REVIEW:

Each of the two has strong competing recordings as well. In Richard Stoltzman’s version of the Corigliano concerto (RCA), there is more of an emphasis on the music’s jazzy rhythms and the contrast between its expressive and abstract elements. While Eddy Vanoosthuyse may not capture the same sense of spontaneity as Stoltzman, or equal the mournful quality of his playing in the Elegy, his phrasing and control illuminates distinctive details along the way, negotiates the treacherous opening cadenza fluidly, and packs more punch in the powerful closing pages. I call it a toss-up. The same holds true for the Carter concerto, where Vanoosthuyse and Michael Collins (DG) both handle the angular passages with aplomb, and offer an absorbing account of the contemplative episodes. Oliver Knussen, conductor for Collins, is a brilliant interpreter of Carter’s music, and the must-hear DG disc also features the only available recording of Symphonia. But Vanoosthuyse’s conductor, Paul Meyer, is a notable clarinetist himself, and his grasp of these concertos is no less effective. All things considered, this is an exceptional release in every way.

— Fanfare

This recording constitutes nothing less than a landmark in both the Hindemith and Walton discographies. The Walton Concerto is the better known of the two, but it’s an elusive work that often fails to make a strong impression. It has never received a more shapely, focused, and intelligent performance than it does here. Poltéra’s swift tempos and exceptional virtuosity give the music such freshness, while the long finale holds together better than in any other performance. If you’ve ever had doubts about this work, here’s an interpretation that will set them to rest.

As for the Hindemith, this is an absolutely wonderful piece, with a slow movement that contains perhaps Hindemith’s most memorable single tune. He used it a lot. Its second phrase opens the song cycle Das Marienleben, and it also appears in the Symphony in E flat. For some reason the work has never quite caught on, despite being very approachable and extravagantly scored. Janos Starker’s RCA recording was the best option before this, but that comes coupled (oddly) with the Schumann concerto, whereas the Walton makes a far more apt disc mate.

Poltéra’s performance simply puts everyone else in the shade. His tone has just the right combination of purity and sweetness, but it never turns sentimental. The virtuosic outer movements play as if self-propelled–and in this respect let us pause for a moment to give Frank Shipway and the São Paulo Symphony credit for their exciting but always sensitive accompaniments. The solo cello works, too, make apt and unusual couplings, and they are played with the same point and panache as the concertos. Stunning SACD engineering represents the icing on the cake. This is just glorious.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

These four works are among the few surviving examples of Muzio Clementi’s early orchestral music. The two Symphonies, Op. 18 follow Classical models but are full of the surprise modulations and dynamic contrasts to be found in his piano sonatas. The Piano Concerto has a dazzling solo part and some delightful orchestral touches. Clementi’s Symphonies Nos. 1-4 can be heard on Naxos 8.573071 and 8.573112.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies' Strathclyde Concertos are amongst his most imposing contributions to the genre. The solo pairing of his Concerto No. 5 was inspired by Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola, the soloists appearing in dialogue over intricate harmonies and dense string textures. Illuminated by Peter Bruegel's painting Children's Games, the distinctively scored Concerto No. 6 has an uninhibited lightness and transparency. Strathclyde Concerto No. 2 can be heard on Naxos 8.573017, Nos. 3 and 4 on 8.572353.

In this final volume of Mozart's complete piano concertos, Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie, listeners are treated to Mozart's very earliest attempts in the genre. In these works, young Mozart expands his existing sonata movements into proper concertos, many believe this was a task given to him by his father, Leopold. After a few years, Mozart adopted a more mature approach to the concertos but still used arrangements of sonatas as inspiration. "An ideal mixture of clarity and stylish effervescene" - International Record Review

You can have too much of a good thing, but Mendelssohn wrote a lot of music that deserves to be better known, and if you’re a hard core Mendelssohnian or are just curious to learn what you’ve been missing, this attractively priced 11-disc set deserves your consideration. The performances of the five standard symphonies with Litton and the Bergen Philharmonic are uniformly fine: very well played, and intelligently paced. Once example that all fans of the composer will appreciate is the ideal tempo that Litton chooses for the coda of the Scottish Symphony (sound clip)–grand but fluid, so that the music never sounds as though it should have stopped a few minutes before it actually does.

