REVIEW:

This CD has been given the title “The French Connection,” but it has nothing to do with the 1971 film in which Gene Hackman plays a New York City police detective trying to figure out where all the heroin is coming from. Instead, the title is an allusion to the increasing interest that French and Italian composers (and music lovers in general) had in each other’s music during the 1720s and 1730s. Vivaldi was an important player in this virtual exchange program, and supplied music—either new or recycled—for French patrons and printers. Even music intended for domestic use sometimes spoke with a French accent, as it were, during this period. Try the opening of RV 211 (probably composed as an operatic entr’acte) and you’ll immediately hear, in the dotted rhythms and swooping flourishes, an example of Vivaldi “speaking French.” This CD, then, is a varied compilation of works that fit into one of the above categories. As usual, one is impressed with Vivaldi’s fecundity and flexibility.

Adrian Chandler’s booklet notes are in two parts. The first is a discussion of Vivaldi’s impact on French music, and vice-versa. The second is “A note on the performance—a musician’s perspective.” This is a really terrific bit of musicology that even a layman should be able to get into. For example, in two of the so-called “Paris” concertos, a theorbo is used in the continuo, but in the fifth concerto, it is replaced with a guitar. Why, you might ask? Chandler argues that this concerto appears to have been specifically composed for a French audience and is the most typically French in style; therefore, it makes sense to use a guitar, which apparently was uncommon in Italian orchestral music at that time. Chandler also explains the two fragments included on this CD—concertos lacking one or more movements. Schubert’s “Unfinished” is, after all, a fragment, too, argues Chandler. I don’t think either of these fragments rises to Schubert’s level (or Bruckner’s Ninth!), but I agree with Chandler that works shouldn’t be ignored just because they are incomplete.

At first I thought that these performances were going to be too aggressive, but fortunately that is not the case, at least for the most part. The playing is lively (but not rushed) and very well articulated, and the fast movements have an appealing bounce. The musicians seem to be having fun. The slow movements sing nicely, without too much sweetness. La Serenissima was founded in 1994 and has recorded several discs for Avie. I am sorry to have missed them until now, but I hope to make up for that. Flutist Bircher and bassoonist Whelan are members of the ensemble. Whelan is particularly delightful to hear as he burbles through Vivaldi’s busier passages. His bassoon, a modern copy of an old Venetian instrument, even sounds a little like a saxophone at times, and to my ears, that only adds to the fun.

The recording is rich and brilliant, but not everyone will like how it brings the soloists so well into the foreground.

FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle

Includes cto(s) for bsn by Antonio Vivaldi. Ensemble: Nicolaus Esterházy Sinfonia. Conductor: Béla Drahos. Soloist: Tamás Benkócs.

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

As a teenager, Franz Liszt created at least two virtuosic concertos for piano and orchestra, scores which now are lost. The three works gathered here first saw the light of day only a few years later, however, during the 1830's when Liszt’s career as a young, travelling virtuoso was at its height. The two numbered concertos, which Liszt revised extensively before letting them be published some 25 years after their conception, frame the single-movement Malédiction for piano and strings which Liszt composed in 1833 and revised in 1840, but which was never published in his lifetime. Stepping into Liszt's shoes for the present recording is Alexandre Kantorow, another very young man. Born in 1997, Alexandre is here supported by his father Jean-Jacques Kantorow conducting the Tapiola Sinfonietta, a team with a number of highly acclaimed recordings to their credit. The recording is Alexandre’s first for BIS, as well as being his début concerto disc, and represents a remarkable achievement by a hugely promising talent, as well as being a vibrant and exciting account of three impassioned scores.

VIVALDI: Dresden Concertos, Vol. 2

DANZI: Bassoon Concertos

Classical Music

Recorded in: All Saints' Church, Tooting, London 22,23 September 1986 Producer(s) Brian Couzens Sound Engineer(s) Trygg Tryggvason Ralph Couzens [Assistant]

Recorded in: All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London 8-9 January 1996 & 9-11 July 1996 Producer(s) Nicholas Anderson Sound Engineer(s) Ben Connellan Jonathan Cooper (Assistant) Richard Smoker (Assistant)

Classical Music

Recorded in: All Saints' Church, East Finchley, London 1-3 March 1994 Producer(s) Richard Lee Sound Engineer(s) Richard Lee Andrew Lang (Assistant)

Les Violons du Roy: Encore!

