Born in Long Beach, California, on August 9, 1928, Camilla Wicks led a stellar career in the dozen years after World War Two; one of a select group whose achievements helped to establish women violinistsí prominence on the concert stage. It is worth considering that around that golden time, the likes of Heifetz, Milstein, Menuhin, Francescatti reigned supreme; the veterans Szigeti, Elman and Thibaud were still active and beloved; Stern was a firm favorite, Rabin a prodigious sensation, and Oistrakh and Kogan were just resoundingly breaking through the Iron Curtain. In this illustrious company, Wicks was considered one of the great soloists on both sides of the Atlantic, upheld by many as a queen among violinists. At the peak of her fame and subsequently, she retired more than once to devote herself to her family, but remained an outstanding if intermittent performer for many more decades. While her vinyl records have long been revered by collectors, this CD release of early live performances offers a vital opportunity for a more widespread audience to discover this astonishing artist. Wicks was recently featured in a long article in Strad magazine which mentioned this upcoming CD.

Though guitarist John Hart has performed with quite a few organists, including the distinguished Jack McDuff with whom he played 16 years, this is his third album with organ in the group. With the award-winning, remarkable Gary Versace at the B-3, John Hart unfolds here a spellbinding Act Three of his guitar/organ trio performance. John Hart, while leading an active life as performer on the world jazz scene, has held a full-schedule lecturer/head post of the jazz guitar department at the FROST SCHOOL OF MUSIC of his alma mater, University of Miami for several years now. On Hart’s previous and the first release on SteepleChase SCCD 31865 “Crop Circles” last year Ken Dryden commented, “The strength of this session merits more frequent record dates for John Hart.”

Based on George Bernard Shaw's play, the 1967 television special Androcles and the Lion recounts the story of Androcles, the simple-hearted Christian tailor whose friendship with a lion saves himself and his friends from martyrdom in the Roman Colosseum. Set to music by Richard Rodgers, the cast includes British comedian Norman Wisdom as Androcles, Noel Coward as Caesar and features Ed Ames, John Cullum and Geoffrey Holder.

Tracks:
1. Opening 4:45 – Orchestra
2. Velvet Paws 5:45 – Norman Wisdom
Dialogue: Norman Wisdom and Patricia Routledge
3. Follow in Our Footsteps 1:52 – Ed Ames and Chorus
4. Strangers 5:00 – Inga Swenson and John Cullum
Dialogue: Inga Swenson and John Cullum
5. A Fine Young Man 6:45 – Ed Ames
Dialogue: Ed Ames and Brian Bedford
Strength Is My Weakness – Norman Wisdom and Ed Ames
Dialogue: Norman Wisdom, Ed Ames, Inga Swenson and Brian Bedford
6. Gladiators’ Ballet 3:07 – Orchestra
7. The Emperor’s Thumb 2:47 – Noel Coward
Dialogue: Noel Coward, Inga Swenson, Kurt Kasznar and Clifford David
8. No More Waiting 4:50 – Inga Swenson and John Cullum
Dialogue: Norman Wisdom, Inga Swenson and John Cullum
9. The Arena Pantomime 3:55 – Norman Wisdom and Orchestra
10. Don’t Be Afraid Of An Animal 4:51 – Noel Coward and Norman Wisdom
Dialogue: Noel Coward, Norman Wisdom and Bill Hickey
11. Reprise: No More Waiting 4:23 – Inga Swenson and John Cullum
Dialogue: Noel Coward, Norman Wisdom, Ed Ames, Inga Swenson and John Cullum
Velvet Paws – Norman Wisdom

Among musicians closely associated with Charles Ives and his music, John Kirkpatrick possessed an innate affinity for the composer’s rough and tumble sound world that bordered on clairvoyance. A brilliant and adventurous pianist, Kirkpatrick (1905-1991) gave the complete public premiere of Ives’ “Concord” Sonata in 1938, followed six years later by its first recording. Kirkpatrick remade the work in stereo for Columbia Masterworks in 1968, and its first CD release here sounds better than ever.

The lean, slightly astringent sonority I remember from my well-worn LP copy gains color and tonal heft via digital remastering, with no compromise in regard to the composer’s considerable dynamic range. Kirkpatrick shapes the first two movements’ gnarly, restless keyboard writing with bracing energy and a near-infallible sense of the music’s quirky ebb and flow. The dissonant outbursts, lyrical asides, and wacky popular song quotations emerge with such idiomatic rightness and effortless transitions that it almost seems as if Kirkpatrick is making up the sonata on the spot. He is not, of course, but astute listeners will notice small textual variants based on source material that appeared only after the composer’s death, and the absence of the optional viola and flute parts.

