Classical Music

This excellent disc is a curious mixture of rejected, real and reconstructed Janá?ek. Jealousy started life as an overture to Jenufa but was abandoned during rehearsals. The short Violin Concerto is a by-product of his opera From the House of the Dead. The Danube was on Janá?ek's desk at the time of his death having been in an off-and-on state for several years. These last two have been put into a performable state by Leoš Faltus and Miloš Št?dro?. Some details of how they proceeded with their reconstruction are given in John Tyrell's informative notes.

The remaining three works, Blaník, The Fiddler's Child and Taras Bulba, well over half the disc, are fully the work of the composer. If one ignored all this and just listened one would probably remain unaware that anything was not purely the work of this remarkable early twentieth century genius.

The disc opens with Jealousy and one is immediately aware of the very best Chandos surround sound and of music being performed by an orchestra of the utmost virtuosity in the very best, colourful Eastern European style. The woodwinds shrill, the brass cuts through the texture, the timpani hammer out rhythmic patterns, the strings manage both to sing and shout as required. These are Janá?ek performances of the very finest. It is quite astonishing that this sound comes from a Norwegian orchestra based among the fjords of north-western Scandinavia and directed by the British conductor Edward Gardner. I could really stop there because the rest of the programme is at least as good. However, a few more details. James Ehnes produces the most lovely clean and pure sound in the beautiful Violin Concerto, which, linked as it is to the wonderful prelude of The House of the Dead, is both passionate and soulful, covering much emotional ground in its short 12 minutes. The Ballad of Blaník is a dramatic eight minutes describing the transformation of a band of knight's weapons of war into farm implements. It's derived from a nineteenth century pacifist poem — a tale well suited to Janá?ek's deeply humane beliefs. The Fiddler's Child depicts a scenario involving the ghostly kidnapping of a child's soul. This provides the composer with multiple opportunities for operatic writing sans voices. In his unfinished symphony The Danube he actually introduces a single voice singing without words, the soprano becoming another instrument in his orchestra. This work is perhaps more interesting than satisfying, but it is worth hearing. Finally on the disc is his great masterpiece Taras Bulba, a three movement epic symphonic poem on a bloodthirsty tale of death and revenge. It uses not only a large orchestra but also the organ, employed to earthshaking effect especially at the very end. Those with a sub-woofer in their system will be glad they bought it. It is interesting to note that the impressive Grieghallen organ is not a pipe organ but is in fact an electronic instrument built to the hall's specification by UK organ builder Copeman Hart and installed in 2005, a fact omitted from the otherwise thorough booklet notes.

– Dave Billinge, MusicWeb International

For the second volume of the music of Eric Coates, John Wilson has built his programme around three contrasting ‘major’ works. The Suite Summer Days was premiered in October 1919, shortly after Henry Wood had fired Coates from his position as lead viola in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra. An immediate hit, the suite received rave reviews and many more performances. It was recorded in 1926, Sir Edward Elgar telling Coates that he had played it so often that he had worn out the album! The Selfish Giant, from 1925, based on Oscar Wilde’s story, was the first in a series of highly successful musical retellings of fairy tales. The Enchanted Garden originated in a commission from the Swedish Broadcasting Company. Although he described The Enchanted Garden as a ballet, Coates conceived it principally as a concert work. Composed in June and July 1938, it was premiered in a BBC radio broadcast in November that year, immediately before Coates took it on tour to Stockholm. Of the other, shorter pieces on the album, Calling All Workers is arguably Coates’s best-known work, composed in the summer of 1940 and dedicated ‘to all who work’. The march was adopted by the BBC as the signature tune for their new daily radio show ‘Music While You Work’, and was heard twice daily for twenty-seven years – clocking up more than 16,000 broadcast performances.

REVIEWS:

The second volume in John Wilson’s Eric Coates edition for Chandos reprises the excellence to be found in the first. Wilson has recorded much Coates for other labels but to find him return to the repertoire in a more formalized way is especially good news.

