This 1994 recording is one of the first Holst collections made by Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia, an orchestra he conducted for thirty-seven years, until his death. Having brought neglected works by Holst to a more deserved fame in the early 1990's, Hickox returned to Holst in 2007, embarking on a new series with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He was recording what would have been the second volume of this new survey when he was suddenly taken ill. While he was never able to finish that second volume himself, the first instalment was released in January, 2009 and seen as a recording triumph.

Alongside its ongoing much-lauded Copland series, the BBC Philharmonic embarks on a new American journey, this time with its chief guest conductor, John Storgards. Known as ‘the bad boy of music,’ George Antheil began his career with a reputation as an enfant terrible, composing shockingly avant-garde works such as his every popular Ballet mecanique, inspired by the dynamism and dissonances of Stravinsky’s early ballets. Although he is well established on the film music scene, too, it is his symphonic output-sampled here- that today survives in the concert hall. This new series documents the evolution of his musical style, which moved towards a fundamentally tonal and melody-based idiom, Antheil joining the growing ranks of famous US symphonists. The war-inspired Fourth Symphony and ‘joyous’ Fifth clearly represent this compositional shift, breaking with what the composer called the ‘now passe’ modernism. Also here is the premiere recording of the Texas-inspired Over the Plains, memorable for its allusions to cowboy music and offering some unexpectedly dramatic and atmospheric twists along the way.

The favourites plus less well known pieces, excellently performed and recorded.

The guiding hand of Richard Hickox and his fellow conductors more or less guarantees high quality and that is what we get. The cheerfulness is never overdone and the Irish Tune from County Derry (popularly known as the Londonderry Air) receives an affecting but not over-sentimental performance. This is far removed from the overdone renditions by the likes of Josef Locke that my father and grandfather revelled in.

The recordings are in Chandos’s best manner: bright but not over-bright. Despite having been made on several different occasions - and in several locations? - there is never any sense of having to adjust aurally between tracks.

It is to be hoped that purchasers will be inspired by this introduction to experiment further with Chandos’s excellent range of Percy Grainger recordings. There are only three vocal items here, but they are just enough to remind us that not all of his output was orchestral: the Chandos catalogue contains both vocal, chamber, instrumental solo and orchestral pieces.

Most of the Grainger here is fun music – this is, after all, the work of the composer seen leaping around fey-like in the classic Ken Russell Delius film – but there is a serious side, too. Listen to his arrangement of Early one morning for the other side of the coin. Even the jolly music is well crafted – clearly, Grainger spent at least some of his time in more serious pursuits. You’ll see from the dates in the headings how often and over how long a period Grainger reworked his music – further details in the Chandos booklet. There is a strong case for placing his arrangements of British folk song on a par with those of Delius – and who else could have taken a tune from Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith and turned it into that jazzy and un-Handel-like piece Handel in the Strand? It takes the likeable cheek of a Mr Toad to do that.

The wind-band writing in the Lincolnshire Posy suite is fully the equal of Holst’s and Vaughan Williams’ and the performance by the Royal Northern College Wind Orchestra every bit as good as that on my favourite recording of the Holst and V-W (London Wind Orchestra/Denis Wick at budget price on ASV Resonance CDRSN3006).

For low-price introductions, the presentation of these CDs has not been skimped, apart from the lack of detail about where and exactly when the recordings were made. Both the Grainger and VW booklets contain helpful information – I hadn’t realised the full story behind the several versions of Country Gardens, for example – with catalogue numbers from the British Folk Music Society, etc., for Grainger and within attractive covers. Is the bicycle on the cover of the Grainger not a little too modern, though, with its plastic reflectors?

At this price, the only serious rival is Chandos’s own even cheaper but shorter 1978 collection from the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and Kenneth Montgomery on CHAN6542 (CD and mp3).

-- Brian Wilson, MusicWeb International

Eugen Suchon (1908-93) was the most influential and respected Slovak composer of the 20th c. This new Chandos CD features the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra and it's artistic director Neeme J�rvi performing three of Suchon's greatest symphonic works, composed during the years he spent teaching in Bratislava, both pre- and post- WWII. His interest in the origins of Slovak folk music and extended tonality are to be heard. Winner of two Grammy� Awards, in 2004 and 2010, the ENSO is the longest, continually operating professional orchestra of it's kind in Estonia and tours worldwide.