BEETHOVEN Violin Concerto. BERG Violin Concerto • Antje Weithaas (vn); Steven Sloane, cond; Stavanger SO • AVI 8553305 (67:51)


Violinist Antje Weithaas’s pairing of Beethoven’s and Berg’s violin concertos isn’t the first, even in recent memory—Isabelle Faust did so, for example, with Claudio Abbado on Harmonia Mundi 902105 ( Fanfare 35:6). Arabella Steinbacher also programmed the two works, with Andris Nelsons conducting the WDR SO (Orfeo, 778 091, Fanfare 33:4)—which, incidentally, at 75:22, lasted almost eight minutes longer than Weithaas’s performances—and Audite released a pair of older readings by Christian Ferras of the two works with different conductors. Weithaas asks in the booklet notes for the reason for yet another recording of Beethoven’s Concerto and gives a sort of answer—she believes that she’s found something personal to say in (through?) it. She plays a violin made by Peter Greiner in 2001; and, in doing so, joins a number of intrepid artists willing to espouse the productions of contemporary violin makers. That violin itself deserves attention, because of the bright, silvery sound she draws from it, one that’s generally more than captivating (the engineers have made a contribution to its effect, of course). And, with it, she does manage, as she seems to have hoped, to express a message that, while it may in itself not be so original, yet features many nuances that do from moment to moment in the first movement, in passagework and in cantabile, repeatedly bring something unexpected for the listener to ponder. Her tempos in the first movement remain on the quick side, but that’s no hindrance to the music’s profundity, as Jascha Heifetz and Aaron Rosand have shown. She sounds at times commanding and at times like pure quicksilver in the cadenza, which introduces timpani (as did Beethoven’s own for his piano transcription of the concerto), and the effect is electrifying. (Isabelle Faust, Ji?í B?lohlávek and the Prague Philharmonia, Harmonia Mundi 90194, Fanfare 32:4, also gave an electrifying account of the cadenza.) The purity of tone that graced Weithaas’s reading of the first movement plays an even more central role in the slow one. Anne-Sophie Mutter dug for more individuality and depth in the movement’s preternaturally still sections with what sounded like warped tools; Weithaas does so without a trace of eccentricity, either stylistic or timbral. While the soloist combines fluidity in statements of the finale’s main subject matter with confident declamation in the episodes (while interspersing a large number of striking cadenzas), Steven Sloane and the orchestra make the tuttis, as in the first movement, authoritatively explosive, but at the same time achieve admirable clarity of detail. Which would be the greater arrogance, to release yet another recording of Beethoven’s work or to believe yourself capable of doing so? Weithaas may be guilty on both counts, but she acquits herself of all charges with a convincing performance that combines light and dark in a delightfully individual way.


Weithaas and Sloane also adopt a quick tempo in the first half of Alban Berg’s Concerto’s first movement, a tempo that, perhaps surprisingly, does little to disperse its mists and brings passages together for listeners in a fresh way (recall the famous, perceptually ambiguous, duck-rabbit). As in one of the outstanding early recordings of the work, that by André Gertler (Angel 3509, released on CD as Hungaroton 31635), the engineers have placed the violin within the orchestral web, and make a strong case for it belonging there. Sloane and the orchestra revel in the shifting timbres of the first movement’s scherzo-like second half but build to an almost terrifying climax near the middle. Weithaas slashes more savagely than Gertler did in the opening of the second movement’s first half (and Sloane extracts more disturbing dissonances from the orchestra than did Paul Kletzki in that recording). And they create, in the tragedy at the end of that half, a terrifying sense of existential Angst . And in embellishing the chorale tune ( Es ist genug ) that Berg spun out of his tone row, Weithaas and Sloane evince an almost chamber-like intimacy.


Previous experience with Weithaas’s recordings made the arrival of this one for review particularly intriguing, raising the highest expectations. Each and every aspect of the release (including the prepossessing tone of Greiner’s violin) has met, and even exceeded, those expectations. A recording of special merit, it deserves a place on every record shelf. Urgently recommended.


FANFARE: Robert Maxham

Classical Music

It would be difficult to find someone who did not recognize the themes from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Arguably one of the most performed pieces of classical music, it seems to have found its way into every corner of the world. This release titled 8 Seasons contains Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and also Astor Piazzolla’s Las Cuatro Estaciones Portenas. Piazzolla composed his Seasons between 1965 and 1969 for an ensemble comprised of violin, electric guitar, piano, double bass, and bandoneon. Fusing jazz, classical tradition, and Afro-Hispanic music, Piazzolla’s Seasons are an interesting compliment to Vivaldi’s.

"Danae Dörken is one of the most extraordinary young artists I have had the pleasure to meet. Her absolute devotion to music, paired with a breath-taking talent for musical expression and tone color, turns her performance into a truly unique experience..." - Lars Vogt

Despite being only 24 years old, Danae Dörken has already performed in numerous concert halls around the world with the highest calibre of ensembles. This recording is Danae Dörken's third release with ARS Produktion, following the ICMA Award nomination that she received for her second album.

