One might have thought that the exceptional nature of this opera, lull of vague thoughts and understated music, would prove elusive on disc, but Boulez's much praised 1970 recording, made after his performances of it at Covent Garden, reappears amid a positive welter of recommendable versions of the work, making choice increasingly difficult. His long introductory essay that accompanied the original LP issue, setting out his ideas on the opera and its casting, has unfortunately now been dropped; but in particular he made a point of the importance of the orchestra — "to reduce the score to an accompanied recitative is conspicuously to betray it" — and under his direction the orchestral sound is truly splendid, reflecting his reaction against the "bloodlessness" with which the drama is often presented.

The French of his completely non-French cast (contrasting with those of Dutoit and Jordan Decca, 3/91 and Erato, 12/91 respectively) is let down only by George Shirley—I am surprised that Boulez did not insist on something being done about his poor vowels—and though, as a tenor, he conveys Pelléas's youthfulness, his tone is rather unyielding for much of the time. The other slightly disappointing piece of casting is David Ward, who makes old Arkel sound merely glum (though that seems to have been the reading Boulez wanted). But the strength of this performance lies with the intelligent and vocally assured Sdderström and with Mcintyre's superb character study of Golaud, against his will eaten up with a jealousy that drives him to near-madness; and exceptionally good is the boy Anthony Britten as little Yniold. The recording, always very satisfying, is now "enhanced using 20-bit technology", if you know what that means: at any rate, it sounds fine to me.

-- L.S., Gramophone [4/1992]

Classical Music

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

This 1994 recording is one of the first Holst collections made by Hickox and the City of London Sinfonia, an orchestra he conducted for thirty-seven years, until his death. Having brought neglected works by Holst to a more deserved fame in the early 1990's, Hickox returned to Holst in 2007, embarking on a new series with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. He was recording what would have been the second volume of this new survey when he was suddenly taken ill. While he was never able to finish that second volume himself, the first instalment was released in January, 2009 and seen as a recording triumph.

This two disc set is a BBC recording that was broadcast on February 2, 1964 of Phyllis Tate’s The Lodger, an opera in two acts. The work was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Music. It was first performed there in 1960. This recording was the opera’s first broadcast. The work features Anthony Jacobs as the narrator, as well as the BBC Northern Singers and BBC Northern Orchestra.

REVIEWS:
American Record Guide (11-12/97, p.138) - "...Naxos continues to ply its way through the 18th century symphony repertoire with this, their fourth release, and the best in the series thus far....The musicians of Nicholas Ward's Northern Chamber Orchestra, based in Manchester, England, are strong advocates for this literature. These are crisp and clean readings with excellent choices of tempo, balance, and perspective."

Chicago-based alto saxophonist and composer Greg Ward (Tortoise, Lupe Fiasco, McKaya McCraven) presents a new group, Rogue Parade, featuring a quintet of heavyweight creative Chicago musicians: Matt Gold and Dave Miller (guitar & effects), Matt Ulery (bass), and Quin Kirchner (drums). Following his critically acclaimed Greenleaf debut Touch My Beloved's Thought (2016), which was a re-imagining of the music of Charles Mingus, Stomping Off From Greenwood highlights Ward's skills as a writer and arranger with a set of eight new compositions that explore this unique two-guitar instrumentation, which blends the acoustic and electronic sonic worlds. The group honed their ensemble sound during a month-long residency in Chicago, followed by extensive touring in the Midwest, before heading into the studio to capture the band's energy on record. In addition to the original material, the band presents Ward's moody arrangement of the jazz standard " 1) Metropolis 2) Excerpt 1 3) The Contender 4) The Fourth Reverie 5) Let Him Live 6) Black Woods 7) Pitch Black Promenade 8) Stadust 9) Sundown

Classical Music

‘It simply cannot be gauged what music has lost with him’ (Gustav Mahler) Hans Rott was a composer from Gustav Mahler’s time who had been unknown or known only by name even to most pundits. Many people have expressed the opinion, perhaps justifiably, that only his tragic fate prevented him from going down in the annals of music as Mahler’s equal and establishing a permanent position in the repertoire. A member of Bruckner’s circle within the music scene in Vienna, he developed a pronounced antipathy towards Johannes Brahms. In view of many of his works, it is difficult to comprehend that during Rott’s lifetime presumably not one of them was performed in public, but that only presentations took place under the aegis of internal conservatory events. With these recordings Capriccio attend to fill the gap with his (some of them reconstructed) orchestral works and document these fascinating worlds of music for the eternity.

