Concertos
1019 products
Tchaikovsky: Piano & Violin Concertos / Gilels, Oistrakh
-- Gramophone [6/1983]
reviewing the first CD release of the Gilels/Mehta Piano Concerto, CBS 36660
David Oistrakh plays...with the total skill and musicianship which seem as rewarding today as they did 20 years ago... [T]he Philadelphia strings are both very strong and very impressive.
-- Gramophone [12/1982]
reviewing an LP release of the Oistrakh/Ormandy Violin Conceto, CBS 60312
J.s. & C.p.e. Bach: Harpsichord Concertos / Gustav Leonhardt

Bach’s D minor Harpsichord Concerto BWV 1052 stands as a landmark both in Bach’s own output and in the history of the keyboard concerto. While J.S. Bach is often given credit for “inventing” the keyboard concerto, the fact is that during the period when he was in charge of the Leipzig Collegium Musicum, two of his oldest sons (W.F and C.P.E.) were also involved both as performers and composers. C.P.E. Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto Wq. 1 was likely composed for the Collegium, and it is in any event exactly contemporaneous with the elder Bach’s works in the form. The invention, then, of the keyboard concerto was very much a family affair, and it is probably correct to say that the two sons were at least as responsible for this innovation as was their father.
BWV 1052 held a special place in the heart of C.P.E. Bach, who knew it intimately and made his own manuscript copy. This disc, featuring the younger Bach’s D minor Concerto, composed at Potsdam in 1748, offers a splendid opportunity to compare the music of father and son. J.S. Bach’s concerto begins with a famously compact ritornello full of pregnant musical figures, lasting only about fifteen seconds. C.P.E.’s ritornello lasts more than a minute, and is full of those dissonant jagged phrases alternating with more lyrical ideas typical of this composer particularly, and of the Sturm und Drang ethos more generally. It sounds decidedly more modern, but the fact is that both works are masterpieces and it’s a joy to be able to hear them paired together.
Gustav Leonhardt recorded BWV 1052 at least three times, if not more, but this version from around 1981, featuring an unidentified string ensemble (The Cantus Germanicus Academica Anonymous?), remains perhaps his finest for the playing of the ensemble, the rich timbre of the harpsichord, and the warmth of the recorded sound. Leonhardt finds an especially natural, flowing pace in each movement, one that never turns mechanical. Hardly the most flamboyant of artists, he also doesn’t put on his monk’s robe of austerity here to the point where the music loses its natural brilliance. This is particularly important in the C.P.E. Bach concerto, with its strong contrasts between solo and orchestra.
This current reissue contains no notes, no recording information–in short, nothing but the disc. In fact, you’d be just as was well off downloading the performances for less money, but however you source them you owe it to yourself to listen, and listen often, to these two magnificent works as played here, so splendidly.
-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Dvorak: Violin Concerto, Cello Concerto / Stern, Rose Et Al
Both works are given the customary weight by the Philadelphian strings. In fact Ormandy encourages a strong symphonic approach to these two works. This is the orchestral equivalent of a sleek Bentley. The Cello Concerto emerges best of the two works. However first to the Violin Concerto. This is a work I have always felt affectionate towards. My reference set is the Supraphon recording with Josef Suk. The Sony has Stern in place of Suk. Stern's touch of schmaltz and flashiness sometimes jars in such a cleanly rustic nationalist work. However there is much to take pleasure in too. At 10.12 in the first movement no-one, not even Suk, achieves that moment of pulse-stilling calm. Another example is the needle-fragile crystal glass dance Stern evokes at the start of the Allegro giocoso. This is a good interpretation but the age of the recording tells against it marginally but noticeably.
Leonard Rose is ripe, noble, brilliant, edgy, resinous of tone and exciting and he brings all the strengths that we know from his Sony recording of the Brahms Double Concerto. The sound quality is a notch or two above that for the other Dvo?ák work on this disc but still grainy in texture.
-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International
Wynton Marsalis - The London Concert - Haydn, Hummel, Mozart / Leppard, English CO
This selection is also available in Super Audio CD format.