A selection of Ives’ own private piano recordings fills out the disc, and features the composer improvising variants and new material based on the Emerson and Hawthorne movements, along with a straighter yet no less fervent reading of the complete Alcotts movement. While it’s instructive to sample Ives’ “Concord”-based piano recordings as an adjunct to Kirkpatrick’s performance, you also can find them in CRI/New World’s collection of the complete recordings of Ives at the piano. Had I produced this reissue, I would have gone so far as to add Kirkpatrick’s earlier and even more incisive 1945 “Concord”, together with the never-before-reissued “In the Inn” from the First Sonata that filled out Side 10 of the original five-disc 78 rpm album. Still, Sony/BMG and Arkivmusic.com deserve thanks for restoring Kirkpatrick’s stereo “Concord”, a performance that fully deserves its iconic reputation.

-- Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

COLORS OF JAZZ - FOR TROPICAL

Track Listing
1. How Do You Keep the Music Playing?
2. Eleanor Rigby
3. Just the Way You Are
4. Through the Fire
5. What's New?
6. That's What Friends Are For
7. You've Got a Friend
8. With Every Breath I Take
9. Just the Two of Us
10. You Are So Beautiful
11. Saving All My Love for You

Personnel: John Basile, Wayne Krantz (guitar); Dick Oatts (flute, saxophone); Randy Brecker (trumpet, flugelhorn); Fred Hersch (piano, synthesizer); David Finck (electric bass); Dave Ratajczak (drums); Jim Saporito (percussion).

Liner Note Author: Mort Goode.

Recording information: Skyline Studios, New York, NY.

Arrangers: Fred Hersch; Brad Dechter; Byron Olson.

Liner notes are in German.

The Missa Cellensis was Haydn' first Mass setting for his new employers at EszterhAza. In common with his Stabat Mater, Haydn draws upon the wealth of musical styles and traditions associated with the Viennese Mass. Scored for strings, oboes, bassoon.

Dvorák: Stabat Mater - Psalm 149

Track Listing
1. Overture
2. Ladies Who Lunch, The
3. He Tossed a Coin
4. Two by Two
5. I Want to Be Happy
6. Coffee in a Cardboard Cup
7. Lucky to Be Me
8. Send in the Clowns
9. I'm Always Chasing Rainbows
10. Over Here!
11. What I Did For Love
12. Mack the Knife
13. Tomorrow
14. Fifty Per Cent
15. Come Follow the Band
16. Folies Bergere

Music by Jules Styne, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

Principal cast includes: Phil Silvers (Hubert Cram), Nancy Walker (Kay Cram), David Burns (Brains Berman), Nancy Dussault (Tilda Mullen), and John Reardon (John Henry Wheeler).

Recorded at the Manhattan Center, New York on January 8, 1961. Liner notes written by Steven Suskin and Mary Martin.

Track Listing
1. Any Place I Hang My Hat / It's A Grand Night For Singing / Good Morning / It's A Lovely Day Today
2. I'm Shadowing You
3. Crazy Rhythm
4. Primrose Colour Blue
5. We Are the Music Makers
6. You Spotted Snakes
7. Methuselah
8. When I Was One and Twenty
9. Sing Me No Song
10. Triboro Fair
11. You've Got to Do What You've Got to Do
12. He Was Beautiful
13. Turkish Delight
14. Never Let Me Go
15. Hoagy Carmichael Medley: Georgia On My Mind / Lazy Bones / The Nearness Of You / I Get Along Without You Very Well / My Resistance Is Low / Stardust
16. I Want to Be Happy

Personnel includes: Cleo Laine (vocals); John Dankworth (alto saxophone).

Good set celebrating the 10th anniversary of the sensational 1973 Carnegie Hall concert that was an acclaimed two-album set. Laine is a dynamic, versatile entertainer who isn't a jazz singer in strictest sense, but does possess incredible timing and a remarkable ear. Her diction and enunication are admirable, and her stylistic range includes theatrical songs, pre-rock pop, English and Scottish folk tunes, and more. ~ Ron Wynn

Track Listing
1. Powder Puff
2. Pesky Serpent, The
3. Bunny
4. Pirouette
5. Morpo
6. Diablo's Dance
7. Mambo del Crow
8. Indian Club
9. Coop de Graas
10. Infinity Promenade
11. Short Stop
12. Boar-Jibu
13. Contours
14. Tale of an African Lobster
15. Chiquito Loco
16. Sweetheart of Sigmund Freud
17. Blues for Brando
18. Chino
19. Wild One, The (Hot Blood)
20. Windswept

