GLAZUNOV / DVORAK: Violin Concertos in A Minor

Recorded in: Dvorák Hall, Rudolfinum, Prague 21-22 September 1992 & 6-7 May 1994 Producer(s) Ralph Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Ben Connellan Richard Smoker (Assistant)

Classical Music

DURUFLE: Requiem / 4 Motets / Prelude and Fugue

DUFAY: Missa L' homme arme

Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (2 November 1739 - 24 October 1799) was an Austrian composer, violinist and silvologist. Music from this Classical period can be difficult to be positive about when it's compared to the works of Mozart, but Dittersdorf's manages to be far from boring and in fact not that far removed from the music of Mozart. All the music on this CD has a gentle and flowing nature about it, while still managing to dip into the lower/softer extremes of it's subject as well as the more intense aspects. This selection was recorded at the Calvanist Church, Budapest, Hungry, from 9th to 11th December, 1996.

1995 release. He Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra (Bratislava) Andrerw Mogrelia, Conductor. Recorded at Concert Hall of the Slovak Radio at Bratislava, January 9-20, 1995."The Bratislava orchestra plays with characteristic finesse and grace and with glowing lyrical feeling. There is both drama and vitality in this Copp�lia. The recording is warm and spacious, with the orchestra set slightly back. Other versions may have more surface brilliance, but most lovers of ballet music will enjoy the naturalness of perspective and the attractively smooth string-quality. La Source comes off equally well. The Pas de fleurs grande valse is a real lollipop and in the two suites the music (selected rather arbitrarily) has plenty of colour and rhythmic life." - Penguin Guide.

DEBUSSY: String Quartet No. 1 / RAVEL: String Quartet in F /

REVIEW:

The Bratislava orchestra play with such spontaneous enjoyment in Rodeo and Billy the Kid that one cannot help but respond. Gunzenhauser, a fine conductor of Czech music, is equally at home in Copland’s folksy, cowboy idiom and all this music has plenty of colour and atmosphere. If some of the detail in Appalachian Spring is less sharply etched than with Bernstein, the closing pages are tenderly responsive. The recording is admirably colourful and vivid, with a fine hall ambience, and the spectacle of the Fanfare for the Common Man is worth anybody’s money. A bargain.

-- Penguin Guide

Classical Music

Joy to the world, better known in the United States of America, is derived from Handel, and is based, initially and very simply, on the notes of the descending scale. The famous Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols established earlier in the present century at King's College, Cambridge, traditionally opens with the singing in procession of the Victorian Once in royal David's city, a setting by the nineteenth century English organist Henry John Gauntlett of words by Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander. Gauntlett nearly became a pupil of Mozart's pupil and Mendelssohn's friend Attwood, but instead turned to the law, and practiced as a solicitor. He took lessons, however, from Samuel Wesley, and played the organ in the first Birmingham performance of Mendelssohn's oratorio Elijah. O little town of Bethlehem is by Walford Davies with words by the nineteenth century American Bishop Philips Brooks, while The Cherry Tree Carol has a traditional English origin, the folk-tune here arranged by Donald Hunt. In the bleak mid-winter, a setting of a poem by Christina Rossetti, has music by Gustav Holst, who arranged the traditional Sing aloud. Away in a manger is equally well known in two different versions. The setting better known in England is that by the American gospel music composer William James Kirkpatrick. The tune for the anonymous words is here arranged by Donald Hunt. Joys Seven is another traditional carol, the setting arranged by Stephen Cleobury of King's College, Cambridge. I wonder as I wander, arranged by Donald Hunt, and Jesus, Jesus, rest your head, arranged by Arthur Warrell, are taken from Appalachia, a rich source of original folk-song material, inherited from early settlers. In dulci jubilo, a German fourteenth century Macaronic carol, alternating Latin and vernacular words, is sung in a familiar nineteenth century arrangement by the antiquarian English composer Robert Lucas Pearsall. O little one sweet is familiar in J. S. Bach's harmonization of a melody by his seventeenth century compatriot Samuel Scheidt. The Shepherds' Rocking Carol is of Czech origin, a Christmas lullaby, and Ding dong! Merrily on high, with English words by G. R. Woodward, uses a sixteenth century French dance tune. O come, all ye faithful, in it's English version, is of composite authorship, with music of probable eighteenth century provenance, arranged by David Willcocks. The Coventry Carol is taken from the fifteenth century Pageant of Shearmen and Tailors, lamenting at the same time the Massacre of the Holy Innocents and while advertising the Shearmen's own wares, scissors, knives and shears. As I outrode is an English traditional carol and Unto us is born a son, a Latin carol of the fifteenth century, appears in the well known German collection Piae Cantiones, published in 1582. The anthology ends with Mendelssohn's Hark, the herald angels sing, adapted by W. H. Cumming, from a festival choral composition, here arranged by David Willcocks and Donald Hunt's arrangement of Silent Night, it's original German words written by Joseph Mohr in 1818, with a melody of the same date by Franz Gruber. The music of Stille Nacht was written on Christmas eve, presumably for performance at Midnight Mass at the church of St. Nicholas at Oberndorf, where Gruber was organist and choirmaster. On this first occasion the organ broke down, and a guitar was used in accompaniment.