Bach: Concertos For 2 & 3 Pianos / Casadesus, Et Al
Maw: Violin Concerto / Joshua Bell, Roger Norrington, Et Al
This isn’t a new release. Maw’s Violin Concerto was written with Joshua Bell specifically in mind in 1993; the recording followed in September 1996. In the very enthusiastic sleeve-notes – I’m not sure how Maw feels about being described as a “genius” – great play is made of the work in relation to the Brahms Violin Concerto. Certainly it has a complex romantic affiliation but the composers’ names that occurred to me were those of Prokofiev and Walton. Not that Maw could be remotely taken to be either of them – but in its cultivation of an almost Italianate lyricism it does summon up the memory of Walton’s Mediterranean work and in its fusion of melodic beauty and scherzo drama it must pay at least oblique, tangential historical homage to Prokofiev.
The Concerto is cast in four movements. It opens with ruminative slowness but then opens out into a flourishing, rich and luminous sound world, bedecked by manifold orchestral and solo felicities; those little orchestral lurches toward the end for instance. The second movement is indeed Walton-like in its vivacity but Maw’s control of lingering lyricism, finely woven into the work’s fabric, ensures seamless warmth from the current-swell of dynamism that he generates. The lodestones here are Prokofiev and Barber but they’re securely absorbed into Maw’s lyric modernist world. The powerful cadential passage over a sustained orchestral chord is followed by a muted upwards drift into orchestral nothingness, a Cherubini-like stroke of translucent and mysterious beauty.
Maw’s predilection for major chords – the C major especially – permeates the third movement. Harmonies are richly complex and there are elements of post-impressionism in the writing, as well glimmers of Berg; but over and above such composer-spotting moments, which are essentially incidental, is the sense of luminous quiet, the rapture, the specific and yet endless personal landscape that Maw evokes. And when he unleashes the finale it comes brimful with tunes, vibrant and exciting, richly orchestrated.
Throughout Bell plays with the romantic ardour that Maw identified – and so admires – in him. His playing manages to balance scrupulous cleanliness of attack with tonal warmth and pliant phrasing. Norrington marshals the LPO in assured, colouristically aware fashion and the recording does full justice to the enterprise.
The Maw is a concerto that embraces its historical lineage without being shackled by it. If you admire the Berg, Barber, Walton and Prokofiev concertos, and like orchestration that is both luminous and pulsing then this is the work for you.
-- Jonathan Woolf, MusicWeb International
Edwin Fischer - Concert Performances & Broadcasts 1943-1953
Meyer, Bottesini: Concertos / Edgar Meyer, Bell, Ma
Lost Feuermann - The Japanese Recordings 1934 & 1936
--Dan Davis, ClassicsToday.com
Scott, C: Orchestral Works, Vol 2
Cyril Scott was an artists of immense standing amongst his contemporaries. Debussy wrote of him, 'Cyril Scottt is one of the rarest artists of the present generation...' and Elgar acknowledged Scott's influence in his treatment of harmony. Scott failed to receive attention after the First World War for he did not connnect with the msuical establishment as it developed. His posthumous lack of popularity is unfathonable as his music has a personality and integrity which demand, nearly half a century on, that we revisit it. This release places Scott's early masterpiece, the first Piano Concerto, alongside one of the larger orchestral works composed after the Second World War. Performed here by Howard Shelley, the large scale Piano Concerto was composed immediately before the First World War and premiered by Scott himself, with the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of his friend Sir Thomas Beecham. Scott's static and exotic harmony, and his use of ostinati, repeated motifs, exotic orchestral colours and the bell-like effect of repeated fourths lend the work an oriental sound world. Scott himself said about it: 'It's as if Scarlatti had lived in China'. Symphony No.4 was completed in 1952 but has not been performed until now and with this release receives its world premiere recording. Clearly influenced by Ravel and Debussy, particularly at the climax points, Scott composes melodic lines that are richly chromatic, and his orchestration is colourful and constantly changing. This work is coupled with 'Early One Morning', a single-movement 'Poem' for piano and orchestra.
Grieg: Piano Concerto In A Minor, Op. 16; Holberg Suite, Op. 40 / Boyagian, Pompa-Baldi, Ohio Philharmonic
Antonio Pompa-Baldi continues his series of recordings for Centaur devoted to the music of Edvard Grieg with the ever popular Piano Concerto.
