Classical Music

Recent News Tasmin Little has scooped the Critics' Award at the 2011 Classic Brit Awards, held at the Royal Albert Hall, London on 12 May, for her recording of Elgar's Violin Concerto with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis Recent reviews The CD received a string of superlative reviews on its initial release: 'Little tantalises with a winning combination of heartfelt passion and engaging simplicity that radiates beguiling warmth.' Julian Haylock, Classic FM ***** 'For sheer beauty of tone and expressive nostalgia, Tasmin Little and Sir Andrew Davis out-Elgar their rivals.' Michael Kennedy, The Sunday Telegraph 'Tasmin Little's [recording] goes right to the top of the class.' David Mellor, The Mail on Sunday Edward Greenfield in Gramophone ('Editor's Choice') described Tasmin Little's playing as masterly'. The long-awaited and much anticipated recording by Tasmin Little of Elgar's Violin Concerto will be released this November, 100 years after the work's first performance. In concert Tasmin Little is closely associated with this concerto, having celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sir Edward Elgar with performances of it on a major tour to Southeast Asia and Australia in 2007; she has also performed the concerto extensively in London: at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican, and with the Philharmonia Orchestra in the Royal Festival Hall. What makes this recording especially interesting is that she has included the cadenza used in the work's first recording, made in 1916 with Marie Hall. For that occasion, Elgar, amongst other things, added harps to counter the sonic limitations of the acoustic recording process. For those used to hearing the standard version, also included, the result makes for fascinating listening, and the recording will prove a valuable addition to the Elgar discography. The 1916 version of the cadenza has been tracked separately. Tasmin Little: 'I have waited a long time to record the Elgar Concerto, a work that I have been playing for twenty years and one which is so close to my heart. In the inspirational Andrew Davis and the RSNO's commitment, I found exactly the right partnership for this monumental work.' The Violin Concerto is complemented by another piece for violin and orchestra, the charming Interlude from The Crown of India, as well as the rarely recorded but imposing Polonia, an inventive and colourful work incorporating much Polish melodic material. This was commissioned by the Polish conductor Emil Ml~ynarski in 1915 and dedicated to Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the pianist composer and, later, Prime Minister of Poland. Since coming to prominence as a finalist in the string section of the 1982 BBC Young Musician of the Year competition, Tasmin Little has enjoyed an international career, making more than twenty recordings. Highly imaginative in her approach to classical music, she received the 2008 Classic FM / Gramophone Award for Audience Innovation in London for the project 'The Naked Violin'. Whilst she has made superb recordings of the great popular violin concertos, including those by Bruch, Brahms, and Sibelius, she has made a speciality of recording and performing less familiar repertoire, especially neglected British works. On Chandos, she has released a recording of Finzi's Violin Concerto to tremendous critical acclaim (CHAN 9888). Sir Andrew Davis is famous for his performances of British music in general, and of the music of Elgar in particular. Last year he had great success with the premiere recording of Elgar's The Crown of India on Chandos (CHAN 10570(2)). Chandos also has a long association with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Over the last thirty years the label, in partnership with the RSNO, has produced a string of award winning CDs, notable among much else for their sound quality. This new CD, recorded in five-channel surround sound, continues that tradition.

One of the most enjoyable highlights CDs I have heard for a long while.

This is a highlights disc in the Opera in English series by Chandos sponsored by the Peter Moores Foundation.

The opera itself ran for eighteen performances in 1863 and then lay forgotten until after the composer’s death. It was the success of Carmen which prompted the publishers Choudens to re-publish The Pearl Fishers.

The disc under review includes the opening prelude and all the music up to the famous duet for Nadir and Zurga, then Nadir’s Romance, and the final Air with chorus from Act 1; Leila’s Cavatina and the duet with Nadir from Act 2; Zurga’s Air, his duet with Leïla and their scene with the priest Nourabad where they prepare for their execution, from Act 3. So, apart from the very end of the opera, we have the main turning points of the plot represented here.