The twelve string symphonies, early though they are, contain a great deal of masterful music, and the later ones are in fact quite substantial. This set is both the most complete, as well as on balance the most desirable yet recorded. You get both versions of No. 8 (with and without winds), plus the single movement No. 13, and also the scherzo from the Octet in its string orchestra arrangement (later on in the box). Lev Markiz leads the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in performances that respect the music’s classical roots without sacrificing warmth or beauty of tone. Rhythms are sharp, tempos lively, and the string ensemble consistently well balanced.

There are four discs of concertos here, including Isabelle van Keulen’s excellent original version of the famous E minor Violin Concerto (second sample). Everyone will have favorite performances of this music, or at least the more famous works, but with Markiz once again in charge of the accompaniments, these versions with chamber orchestra are all of a piece. There’s a welcome intimacy between solo(s) and orchestra that makes these recordings quite distinctive and appealing. The solo piano concertos have plenty of sparkle in Brautigam’s hands, while Roland Pöntinen and Love Derwinger play the two double piano concertos with unaffected brilliance.

Some of this music (the lesser known concertos) is not always easy to find in top-knotch performances, so even if you wind up duplicating the standard pieces, this may well be worth considering. With fabulous sonics, you really can’t go wrong at mid to budget price.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

A must-have and a life-changer for Shostakovich fans.



SHOSTAKOVICH Cello Concertos: No. 1; No. 2 • Enrico Dindo (vc); Gianandrea Noseda, cond; Danish Natl SO • CHANDOS 5093 (SACD: 60:13)


So many cello concerti, so little time. With dozens of competing versions of these two interpretively rich, emotionally ripe scores—the majority of them first-class accounts that come critically recommended, if with some reservations—it’s cost- and time-prohibitive to be familiar with them all. Mørk? Maslennikov? Müller-Schott? What’s a conscientious reviewer to do? Well, yours truly is tempted to fall back on the tried-and-true, which, after all, is tried and true for good reason. That means Mstislav Rostropovich. Of his several recordings, I opt for the mid-’60s performances powerfully conducted by David Oistrakh, not easy to find but most recently sighted on the Yedang Classics label. The sound is a little rough, but no one matches Rostropovich’s passion and profundity in this music.


Nevertheless, that said, there’s always room for a convincing alternative approach, and Enrico Dindo’s is some distance from that of Rostropovich. Though he’s apparently recorded programs of Beethoven and Bach, only a 1998 release of the Brahms cello sonatas is currently listed in the Fanfare Archive. Michael Jameson called it “satisfying” ( Fanfare 21: 6), and tellingly described Dindo’s point of view as one of “letting the music (rather than any gesture intended to propel a subjective vision of the text) speak for itself.” I find that to be an accurate characterization of his approach to Shostakovich as well. Dindo’s tone is silky and sinewy, and he definitely has the chops to respond to everything Shostakovich asks for—from the buoyant rhythms of the First Concerto to the sustained introspection of the Second. He favors fast, clean lines in the First Concerto, which emphasize its satiric edge in ways reminiscent of the composer’s earlier, youthful impulsiveness (despite the fact that it was written in his 53rd year), though neither slighting, nor exaggerating, the second movement’s elegiac lyricism. In the darker Second Concerto, he adopts an appropriately serious demeanor, providing a consistent, fluid line that lacks Rostropovich’s bite, but allows the music to sing its own eloquent, if dolorous, song. In this his resembles Heinrich Schiff’s attentive, persuasive 1984 performance (Philips), although Schiff benefited from Maxim Shostakovich’s strong, emphatically pointed accompaniment, whereby Gianandrea Noseda, following Dindo’s lead, particularly in the Second Concerto provides ever-so-slightly less dramatic, albeit scrupulously detailed, support.


I suspect these are performances that will retain their interest over time. Add Enrico Dindo’s name to the list of recommended cellists in this significant repertoire.