For this third volume in an Ives series that Sir Andrew Davis and his Melbourne Orchestra have already made globally popular, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet takes on the challenge of the solo piano part in Symphony No. 4. The work is famous for its ubiquitous difficulties, not least the apparent impossibility of realizing many of the composer's creative intentions in a live performance, as evidenced by the forty pages of background discussion and practical advice to conductors that introduce the published score. It is complemented by the less-often-performed triptych Orchestral Set No. 2 and the Pulitzer Prize winning Symphony No. 3. This album is a "must-have" for anyone who wants to experience this monumental music under optimal conditions.

This well-filled disc contains excellent performances of some of Ives most popular and significant works. It’s easy to understand why the “Holidays” Symphony has enjoyed greater success as four individual tone poems. With the exception of Thanksgiving, the three other movements (as well as Central Park in the Dark and other Ives pieces) all share the same basic form. They start with a dissonant, slow passage scored mostly for strings, then there’s a lively middle section based on popular dance, march, and hymn tunes. This quickly rises to a chaotic climax and then the opening music returns in a brief coda.

Andrew Davis deserves credit for differentiating the first three movements in a way that prevents monotony–a function of flowing tempos and carefully delineated string textures–while still letting Ives’ cacophony sound aptly cacophonous. Only the unnamed chorus at the end of Thanksgiving could have enjoyed greater prominence, but it’s no big deal. For all we know the singers might be members of the orchestra, which is just fine. The tune, “Duke Street” is still used in the New Haven Protestant churches. I know because when I was in high school in New Haven we sang it there, although not at Thanksgiving.

This performance of Three Places in New England is also first rate, with a rambunctious middle movement and a particularly poetic account of The Housatonic at Stockbridge. The Unanswered Question is basically unkillable (although it has been done), although I’m not sure why it’s separated from its companion piece, Central Park in the Dark, by the Three Places. That was gratuitous, but it hardly matters and you can always play the music in any order you choose. This being Ives, it hardly matters. Fine sonics round out a very desirable release.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

Classical Music

In French music Vincent d’Indy is certainly a composer whose music is often bypassed in favour of the established names such as Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Ravel and Debussy.

This is the sixth and final release in this well received Chandos series of d’Indy’s orchestral works. Playing and recording quality have been splendid and d’Indy’s reputation has been advanced under such first-rate advocacy. …

Splendidly recorded the Chandos team has provided a warm acoustic but not too muddy. There's reasonable clarity and first-class balance. The orchestra's consistently ravishing and lucid support under Gamba has conviction together with expressive characterisation.

– Michael Cookson, MusicWeb International

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus under Oramo with an exceptional quartet of soloists give a vivid and heartfelt interpretation of Smyth’s earliest large-scale choral work. Dame Ethel Mary Smyth, DBE was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas. Smyth tended to be marginalized as a ‘woman composer’, as though her work could not be accepted as mainstream, yet when she produced more delicate compositions, they were criticized for not measuring up to the standard of her male competitors. She was the first female composer to be granted a damehood. Smyth's extensive body of work includes the Concerto for Violin, Horn and Orchestra and the Mass in D. Her opera The Wreckers is considered by some critics to be the "most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten." Another of her operas, Der Wald, mounted in 1903, was for more than a century the only opera by a woman composer ever produced at New York's Metropolitan Opera (until Kaija Saariaho's L'Amour de loin in December 2016).

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REVIEW:

With all the awareness of the need to promote female composers it is surprising that no national opera company has taken up Ethel Smyth’s masterpiece The Wreckers. This new recording of the overture reminds us of just what a splendid work it is.

The bulk of the new recording is given over to the Mass in D, which is an exultant outpouring, here given its head by the BBC forces under a conductor who seems to have an innate understanding of the British musical temperament.

– Lark Reviews

CHABRIER Joyeuse marche. Gwendoline: Overture. Habanera. España. Lamento. Bourée fantasque. 1 Suite Pastorale. L’Étoile: Overture; Two entr’actes. Le Roi malgré lui: Féte polonaise; Danse slave • Neeme Järvi, cond; Suisse Romande O; 1 Alexandre Emard (eh) • CHANDOS 5122 (SACD: 78:12)

The orchestral works of Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-1894) have always made a neat program for an LP or CD. Most of us got to know this high-spirited music through the recordings of Ernest Ansermet; now Neeme Järvi returns to Ansermet territory with the same band, L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, although I daresay today’s orchestra contains none of the same personnel. (Ansermet’s final recording sessions took place in 1969.)

Järvi’s brisk, energetic style suits this music perfectly. He brings exuberance to the Joyeuse marche , which the composer himself described as “crazy,” finds all the myriad colors in the popular masterwork España , and paces the “Féte polonaise” from Le Roi malgré lui with such brio that it sounds like a freshly refurbished carousel.