After the Prelude, the chorus open with their songs and dances and set the festive mood which belies the tragic nature of the opera. After they elect Zurga as their leader, we have the return of Nadir and the recognition scene, leading to the duet ‘ Then, from the holy shrine’ ( Au fond du temple saint). This last is not with the usual ending but the original 1863 version, which comes as quite a surprise to those used to the more traditional one. Both singers deliver the text with clarity, and their voices are well matched. Barry Banks is very Italianate and has none of the traditional ‘French’ sound. Nonetheless he gives an elegant account of the romance with lovely poised pp high notes in each verse. We do without the ‘traditional’ melisma over the orchestral postlude at the end.

The final air with chorus ‘ Brahma the god’ ( Oh Dieu Brahma) rounds off the first act where the priestess Leila, while singing in praise of the god Brahma, recognises Nadir’s voice. Rebecca Evans takes the opening with good legato and the coloratura in the final section is delicately placed. She has the bonus of a real trill.

The Act 2 selection is Leila’s Cavatina beautifully expressing her reawakened love after hearing Nadir. He then makes his way into the enclosure and they are reunited in a rapturous duet declaring their love in spite of the dangers. This is sung by both singers with an ardour fitting with the sentiments expressed.

Act 3 focuses on Zurga’s remorse and then his anger at the events. Simon Keenlyside uses his not inconsiderable skills to convey all the conflicting emotions of this character. This is evident in the duet where he begins sympathetically disposed to Leila, but changes when he learns the true situation of her love towards Nadir. There follows the scene where the two condemned profess their undying love in the face of death.

There are two bonus tracks. The first is a trio attributed to the composer Benjamin Godard, where Nadir and Zurga sing of their love for Leila, who accepts them both. The second is the traditional version of the duet ‘ Then, from the holy shrine’ ( Au fond du temple saint).

The orchestra play extremely well throughout with a good sense of the French style. Brad Cohen never allows the singers to be overwhelmed, and lets them sing well within their capacity so they don’t have to strain to be heard. The chorus give solid support when required and sing with verve and energy in the opening dances. The recording is well balanced with some attempt at perspective: offstage singing, singers moving across the stereo image and the like.

The English translation used here is by David Parry. It is a more modern idiomatic translation than in my old Choudens score, but without the use of very modern TV soap-opera style expressions. The text generally comes across well and is, for the most part understandable, which is a credit to the singers and the listed vocal consultant, Ludmilla Andrew.

The extensive booklet, as usual with these issues, has articles about the opera; a full plot summary of the whole opera; biographies of the singers and conductor - this last in English, French, German, and Italian. There’s also a full English text as sung.

This is one of the most enjoyable highlights CDs I have heard for a long while.

-- Arther Smith, MusicWeb International

The acclaimed violinist Jennifer Pike returns to Chandos to explore her heritage through the repertoire of a group of composers fundamental to the history of Polish music for the violin. From Janiewicz in the late eighteenth century right through to Bacewicz in the middle of the twentieth, Poland produced a number of composer-violinists well known across Europe. All of them were talented musicians as well as composers, their compositions technically demanding. Jennifer Pike here plays music by Karlowicz, Szymanowski, Wieniawski, and Moszkowski with complete control and deep feeling, sympathetically accompanied by Petr Limonov, winner of the Nikolai Rubinstein International Piano Competition.

Gardner directs a superbly perceptive account of Walton's Second Symphony, exhilarating in its purposeful thrust… [M]ake no mistake: with cracking playing from the BBC SO, Gardner's is a conspicuously insightful reading of this underrated score… [A] gem of a disc.

– Gramophone [5/2015]

Edward Gardner conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra in late music by Walton. It follows the success of his recording of Walton’s Symphony No. 1 and Violin Concerto – one of Chandos’ best-selling recordings for 2014. With an air of relaxation that differs from the tension of his previously recorded early works, the music on this album is likely to cause as much excitement.

Walton’s Second (and last) Symphony was commissioned for the 750th anniversary, in 1957 – 58, of the founding of the city of Liverpool, but, delayed by the composition of the Cello Concerto, it was only premiered in 1960. Scored for a large and colourful orchestra, it is based on the same model as the Third Symphony of Albert Roussel, with a similarly compact duration and the use of the key of G minor, and a concentration on angular melodies, sharply dissonant harmonies, and motoric rhythms.

The Cello Concerto was premiered in London in 1957 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra itself. The cello soloist is Paul Watkins, exclusive on Chandos, highly praised as a member of the Emerson String Quartet, but also the Artistic Director, since last year, of the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival of Detroit.