FANFARE: Art Lange


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These two concertos form a pairing which is logical and convenient but by no means ubiquitous. The Cello Concerto No. 1 is the more widely recorded of the two, with impressive accounts from the likes of Han-Na Chang, and the more enduring dedicatee’s version, Mstislav Rostropovich with Eugene Ormandy in 1959 and now available on Sony Classical. One of the best discs of these two works is with Rafa? Kwiatkowski on the Dux label. Aside from Peter Wispelwey’s recording of the Cello Concerto No. 2 along with Britten’s Third Suite on Challenge Classics, there doesn’t seem to be much choice in this repertoire when it comes to SACD recordings, so this Chandos release enters the market with a useful USP.

Enrico Dindo won the Rostropovich Cello Competition in 1997 and has been performing widely since, also making recordings which have included Bach’s Suites and Vivaldi Concertos on Italian Decca. His playing here is remarkably rich, obtaining deep and richly expressive tones from a Rogeri instrument from 1717. The cello sound is forward, bordering on the surrealist as with so many concerto recordings these days, but not intolerably massive in relation to the orchestra. In fact this is one of the genuine strengths of this recording, with masses of colour and detail from a very powerful sounding Danish National Symphony Orchestra. The opening of the Cello Concerto No. 1 throws down the gauntlet in this regard, the double-bassoon sounding like you’ve never heard it in any other recording; dug into with such gusto that you’d expect the floor to shake and the keys to be shaken off by the vibrations. The excitement in the playing is in its shaping and development, building stirring structures rather than hitting us constantly with masses of relentless intensity. The horn-calls are also marvellous in this first Allegretto, woodwinds competing with the soloist through grating dissonance and dramatic release. Perhaps the strings could have had more presence to make the whole thing a tad more credible. They should come into their own in that most gorgeous and moving of Shostakovich statements, the central Moderato. Even here though, the first horn entry far outweighs the texture of the entire body of strings. Behind the soloist they do seem to be rather at a disadvantage in the balance. Just taking one comparison, that with Thorleif Thedéen and James DePreist on the BIS label, the balance brings the strings that much more into the picture. This allows a more equal interaction which can carry greater emotional heft. Thedéen is a little more heart-on-sleeve than Dindo, with a tighter vibrato and a more vocal way of expressing the melodic lines. I wouldn’t swap this BIS disc for the Chandos one now, but still find it has a good deal to offer.

Whether or not you find the recorded balance a problem, Enrico Dindo’s solo lines carry so much emotional strength that you will find yourself gripped from beginning to end. One of my old favourites for these pieces is from Truls Mørk with the London Philharmonic and Mariss Jansons on the Virgin Classics label. Certain aspects of Noseda’s approach do remind me of the Jansons recording, but I have to admit that Dindo gets as much and more out of the music than almost any rival I can name. Like the texture in the inky lines of a Ralph Steadman drawing, Dindo delights in thickening and thinning sustained notes so that we are constantly in a state of awe and expectation, even when Shostakovich is in passages of transition. Listen in the Moderato to the general sonic picture at about 7:00 and on though: the intensity of the upper strings in the orchestra is almost entirely absent, which undermines at least some of that good work. Dindo’s expressive playing gives the impression of space, but Noseda’s tempi are generally a tad more brisk and compact than many. Jansons takes 12:32 with this Moderato for instance, compared to Noseda’s 10:50.

The rough peasant feel in the final movement of this first concerto is something to relish; the aural glue not quite holding together as the winds advance in the balance and give us a kick from time to time. It has an undeniable grip and snatch flowing from Noseda’s treatment, an uncompromising approach which drags us along mercilessly and never lets go.

Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2 is dark from the outset, the mood superbly set through the solo cello and lower strings in the opening bars. The imagination is teased by fragmentary moments of brooding beauty, such as the repeated double-stop gesture at around 4 minutes in. This is a bleak landscape and the kind of inner journey which can lead you to places both moving and disturbing. Dindo speaks emotively, the sighing downward gestures weighed with tears, the parlando moments confiding and gruff by turns. Shostakovich’s score in the first movement is as hard as nails, and the players nail it firmly. The bass drum thwacks from around 9:20 are an audiophile treat as well.