As with several French composers of his generation, Chabrier was overwhelmed by the music of Wagner. He spent six years working on a Wagnerian opera, Gwendoline , and the overture clearly displays that influence. (The sleeve note likens it to Die Meistersinger but to my ears it is early Wagner, particularly Der fliegende Holländer , that informs this particular piece.) Järvi takes this work no more seriously than the rest of his program; he launches into it with exhilarating gusto and never lets up. It is an exciting performance that definitely surpasses Ansermet, whose rendition has always struck me as too sluggish.

Chabrier, a native of the Auvergne region, proved to be a strong influence on the French composers who followed him. His music was admired by Debussy, Poulenc and, especially, Ravel. The latter was devoted to Chabrier’s opera Le Roi malgré lui , a work full of marvelous set pieces, saddled with a virtually incoherent libretto. Ravel’s piano style was influenced by Chabrier’s Dix piéces pittoresques of 1880, and Chabrier himself orchestrated four of these piano pieces eight years later to create the Suite pastorale. In this work the composer’s sunny disposition encompasses an added vein of nostalgia—Chabrier looking back through rose-colored glasses at his Auvergne boyhood—and Järvi conveys the tender atmosphere sympathetically without romantic over-indulgence.

The late piano piece Bourée fantasque (1891) is played here in the usual orchestration, made by the composer’s conductor friend Felix Mottl in 1897. Mottl’s hand is heavier than Chabrier’s, though the scoring sounds less muddy in this performance than in some others, thanks to Järvi’s clarity. An interesting and much quirkier orchestration by Charles Koechlin recently appeared on a Hänssler disc (along with Koechlin’s orchestrations of Debussy’s Khamma and Fauré’s incidental music for Pelléas et Melisande ). In the Bourée fantasque , Mottl gives the opening motif quite sensibly to the cellos, whereas Koechlin gives it to the timpani! Needless to say I prefer Koechlin, and can recommend the Hänssler recording, which was reviewed in Fanfare 36:2 by Adrian Corleonis. About Koechlin’s scoring of Bourée fantasque , Corleonis commented: “Hearing this after the frequently performed rule-of-thumb orchestration by Felix Mottl is to grasp the distance between workmanlike utility and genius.” Extra works in Järvi’s program that are not usually included are the Overture and two brief interludes from the comic opera L’Étoile (1877), and the even earlier Lamento for orchestra. The latter piece is more conventional and less identifiable as Chabrier, but a pleasant interlude nonetheless.

The new disc is certainly recommendable on its own terms, but how does it stand up to the competition? Järvi maintains the authority of Ansermet in this repertoire, and it must be admitted that the latter’s recordings are sounding a little elderly these days. For a still great sounding old disc and vital performances, Paul Paray is one to hear (recently reissued in the Mercury Collection Vol. 2), though his program does not include the selections from L’Étoile, Lamento , or the Habanera . (Paray’s performance of the Gwendoline Overture is even brisker than Järvi’s: 8:44 as opposed to 9:23!) A 1996 DG disc from John Eliot Gardiner and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is also competitive: it has been reissued recently in a cheap series, and includes a beautifully played Larghetto for French Horn and Orchestra that does not appear in other collections. Gardiner’s program is more cleanly recorded than the new Chandos disc, which, despite its spectacular range and Super Audio sound, places the Suisse Romande orchestra in a somewhat reverberant acoustic. Michel Plasson’s Chabrier recordings with L’Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse have been reissued many times by EMI, but how often we will see them in future is in doubt. EMI’s extensive catalog has been purchased by Warner Music, whose classical reissue policy has been inconsistent and piecemeal in the past. Plasson’s performances are authentically French and vibrant, and his program uniquely contains Chabrier’s vocal works with orchestra. The big EMI box of his recordings of French orchestral music (including his Chabrier) is highly recommended: see my review in Fanfare ’s Hall of Fame (34:6). However, if it’s just one disc you require, then the new Järvi program is worth the outlay, and you definitely won’t find yourself straining to hear the bass drum.

FANFARE: Phillip Scott

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.
Digital CD 16Bit 44.1Khz. Originally recorded in: DSD

"...In each of these performances the RSNO, keenly responsive to Denève after his seven seasons as chief conductor, confirm the absolute precision, transparency and - in Jeux as much as anywhere – passion required for these scores. The detail in Images is exquisite (with a lovely oboe d'amore solo by Katherine Mackintosh). The Nocturnes, especially Fêtes, achieve a shimmering, decidedly un-Monet-like glaze, and La Mer erupts and glistens."