In this piece, the traditional structure of Walton’s earlier concertos – a moderately paced opening movement followed by a central scherzo – ends in a rich finale consisting of a theme and four ‘improvisations’. The concept of ‘improvisation’ occurs again in the last work on the disc, based on the ‘Impromptu’ of Benjamin Britten’s Piano Concerto. - Chandos

Reviews:
Performance ***** Recording ****

"...The needlepoint orchestral precision required by the Second Symphony is seriously demanding: George Szell’s 1961 recording with the Cleveland Orchestra set a standard in this respect that remains exceptional. Yet Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra match them as near as makes no difference, while also searching out much more of the work’s range of expression, memorably so in the sow movement’s dark-toned emotionalism... captured in ultra-clear recorded sound, with just the right amount of surrounding resonance..."

Malcolm Hayes - BBC Music magazine - April 2015

"Lavishly reproduced in surround sound, these accounts of three accounts of three of Walton’s later, compariatively neglected works are as superbly thought out as they are atmospherically recorded..."

Paul Driver - The Times (Culture magazine) - 8 March, 2015

This music could be called pre-Elgarian, since it was composed between 1878 and 1879, well before this late-bloomer had begun to find his distinctive voice. It was designed for a specific group of friends who joined together in an ensemble that was off kilter both in terms of its makeup (two flutes, oboe, clarinet, and bassoon) and in terms of its varying skills (the clarinetist was apparently less fluent than the flutists, while the bassoonist—the composer himself—was just beginning to master the instrument). It was penned under less-than-ideal circumstances, too: according to Jerrold Northrop Moore, cited in Noël Goodwin’s informative notes, the young church-organist composer tossed off much of this music during Sunday sermons.

All of this is apt to seem inauspicious, especially for those who don’t much care even for such “important” early works as the Bavarian Dances or for those who don’t like Elgar’s miniatures more generally. Rest assured: there may be nothing even faintly characteristic of the composer here, but the music is consistently captivating in a way that may bring the wind versions of Rossini’s String Sonatas to mind. No profundity, no sentimentality, no significant aesthetic aspirations, no formal challenges, no real attempt to engage the listener on any but the most superficial level: next to this, even the sunnier moments of the Dvo?ák Wind Serenade seem both monumental and avant-garde. But in its bursts of wit and in its unflagging and self-confident optimism, Elgar’s egregiously old-fashioned tidbits will surely brighten your brunch. These spirited performances, by the players who introduced the music to the wider public, have been staples of the Chandos catalog for years—and for good reason. If you’ve missed them in their earlier incarnations, now is a good time to make their acquaintance.

FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz

This fourth album from Neeme Jarvi and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande explores the music of Jacques Ibert. Although Ibert’s work is starkly contrasting from piece to piece, all of his compositions show his deftness with their strong melodic lines and vigorous ostinato patterns. These recordings were taken in Geneva’s Victoria Hall, and the outstanding acoustics are easily heard on this recording.

Review:

Järvi gives us a darker Divertissement than usual. The humor is mordant rather than breezy, the tone at times acerbic. But the shimmering Nocturne, with its poised piano solo, transports us into a sensual world more fully explored in Escales…, and the latter gets one of its finest performances on disc, superbly nuanced, and quite exquisitely played.

It’s the rest of the CD, though, that makes it special. The Suite symphonique, ‘Paris’ swerves garishly between the mechanism of Pacific 231 and the classiest of foxtrots and waltzes. The sad, haunting Sarabande pour Dulcinée comes from the soundtrack for George Pabst’s 1933 film Don Quichotte. Ibert was also a master of the pièce d’occasion, and Järvi includes the riotous Bacchanale and the grandiose Ouverture de fête.

Ibert emerges from it all as a fine composer, whose unity lies in his almost impudent diversity, and who is often far from frivolous as some have maintained. And the disc allows Järvi to show off his Swiss orchestra to perfection. Very fine.

– Gramophone

Given Tasmin Little’s previous explorations in the studio, it must have been tricky to construct a well-balanced series of British sonatas to record for Chandos. She’s well-known for her Elgar, Delius and Bax, naturally, but there is a body of repertoire she hasn’t yet recorded and her contract has allowed her to investigate more widely. This second disc of her series shows the fruits of that search, not least in the case of John Ireland’s Sonata No.1, the big work here.

