Classical Music

In the last movement of Haydn's Farewell Symphony, one musician after the other disappears, until only 2 violinists are left on the stage as a duo and bring the work to it's close. Sperger regarded Haydn's idea as so original that he wrote a counterpart to it: The Arrival Symphony. Von Gemmingen was the scion of a Wurttemberg family of knights. During the years around 1800 he composed 4 violin concertos already pointing far ahead into the romantic era.

Classical Music

Sigismund Neukomm (b. 1778) is best known today as a footnote in Haydn biographies, as one of the composer’s students and associates in his last years. But he lived until 1858, traveling all over Europe, from France, to Russia, to London, and even residing for a number of years in Brazil. It was in Rio de Janeiro in 1817 that he composed his Grande Sinfonie heroïque. The music is faux Haydn: just about about the only thing “heroïque” about it is the drumroll at the start. Check out the tune that begins the finale; it’s as if Beethoven had never existed.

The remaining works on the program represent an interesting illustration of musical aesthetics in the early 1800s. They represent Neukomm’s response to the problem of writing orchestral music that does not sound like Haydn and that employs “free” forms. Indeed, the “Dramatic Fantasia on some passages of Milton’s Paradise Lost,” composed in 1833 for the London Philharmonic Society, might be deemed a symphonic poem, though its general pleasantness reveals a composer lacking true fire in his belly. Still, the music is enjoyable, and the two earlier fantasies composed in 1806-8 reveal a composer clearly trying to find an individual identity while working in Haydn’s (still living) shadow.

The performances are very successful. I have had some pretty harsh things to say about Die Kölner Academy and Michael Willens (and he has replied in kind), particularly on account of their lousy Mozart piano concerto recordings on BIS. This is probably their most successful disc to date. Yes, the “period” string playing still lacks timbral allure, but the winds play characterfully, especially in the Milton fantasia, and the passages for full orchestra sound lively and bold. The fact that the music has no competition on disc also helps, as does the excellent engineering. Interesting stuff, this.

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

This new Henk Badings recording further confirms his rank as a great twentieth-century Dutch composer with an important and independent individual voice in European music. Although he composed his fourth symphony during the war years, absolutely nothing related to World War II or its atmosphere is to be found in it. It is instead a work adhering to the classical structure and displaying unaffected naturalness and quick musical wit, especially in its fast movements. In 1949 Badings composed his fifth symphony as a commissioned work for the sixtieth anniversary of the Concertgebouw Orchestra. In 1955 a reviewer for the daily De Tijd wrote that this symphony resembled film music inasmuch as it clearly dealt with illustrative elements. This was not intended as a negative judgment but instead was born of admiration for the composer’s suggestive style. In any case, today this music impresses the listener with its surprising freshness and vitality.

Starring Franz Lehar, Eva Maria Marold, Juliane Banse.

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

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The goal of the Telemann Festival Days in Magdeburg is to perform the works by Georg Philipp Telemann in concert with artists of international rank. The focus of the festival program is formed by full-length, magnificent compositions including operas, oratorios, passions, and cantatas. Telemann’s "absolutely stunning productivity" (Georg von Dadelsen) manifests itself in special measure in his cantata oeuvre. And in the cantatas heard on this new CD, recorded during a concert held at the next-to-last day of the festival, Telemann again proves to be among the eighteenth-century’s most important composers of sacred music.

Throughout his life Telemann collaborated with outstanding poets who wrote his sacred music texts mostly for complete annual cycles. This practice enabled him to design each annual cycle – seventy as a rule - with two cantatas for each Sunday and feast day, in accordance with distinctive program concepts. Telemann's compositions of great variety are often opulently endowed with a full instrumental ensemble and in this way emphasize the significance of each particular feast day. Telemann often goes far beyond the customary expressive intensity of the traditional two-part form involving the setting of biblical quotations, resulting in highly gripping and brilliant music!