Personnel: Shorty Rogers (trumpet); Art Pepper (alto saxophone, tenor saxophone); Bud Shank (alto saxophone, baritone saxophone); Herb Geller (alto saxophone); Jimmy Giuffre, Bob Cooper (tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone); Bill Holman, Bill Perkins (tenor saxophone); Conrad Gozzo, John Howell , Maynard Ferguson, Pete Candoli, Ray Linn (trumpet); John Graas (French horn); Milt Bernhart, Harry Betts, John Haliburton, Jimmy Knepper, Bob Enevoldsen (trombone); Gene Englund (tuba); Hampton Hawes, Marty Paich, Russ Freeman (piano); Shelly Manne (drums).

Liner Note Author: Todd Selbert.

Recording information: RCA Studios, Hollywood, CA (01/12/1953-??/??/1954).

This double LP offers listeners a strong introduction to the trumpet playing and arrangements of Shorty Rogers, but unfortunately it has gone out of print and was the first and last in its series. The 32 selections feature six different groups headed by Rogers during 1953-1954, ranging from an octet to a big band; all of the bands feature sidemen who essentially formed a who's who of West Coast jazz. Among the other soloists are altoist Art Pepper; tenors Bill Holman, Bill Perkins, Zoot Sims, Bob Cooper, and Jimmy Giuffre; trumpeter Harry "Sweets" Edison; pianist Hampton Hawes; and altoists Herb Geller and Bud Shank. The majority of the selections are Rogers originals; there is music from the Marlon Brando film The Wild One and a Count Basie tribute set. Swinging and surprisingly fiery "cool jazz" that deserves to be reissued on CD in full. ~ Scott Yanow

Dussek: Duos for 2 Fortepianos

Hei-Kyung Hong, the formidable Korean soprano, sings a selection of arias perfectly suited for her rich soprano voice. A soprano in the league of Schwarzkopf, te Kanawa, and Fleming, Hong is one of those artists who can easily change hats. She is equally comfortable as The Countess singing "Dove sono" as she is portraying Violetta in 'La Traviata.'
Her interpretation of "Caro nome" from 'Rigoletto' is enchanting and touching, while her flair for lighter repertoire comes alive in "Quel guaro il cavaliere" from 'Don Pasquale.' Hong's singing of "Ach, ich fühl's" rings of the frustration of lost hope and love that Pamina feels, and Micaela's aria from 'Carmen,' "Je dis que rien ne m'epouvante," is deeply heartfelt. Conductor John Fiore, a fixture at the Metropolitan Opera House, adeptly leads the Orchestra of St. Luke's in this thoroughly satisfying disc.

Personnel includes: Jerry Hadley (vocals); Jay Berliner (guitar, mandolin); John Moses (clarinet); Dominic Cortese (accordion); John Beal (bass); Barry Mitterhoff (mandolin).

Recording information: Clinton Recording Studios, Studio A, New York, NY (05/24/1995-09/27/1995); Soundtrack Recording Studios, Studio A, New York, NY (05/24/1995-09/27/1995).

A perceptively played and admirably recorded performance of two substantial piano works by William Alwyn.

This is a perceptively played and admirably recorded performance of two substantial piano works by William Alwyn, who died last September at the age of 79. The 11 Fantasy-Waltzes are notable for their variety within an integrated conception, and this is also true of the 12 Preludes, both works encompassing a wide range of modern piano-writing techniques. John Ogdon is naturally a match for the technical demands of the music and, since he tells us in the sleeve-note that he recorded the 58-minute programme in the presence of the composer and his wife, we may take it that a high degree of authenticity to the composer's intentions has been achieved. With excellent sound balance and documentation, this is a disc to treasure.

-- Gramophone [11/1985, reviewing the original LP release]

"...Recordings of a work like the Trout always have a problem due to the difficulties of balance between piano and a small string ensemble. In this instance the engineers have avoided the pitfalls and have come up with a good balance. A fresh sounding, lively performance appeals with the important piano part played tastefully by Emanuel Ax and a pleasing degree of shading and contrasts from the strings. Good ensemble playing from a highly regarded group... The String Quintet version of Eine Kleine Nachtsmusik makes a welcome second item. More normally heard in a chamber orchestra version, this minimised Mozart (an option from the time of its composition) is a refreshing change. To hear the five lines (two violin parts not a doubling) is a delight, and the 'authentic' movement of recent years must take some credit for the greater appreciation the reduction gives... [An] attractively compiled CD..." -- Harry Downey, MusicWeb International