Includes vesper(s) by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. Ensemble: Le Concert spirituel. Conductor: Hervé Niquet.

LOBO, D. / CARDOSO: Portuguese Requiem Masses

REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (11-12/97, p.111) - "...The recording was made in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Treviso, where the reverberation makes both instrumental and vocal tone rich and sumptuous....On the whole, it is a performance that is technically assured, well-paced, and coherent, with more a chamber than church music feel..."

It would be hard to imagine more amiable performances of these two strongly characterized Brahms works...intense as well as warm, plainly derived from long experience performing this music in concert... The romanticism of the Nash approach comes out particularly strongly in the opening Andante of the Horn Trio, with the horn soloist, Frank Lloyd, producing exceptionally rich, braying tone to remind one of Dennis Brain. After relaxed accounts of the first three movements the galloping finale is then given with great panache, conveying more fun than the more virtuoso reading from Ashkenazy, Perlman and Tuckwell. Thanks partly to the CRD recording, the Nash performances are made to sound satisfyingly beefy, almost orchestral, though some may find the full-bodied sound a degree too reverberant, with the piano rather in front of the strings. The disc can be strongly recommended, particularly as this is the only available coupling of these two works.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone

Bottesini, G.: Double Bass Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 / Tchaikov

BERWALD: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2

BEETHOVEN Septet in E?. Sextet in E? • Consortium Classicum • MDG 3010594 (60:02)


Of the two works on this disc, the Septet for clarinet, horn, bassoon, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, has gained a firm foothold in the repertoire with some 40 recordings currently listed. Begun in 1799, it’s an early work, as indeed are all of Beethoven’s works for winds alone or for winds with strings, despite some misleadingly high opus numbers resulting from later publication dates.


Less often recorded, and a bit of an oddity in the composer’s catalog, is the Sextet for two horns and string quartet, op. 81b. Like the Septet, it too was written in the mid 1790s. Though it shares a common opus number with the much later-composed “Les Adieux” Piano Sonata, op. 81a, the two works are not related.


Beethoven never wrote anything like the Sextet again, but the real puzzle of the piece lies in how to classify it. Divertimento-type works scored for two horns and a string quartet were not uncommon in the latter part of the 18th century, and both Haydn and Mozart wrote for this complement of instruments. But it’s in the way Beethoven writes for the horns that makes the Sextet so unusual. It’s almost as if he conceived the piece as a chamber concerto for two horns with the accompaniment reduced to the four essential supporting string voices, not entirely unlike Mozart’s downsizing of some of his early piano concertos for performance à quattro —by a string quartet accompanying the solo piano.


In the Sextet, the horns are the stars of the show, with brilliant fanfares and lots of technically challenging busywork, while the four strings are relegated to a subsidiary role, coming to the fore only long enough for the horn players to catch their breath. The piece is also in three movements (fast-slow-fast), rather than the more common multimovement wind and mixed wind-and-strings chamber works of the period, further reinforcing the chamber concerto notion.