– MusicWeb International

Wilson has been a Coates champion for decades and has the natural lightness of touch to make these works, including a substantial ballet, The Enchanted Garden, and an Oscar Wilde-based phantasy, The Selfish Giant, sparkle.

– Sunday Times (UK)

BARBER Piano Concerto. COPLAND Piano Concerto. GERSHWIN Piano Concerto • Xiayin Wang (pn); Peter Oundjian, cond; Royal Scottish Natl O • CHANDOS 5128 (SACD: 75:44)


Let’s get this out of the way: this combination of a Chinese pianist, Canadian conductor, and Scottish orchestra delivers some of the most vibrant and stylish takes on these American piano concertos you are likely to hear anywhere. The soloist, Xiayin Wang, delivers the goods with a winning combination of taste and dazzling technique. She resists the temptation to showboat; she has the chops to make the Gershwin a virtuoso blowout, but instead respects, and trusts, the integrity of the score. As someone who still believes that there is such a thing as a nationalistic style in classical music performance, I am going to risk describing Wang as a member of the contemporary Chinese school of pianism, characterized by phenomenal technique anchored by a rock-solid rhythmic control, bright tone, and a big sound that is related to the immense influence of Russian teachers on Chinese pedagogy. The obvious exponents of such a “school” include Lang Lang, Yundi Li, and Yuja Wang.


This approach is ideal for much of the music on this disc. It even brightens up the rather leaden Barber Concerto, which is usually heard in a more darkly brazen manner. Her way with the Copland (a fine early work by the American master that is inexplicably underplayed), which exhibits a delightfully jazzy bent by the composer, and the beloved Gershwin, is utterly captivating and completely idiomatic.


Peter Oundjian, who I have enjoyed hearing in live performance a number of times, seems to me to be an unappreciated conductor. He has an excellent ear for balance and color, but is not an especially flashy musician, which, in the world of high-octane orchestral performance, does not take one to the front of the public stage. This recording reminds me why I admire him; he and his soloist find natural, flowing tempos, excellent clarity of texture, and attractive highlighting of the fine soloists in this world-class ensemble. Add the usual fine engineering from Chandos and you have yourselves a winner of a release.


FANFARE: Peter Burwasser

SUPPÉ Overtures: Leichte Kavallerie; Boccaccio; Pique-Dame; Dichter und Bauer; Das Modell; Isabella; Die schöne Galathée; Ein Morgen, ein Mittag und ein Aband in Wien. Boccaccio-Marsch. Humoristische Variationen. Marziale nach Motiven aus der Operette “Fatinitza.” Über Berg, über Thal. Juanita-Marsch • Neeme Järvi, cond; Royal Scottish Natl O • CHANDOS 5110 (SACD: 79: 42)


If your familiarity with Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé Demelli (Franz von Suppé to most of us) is limited to the Overtures to Light Cavalry and Poet and Peasant , then this disc is for you. It can be summed up in two words: GREAT FUN! Thirteen numbers spanning half a century (1844-1895) make up this 80-minute program, and few will disappoint. Right from the opening trumpet fanfare of Light Cavalry —bright, boisterous, splendidly assured—one senses that this disc is going to be a total delight. Tight rhythms, crisp articulation, immense verve, and Chandos’s vividly brilliant sound inform every number.


Unless you are already a die-hard Suppé fan, there are bound to be joyful surprises at every turn. The coda to the Queen of Spades Overture will have you positively jumping out of your seat and cheering with exhilaration. The March after Motifs from Fatinitza (arranged by the 20th-century Max Schönherr) is curiously reminiscent of the March from Beethoven’s Ruins of Athens . Listeners who know Brahms’s Academic Festival Overture will recognize one of its themes in the Humorous Variations , although it should be remembered that Suppé’s overture preceded Brahms’s by more than 30 years. And make no mistake, there is humor aplenty in Suppé’s work.


Exclusively Suppé discs are not common. Those that exist are almost all devoted only to the overtures, and I haven’t found any released since 2001, when Marco Polo issued Vol. 6 of its Suppé Overtures series (Volumes 1, 2, 4, and 5 have been reviewed in Fanfare 18:4, 18:6, 19:4, and 22:6). That makes the present item under consideration all the more welcome as it includes four marches and a variation set in addition to eight overtures, some well known, others not.