The acoustic space is emphasised in the open textures of the opening to the central Allegretto, and the sense of volume in the 5.0 SACD surround mix is very tactile indeed. Listen to the laughing winds from about 2:30: the playing is not only needle sharp, but is also filled with personality and character throughout. The theatricality of the opening to the final Allegretto has rarely been so sharply observed, and you expect an announcement from a melodramatic actor as much as you do the entry of the cello. Those ‘nice’ tunes as they arrive are all the more earth-shatteringly emotive for these extremes of contrast. Little operatic touches and that late-Shostakovich sense of a fatefully ticking time-bomb make the whole thing as touching and filled with narrative import as I can ever remember hearing.

Chandos easily replaces its earlier release of this repertoire with Frans Helmerson and the Russian State Symphony Orchestra on CHAN 10040. This has some lovely playing and a decent concert hall balance, but with somewhat rough-and-ready qualities from the orchestra in some of the more technically demanding passages. Fans of these two concertos simply must have this recording from Dindo/Noseda. The cover photo of Red Square is strikingly atmospheric, and there are good booklet notes and pictures inside as well. Despite my reservations about the string balance which admittedly affects the scoring of the first concerto more than the second, this is a must-have and a life-changer for Shostakovich fans.

-- Dominy Clements, MusicWeb International

... flawless, exciting... we have music that unfolds comfortably, but there's enough to arouse curiosity without scaring anyone off. It will not alienate stodgy blue-hair types, but it will still satisfy those who crave creative new music. Thus has American Record Guide responded to the music of New York-based composer Sean Hickey, who reappears with new, engaging, and beautifully crafted concertos in his premiere Delos recording. Renowned cellist Dmitry Kouzov and vaunted clarinet virtuoso Alexander Fiterstein shine with St. Petersburg orchestras under Maestro Vladimir Lande.

This disc features works by three composers – Vincent d’Indy, Ernst Krenek, and Erwin Schulhoff – who in the mid- to late-1920s adopted neoclassicism and wrote works in the neo-baroque concerto grosso style. Sir Neville Marriner conducts the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, one of the most recorded chamber orchestras in the world.

Among the most widely performed of Mozart’s piano concertos for a good half century after its composition in 1785, the Concerto No.20 in D minor still assumes a commanding place in the concert hall. Among its early devotees was Beethoven, who performed the work at a benefit concert for Mozart’s widow in March 1795 and who may well have found much to admire in the work’s brooding opening, characterized by syncopations and later punctuated by more aggressive outbursts; in his informative liner notes, the Mozart scholar John Irving goes so far as to call it ‘Mozart’s grittiest concerto’. Six years after the D minor concerto, in January 1791, the composer completed the Piano Concerto No.27 in B flat major, K595, giving the first performance of it two months later. This was to be his last public appearance as a soloist, and the concerto has sometimes been considered as a work in which the typical sparkle of Mozart’s virtuosity is tempered by resignation, as if the composer were already aware of his imminent demise. Such an interpretation is contradicted by a close study of the autograph manuscript, however: the concerto appears to have been begun two full years before it was completed. Its language is nevertheless more introverted than most of Mozart’s works in the genre: he seems to be aiming for a sublime delicacy of expression rarely attempted elsewhere in his concerto output. These two exceptional works are here performed by Ronald Brautigam and Die Kölner Akademie, on their fifth disc of Mozart’s concertos – an ongoing series which has been described as ‘a lucky break and a true delight’ in the German magazine Piano News.

Classical Music

Encapsulating the voluptuous sound of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s strings, Tasmin Little is both the soloist and conductor in this unique coupling: Vivaldi’s ever-popular ‘Four Seasons’ meets Roxanna Panufnik’s ‘Four World Seasons,’ the premiere recording of a set of highly inspirational pieces. As a complete cycle, ‘The Four Seasons’ offers a set of vivid tableaux, imaginative, enticing, and wonderfully contrasted, with ample chance for the violin soloist to display technique, sensitivity, and color. These are qualities that the British composer Roxanna Panufnik also sought for her own Seasons tribute, Four World Seasons, written for the violinist. Three of the pieces are dedicated to her, while the fourth, ‘Autum in Albania,’ is dedicated to the memory of Panufnik’s father, Polish composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik, who, his daughter says, was born, loved, and died in autumn.