In a thoughtful booklet note Little recounts that she had only just got to know the Ireland – not such a surprise as the companion A minor is the preferred port of call. She negotiates its moods, reflections, and tempo adjustments with great skill, abetted by Piers Lane’s astute pianism, and he clearly enjoys the slow movement’s rolled chords and those moments in the finale that sounds like one of Ireland’s impressionist piano miniatures. Ireland himself probably wouldn’t have approved of their tempi - he was a curmudgeon about spaced chords and preferred loftier tempos. Listening to his own recording with Frederick Grinke in 1945 (Dutton CDLX7103) rather makes the point, as they are nearly three minutes slower than the Little-Lane duo.

The duo has known the early Bridge Sonata for a good while now – and it’s not to be confused with the larger and later work. The H39 Sonata dates from 1904 and survives as a torso with the second of its two movements completed by Paul Hindmarsh. The duo plays it with a rich tone. There are, in particular, some finely executed dynamics in the second movement. Arthur Bliss’s own early Sonata, written around 1914-16, was dedicated to Lady Elgar and was edited for performance by Rupert Marshall-Luck in 2010. He indeed gave it the first recording with Matthew Rickard (EMR CD001). The Little-Lane duo is a touch slower and brings out the music’s largely unsullied lyricism and nostalgia with great conviction. The little March motif and the VW-like songfulness coalesce in a sunset close of some real beauty.

RVW himself is represented by his Two Pieces, written at roughly the same time as the Bliss. The Pastorale is the pick, tender and folkloric. The disc ends with William Lloyd Webber’s The Gardens at Eastwell, a premiere recording. It’s a thorough charmer, dolce espressivo, as noted.

This is a classy disc, with fine booklet notes – except for the misspelling of Marjorie Hayward’s surname – and a generously warm acoustic, which precisely reflects the nature of the music-making.

– MusicWeb International (Jonathan Woolf)

The Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra and Neeme Järvi present this unusual collection of popular works by Saint-Saëns, for orchestra and piano or cello. Truls Mork, this season’s Artist in Residence with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, is the soloist in the two contrasted cello concertos. His ‘seemingly flawless technical command’ is tested in the suave, expressive, famous No. 1 as well as in the many taxing solo passages, huge leaps, and double-stopping flourishes of No. 2. The indefatigable duo Louis Lortie and Hélène Mercier join in the posthumously published Carnival of the Animals, after a highly successful recording of Concertos by Poulenc with Edward Gardner, Disc of the Week in The Sunday Times. They offer the original version, which features a glass harmonica (normally substituted by a glockenspiel). Louis Lortie is also the soloist in the entertaining fantasia Africa, which incorporates folk tunes of the different countries in which it was composed and which is brought off with consummate zest, as well as in the most characteristic and probably challenging of the composer’s keyboard pieces, the Caprice-Valse Wedding-cake, written for the second wedding of the composer’s virtuosic pianist friend Caroline Montigny-Rémaury.

Review:

This is one of those recordings where it seems invidious to look for faults and which just encourages you to sit back, relax, listen and wallow. Mørk brings his characteristic incisiveness and mountain-spring tone to the concertos.

The Grande fantaisie zoologique receives one of its most successful performances on disc (sans narrator) with just the right balance of instrumental virtuosity, sensitive musicianship and, where the opportunity presents itself, fun. ‘Le cygne’ is elegantly phrased and gracefully paced.

Lovely program. Lovely recording. What’s not to like?

– Gramophone

Also available: Ginastera: Orchestral Works 2 / Mena, Wang, Manchester Chamber Choir, BBC Philharmonic

Impressive in our ongoing, very successful Spanish music series, the BBC Philharmonic and its chief conductor, Juanjo Mena, also explores the works of the Argentinean composer Alberto Ginastera in three orchestral volumes. Not only acknowledged as a leading South-American composer of his day, Ginastera is also seen as one of the heroes of Latin-American music in general, whose enduring source of inspiration was Argentina itself: its pre-Columbian legacy on the one hand and the vast landscapes of the pampas on the other.

Review:

There is some fabulous solo playing here, not least from the BBC Philharmonic's principal flute…bring on Vol. 2!