- CPO [Translated from German notes]

Classical Music

J. STRAUSS II Der Carneval in Rom • Ernst Theis, cond; Isabella Ma-Zach ( Marie ); Michael Heim ( Arthur ); Jessica Glatte ( Countess Falconi ); Manfred Equiluz ( Count Falconi ); Marcus Günzel ( Hesse ); Bernd Könnes ( Rafaeli ); Dresden St Op O & Ch • CPO 777 405-2 (2 CDs: 95:47) Live: Dresden 2008


Johann Strauss Junior’s second operetta, Der Carneval in Rom, premiered in 1873 only one year before Die Fledermaus, and while the music is enjoyable enough, with several nice tunes, there is little in the score to presage the gorilla blockbuster soon to come. For one thing, Strauss wrote the music in the more romantic style of light opera because the work was originally scheduled to be mounted at the Vienna court opera, a place of more serious mien than the Theater an der Wien, then the home of the comic-oriented Viennese operetta. When it turned out the production had to be premiered at the latter venue, Vienna’s reigning Waltz King found himself with a score full of choruses and ensembles, few of his signature waltz melodies but plenty of sprightly polka rhythms. In fact, Strauss referred to Der Carneval in Rom as his “polka opera.”


The story is typically slight. Marie, a young girl living in a rural village high in the Alps, longs for her beloved Arthur, a painter who has gone to Rome to make a living, and she decides to go after him. When she arrives in Rome, in the midst of preparations for Carnival, she discovers Arthur is making a living selling spurious religious relics and is more interested in chasing the flirtatious Countess Falconi than in doing much painting. Marie approaches Arthur disguised as a boy and persuades him to take her on as his apprentice. Arthur is too busy planning assignations with the wayward Countess under the very nose of the perpetually jealous Count to pay much attention to Marie. After a couple of typical light-opera mistaken-identity encounters during the love trysts (think Le Nozze di Figaro ) involving Arthur, the Countess, and Marie, the young painter finally recognizes his true love from the mountains, and they pledge their eternal devotion as the Carnival erupts joyfully around them at the finale.


This 2008 recording of Der Carneval in Rom by the German label cpo is virtually a world first. At one time there was a quite ancient RCA LP of only the musical numbers from a 1936 German revival, but this is the first modern CD set and the first with any dialogue. The spoken parts may be cut, without libretto or score I cannot tell, but there is certainly enough there to provide the story clearly to German-speaking listeners, and I believe the original music is all present and accounted for, based on a newly issued critical edition. The producers have even added back in a “lost” coloratura aria for the Countess, which Strauss added to the production a few days after the first night. To its credit, cpo has also recently given us a world premiere of Strauss’s Das Spitzentuch der Konigen (reviewed favorably in Fanfare 33:4 by Christopher Williams) and is planning to release another first-timer, Prinz Methusalen , which they have already recorded. It seems incredible that there are still unrecorded stage works by this iconic Viennese master and one sincerely hopes cpo has the interest and the resources to eventually do them all.


The Dresden State Operetta Orchestra, under the direction of principal conductor Ernst Theis, and its chorus are both better than good and two of the strongest features of this recording. German and Austrian musicians seem to have Strauss’s feather-light, quicksilver music bubbling in their blood; they are the finest in the world at reproducing it. The sound recording is also first-rate, with absolutely no audience noise on a so-called live performance. The singing is solid if not spectacular by artists active in regional German houses and elsewhere. The only holdover from Das Spitzentuch is lyric soprano Jessica Glatte. Here she sings the role of the Countess Falconi, doing a quite credible job of the difficult coloratura aria “Gefangen trauern,” added by the composer when the winds of faint praise were presumably beginning to waft over the production. Glatte is good elsewhere as well, playing the bitchy and bewitching Countess as if she owns the role and adding a sparking top to several well-sung ensembles. The Marie, soprano Isabella Ma-Zach, sometimes goes wandering in search of a note here and there, but is generally pretty good; she renders Strauss’s romantic music for the young Alpine lover in a manner most often quite well sung and pleasurable to the ear. Marie’s entrance aria in the first act became a hit for the original cast’s superstar, Marie Geistinger, a Vienna favorite in the mid 19th century, and Ma-Zach carries it off well here, showing us why the piece gained such widespread popularity. The men are solid also, the Arthur of Michael Heim and the Count of Manfred Equiluz both sung quite competently. Bernd Könnes, in the role of the painter Rafaeli, exhibits a vocal wobble more like a bleat, hard on the ear, but fortunately the part is not very big. As in several other Strauss operettas the cast is large, and the remaining singers here perform quite well.