In just two years, between 1784 and 1786, Mozart composed no less than twelve piano concertos – a staggering number. Often described as one of the most light-hearted and buoyant among these is the Concerto in F major K 459, sometimes called ‘the second Coronation Concerto’. The nickname comes from the fact that Mozart would later choose to perform it, along with the ‘Coronation Concerto’ in D major, during the festivities surrounding the coronation of Emperor Leopold II in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1790. Its companion work on this fourth disc in Ronald Brautigam’s survey hails from the same period: begun in 1784, the Concerto in A major K 488 was completed in March 1786, at the same time as Mozart was putting the finishing touches to his opera Le nozze di Figaro. It is one of only three piano concertos in which Mozart uses clarinets in the orchestra, resulting in a very particular sound world, especially in the magical slow movement. Mozart clearly held the work in high regard, and described it as one of his most select compositions ‘which I keep just for myself and an élite circle of music lovers’, and later audiences have agreed with him. Ronald Brautigam has been described as ‘an absolutely instinctive Mozartian… with melodic playing of consummate beauty’ (International Record Review), and he is once again supported by the period orchestra Die Kölner Akademie conducted by Michael Alexander Willens in a partnership which more than one reviewer has termed ‘ideal’.

The Swedish recorder virtuoso Dan Laurin has demonstrated his remarkable versatility on some thirty recordings for BIS, ranging from a nine-disc set with 17th-century composer Jacob van Eyck's complete Der Fluyten Lust-hof to the recent Rock that Flute, with music for recorder and strings written in 2013 by the Dutch composer Chiel Meijering. During a recording career that stretches over almost 30 years, Laurin keeps returning to one particular set of works, however: the concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Three of the works (the Concertos RV 441, 443 and 444) included on his latest release he has recorded more than once before, with ensembles such as the Drottningholm Baroque Ensemble, Bach Collegium Japan and Arte dei Suonatori. For his latest 'take' on these favourites Laurin has joined forces with the young and vibrant Norwegian string ensemble 1B1 (shorthand for Ensemble Bjergsted 1). As he explains in his own liner notes for the present disc, he was inspired by his work on transcribing and performing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: ‘A close reading of RV441 and RV443–445 reveals great similarities between these works and The Four Seasons: sudden changes of moods, turbulent emotions, burlesque whims mixed with sublime beauty and elegance… My aim here is to explore the recorder concertos with the same freedom and spontaneity that characterize the modern-day approach to the Seasons.’ Laurin’s recording of the Seasons has been called ‘undoubtedly the best transcription to date’ (Diapason) and ‘never hackneyed, but instead invigoratingly fresh and vibrant’ (Clarino), verdicts which can only fuel the expectations concerning this his latest version of the recorder concertos.

MOZART WILLENS (COND.); BRAUTIGAM (FORTEPIANO); DIE KOLNER AKADEMIE PIANO CONCERTOS- PIANO CONCERTO NO. 24 IN C MINOR, K 491; PIANO CONCERTO NO. 25 IN C MAJOR, K 503

Classical Music

After a move to the U.S.A., Bohuslav Martinů was to compose four works which all belong to the central 20th century repertoire for the viola. Maxim Rysanov, one of today's leading viola players, has gathered these works on this disc, opening with the Rhapsody-Concerto from 1952. In this lyrical two-movement work, characterized by sustained legato writing, sudden changes of mood and texture and a vivid style of orchestration, Rysanov is supported by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the eminent Martin? expert Jirí Belohlávek. The two Duos for violin and viola which follow are slightly earlier (from 1947 and 1950, respectively) and were written with the husband-and-wife team Joseph and Lillian Fuchs in mind. Here the young Russian violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky joins Rysanov, in two scores where exacting technical demands bring the reward of an astonishing richness in sounds and variety from such a sparse instrumentation. Maxim Rysanov closes the disc in the company of the pianist Katya Apekisheva, performing the Viola Sonata of 1955 – like the Rhapsody-Concerto in two movements, with a tough, passionate mood that often recalls the composer's better-known cello sonatas.