Baroque Music For Trumpets / Marsalis, Leppard, English Co
-- John Duarte, Gramophone [6/1988]
American Classics - Rorem: Piano Concerto No 2, Etc

Better late than never, these Rorem premieres are irresistible
How remarkable that two such delectable concertos should be receiving their world premieres on disc. Unapologetically romantic and accessible, those qualities may well have mitigated against acceptance among the industry’s fashion-mongers. The Second Piano Concerto (1951) was written for Julius Katchen (also the dedicatee of Rorem’s attractive Second Piano Sonata) and was given its first performance by that superb pianist in 1954. Since then it has lain dormant until its present revival by Simon Mulligan whose brilliance, ideally matched by José Serebrier, is worthy of Katchen himself. Here, the ghosts of Ravel, Françaix, Gershwin, Stravinsky and, most of all, Poulenc, jostle for attention. Yet Rorem’s idiom is as personal as it is chic. The final pages of the central “Quiet and Sad” movement, where the piano weaves intricate tracery round the orchestral theme, may owe much to the Adagio assai from Ravel’s G major Concerto but it maintains its own character. The finale, “Real Fast”, is an irresistible tour de force played up to the hilt by Mulligan.
In the Cello Concerto Rorem happily eschews a conventional form, giving programmatic subtitles to each section. These range from “Curtain Raise” to “Adrift”, offering Wen-Sinn Yang a rich opportunity, whether playing primus inter pares or revelling in Rorem’s alternating nostalgia and effervescence. Finely recorded, it’s a clear winner for the Naxos American Classics series.
-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone [12/2007]
Naxos' ongoing series of Ned Rorem orchestral music recordings offers well-deserved recognition to a major American composer. This latest release is no less rewarding than the prior issues. The Second Piano Concerto dates from 1951 and shows the young composer writing with tremendous gusto. A large work (34 minutes) in the traditional three movements, its scoring is both vivid and at times a touch dense and "over the top", while the work's melodic generosity and rhythmic drive are undeniably infectious; its neglect must be counted a major mystery. Conductor José Serebrier's notes make much of the music's "American" qualities, particularly in the finale, but I was much more forcibly struck by Rorem's much-advertised love of French music. Whatever the answer to the "influence" question, this concerto is without doubt a major statement, and it's very impressively performed by Simon Mulligan, Serebrier, and the orchestra, who let the music speak with all of its delicious formal (in the first-movement cadenza) and textural excess.
Rorem's Cello Concerto dates from 2002, and like many of his late orchestra works it abandons traditional form in favor of a series of brief movements given cute names that may or may not have anything significant to do with their musical content. Frankly, I find this habit unnecessarily coy and distracting, but others may simply be intrigued; and if the listener's curiosity, once aroused, leads to giving the music more concentrated attention, then it's all to the good.
The sequence of eight movements is laid out for maximum contrast, and I particularly enjoyed the seventh, a characterful waltz. Indeed, Rorem is such a fine melodist when he wants to be that you have to wonder why he feels the need to venture into more aggressively "modern" territory now and then. Perhaps he's working a little bit too hard at being a "serious" composer. Never mind: this is a fine work, also strongly played by cellist Wen-Sinn Yang. Naxos' engineers have judged the balances very accurately between both soloists and the orchestra, while the occasional opacity at the climaxes of the piano concerto seems more a function of the heavy scoring than a suggestion of technical inadequacy. A fine disc.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Diamond: Symphony No. 1, Violin Concerto No. 2 / Talvi, Schwarz, Seattle Symphony
REVIEW:
It's so comforting to know that these excellent performances will have a new lease on life courtesy of Naxos. David Diamond's First Symphony (1841) is a compact, three-movement work lasting 22 minutes that stands with the best American products of the period. Characteristically springy rhythms in the outer movements make the music quite refreshing and emphasize the touching lyricism of the central Andante maestoso. The Violin Concerto No. 2 was receiving only its second performances ever when this recording was made. The talented Finnish violinst Ilkka Talvi proves an able exponent of this grandly conceived and marvelously scored work (listen to the imaginative violin/xylophone writing at the opening of the finale). It's a major statement by any definition and it surely deserves to return to the repertoire. The Enourmous Room, a fantasia for orchestra after the book by e.e. cummings, drives home Diamond's fundamentally Romantic outlook and caps a wholly winning disc that is as well played as it is well recorded. If you missed this the first time around, here's your chance to make up the loss.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Glenn Gould Anniversary Edition - Bach: Piano Concertos Vol 2
Expanded Edition - Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich / Midori
This selection is a DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording.
