The unjustly neglected and often dissident music of Ruth Gipps is with this album finding all the resonance it deserves by Rumon Gamba and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, having already championed many British composers from the twentieth century with their series devoted to British Tone Poems and Overtures from the British Isles. While, not surprisingly, there are echoes of the most popular composers of the time – Sibelius, Walton, and Vaughan Williams – the music is notable for its personal voice, confident conception, and vivid writing for the orchestra. Gipps herself actually felt her best works were those for orchestra. In a programme of contrasting impressions and emotions, Symphonies Nos 2 and 4, the former inspired by the Second World War, offer an approachable tuneful idiom. They are complemented by the lyrical, shorter Song for Orchestra and the early tone poem Knight in Armour, premiered at the last Night of the Proms in 1942.

Includes work(s) for organ by César Franck. Soloist: Joris Verdin.

Includes such famous works as the Greensleeves and Tallis Fantasias as well as The Lark Ascending.

12.99

Classical Music

Kodály's orchestral output was relatively limited. Best known for his educational material, he wrote only nine works for orchestra. On hearing Kodály's orchestral music, one cannot help but notice similarities to Bartók in the use of Hungarian folk melodies, rhythms and dance forms, as well as his application of quartal harmonies, that is, harmony using the interval of the perfect fourth as its basic unit, instead of the third or fifth. Though overshadowed by Bartók as a serious composer, Kodály's music is neither derivative nor insignificant. Bartók was more of a modernist with respect to form, using mathematical and architectural strategies to generate new forms. Kodály strove to frame Hungarian music with classical and baroque forms, as in his Concerto for Orchestra.
This is a good overview of Kodály's orchestral music. Yan Pascal Tortelier metes out a steady tempo without being too rigid to accommodate the fluid exoticism of the 'Dances of Marosszek.' The BBC Philharmonic is a tight rhythmic ensemble, essential to a good performance of the dance rhythms found in Kodály, Bartók, or Stravinsky. This is particularly evident in the woodwinds' nimble performance at the end of the Allegro con brio from 'Marosszek.'

Recorded in: New Broadcasting House, Manchester 10-11 May 1998 Producer(s) Ralph Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Don Hartridge

John Wilson’s first album in a series of recordings of the orchestral works of Eric Coates, using his own definitive editions of the scores. includes the suites The Jester at the Wedding and London, and the miniature overture The Merrymakers. Infectiously idiomatic playing from the BBC Philharmonic! Eric Coates was born on August 27th, 1886, at Hucknall. Coates showed an interest in music at an early age, studying first the violin and then the viola with George Ellenberger, a pupil of Joachim, and harmony with Dr Ralph Horner in Nottingham. At the age of twenty he arrived in London determined to make a career in music despite some family misgivings. He won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music where he studied viola with Lionel Tertis and composition with Frederick Corder. Eventually, in 1919, when neuritis in his left hand made playing the viola more and more difficult, Eric Coates turned exclusively to composition. Eric Coates' work is in the tradition of polished melodic light music started by Sir Arthur Sullivan and continued by Edward German.

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REVIEWS:

Wilson is relishing every second of the music. The BBC Phil is in great nick, and Stephen Rinker’s engineering brings sound of clarity and fidelity, every detail, dynamic, and subtlety captured perfectly.

– ClassicalSource.com

Volume 1 implies we are to get more like this and they can’t come soon enough. Eric Coates is surprisingly undervalued, even with the resurgence of interest in light music. There are some very familiar pieces here – The Merrymakers, By a Sleepy Lagoon, London Suite – alongside the ballet The Jester at the Wedding and two symphonic rhapsodies. All engaging and here splendidly played by the BBC Phil under one of the real champions of light music, John Wilson.

– Lark Reviews

This re-release of The Canterbury Pilgrims forms part of the new Hickox Legacy commemorative series on Chandos Records, leading up to (and continuing beyond) the fifth anniversary, in November 2013, of the conductor's untimely death. The two-disc set is issued for the price of 1 CD. The pioneering account of The Canterbury Pilgrims, a colorful but neglected work by Sir George Dyson, brilliantly depicts assorted characters from the prologues of Chaucer’s famous Canterbury Tales, while highlighting key aspects of Hickox’s recorded legacy: the championing of neglected repertoire in general, and British repertoire in particular, as well as his special affinity with choral music. ‘Chaucer’s amusingly ironic depictions and Dyson’s memorable tunes and imaginative orchestration are a winning combination. If you like Gerontius, Vaughan Williams and Ireland, you’ll like Dyson. Go out and buy this disc *****’. - BBC Music Magazine ‘This is a very fine recording… Every layer in the texture is exceptionally well defined and integrated, which is no mean feat when such elaborate forces – soloists, choir, and orchestra – are involved’ – Gramophone Magazine

In the wake of violinist Lydia Mordkovitch’s untimely death in 2014, Chandos has reissued and remastered several of her best recordings for the label, including this 1989 coupling of both Shostakovich violin concertos. The performances remain outstanding on every level.