Classical Music

The composers featured on this new release are rarely performed, and much of their music has been lost. All of the pieces featured on this release were found in Johann George Pisendel’s private library collection, and date from 18th century Dresden. Marcin Swiatkiewicz is one of today’s foremost Polish harpsichordists. He specializes in period keyboard instruments, as well as improvisation in both the modern and old styles. Martyna Pastuszka has been the concert master and artistic director of {oh!} Orkiestra Historyczna since 2012. She is an active teacher, and is frequently asked to collaborate with other ensembles.

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


Expectations ran high in anticipation of this release, and they have not been disappointed. BIS just completed a partially successful Beethoven piano concerto series in which an often inspired Ronald Brautigam was shackled to an expressively challenged and period-pedantic Andrew Parrott. Here, both conductor and soloist are consistently operating on the same exciting wavelength. Osmo Vänskä's credentials as a Beethoven conductor remain impressive. He understands the importance of accents, of sforzandos that enliven but don't disrupt the melodic line. He never fails to balance Beethoven's all-important bass lines clearly (opening tutti of the Fourth concerto), or to give sufficient prominence to those rapid accompaniments in repeated notes that energize the music's texture (first movement of the "Emperor"). The orchestra plays with real intensity as well as expressiveness, offering the perfect collaboration for Yevgeny Sudbin's contributions.

These are no less memorable. It's sometimes said that you can tell how well the Fourth concerto will go from the pianist's handling of the opening phrase, and there's some truth to this observation. Sudbin plays it with simple dignity, refuses to make a big ritard at the end, and strictly observes Beethoven's eighth-note value on the last note. The result is that the phrase sounds incomplete (as it should), arousing expectation and carrying the music through the pause to the hesitant entry of the violins in a different key. He understands that some of Beethoven's biggest surprises arrive softly. In short, there is a true give-and-take between soloist and orchestra throughout these performances that makes them especially engaging.

The slow movement is wonderful: Vänskä finds a tempo--a touch slower than usual--that allows him to observe the "sempre staccato" indication and provide the necessary rhetorical weight to the strings' emphatic proclamations, while Sudbin's answers represent the soul of inward poetry. The finale, by contrast, is dazzling and uninhibited, with trumpets and drums cutting through the texture, and Sudbin's fast passage-work is joyous but never tonally forced or hard.

Indeed, it may sound odd to say so, but one of the joys of Sudbin's playing is his handling of simple scales and runs. Mozart once remarked how he delighted in making them "go like oil", with perfect smoothness, and that's just how Sudbin handles them. There are a lot of scales in these pieces, in the "Emperor" particularly. In its first movement, each major entrance (and exit) of the piano features a simple scale, and anyone who can make these as memorable and beautiful as Sudbin does is a major talent indeed. He has a particular way, in the Adagio for example, of rendering the melodic line expressive through control of touch and dynamics without distorting the rhythm, and this makes the music touching without excess sentimentality. It all seems very much in the spirit of Beethoven, as is the robust and perfectly-timed manner in which he and Vänskä launch the finale--grand in all of the right ways. The coda's huge, amazingly well-judged diminuendo and ritard only confirm the generally masterful impression. Gorgeous SACD sonics make this release a Beethoven experience you will not want to miss.

– David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

Import Hybrid-SACD pressing.

On this ninth installment in Ronald Brautigam’s series of the complete piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the program consists of three works composed in 1776 and 1782-83. As on previous discs, Brautigam – whose ‘muscular yet sensitively nuanced command of Mozartian discourse’ has been described by BBC Music Magazine as central to the series – is supported by Die Kölner Akademie under Michael Alexander Willens, in a partnership that for each new recording becomes ever more intuitive and close-knit.

Review:

Ronald Brautigam and the Cologne Academy under Michael Alexander Willens offer stylish and enjoyable performances.

– BBC Music Magazine

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



At last, a modern Nielsen to lead the field - and a future classic?