Expanded Edition - Bach: Keyboard Concertos / Glenn Gould
Prokofiev: Piano Concertos 1, 3; Sonatas 2, 3 / Graffman
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com
Vivaldi: The Complete Viola d'Amore Concertos / Pine, Ars Antigua

The viola d’amore is a curious beast. It has extra strings (like the baryton) that exist for no purpose other than to provide resonance, producing a fuzzy timbral halo that sweetens the slightly nasal, husky tone of the instrument, rather like a sort of mild continuous vibrato. When played with perfect intonation such as we might expect from Rachel Barton Pine, the result is captivatingly mellow and expressive, even in virtuoso passages. Vivaldi composed eight concertos for viola d’amore, and here they all are, smartly gathered together and performed to the hilt.
Although Vivaldi limited himself tonally in these works (to D, F, and A, with four in D minor), the instrument’s unusual tunings, combined with inventive scoring, ensure variety and contrast. The Concerto in F major pits the viola d’amore against a wind ensemble of oboes, horns, and bassoon, with the oboes and horns muted. I’m not sure what a muted baroque oboe is, but they sound lovely here and the horns also never turn gnarly–they really do complement the timbre of the viola d’amore. There’s also a double concerto, RV 540, for viola d’amore and lute, with the superb Hopkinson Smith on hand to partner Barton Pine.
The players of Ars Antigua accompany with evident relish, although as usual with today’s period instrument groups the strings could use some natural vibrato in the slow movements. Leaving it out or minimizing it the way they do is neither stylish nor “authentic”, but when the playing itself is so pointed and in tune it matters very little. The fact that the sonics are drop-dead gorgeous and the balances absolutely perfect also counts for a lot. If you thought that Vivaldi all sounds the same, consider this release as a welcome corrective.
– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday
Mendelssohn: Piano Concertos No 1 & 2, Etc / Serkin, Et Al
Beethoven: Piano Concerto No 5, Triple Concerto / Stern
Saint-Georges: Violin Concertos, Vol 2 / Qian Zhou, Mallon, Toronto Camerata
Includes cto(s) for vln by Joseph B. Saint-Georges. Ensemble: Toronto Camerata. Conductor: Kevin Mallon. Soloist: Qian Zhou.
REVIEW:
The works on this second volume of the Toronto Camerata’s series stand comparison with early Mozart, and the ensemble play suavely yet lightly. Much of Qian Zhou’s playing is similarly stylish… An excellent recording.
-- The Independent (U.K.)
Bach: Brandenburg Concertos / Lamon, Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra
– Gramophone
1995 JUNO Award Winner – “Best Classical Album: Large Ensemble.”
The Six Brandenburg Concertos by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) are considered by musicians, critics and audiences alike among the finest musical compositions of the baroque era. Bach presented the concertos to the Margrave of Brandenburg, Christian Ludwig, in Berlin, March 24, 1721, with the hopes some patronage would come his way. The music was preserved in the Brandenburg archives, and when rediscovered in the 19th century became some of the most beloved music of all time. Beloved is the operative word in this re-release of the masterpieces in the hands of JEANNE LAMON and the TAFELMUSIK BAROQUE ORCHESTRA. Critic Teb Libbey wrote, “Lucid and refreshingly pure, like water drawn from a cool, clear stream, these accounts are notable for the consistently clean textures and solid bass lines, for the way melodic lines and voice leading are clearly delineated, and for the manner in which the solo instruments emerge from the tutti with just the right amount of presence. With excellent sound, these are well-nigh ideal realizations.”
Karlowicz: Serenade, Violin Concerto / Kaler, Wit, Warsaw PO
Described by Gramophone as a ‘magician, bewitching our ears’, Russian-born American-based violinist Ilya Kaler has won 1st Prizes and Gold Medals at the Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and the Paganini Competitions and made many acclaimed Naxos recordings. He is an ideal soloist in Mieczysław Karłowicz’s attractive and spirited Violin Concerto. The Serenade, Karłowicz’s first orchestral work, signals the young composer’s extraordinary command of expressive ideas and opulent harmonies.
