indispensable. I'd say Wang's performance is just as desirable; indeed, it’s sure to win her a raft of new admirers.

How does she fare in the Khachaturian, written for and premiered by the great Russian virtuoso Lev Oborin? Well, the start of the Allegro has plenty of brio and bite, but as before this pianist is at her most pliant and persuasive in the concerto's quieter passages. Don't be fooled though, for there's a surprising edge – an unrepentant glitter – to her playing in the extrovert ones that’s just riveting. Her articulation is remarkable and those glorious runs are simply breathtaking. The central movement – what dark, moody woodwinds at the outset – is perfectly poised, shape and momentum assured.

Oundjian and the RSNO deliver a big-boned finale, to which the soloist responds with playing of equal force and weight. That she does so without hiatus or hyperbole is proof of her sound technique and good judgment. Katin is not usurped, but this young pretender almost topples him from his throne. Incidentally, Xiayin Wang's account of this concerto comfortably outclasses that of Constantine Orbelian and Neeme Järvi, also on Chandos.

Xiayin Wang astounds at every turn, as does the recording; a terrific coupling, too.

– MusicWeb International (Dan Morgan)