Classical Music

“For Several Friends“ - a high-baroque chamber music collection by Matthew Locke - was the inspiration for the title of this album, on which a colorful bouquet of German and English chamber music from the 18th century has been compiled. After the cultural life in England had almost come to a standstill in the years of the civil war from 1642 to 1649, it came to a new bloom by the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in the year 1660. The courtly music ensembles Chapel Royal, Royal Music, The King‘s Band and The Queen‘s Band have been reinstated, and a lively musical life has also sprung up in London. Annette John performs in Germany and abroad, among others with the ensembles Weser-Renaissance, Orlando di Lasso, Concerto Palatino, Concerto Brandenburg, Oh-Ton Oldenburg, the Hanoverian Court Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Boston Early Music Festival, the Bremen Council Music and the Hamburger Council Music. She is interested in both old and new music. She is a lecturer at the University of Oldenburg. Since 1995 Susanne Peuker has devoted herself to freelance teaching and concert activities. As a soloist and as a sought-after chamber music partner, her concert tours took her all over Germany and Europe. She is a permanent member of various ensembles: in addition to the musical Tafelkonfekt Fortunes Musicke, Musical Delight and Musical Playground, but also in ensembles such as Weser Renaissance, North German Baroque Collegium, Elbipolis, Capella Cantorum, Saxon Vocalensemble and the Philharmonic Bremen

Classical Music

PROKOFIEV: Peter and the Wolf / BRITTEN: Young Person's Guid

The American John Holmquist's performing honors include first prize and a standing ovation at the prestigious Guitar International Competition in Toronto, and a Solo Recitalist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. John Holmquist was the first person to edit the recently rediscovered Ten Etudes for guitar by Giulio Regondi. Unearthed in a private collection in Moscow by Matanya Ophee and published by Editions Orphee, these compositions are held to represent one of the most significant finds in the guitar literature this century. John Holmquist subsequently recorded the manuscript for Naxos.

It is tempting to think of Nathaniel Shilkret?s Trombone Concerto as Rhapsody in Blue light, as there are many similarities, and the Swedish composer openly expressed his debt to Gershwin. According to the liner notes, it was, in fact, Shilkret himself who conducted the premiere of Rhapsody in Blue , after Paul Whitman, who usually gets the credit, could not agree on tempos with the composer. But the works are not really kissing cousins. Shilkret?s opening movement owes more to central European light dance music than to American jazz, sounding as if it would be right at home at a Viennese pops concert, or even as a Hollywood soundtrack from the 30s (most of which were written by central European émigrés). The next two movements are filled with blue notes and syncopation, conjuring the jaunty swagger of An American in Paris more so than the Rhapsody . The Concerto was first performed, in 1945, under the combined direction of Tommy Dorsey and Leopold Stokowski, who commissioned the work. Lindberg?s performance sounds spot-on, casually virtuosic, with wonderful expressivity and tonal luster.


This CD is worth acquiring for the Shilkret alone, which is a good thing, since the rest of the program is, well, a bit weird. Please notice I didn?t say bad; this is a matter of taste. My colleague William Zagorski enjoyed an earlier BIS recording of Lindberg?s Helikon Wasp , among other pieces, seeming to enjoy the iconoclastic bent of the composer, for whom ?arid musicological debate is excoriated.? Indeed.


The contemporary Swedish composer Fredrik Högberg gives us the campy concerto subtitled ?The Return of Kit Bones,? with English dialogue, supposedly inspired by Spaghetti westerns, but with heavy doses of schlocky Broadway musical mannerisms as well. Sensitive listeners should be prepared for the occasional scatology. Charming and rather goofy stuff this, and, musically, as light as a feather.


Trombone fanciers will surely want to hear the fabulous playing of Christian Lindberg showcased on this CD, and the Shilkret Concerto is a veritable revelation. Suggestion for a future release; the Shilkret along with the equally neglected and completely delightful Trombone Concerto of Nino Rota.


FANFARE: Peter Burwasser

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



Tchaikovsky renewed in this dream concerto debut disc

Yevgeny Sudbin’s performance here fairly explodes with imagination, feeling and desire. Here, one feels, is a pianist hungry to test himself intellectually and emotionally as well as technically. For a performer who reputedly gets very nervous, there is nothing tentative about his commanding style. Yet there is nothing overly monumental about it either. His Tchaikovsky is on a human scale, almost a search for something – understanding perhaps. Sudbin is on a journey, to a marvellous career as much as anything else, and it is clear that his listeners are along for the ride. The Medtner is of course the rarity on this release. It is also a cruelly difficult piece to play. Sudbin rises to its demands with aplomb and it is entirely to his credit that one is never made ostentatiously aware of just how fiendish it is. There was apparently some creative tension between him and Neschling during the sessions. Nevertheless, they can both be proud of the results.