Whatever the Sextet is or Beethoven intended it to be, it’s an interesting experiment from the composer’s early curiosity shop but not a memorable masterpiece. Not so the Septet, which is surely one of Beethoven’s most expansive and important early works. Its exceptional popularity in the composer’s own lifetime, overshadowing later works he considered superior, is reported to have caused him considerable annoyance. Nonetheless, with an eye on the cash register, in 1803 or thereabouts he arranged the op. 20 Septet for clarinet (or violin), cello, and piano, and published it as op. 38. This is not the same piece as another trio Beethoven wrote in B?-Major for this same combination of instruments, nicknamed the “Gassenhauer” Trio, op. 11, which is often included in its violin version as No. 4 of the composer’s standard canon of piano trios.


Founded by clarinetist Dieter Klöcker in the early 1960s, Consortium Classicum has distinguished itself as one of the world’s leading chamber ensembles, acclaimed especially for its performances of 18th- and 19th-century repertoire for winds. But as is clear from these performances recorded in 1994, string players are no strangers to the group. Why this MDG CD has only now arrived for review I can’t say for sure, but I suspect it has been available abroad for many years and is just now being distributed here in the U.S. But the Consortium has recorded the Septet and Sextet more than once, and this is not the same 1974 pairing of these works on a cpo CD reviewed by Richard A. Kaplan in Fanfare 30: 5.


The Consortium’s execution is clean and sharply focused and the recording, as is customary for MDG, is brightly lit and very well balanced, clearly delineating each instrument. I find this to be a most enjoyable and recommendable CD. Still, if this particular coupling appeals to you, I wouldn’t want to suggest that the Consortium Classicum is preferable to two other very fine identically programmed discs, one with the Gaudier Ensemble, now on Hyperion’s mid-priced Helios label, and the other with the estimable Nash Ensemble on the unfortunately not so inexpensively priced ASV Gold label. In both cases, I find the playing a bit more spirited and perhaps more spontaneous than I do the Consortium Classicum’s performances. But the Septet, despite Beethoven’s dismay at its popularity, is popular for good reason and well worth having in more than one version. So, recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

Piano Sonatas 2,3,7,8 "Pathetique" 11,12 "Funeral March," 24. Brendel's monumental cycle continues with this delightful collection.

Includes work(s) for piano by Johann Sebastian Bach, Christoph W. Gluck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven. Soloist: Guiomar Novaës.

Naxos is going head to head with Chandos in English repertoire, and while British critics no doubt will circle the wagons in defense of their home-grown product, the fact is that this newcomer beats the Brits at their own game. Not only do we have a British conductor with evident sympathy for the music (which is Bax at his opulent best), but one with an orchestra that Chandos, in its own innumerable releases, demonstrated was clearly superior to the London Philharmonic (led by the late Bryden Thomson in the case of Bax's symphonies). In addition, we also get a recording of excellent technical quality. In fact, Chandos' recording of this piece was cavernous in the extreme, and Thomson's sometimes slack way with the music was anything but ideal. (There's a superb version of this symphony on Lyrita conducted by Meyer Fredman which has never appeared on CD). In short, this recording offers top quality in both performance and sonics irrespective of price, and makes the perfect starting point for anyone interested in sampling the work of this lusciously Romantic composer. [10/3/1999]--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

"Having a premiere recording of Bartok on Naxos makes an unmissable bargain. His Viola Concerto was the uncompleted work which, soon after his death, Tibor Serly put together from sketches. Now Bartok's son Peter, with the scholar Paul Neubauer, has re-edited those sketches. Though the differences are small, this first recording of the revised version, superbly played, proves fascinating, sounding closer to the Concerto for Orchestra. With the rich-toned Chinese violist Xiao as soloist, that version is here presented alongside Serly's. The warmly atmospheric Two Pictures and a viola work make a good coupling."

– The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs & DVDs - 2005/6 Edition, page 114

Classical Music

"The opening and closing choruses of the Ascension oratiorio contain some of Bach’s most irresistible, catchy music, and this chorus and orchestra really give it their all, from the brilliant trumpets and insistent syncopated rhythms to the invigorating choral singing...once you get into this Bethlehem Bach Choir production, it’s impossible not to like it."

-- David Vernier, ClassicsToday.com

BACH, J.S.: Orchestral Suites Nos. 1-4, BWV 1066-1069