Extensive program notes by Calum MacDonald about each work add further sparkle to this outstanding release. Definitely a Want List candidate.


FANFARE: Robert Markow

The exhilarating conductor Kristjan Järvi exploits the style and panache of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in a festive programme of works by the American John Philip Sousa, ‘The March King’. This follows the spectacular recording of works by Julius Fu?ík, made by Neeme Järvi, Kristjan’s father. Including such famous pieces as The Stars and Stripes Forever (National March of the USA), Semper Fidelis (Official March of the US Marine Corps), and The Liberty Bell (theme tune for Monty Python's Flying Circus), this album is a celebration in its own right, enhanced by brightly coloured sound captured in high-quality surround-sound.

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REVIEW:

This fun album mixes the familiar — the thunderous trombone scales and tootling piccolo descants of The Liberty Bell (of Monty Python fame), The Washington Post, and The Stars and Stripes Forever — with elegant extracts from such forgotten operettas as The Irish Dragoon and El Capitan. It’s an infectious selection.

– The TImes (U.K.)

In this fourth volume in their Richard Rodney Bennett series, John Wilson and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra turn to his Piano Concerto, commissioned by the John Feeney Trust for the CBSO and written in 1968. A chance meeting with Stephen Kovacevich provided Bennett with a willing soloist, and the work was premiered in Birmingham in September that year. The fellow composer Anthony Payne’s judgment was unequivocal: ‘It’s a bloody good work.’ The soloist here, Michael McHale, gives a virtuosic performance which certainly lives up to that judgment. Commissioned in 1982 for the sixtieth anniversary of the BBC, Anniversaries is the other major work on this recording. A brilliantly virtuosic concerto for orchestra, the eleven-section work loosely follows the form of a theme and variations, although it also shows glimpses of a symphonic structure. Dedicated to his close friend Irwin Bazelon who was also sixty that year, the score is a playful and joyous celebration, as well as an orchestral tour de force. In the 1990s, his decision to quit smoking led Bennett to experience a serious creative block. He found a route out of this by immersing himself in English baroque and mediaeval music. The Country Dances (Book 1) are based on folk dances from John Playford’s anthology The English Dancing Master. Troubadour Music was written for John Mauceri’s final season at the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, and is based on the thirteenth-century minstrel song ‘Volez Vous Que Je Vous Chant’. Recorded in SS.

Andrew Litton’s recent recording of Copland’s Billy the Kid and Rodeo with the Colorado Symphony (BIS, 1/16) was notable for offering the rarely performed complete versions of the ballets. John Wilson, in the first in a series of Copland’s orchestral music for Chandos, opts for the slightly shorter suites as well as that of Appalachian Spring. In doing so, Wilson comes into direct competition with Tilson Thomas and Bernstein, not to mention the composer himself. However, none of these recordings, not even BIS’s excellent multi-channel production for Litton, matches the spaciousness, transparency, and weight of the sound on the new Chandos disc. It’s the finest-sounding recording to have come my way for some time.

REVIEW:

Wilson’s performances are similarly impressive, and he secures superb playing from the BBC Philharmonic. The three ballets receive strongly characterized interpretations, as piquant and affecting in the slower passages as they are punchy and ebullient in the faster ones. The poignancy and rapture of the quieter episodes of Appalachian Spring are also strongly conveyed. I enjoyed listening to this disc enormously.

– Gramophone

This performance replaces the John Eliot Gardiner as my new No. 1 Acis. It’s easy to understand why this brief work was the composer’s most popular during his lifetime: the quick, charming, and eventually touching libretto (probably by John Gay and Alexander Pope, no less) is more than supported by Handel’s crisp, memorable tunes that even at their most sentimental are never maudlin, and at their jolliest are truly toe-tapping.

The Italian opera at the Haymarket had closed and Handel was happy to receive a commission from the Earl of Carnarvon (later Duke of Chandos) to present a “pastoral entertainment” at his country estate. Merrily devoid of superfluous shepherds and nymphs, it tells its bizarre tale of woe with five singers (and an extra soprano for the choruses in this recording).