-- Gramophone [5/2007]

To describe 26-year-old Yevgeny Sudbin as music’s brightest young star pianist is in a sense to do him a disservice. For he is above all an artist, and here in his eagerly awaited concerto debut on disc he gives us a Tchaikovsky First of spine-tingling brilliance, poetry and vivacity. This is never the Tchaikovsky you have always known, but an arrestingly novel rethink with the concentration on mercurial changes of mood and direction. Here, amazingly, is one of the most familiar of all concertos rekindled in all its first glory, brimming over with zest and shorn of all the clichés that have adhered to it over the years.

In the first movement Sudbin’s octaves ring out at 10'18" like a giant carillon, while the Andantino’s central prestissimo becomes in such extraordinary hands a true firefly scherzo. Not even Cherkassky at his finest possesed a more elfin sense of difference or caprice. And to think that all this and more is accomplished without the lift, or hindrance, of a major competition success.

Medtner’s massive First Concerto, too, could hardly be played with a more burning clarity and committment. Once wittily if misleadingly described as “a declaration of love in the language of the First Empire”, Medtner’s music remains formidably inaccessible, despite displaying the outward trappings of Romantic rhetoric. Yet Sudbin clearly believes in every note and his playing evinces, as on live occasions, a rare sense of affection. Such poetry is confirmed in his encore, his own transcription of Medtner’s Liebliches Kind! from his Op 6 songs. It only remains to add that BIS’s balance and sound are of demonstration quality and that the São Paulo SO under John Neschling sound as if influenced by neighbouring Rio’s carnival spirit, so infectiously do they respond to their radiant soloist.

-- Bryce Morrison, Gramophone [5/2007]

You know you've got a winner on your hands when a performance of a piece you know by heart and already own in dozens of recordings makes you sit up and listen to it with fresh ears. That's exactly what happened at the opening of this Tchaikovsky First Concerto. Yevgeny Sudbin attacks those pounding "Liberace" chords with virtuoso relish--and thanks to a little arpeggio action in the right hand at the top of each sequence, with a glint of humor as well. This devil-may-care opening turns out to be a bit deceptive, though, for what characterizes the remainder of the performance is Sudbin's willingness to engage the orchestra in a real dialog. Mind you, nothing is precious or mannered: he simply knows where his part fits into the overall texture, and in places such as the second subject of the first movement and the entire Andante, he lets his colleagues in the wind and string sections have their say and reacts accordingly.

The result, while never short-changing the virtuoso elements (particularly in the finale), has a give-and-take that few other versions match. There are a couple of brief spots in the first movement where the tension does drop a bit as Sudbin lapses into dreamy reverie, but otherwise this is as persuasive a performance of this warhorse as any on disc. The orchestra and conductor have just as much to offer as the soloist, being totally at one with the interpretive concept and wholly characterful in their collective response. I would have loved to have heard this live.

The Medtner First Concerto, a 34-minute single-movement post-Romantic effusion that no one seems to like very much, also receives an enormously powerful and convincing performance. Sudbin must be almost unique in the arts world in that his liner-note writing is every bit as good as his piano playing, which is saying a lot. He makes a strong case for the work and guides the listener through its twists and turns with clarity and enthusiasm. Yet despite his professions of love for the piece, the sincerity of which I do not question, it says something that he has to spend three times the space talking about it than he does the Tchaikovsky. In short, it requires a measure of special pleasing. And yet it really shouldn't. Yes, it may sound in places like Rachmaninov without the tunes, but there's nothing radical or off-putting about Medtner's style.

Perhaps he stresses form over immediacy of emotional expression, and the bottom line is that it's not easy to grasp a single-movement form lasting longer than half an hour on casual acquaintance. But if you make the effort, you will discover an impressively grand, turbulent work that progresses from tragedy to defiant triumph. It's a connoisseur's piece, for sure, and for that reason it won't necessarily appeal to the same audience as the Tchaikovsky (hence the single note of caution in the overall rating for artistic quality). Nevertheless Sudbin deserves a ton of credit for giving the piece an outing and investing it with every ounce of the passion that it deserves. As he himself notes, it is music that grows on you given sufficient time, and you will know right away if you feel like making the investment. Sudbin's own transcription of one of Medtner's songs makes a perfect encore, and the sonics in all formats are, typically for this label, state-of-the-art. In sum, a disc to live with.

--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com