- Fiona Maddocks, The Observer, 12, May 2012

After a successful cycle of Chopin works for solo piano, exclusive Chandos artist Louis Lortie plays here works by Poulenc with his duet partner Hélène Mercier. In Aubade and the two concertos they are joined by Edward Gardner and the BBC Philharmonic.

The French-Canadian pianists draw a persuasive portrait of the melancholic Parisian that Poulenc was: playful and depressed, like his tutor, Erik Satie. There is always a sense of palpable anxiety in these pieces, be it the sarcastic joie de vivre of the 'choreographic concerto' Aubade or the ironic melancholy of the explosive Concerto for Two Pianos – Mozartean and Stravinskyan at the same time. Further examples are the contrasting pair of works for two pianos, in which the evocation of the sound of accordion and smell of fried potatoes in L'Embarquement pour Cythère complement the Élégie which, as Poulenc indicated, should be played with 'a cigar in your mouth and a glass of cognac on the piano'.

Similarly, the dazzling and dissonant Sonata for Piano Duet alternates between passages of charme and others that are féroce and strident. 'Inventing his own folk tunes', as Ravel noted, Poulenc took a decisive step in his musical emancipation with this very 'dissident' work.

Louis Lortie also plays the Piano Concerto, in which the traditional concerto virtues are more obvious: memorable tunes, sparkling orchestration, and a wide range of textures in the piano part.

Review:

The distinct attraction of this performance by Lortie with the BBC Philharmonic under Edward Gardner is the way in which orchestral color, as well as piano texture, is so clearly defined and zestfully articulated. Lortie is joined by Helene Mercier for cracking performances of the Two-Piano Concerto and the Sonata for four hands, their distinctive acerbities given whiplash emphasis by both pianists, yet with their more lyrical leanings tenderly voiced.

– Gramophone

In his latest recording for Chandos with his Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi explores pieces by three of Estonia’s earliest composers. The bulk of the works in the programme were composed in the first decade of the twentieth century and are all excellent representations of the birth of Estonian Music, as Estonia transitioned from a territory in the Russian Empire to independent Nation State. As was the norm at the end of the 19thcentury, these composers studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, and Estonian symphonic music certainly has its roots in the Russian Nationalist style. Like so many other European Musics of this era, ethnic identity is emphasized by the inclusion of native folk tunes and the ‘Nordic’ style of Greig and others is certainly an influence. Kapp’s 4thSymphony, however, was written after WWII, when Estonia and the other Baltic States were occupied by the Soviet Union. Dedicated to the 30thAnniversary of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (although probably not by choice) Kapp also subtitled it ‘Classical Symphony’ and its compact form and light textures deliver a more concentrated distillation of the Estonian style.

There’s a very wide expressive range between the bright and breezy finale of Arnold’s Second Symphony and the angst-filled violence at the start of the Seventh, never mind the long, desolate finale of the Ninth. I suspect it will be a while before this strange, often disturbing, but colorful and compelling sound world achieves the acclaim that it deserves, and it may never get there all, but Arnold’s remains a distinctive voice and these symphonies deserve your attention. They certainly reward repeated listening, and even at their gnarliest they still feature memorable ideas presented with unfailing urgency and flair.

My preference in complete cycles remains Andrew Penny’s on Naxos, both for consistent excitement and the fact that the performances carry the composer’s imprimatur. That doesn’t always mean much, but here the quality of the results speaks for itself. These Chandos versions, however, are just about as fine, even though the cycle is split between two conductors and orchestras, with Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic in Nos. 7-9 microscopically less impressive than Hickox and the LSO in the first six (but then, Gamba’s team had the tougher job).

If you want to get all of the Arnold symphonies in a single shot, you can’t go wrong with this set.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This is Volume 1 in a new series devoted to the Works for Solo Piano by Johannes Brahms, starting with a selection of highly personal collections of Capriccios, Intermezzi, Ballades, a Romance, and Rhapsodies. The series also marks the first major project of the internationally acclaimed pianist Barry Douglas as an exclusive Chandos artist. Since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow, Douglas has established a major international career, and his reputation as a pianist and conductor continues to grow. Douglas was the soloist in the 2011 recording of Nino Rota's Concerto soir�e (CHAN 10669), of which International Piano said: 'For pianophiles, the headline message is undoubtedly "Barry's back". a complete Brahms series beckons, for which this definitely whets the appetite.'