Christian Curnyn leads with zip and sharp, woody attacks (very few metal strings are used), and there is a spring in the quick movements. “Oh ruddier than the cherry” never has sounded so passive-aggressively witty, recorder obbligato and all–and Neal Davies, once the joking is over, is a dark, cruel Polyphemus as well. Tenor Allan Clayton is the least drippy Acis on disc, and in “Love in her eyes sits playing” sounds utterly enthralled with the love of his Galatea. And who wouldn’t, in Lucy Crowe’s performance, with a cooing “As when the dove”, and a heart-breaking “Heart the seat of soft delight”. Coridon’s “Would you gain the tender creature” never has sounded better than it does here sung by Jeremy Budd. Benjamin Hulett makes a fine, mellifluous Damon.

If you’re uncertain, just listen to the opening three-minute Sinfonia: jolly, with cleanly articulated, rhythmically apt strings and the oboes and recorders toodling along, with its dark coda a masterful 15-second scene change. And the flawless diction of the opening chorus is just a taste of what’s to come. Sound is wonderfully warm and realistic. Buy this.

– ClassicsToday (Robert Levine)

Andrew Haveron and John Wilson deliver a fresh and intensely idiomatic reading of Korngold’s Violin Concerto, coupled with the formidable String Sextet. One of the most sought-after violinists of his generation and a laureate of some of the most prestigious international violin competitions, Andrew Haveron studied in London at the Purcell School and the Royal College of Music. As a soloist, he has collaborated with conductors such as Jirí Belohlávek, Sir Colin Davis, Sir Roger Norrington, David Robertson, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and John Wilson, performing a broad range of well-known and less familiar concertos with many of the finest orchestras in the UK. In 1999 he was appointed first violinist of the internationally acclaimed Brodsky Quartet. In 2007 he was appointed leader of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He joined the Philharmonia Orchestra in 2012, has been the leader of The John Wilson Orchestra since its inception, and in 2013 took up his current post of concert master of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

REVIEW:

Violinist Andrew Haveron comes unusually close to the precise yet sentiment-filled Heifetz (the Violin Concerto's first player) sound ideal. His sheer endurance at the top of the violin's range in the slow movement is especially notable. Players from the Sinfonia of London are heard in the companion work, the teenage Korngold's String Sextet, Op. 10, a terrifically lush slice of prewar Vienna. A very fine Korngold release that should find a place on the shelves and hard drives of lovers of Korngold, film music, and the last, or at least penultimate, bloom of late Romanticism.

– AllMusic Guide (J. Manheim)

Classical Music

Simply unmissable for any fans of this opera, Anglophone or not, Mackerras balances the songful and the sinister with absolute sureness. There is not a weak link in the cast, with Rebecca Evans in particular showing how her voice has bloomed in recent years. Jane Henschel is a frighteningly credible witch: she could be your smiling next-door neighbour.

-- Gramophone [9/2007]


This new Opera-in-English set of Engelbert Humperdinck's wonderful Hansel and Gretel goes straight to the top of the list of recorded performances, along with the Schwarzkopf/Karajan. Charles Mackerras leads a most beautiful reading, fully aware of Humperdinck's debt to and love for Wagner but with a warmth that makes the glorious orchestrations and easy, lovely, folksy melodies flow naturally and gracefully. This is not to say that there isn't excitement--the "Witch's Ride" is thrillingly lumpy and aggressive. Mackerras offers a terrific piece of storytelling in music, and the big burst when the Witch is pushed into the oven is a fine cataclysm, handsomely captured by Chandos' engineers.

David Pountney's translation is always comfortable and mostly understandable, and the cast is blessed with natural actors. Jennifer Larmore at times has been faulted for her hard-edged tone; here, as Hansel--sure of himself, boyish, and charming--she's just right. Rebecca Evans sounds nothing like Larmore and portrays a Gretel both spunky and spooked out. If the children's Evening Prayer ever has been sung more beautifully I certainly don't remember it; absolute obedience to dynamics and an ideal blend of voices make it a few moments of sheer bliss. Jane Henschel's Witch is the tour de force this role had better be, and while she may not be the absolute best on CD (that honor goes to Christa Ludwig on an old RCA recording, a set marred only by Anna Moffo's weird Hansel), she's a master of altering her tone, from cajoling to menacing to utter loathing.

