A most compelling disc.

These choral works by Verdi are overshadowed by his great Requiem Mass and are consequently often overlooked. Maestro Noseda has been doing a first-class job in Manchester from 2002 as principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Sadly his final appearance as their chief conductor was on 16 April 2011 in a concert performance of Verdi’s Otello at the Bridgewater Hall. Noseda will become conductor laureate of the BBC Philharmonic.

For these choral scores Noseda has turned to all-Italian forces. The soloists are renowned Milanese soprano Barbara Frittoli and Genoa-born tenor Francesco Meli. The feature work is the Four Sacred Pieces - a score with three or four fine alternative versions in the catalogue but it certainly hasn’t been recorded anywhere near as often as its quality deserves.

Soon after working on The Force of Destiny in 1862 Verdi composed the dramatic cantata the Hymn of the Nations. It was the intended as the Italian entry for the International Exhibition in London in 1862. The score calls for tenor soloist, referred to as ‘The Bard’ in the text, sung by Francesco Meli, a four-part mixed chorus and orchestra. It is a setting of words by Arrigo Boito, the librettist especially noted for Otello and Falstaff. It did not actually feature at the International Exhibition but when performed (with a soprano soloist) in London it was to considerable acclaim. This celebratory work sung with tremendous fervour includes references to France and Italy. In deference to Queen Victoria there is a verse of ‘ God Save the Queen’ at the conclusion.

To mark Rossini’s death in Paris in 1868 Verdi suggested that the composers of Italy should unite in honour of Rossini. A scheme was hatched that each composer would collaborate gratis and contribute part of a Messa per Rossini to be performed once only at Bologna on the first anniversary of Rossini’s death. Initial performance preparations were put in place. However, the collaborative project experienced several difficulties and never came to fruition. Verdi’s contribution was the closing section the Libera me, Domine cast for soprano solo, four-part mixed chorus and orchestra. Verdi later reused the Libera me Domine for his great Requiem Mass ( Manzoni Requiem) with a few alterations necessary from the original to ensure a good fit.

Verdi’s Four Sacred Pieces were actually premièred as three Sacred Pieces in 1898 in Paris. Verdi dropped the Ave Maria from the performance. The Ave Maria was performed as part of the set later that year in Vienna. Its four panels can be summarised as follows:-

i. Ave Maria on an ‘enigmatic scale’ harmonised for four-part mixed chorus a cappella, in Latin
ii. Stabat Mater for four-part mixed chorus and orchestra, in Latin.
iii. Laudi alla Vergine Maria (text taken from Canto XXXIII in Paradiso of Dante’s Divine Comedy) for four-part women’s chorus a cappella, in Italian.
iv. Te Deum for double mixed chorus and orchestra, in Latin.

I have several versions of the Four Sacred Pieces including accounts from the Berlin Philharmonic and the Ernst Senff Chamber Choir/Giulini on Sony, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir/Gardiner on Philips and the Berlin Philharmonic and the Swedish Radio Choir and Stockholm Chamber Choir/Muti on EMI. Most outstanding of all is the version from Carlo Maria Giulini with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus on EMI Classics. Produced by Walter Legge, this was recorded in 1962 at London’s Kingsway Hall. My current copy is the wonderful sounding 2010 reissue on the EMI Classics, Masters series titled Great Classical Recordings. The coupling is Giulini’s justly famous 1963-64 Kingsway Hall account of the Requiem on < EMI Classics 6 31821 2.

The Ave Maria for unaccompanied mixed chorus is a haunting score. Noseda’s Teatro Regio Chorus is attractively toned and sing well. Giulini takes the tempo a little slower than Noseda. I immediately noticed the superior sound from the refined and highly unified Philharmonia Chorus. Giulini’s women’s choir sound remarkably angelic with the men’s choir providing a sturdy foundation.

The substantial Stabat Mater is highly dramatic with Noseda’s Turin forces contributing a sparkling and buoyant performance. Giulini’s Philharmonia chorus is noticeably more powerful with singing of considerable weight together with resounding orchestral accompaniment. Giulini’s climaxes remain quite awe-inspiring - spine-tingling stuff. The glowing string sound from the Philharmonia also takes the ear. Remarkable too is a glorious hushed quality to the Amen.