The booklet is first-rate, with a track-keyed synopsis, extended essays, and synopses in German, English, and French. The English translations are sometimes a bit dicky and I’m bothered a little more than fellow reviewer Williams by the lack of libretto and translation, but this set is a must-have for all J. Strauss fans and operetta lovers as well. We may never see its like again.


FANFARE: Bill White

"There’s some question as to whether or not all of these works are by Gluck, but it doesn’t matter. The music is unfailingly enjoyable, the performances vigorous and full of life...L’Orfeo plays on period instruments with results that are well above average. The winds, horns especially, are pretty terrific, and they have some impressive solo licks. The string ensemble is clean and the tone generally attractive...This is an important addition to the Gluck discography and definitely worth the collector’s attention."

-- David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com, [May 9, 2011]

"None of these works is ground-breaking exactly - in fact they are utterly conservative! - but they are all clearly written by a man, probably still young, who knew what he was doing, and how to achieve his desired effects with considerable imagination and audience-pleasing brio. The Overtures in particular are easy-going, but peppered throughout the programme there is some lovely writing, especially for the horn pair and, from time to time, the oboes. The two works in D - both in two movements only, incidentally - are probably the most memorable, Chen D6 for its concertante interplay, Wq 165.2 for its catchy simplicity.

Under Gaigg's assured violin-in-hand guidance, the Baroque Orchestra's playing is Classical: refined and restrained, with attention to detail, yet still light and bright. Period instruments and techniques are used to authentic effect."

-- Byzantion, MusicWeb International

Certainly the most stylistically advanced of the lot, the G-Major Symphony, points strongly to the influence of Johann Stamitz’s later symphonies of the early 1750s: great rhythmic energy, strong textural contrasts, half-cadence substitutions, orchestral intensification of short motto themes upon their immediate restatement, frequent and distinctive use of specific wind colors, cantabile themes over bass ostinatos, and that desire to avoid the expected—whose most telling monument can be found in C. P. E. Bach’s quirky later symphonies. By way of greatest contrast, there’s a D-Major Symphony (Chen D2) whose first of two movements, a complex but gracious Andante with potential operatic origins, is purest galant, as though it had stepped out of a work by Brunetti or Boccherini. Regardless of which individual or group of composers is responsible for these works, they make for fascinating and uniformly pleasurable listening.

Some of that is due, of course, to Michi Gaigg and her 22-person L’Orfeo Baroque Orchestra. The tonal bite to the strings that was present in their recording of Rebel’s Les Élémens (Phoenix Edition 110) is not as prominent, but that’s to be expected, as the music is from a different culture and period. Consistent, however, is their concern with clean articulation, firm rhythms, and a focus on instrumental tone. They are all technically expert—notably so the two hornists, Thomas Fischer and Christoph Beham, featured in the wince-inducing difficulties of the D-Major (Chen D6) Symphony’s minuet finale.

The sound is close and distinct, with none of the rich acoustical reverberance that may be meant on occasion to hide a period ensemble’s anemic string tone, but instead ends up swamping textural and rhythmic clarity. In short, whether this is Gluck or not, it’s well worth the consideration of any listener who enjoys fine examples of the mid-Classical period symphonic oeuvre.

FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Includes work(s) for organ by Johann Sebastian Bach. Soloist: Gerhard Weinberger.