It’s easy to slight No. 2’s often austere countenance and relatively sparse textures in favor of No. 1’s wider range of moods, textures, and greater surface virtuosity, yet Mordkovitch proves just as compelling and committed as her mentor David Oistrakh. If anything, she surpasses him in the brooding Adagio, where her slightly slower basic tempo, expressive discretion, and mesmerizingly controlled long legato lines grip you from start to finish. One might prefer a more incisive and playful approach to the Allegro finale, yet here the slippery thematic exchanges between soloist and orchestra convey a sense of gravitas and symphonic integrity that build to overwhelming climaxes.

These qualities also reveal themselves in the First concerto’s great third-movement Passacaglia, where the Scottish brass section achieves a smooth collective blend that still projects the music’s ferocity, matched by Mordkovitch’s perfectly tuned high sustained notes and octaves that both pierce and speak at the same time. Both Mordkovitch and Järvi revel in the Burlesque’s bleak brio and in the Scherzo’s rapid-fire chamber interplay, while the long first movement’s gloomy trajectory unfolds with carefully gauged dynamics and balances, from the low-lying woodwind rumbles to the ethereal celesta and harp intertwining at the end. Chandos’ resonant ambience closely approximates concert hall realism, especially if you’re listening via excellent quality loudspeakers or headphones.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

12.99

Recorded in: Orchestra Hall, Detroit 12,13 November 1994 & 26 May 1996 Recorded in: Orchestra Hall, Chicago 20-22 & 25 April 1989 & 30 January-3 February 1991 Producer(s) Charles Greenwell Ralph Couzens Lan Shui (assistant) Chris Hazell - Chicago Sound Engineer(s) Dan Dene Robert Shafer Mitchell Heller - Chicago

The eagerly awaited volume 2 in the fascinating exploration of Antoine Reicha’s keyboard music by the trailblazing pianist Ivan Ilic is now out! Ilic here digs into a crucial aspect of Antoine Reicha’s music: counterpoint and the manner in which Bach’s music served as a point of departure for Reicha’s eclectic, fertile mind and wide variety of musical styles. If most of these etudes are made up of a Prelude paired with a Fugue, their variety offers the album great diversity, and unveils the compositional genius of Antoine Reicha: here are unexpected moods and textures, sophisticated canons, cheeky invertible counterpoint, chaconnes and minuet-like character pieces, even a piece the only unifying characteristic of which seems to be its tumbling scales in dotted rhythm. Ilic’s unique interpretations are supported by enlightening booklet notes, written by the pianist himself, shedding light on revelatory moments in the composer’s life. While the musical world will soon become saturated with celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, his friend and exact contemporary Antoine Reicha will enjoy a renaissance with this unmissable series.

Classical Music

Classical Music

BRAHMS: PIANO CONCERTO NO 1 A

GERSHWIN Rhapsody in Blue. Rhapsody No. 2, “Rhapsody in Rivets.” Variations on “I Got Rhythm.” Piano Concerto in F • Anne-Marie McDermott (pn); Justin Brown, cond; Dallas SO • BRIDGE 9252 (72:53)


Gershwin’s four works for piano and orchestra fit so comfortably on a single CD that it’s surprising how rarely they all show up together. Currently, arkivmusic.com lists only two direct challengers: Sony’s compilation of Levant’s classic but dim-sounding recordings (with the preludes as a bonus) and a Conifer disc with performances by Michael Boriskin, which was tepidly reviewed by Michael Ullman in 22:5. This new Bridge issue, therefore, fills a significant if unexpected discographic gap. Even when held up against less complete collections, though, these classy performances stand high.