Probably the most immediately appealing of the set is the lightly textured and captivating Laudi alla Vergine Maria for unaccompanied women’s chorus. Noseda’s Turin choir offers attractive singing and is stirring on occasions. Giulini’s choir with their impeccable unity sounded angelic. Here Giulini takes a slightly quicker pace than Noseda.

For mixed chorus and orchestra the Te Deum is the lengthiest piece and the most complex of the set. It is generally acknowledged as containing the finest writing - best appreciated after several plays. The piece also includes the set’s only part for solo voice. Noseda’s Turin choral forces are in excellent voice sounding particularly reverential. They take great care over the meaning of the text. The Turin brass sound thrilling and I was struck by the gleaming timbre of the strings. For Noseda soprano Barbara Frittoli is suitably pious in her small solo part. A little quicker than Noseda, Giulini’s stunning interpretation feels weightier and has additional vitality with breathtaking climaxes. The orchestral accompaniment from the Philharmonia shines through - especially the brass - to grand effect. Janet Baker can be heard singing serenely towards the conclusion.

The final score on the Chandos release is Mary the Virgin of the Angels, the concluding chorus with Leonora from act II of the opera The Force of Destiny (1861/2). Verdi’s librettist for the opera was Francesco Maria Piave.

Renowned soprano Barbara Frittoli has pleaisng clarity of diction combined with a most glorious tone. The pronounced wobble on her sustained notes may prove a distraction for some. In the Libera me Domine from the Mass for Rossini Frittoli remembers appropriately that she is not singing in a Verdi opera and is suitably reverential. I was highly impressed with Francesco Meli, a clear-toned tenor with a top register that reminded me a little of Pavarotti. Meli’s voice is sufficiently powerful to soar over the chorus in the Hymn of the Nations.

The Chorus of Teatro Regio of Torino is in impeccable form: heartfelt, reverential and decisive. I found them especially rousing in the Hymn of the Nations and tenderly devout in the Stabat Mater and Laudi alla Vergine Maria. With notable unanimity and potency the Teatro Regio Orchestra respond with conviction to Maestro Noseda’s thoughtful promptings.

The Chandos presentation is to the high standard that we have all come to expect. I was impressed by the quality of the booklet notes which included a fine essay and full texts with English translation. The sound quality is reasonably clear, however, I was a touch uncomfortable with the brightness of some of the forte passages. This is a compelling disc and reminds us again that every Noseda disc is worthy of investigation.

-- Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International

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

Late Romantic composer Josef Suk, Antonín Dvorak’s son-in-law, wrote a substantial body of works, many of them bold and ambitious and deserving of a place in the modern repertory. Suk has no greater champion today than his Czech compatriot, Jiri Belohlávek. Following up his previous Chandos release coupling Suk’s Symphony No.1 with Ripening, here Belohlávek presents two substantial symphonic poems, again with ‘his’ BBC Symphony Orchestra – the excellent studio recordings were made in January 2012, eight months before he was due to stand down as the orchestra’s Chief Conductor of six years.

Suk’s best known orchestral work, the mournful Asrael Symphony, was written in memory of Dvorak and his daughter Otilka – Suk’s wife – whose deaths within months of each other in 1904 devastated the composer. The double tragedy occurred while Suk was already planning a new piece, one which subsequently reflected his acute loss. Prague, Suk's Op. 26, was conceived as a symphonic poem dedicated to the Czech capital, incorporating elements of its rich, sometimes turbulent, history and reflecting its mystical allure. The finished 25-minute work conveys pride in his home city, but there is poignant sorrow in a love-theme originally written during his courtship to Otilka.

From the super-hushed atmospheric opening, shimmering strings representing the mist-shrouded Vltava River, through the swashbuckling Hussite horn calls and vivid battle scenes, to the triumphant conclusion with spine-tingling organ, Belohlávek inspires a performance of total commitment. The orchestral sound may not be distinctively Czech, but the vibrant playing is full of character and brings the work alive brilliantly, compensating for a lack of musical development in its most programmatic passages.