– Gramophone

The BBC Philharmonic is in cracking form at the moment…and in Juanjo Mena it has a chief conductor capable of leading it through the dance rhythms and moods of the Spanish-speaking world with gusto and understanding…altogether, this is a thoroughly enjoyable start to what should be a significant series.

– BBC Music Magazine

Review:

The Estonian strings sing their hearts out…the woodwind solos are very lovely, too. Viola-player Mikhail Zemtsov impresses with the sheer beauty of tone.

– BBC Music Magazine

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This album with the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and its artistic director, Neeme Järvi, features two mature works by Bohuslav Martinu, recorded in the splendid acoustic of the Estonia Concert Hall in Tallinn.

One of the most wide-ranging composers of music for the stage, Martinu was also enthusiastic about the theatrical possibilities of including new media in his operas. Špalícek in many ways belongs to this experimental tendency. Although it was published and billed at its first performance as a ballet, it might best be described as an opera-ballet, as alongside the many dances there are extensive roles for chorus as well as tenor, soprano, and bass soloists. Martinu described the work on his manuscript as deriving from folk games, customs, and fairytales.

The lyrical Rhapsody-Concerto was written in 1952, at a time when Martinu was fighting homesickness and depression, worsened by the political situation in his native Czechoslovakia. The work is a marked move toward a more romantic sound world. The soloist here is Mikhail Zemtsov, principal violist of the Residentie Orchestra The Hague since 2001 and a prize winner at the first International Viola Competition (Vienna) and the Elisa Meyer String Competition (Hamburg).

The exploration by Järvi and the ENSO of hidden gems from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has proved highly successful, their recent recording of works by Suchon awarded the Choc de Classica

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

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Chorus conducted by Sir Andrew Davies perform two rarely heard works by Frederick Delius. Appalachia has a somber mood reflecting the fate that overcame many of the black slaves along the Mississippi River. The inspiration for the work came to Delius while he was working on an orange plantation in Florida as a young man. It culminates in the setting of an anonymous slave song which he heard in Florida. In the work, the song is first sung by unaccompanied chorus.

The inspiration for The Song of the High Hills was the mountains of Norway, a country that Delius regarded as his spiritual home. In 1911 he began composing this tone poem, in which he sought to capture the impression created by a still summer night in the Norwegian mountains. Written for large orchestra and chorus, it was completed the following year. The chorus plays an integral part in the work, as it does in Appalachia, although the singing here is entirely wordless.

Recorded in: Grand Hall of Moscow Conservatory November 2000 Producer(s) Valeri Polyansky Sound Engineer(s) Igor Veprintsev

Recorded live on SACD in the sumptuous acoustic of Grieghallen in Bergen, this mind-blowing interpretation of Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder involves 350 performers: large choral forces, six exceptional soloists, and the legendary Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra- extended for the occasion- all conducted by Edward Gardner. Marking the pinnacle of the Orchestra’s 250th anniversary celebrations, the same forces offered two evening concerts that met with unanimous acclaim in the press, including a five-star review from The Daily Telegraph praising the ‘sweep of Gardner’s conducting, by turns luminous and incisive.’ It added, ‘He unleashed the piece’s volcanic passions while never becoming mired in its high-calorific density, and somehow avoided drowning the singers’, and also congratulated the ‘heroic’ Stuart Skelton, ‘warm’ Alwyn Mellor, ‘ethereal’ Anna Larsson, and ‘powerful’ Thomas Allen.

This new Elgar recording brings together some of Cahndos' finest exclusive British artists for the first time. The Doric String Quartet - highly praised for its series of Haydn and Schubert quartets - joins the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Edward Gardner in the "Introduction and Allegro", one of Elgar's masterpieces. Gardner here captures the subtle contrast between the solo quartet and the string ensemble, while also reconciling a wide variety of musical ideas and tempo fluctuations, not least the ever-popular "Welsh" solo viola melody. The full Orchestra then appears in a passionate account of the majestic Symphony No. 1, a much-loved work ever since its premiere in 1906. As well as highly praised Walton and Britten recordings, the enduring relationship between Edward Gardner and the BBC Symphony Orchestra has seen successful series of works by non-British composers such as Szymanowski and Lutoslawski. Edward Gardner is also involved in recording projects with many other orchestras, including the Bergen Philharmonic, the DBSO, and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, his latest collaboration.