C.P.E. Bach’s Flute Concerto in d, Wq 22 dates from his years in Berlin during the reign of Frederic the Great. + Bach’s music was the immediate starting point for Hans Werner Henze’s conception of musical and aesthetic history as well as for his work as a composer, so for example in his interpretative transcription of one of Bach’s Fantasias. + Mozart is here represented by his Concerto for Flute and Harp, KV 299. + “The young Argentinean flautist Maria Cecilia Muñoz has astounding technique… beauty and refinement of sound…supple opulence and luminous tone.” (Wiener Zeitung, Austria)

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This recording combines all the major works of bassoon repertoire written between 1770 and 1830, with Mozart's magnificient concerto as the undisputed masterpiece of the entire repertoire. He was able to bring the full range of bassoon's possibilities into play, making use of its entire tonal range in the opening movement, with semiquaver passages, glorious cantabile sections and maniacal trills. Matthias Rácz, probably one of the best bassoon players of our generation, present this work as well as the two concertos of Hummel and Weber with the greatest of ease.

Chopin: Complete Works for Piano & Orchestra, Vol. 1

David Finko is a Russian American composer who studied at the Rimsky-Korsakov School of the Performing Arts and the Leningrad Conservatory. He was a member of the Union of Soviet Composers and also wrote commissioned works for the Soviet Ministry of Culture.

To the best of my knowledge, Imogen Cooper has come only recently to directing as well as playing concertos. In October last year I heard her at the QEH with the Northern Sinfonia in Beethoven – her playing was as fresh and spontaneous as always. Here she is, on record, in Mozart, a composer clearly very close to her heart.

It is actually the 23rd concerto that we hear first on the disc. The opening is very serene, very unhurried, even slightly Romantic in feel. Maybe one should really start listening with K291 as K488 is almost too comfortable. That said, there are some nicely sprung rhythms later on and the cadenza is simply tremendous, exhibiting real depth. Throughout there is a chamber music feel to it all, the give-and-take between piano and - in particular - winds a joy. The famous F sharp minor slow movement begins with a piano rumination that had me in mind of Daniel Barenboim's early version of this work from his cycle of the 1960s and 1970s with the English Chamber Orchestra. Indeed, all credit to the Northern Sinfonia for sustaining Cooper's intensity so well and losing nothing to their more southerly colleagues. Cooper adds decorations to Mozart's large, bare intervals - towards the end, around six minutes in. The finale begins with Cooper opting for a completely different touch, a harder staccato that delineates the territory immediately. Again there seems to be very slight blurring from the middle frequencies of the orchestra, though.

The so-called Jeunehomme Concerto begins with Cooper rather surprisingly indulging in unnecessary point-making in her initial dialogue with the orchestra. Just one misjudgement – an over-tenutoed note on the orchestra around 1:28 in. But with Cooper's pianistic re-entrance, all is civility and expert balance. Cooper even relaxes enough to give a really cheeky end to the cadenza.

The middle Andantino is peppered with moments of magic; the finale contains large swathes of superbly even passagework, scampering around wonderfully. Perhaps Cooper milks the Menuet that forms the centrepiece of this finale rather, but one can still revel in the beauty of her phrasing. True, I still maintain much affection for Cooper's mentor, Alfred Brendel, in this piece - I refer to the earlier ASMF recording now on a Philips twofer - but Cooper's recording shall now ever be at its side.

There is little doubt that this disc will bring much joy. The applause at the close of both concertos is eminently deserved.

-- Colin Clarke, MusicWeb International

Franck's Piano Concerto No. 2, composed when he was just 13 (an earlier attempt was destroyed), previously was available on a 1990 Schwann disc that even then was overdue for replacement. Martijn van den Hoeck gives an agile and accomplished reading here, one that fully justifies buying this CD even if you already have the other works on the program. The recording was made in the Musis Sacrum in Arnhem, whose fine Philharmonic Orchestra previously made a strong impression in its first contribution to Naxos' Franck survey. This follow-up gives the rarely played concerto a much needed new lease on life, and in every way this is a considerable advance on the Schwann version by Jean-Claude van den Eyden, whose cautiously under-stated manner suits this volatile and extrovert work less well than van den Hoeck's gutsy, powerfully animated style. The Schwann production also suffers from technical flaws in both outer movements, and keyboard detailing in the adagio is poorly reproduced by the dimly-lit recording.


On this Naxos disc, which shows van den Hoeck in exceptional form in the concerto's virtuoso finale, the sound is rich, spacious, and very detailed, with the piano placed slightly back, just as you'd expect in a concert hall. François-Joël Thiollier is soloist in the remaining works, and he gives estimable accounts of each. Perhaps unsurprisingly, however, his performance of the Symphonic Variations doesn't quite attain the poise and flow of the Decca version by Bolet, Chailly, and the Concertgebouw (let alone Rubinstein/Wallenstein on RCA). But Thiollier possesses an assured technique and a firm grasp of structure, making this a very useful interpretation, especially if you don't already have this work in your collection. Recommended.
--Michael Jameson, ClassicsToday.com