They bring the same dedication to A Summer's Tale, an hour-long, five-movement symphonic poem from 1907, the second of a four-part reflective cycle encompassing death and the meaning of life. More positive than the bleakness of Asrael, it explores the healing powers of nature through an enthralling score that fuses epic, Mahler-ian romanticism with adventurous forays into impressionism (Debussy's La Mer had premiered in Paris two years earlier). B?lohlávek and the BBC SO make a powerful and impassioned case for this intense work, one that deserves to be much wider known.

– Graham Rogers, BBC Music

The symphonic output of George Antheil, the self-proclaimed ‘bad boy of music’, is further investigated by the BBC Philharmonic and its Chief Guest Conductor, John Storgårds, in the second album of the series. Following his early experimentations with modernist ideas as an enfant terrible in 1920s Paris, the stylistic trajectory of his symphonies over the next decades mirrors his self-confessed desire to learn more orthodox compositional techniques. This album explores two more of his symphonies: Symphony No. 3 (compl. 1946), only one movement of which was performed during Antheil’s lifetime, and Symphony No. 6 (compl. 1950), in which the influences of Shostakovich and Ives make themselves heard. Completing this exciting album from the BBC Philharmonic and Storgårds are two lively symphonic pieces, Archipelago (1935) and Hot-Time Dance (1948), and a re-orchestration into a concert waltz of music from the strikingly eclectic score to Specter of the Rose (1946). This film tells the gripping story of a male ballet dancer suspected of having murdered his first wife and of being on the verge of dispatching his second in the same manner.

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REVIEW:

Antheil’s sound world comes vividly alive with the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds’ perceptive and idiomatic leadership. For the most part, Storgårds’ interpretations are comparable to those in Hugh Wolff’s standard-setting CPO Antheil cycle. They also boast a small sonic advantage in that Chandos’ engineering captures first-desk soloists and string tuttis at closer range, in contrast to CPO’s slightly diffuse concert hall realism.

– ClassicsToday (Jed Distler)

This exceptional recording gathers the finest young vocal talents in a unique program of songs by Sullivan, many of them very rarely recorded. Currently widely acclaimed for key operatic title roles in the UK and abroad, the "deeply touching, outstanding" (The Guardian)soprano Mary Bevan, the "elegant yet intense, impeccable" (The Guardian) tenor Ben Johnson, and the "increasingly impressive" (The Financial Times) bass-baritone Ashley Riches - who here appears on Chandos for the first time - span fifty years of Arthur Sullivan's large non-operatic vocal output. They are accompanied by the UK pianist David Owen Norris, who regularly appears in highly praised concerto performances at the BBC Proms. This album continues to celebrate the Shakespeare anniversary but also presents a wide variety of poets, drawing on texts from a vast range of sources, through the voices of today's greatest rising stars.

Following a highly praised recording of Symphony No. 1 last year, Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony present here an electrifying interpretation of Elgar’s Symphony No. 2, with the addition of one of his most performed works: the Serenade for Strings. Having now become experts in British repertoire with highly lauded series of Walton and Britten, they reveal all the aspects of Elgar’s masterpiece in this surround sound recording. Symphony No. 2 is richly orchestrated and skillfully constructed, drawing on hugely varied resources of harmony, rhythm and melody, and making considerable use of thematic transformation as a unifying technique. While the Symphony No. 2 is one of the greatest products of Elgar’s maturity, the Serenade in E minor for Strings is perhaps the most charming product of his youth. In this three-movement piece dominated by a deeply passionate Larghetto, the strings of the BBC Symphony superbly encapsulate all the emotions offered by this graceful work: tender lyrical and intense.

Classical Music

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

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

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

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

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

Classical Music

Deeply committed to world premiere performances and recordings of new music, the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra is under the direction of Clark Rundell, with guest conductor Mark Heron. Robert Russell Bennett is best known for his orchestrations for over three-hundred musicals between 1920 and 1975. His rich career left us a heritage of more than two-hundred original compositions, more than thirty of which were written for wind band.