On the whole, the performances are characterized by a light (even Gallic) touch, not only on the piano but also in the orchestra, where the brass and percussion are generally kept under control. I don’t want to suggest that McDermott is tame or aloof: with her imaginative articulation and dynamics, coupled with her willingness to tease the rhythms and tone (listen to the Debussian colors before rehearsal 10 in the Concerto’s second movement), she invests the music with plenty of personality. But mercurial though it may be, that personality tends to be suave rather than aggressive, deft rather than determined, snappy rather than assertive. Rarely does she reveal the claws beneath her velvet paws. Thus, for instance, she sets out the big tune in the Rhapsody in Blue with a tenderness that nimbly sidesteps the self-indulgent gush that drowns, say, Leonard Bernstein’s performances; she dances through the climaxes of the Concerto, more apt to impress us with a wink than with a whack; she turns the Second Rhapsody, pushy even under Levant’s sophisticated fingers, into a delectable tin-pan soufflé. Justin Brown is a sympathetic partner, and the orchestra gives us considerable detail without a hint of pedantry (try, as but one example, the nifty upward arpeggio on the bassoon three measures before 7 in the middle movement of the Concerto). Frothy but sassy, these performances will lift your spirits.


I wouldn’t quite say that McDermott sweeps the field. Any lover of Gershwin will want to consider the Levant, too, as well as the Earl Wild/Arthur Fiedler recordings of the Concerto, the Variations , and the Rhapsody in Blue . Jon Nakamatsu’s intently modernist version of the Concerto on Harmonia Mundi (31:1), in state-of-the-art SACD sound, is also well worth knowing. But McDermott’s solidly engineered performances are surely among the front-runners. Enthusiastically recommended.


FANFARE: Peter J. Rabinowitz

The Serbian-American Paris-based pianist Ivan Ilic has signed a new multi-album recording contract with Chandos Records, following internationally acclaimed recordings of works by Godowsky and Feldman. His first project on the label is a series devoted to the solo piano works of the Czech composer Antoine Reicha, a contemporary and lifelong friend of Beethoven. Although best known for his contributions to the repertoire for wind quintet, Reicha wrote vast quantities of solo piano music, most of which has never been recorded. The manuscripts, preserved in the Bibliotheque nationale de France, were published only recently. Offering premiere recordings of the Grande Sonate in C major, the Sonata in F major, and three excerpts from Practische Beispiele, this first volume confirms Reicha as an authoritative, singular voice, whose piano works complement and enrich our understnanding of Haydn and Beethoven. Volume 1 is a coproduction of Chandos, RTS (Swiss Radio), and the Palazzetto Bru Zane- Centre de Musique Romantique Francaise in Venice.

This set is offered at a special price: 12 discs for the cost of 10.

Classical Music

The Collegium Vocale Gent, the Royal Flemish Philharmonic and Philippe Herreweghe join forces once again for a monument of the sacred choral repertoire: Antonín Dvorák’s Requiem, Op. 89. This work, dating from 1890, is one of those that marked a new phase in the composer’s musical creation, in which he recognized himself ‘as much a poet as well as a musician’. In addition, this reveals the veritable nature of a composer without constraint, probably being neither a commission nor an occasional work.

Bayreuth in the 1950s was annual summer home to the greatest cast of Wagnerian singers in the opera world, as the numerous and thankfully recorded performances from that house in that decade reveal. This 1957 performance of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg has as its female lead Elisabeth Grümmer in the role of Eva, whom some argue was the character’s finest interpreter. Conducted by the fine French Wagnerian André Cluytens, other cast members include Gustav Neidlinger and Joseph Greindl. Complete on 4CDs; 24bit/96kHz re-mastered.

14.99

BR‐Klassik presents the 2014 live recording from Munich's Philharmonie im Gasteig of the semi‐staged performance of Tchaikovsky's late masterpiece “Pique Dame”, or “The Queen of Spades”. In its long history as a concert orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra has also devoted itself on numerous occasions to opera, under such eminent conductors as Rafael Kubelik and Leonard Bernstein. Chief conductor Mariss Jansons also maintains this tradition, for example with concert performances of Russian operas such as “Eugene Onegin”. With great connoisseurship, Maestro Jansons assembled a group of singers for this performance, sung in the original Russian, who are all native speakers of the language, and very familiar with the work, including Misha Didyk as Herman, Tatiana Serjan as Lisa, and Alexey Markov as Prince Yeletsky.

To mark Britten's 100th birthday, Mariss Janson's conducted the composer's best-known and most moving work, War Requiem, in March 2013. In addition to the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, the Tolz Boys' Choir can also be heard. An outstanding ensemble of soloists rounds off this remarkable recording.