I prefer a lighter-toned Sandman, but Diana Montague cannot be faulted vocally or for her gentle singing, and Sarah Tynan's Dew Fairy is lovely. Rosalind Plowright's Mother is strong (she might have made a good Witch) and Robert Hayward sings the Father's music brightly (Mackerras leads his entrance "Tra-la-la-las" nice and quickly). Orchestra and chorus are superb. This set is a pleasure--the ideal Hansel in English, and perhaps in any language.

--Robert Levine, ClassicsToday.com

The highlight of this sunny, consistently delightful disc comes in the form of 26 Variations on "La folia di Spagna", based on one of the most famous tunes in Western civilization. A veritable "concerto for orchestra", this late (1815) masterpiece offers a compendium of orchestral tricks of the trade, with brilliant sectional writing, echo effects, and solos for everyone, including (alongside more traditional strings and winds) trombones, harp, and even snare drum. Why it's not an orchestral staple even today simply defies the imagination, and aside from a less-than-seductive principal violin solo, it's brilliantly played here.


The remaining works consist of opera overtures and symphonies created from them, in the purest pre-Rossini Italian tradition. Zesty rhythms, lively tunes, and daring wind writing make these pieces a joy from first note to last. The Sinfonia "Il giorno onomastico" and the overtures to Falstaff and Angiolina offer particularly enticing melodies set amid bold splashes of orchestral color. As noted, Matthias Bamert and his London Mozart players do the music proud, though Chandos' recording does not quite solve the problem of recording a small orchestra up close in an overly ample acoustic. Great fun.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Recorded in: 'Kitara' Concert Hall, Sapporo, Japan 8-11 May 2000 Producer(s) Tony Harrison Sound Engineer(s) Mike Hatch

Every Strauss lover needs a recording of this ballet, composed just before (or during) An Alpine Symphony, for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris. The work has suffered from Strauss’ professed lack of interest in the title character, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t work hard to create a successful piece. I mean, who deliberately wants to fail at a Paris premiere by the Ballets Russes? The notion that Strauss just couldn’t handle it because of his own comments about the subject hold no water, at least for me. He was a great composer, and more than that, a consummate professional, and he did his best.

This doesn’t meant that Josephslegende is his best work. The problem it has, and that Strauss had difficulty solving, is musical. Because it’s a ballet, he was forced to impose on his natural polyphonic fluidity a certain rigidity of rhythm, generally in the form of those typical ballet-type percussion ostinatos for the tambourine and its friends, that almost all ballets feature in one form or another. The result can weigh the music down, so what it needs is just what Järvi and company offer here: a reading of exceptional liveliness, lasting under an hour. There are no dead spots, and the climaxes are really exciting as belted out by the Scottish National players. We can also really hear how the music foreshadows the Strauss to come in Die Frau ohne Schatten, especially the “magic” music in the opera involving the character of the Nurse. The work has been gaining some ground lately; who wouldn’t want what is effectively another big Strauss tone poem? Even with fine versions by Sinopoli (DG) and Fischer (Channel Classics), this stands out as perhaps the most vivid of all.

We also get couplings. The early Festmarsch, Op. 1 is both festive and march-like, which is all that need be said about it. The Love Scene from Feuersnot, however, is another story, a gem of an extract from another unjustly neglected mature score. It really ought to be called a “sex scene” rather than a “love scene” for reasons that become completely obvious once you hear it. This literal climax also includes references to The Ride of the Valkyries in the brass which only serve to make Strauss’ intent even more graphic, as well as funny (in case you didn’t know, the opera is a comedy). He must have had a huge laugh over this bit, and you will too.

Excellent sonics in all formats make this a treat for Straussians and the curious, both.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com