In his final year as BBC Philharmonic’s Chief Conductor, Juanjo Mena completes a highly-acclaimed Ginastera series with this third volume. Like in his previous series ‘La Musica de Espana,’ Mena brings the composer’s creative genius to a more deserved fame, showcasing here three works that belonged to three different periods of his compositional life. While the Concierto Argentino is the most significant score of his early years, drawing directly on Argentinian folk music and full of youthful exuberance, the Variaciones Concertantes (more a concerto for orchestra than a set of variations) assumes a more personal and abstract form in accordance with the development of his harmonic ideas in the later stage of his life. The rhythmic energy and magic scoring of the ‘neo-expressionist’ piano concerto (as Ginastera defined the third phase of his life) is faithfully expressed by the highly technical and virtuosic playing of Xiayin Wang, widely praised for her recent solo recording of piano works by Enrique Granados.

For its very first excursion on Chandos, the Crouch End Festival Chorus presents a landmark recording of J.S. Bach's St. John Passion sung in English - the first for over forty-five years. With communicative zeal, beautiful articulation, and focused energy, this choir of more than 100 voices lends precision and power to the performance alongside the instruments of the Bach Camerata, one of the finest UK baroque orchestras, all under the inspired direction of David Temple. The essence of the work is the conveying of a human story underpinned by the universal themes of love, betrayal, loss, and hope. The performance in English allows the drama and visceral energy of the work to go straight to the heart of the English-speaking listener. The narrative is immediately understood, and the power of the storytelling imbues Bach's music with extra freshness and meaning. Thanks to an array of superb soloists and orchestral musicians, the new recording brings those qualities together in a performance which will present a well-loved piece in a completely new light, and appeal to existing and future generations of music-lovers alike.

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REVIEW:

One will struggle to find more committed, well-balanced, agile and crisp singing than that of the Crouch End Festival Chorus, who are on top form throughout. Frankly none of the soloists could be bettered, nor the superb continuo team. Congratulations to all concerned on producing such a buoyant, absorbing, and sonically thrilling recording.

– Gramophone

Founded in 1983, regularly giving more than sixty concerts a year, and having performed in over forty different countries, the Schubert Ensemble is firmly established as one of the world’s leading exponents of chamber music for piano and strings.

The Ensemble here performs Piano Quintet No. 2, which is arguably one of Dvorák’s greatest and most popular chamber pieces, thanks to its memorable melodies and sheer panache. The composer took great pride in his country, in his people, their character and cultural heritage, all of which is evident in this work. In the words of the late British Dvorák scholar John Clapham: ‘[it] probably epitomizes more completely the genuine Dvorák style in most of its facets than any other work of his. Laughter and tears, sorrow and gaiety, are found side by side, as well as many moods that lie between these two extremes. All are presented with consummate mastery, they are decked in a wide range of instrumental colouring, and through the whole sweeps the life-blood of vital rhythm.’

Dvorák wrote his Piano Quartet No. 2 at the persistent request of his publisher Simrock in Berlin, who had long recognised the sales potential of the composer’s music. He was not wrong; the work went on to become one of Dvorák’s most frequently played chamber works. Here, Dvorák revels in taking on both tranquil and stormy moods; the feeling of great joy present in the third movement pre-echoes the sunny disposition of his Symphony No. 8, which was to follow immediately after the Quartet.

The seven songs which make up the cycle Gypsy Songs were written in 1880 to texts by the Czech poet Adolf Heyduk. The fourth, ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me’, is the best known internationally of all Dvorák’s songs. The version heard here, for piano quartet, was arranged by the four core members of the Schubert Ensemble, and is a highly popular encore piece performed at many of its concerts. - Chandos

Classical Music

Recorded in: Grand Hall of Moscow Conservatory 23 September 1998 Producer(s) Igor Veprintsev Sound Engineer(s) Igor Veprintsev