There are eight or so modern accounts of the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto in the catalogue, plus a few no less impressive that have come and gone. Most have fine qualities. Yet for sureness of idiomatic touch none dislodges Ib Erikson’s classic 1954 Danish accounts.

Closer to the mark than any modern rivals is this new issue from Martin Fröst, the clarinettist of the moment for all-round artistry allied to adventurous approach to repertoire. He seems to have Nielsen’s irascible masterpiece in his bloodstream, as surely as he has its technical contortions under his fingers. Vänskä ensures that the Lahti players are never fazed by the exposed edges in the accompaniment, and only the very drawn-out final bars come across as slightly self-conscious. Detail for detail, phrase for phrase, I would have to give this team the palm over the old Danish recording, even before considering BIS’s immeasurably superior sound quality. Even so, Erikson and Wöldike remain a benchmark for insight into the character of the piece.

Kalevi Aho’s Concerto starts arrestingly but without a trace of the attention-seeking that afflicts certain other clarinet concertos of recent times. There is something in Aho’s five continuous movements that recalls Nielsen’s directness and free-flowing succession of ideas, and the cadenza that forms the second movement even brings momentary echoes of Nielsen’s uncompromising skirls and flourishes. But the Finn’s sights are set more on the starkly elemental than on the quirkily personal. For Aho the Vivace con brio third movement is the “centre and culmination”, and it is certainly exuberant – dangerous, even – in its restless virtuosity, rather like Strauss’s Till Eulenspiegel driven mad by inner demons. After this a sad slow movement brings sober reflection, and an Epilogue concludes the work on a note of mystery.

Few would now question the status of the Nielsen as the finest clarinet concerto of the 20th century. Time will tell with Kalevi Aho’s concerto in the 21st. In the short term it will probably daunt as many prospective soloists and orchestras as Nielsen’s work did in its time. But there can have been few equally impressive head-on engagements with the concerto medium in recent years. In sum, a CD of rare distinction.

-- David Fanning, Gramophone [5/2007]

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



WEBER Symphonies: No. 1; No. 2. Andante e Rondo ungarese. 1 Bassoon Concerto in F 1 • Jean-Jacques Kantorow, cond; Jaakko Luoma (bn); 1 Tapiola Sinfonietta • BIS 1620 (Hybrid multichannel SACD: 67:42)


There is little that can be done for Weber’s gauche, mindless early symphonies, written when he was 21. They are all sparks and bombast, with colorful surfaces but virtually no content. Single woodwinds (there are no clarinets) generally carry the tunes, passing them around the section, while strings offer some relief; brass join in for consistently loud, fanfare-like tutti. The general consensus has been to play the symphonies as fast as possible (to get them over with?). Kantorow does that too, and his 40-piece orchestra, playing modern instruments with all the snap, sparkle, and tonal panache of period practice—more so than Roy Goodman’s period-instrument Hanover Band—makes the most of the symphonies, aided by BIS ’s usual sensational recorded sound. Luoma’s bassoon stands out among the winds; Roger Norrington’s London Classical Players have better-balanced wind soloists, but the overall performances are not as precise. The Second Symphony opens this disc, beginning with a stunning two-bar fanfare; unfortunately, it never does anything with it, making the 10-minute Allegro seem endless. As if the composer immediately recognized the problem, the following three movements whiz by in a mere eight minutes. After the “final” coda and a pause, two brief pp notes from bassoon and low strings bring the proceedings to a close. Haydn did everything better, including jokes and false endings.


Concerted pieces always inspired the best from Weber: three for clarinet, three more for piano, one each for oboe and French horn. These two for bassoon are the cream of that instrument’s repertoire (there also was a kid named Mozart). Playing a bassoon built in 2000 by Wilhelm Heckel—I don’t know if he is related to the creator of the heckelphone—Luoma sails through both works with the greatest of ease, producing consistently lovely tones. Whatever happened to that grumpy old instrument that was so difficult to play?


The First Symphony comes last, probably so that its Presto finale, the most successful movement of the eight, can wind up the disc with a bang. As fine as the CD is, SACD opens up the sound, giving it more life. Trumpets and strings gain clarity and presence, which makes the winds recede slightly from the spotlight. Surround sound adds an airy feeling, but doesn’t alter the basic sound. If you must have Weber’s symphonies, this is certainly the disc to get, especially so given the bonus bassoon works. But the others mentioned also include marvelous bonuses: Melvyn Tan plays the fortepiano Konzertstück with Norrington, and Anthony Halstead plays a natural horn in the Horn Concertino with Goodman.


FANFARE: James H. North


Finely honed performances of charming music played with relish.

These works were all written between 1807 and 1811, so pre-date Weber’s fame as an opera composer. He had just left Breslau, having survived a dreadful accident when his father, a printer, left a nitric acid solution in a wine glass which his son absent-mindedly then drank. His next post was a temporary one, when he went to Bad Carlsruhe and the court of Count Eugen Friedrich of Württemberg-?ls, who, being himself a fair oboist, encouraged Weber to compose. Both symphonies were written there during these idyllic few months, the first in C major in December 1807 and January 1808, the second (also in C major) later the same month. Reflecting the resources he found there, the scoring lacks one flute and most surprisingly there are no clarinets. Solos for the rest abound however, some of them very demanding, so standards must have been high. Obviously the oboe has his plate full, but the remaining winds, particularly the bassoon, are active, so too the French horn and some solo strings; in fact pretty well everyone has their fifteen seconds of fame. Written when Beethoven’s first three symphonies were already known, it is important to regard Weber’s more in Haydn’s style, with the crossing of the cusp between Classic and Romantic reflected more by orchestral colour than any disturbance of formal structure. Even so, these are not predictable works, in particular the finale of the Second, which stops and starts for individual solos before scampering on to the next pause like an American football game. This is Haydn’s wit at work. Much the same can be said of the First Symphony, which highlights individual wind players once again. It is full of confident orchestral outbursts on the one hand - the opera conductor here - and charming melodies of an almost rustic hue. At a minute and a half, the Minuet and Trio of the Second Symphony must be the shortest ever. Note that this recording inexplicably starts with the Second Symphony and ends with the First, easy to miss that as both are in the same key.

The rest of the fare is devoted to two concerted works for bassoon and orchestra. The brief Andante and Hungarian Rondo was originally composed in 1809 for Weber’s violist brother Fritz, while the bassoon transcription was made for the virtuoso player Georg Friedrich Brandt with some inevitably consequent changes. The Rondo’s rhythms emphasise the Hungarian flavour of the music. Weber’s writing exploits fully the facility of the instrument, its agility over a wide range of notes, tonal quality, and its lyrical as well as comical element. It was in March 1810 that he found himself conducting a concert with the Munich Court Orchestra, its programme including a clarinet concertino he had written for Heinrich Bärmann. Its success encouraged the orchestra’s principal players to ask for solo works, so two concertos for clarinet followed in 1811 and, on 28 December, a bassoon concerto for Brandt. He made some revisions in 1822, expression and dynamic indications expanded and some string accompaniments rewritten, and this is the version heard on this CD.

The performances by Jaako Luoma are finely honed in both works. His instrument paints a wide palette of colour, his phrasing is stylish. The Tapiola Sinfonietta under its former (1993-2000) director Jean-Jacques Kantorow match him in detail in a cleanly balanced recording. Both symphonies are played with relish, all solo opportunities exploited to the full. The music is charming, but Weber is surely still going to be remembered best for his operas and their overtures, but at least it gives clarinettists and, in this instance, bassoonists a chance to shine. 

-- Christopher Fifield, MusicWeb International 

During the preparations for the recording of Concertos for Children, I remembered my very first steps in violin playing and the emotions which are an inseparable part of public performances. I still have fresh in my memory the joy and excitement which accompanied me during my performances, particularly in the first stage of my musical education. I would like the enthusiasm of music-making to be shared by all young musicians, no matter how their careers develop in the future. I hope that this CD with Concertos for Children will help music-school students to prepare for the requirements of the concert stage, at the same time allowing other listeners to recall the joyful and carefree time of their childhood.'