REVIEW:

The young British conductor Christopher Ward directs Cologne’s Gürzenich Orchestra in Capriccio’s first volume of Rott’s orchestral works with obvious commitment and makes no attempt to batten down the Wagnerian elements that course so freely; nor should he. With a thoughtfully balanced recording and concise notes this is a revealing document of Rott’s music, and the reconstruction of the Hamlet overture has the advantage of being heard in its world premiere recording.

– MusicWeb International

Classical Music

Try something new is Simon H�fele's motto. Inquisitive, intrepid and full of passion for his instrument, on his new album "Standards" he turns to the trumpet in all it's many facets, sweeping his audience along with him with his audacious and clever programmes and thrilling playing. As a "Rising Star" of the European Concert Hall Organization and one of Konzerthaus Dortmund's "young wild things", Simon H�fele has centered his debut album on the Berlin Classics label around the key repertoire for trumpet and the quintessence of his time as a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist.

The Wells Jubilate is typical Rutter – brightly melodic, immediately communicative, and well calculated to bring executive satisfaction to the performers without over-stretching them technically.

Brass fanfares cap the organ accompaniment resplendently: it’s an effective opener, though perhaps the concluding Winchester Te Deum is even more stirringly celebratory. ‘Look to the Day’ (written for Cancer Research UK) is similarly tuneful and optimistic...

I personally prefer Rutter in less glib and comfortable mode: ‘Lord, thou hast been our refuge’, for instance, combines a resonant part for solo trumpet with a sustained seriousness in addressing the biblical text, plumbing deeper emotions than he finds in the more cosy, extrovert settings. ‘O Lord, thou hast searched me out’ (commemorating George Guest) is similarly reflective, cor anglais this time providing the obbligato commentary.

With Rutter himself conducting his own, outstanding Cambridge singers, these excellently recorded performances have a grip and authority hard to equal.

-- Terry Blain, BBC Music Magazine

It may or may not be purely coincidental that this third volume in Naxos’s issue of the complete Boccherini Cello Concertos has been released in the year that marks the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death. Whatever the case, this new recording, featuring an entirely different soloist and orchestra from the previous volumes, should not disappoint collectors of the entire cycle. Raphael Wallfisch proves to be a most stylish and sympathetic performer. He has the necessary technical armoury to cope with the fearsomely difficult writing in each concerto, but also delivers a wonderfully expressive melodic line in the slow movements. Throughout Wallfisch plays his own cadenzas which are free from Romantic bluster and empty virtuosity. The partnership with the Northern Chamber Orchestra works very well, though the reverberant and muddy recording does not always serve the music to its best advantage. While the rather heavy bass line seems apposite for movements such as the Maestoso of the C major Concerto, it appears to undermine the lightness and wit of the rondo finale of the well-known B flat Concerto, and makes some of the slow movements sound more lugubrious than one might have expected. Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Erik Levi, BBC Music Magazine

Le retour à la vie - this extraordinary work, half-literary, half-musical reflected much of the thoughts and ideas also found in his letters of the time, using music that was largely written earlier in Paris. The genesis of the work was yet another love-affair gone wrong. The six musical numbers of Lélio are wholly diverse in subject and treatment, yet a sense of order is imposed by the literary format. It is a unique assemblage, there is nothing else quite like it in all musical history. Roméo et Juliette is counted third among Berlioz’s 4 symphonies. Another uniquely constructed work, it moves away from the purely symphonic towards the realm of opera. But Berlioz keeps the formal structure of a symphony firmly in his mind: the three principal instrumental sections – Fete chez Capulet, Scene d’amour, and La reine Mab – making a first movement, slow movement and scherzo encircled by elaborate vocal sections to begin and end.

Veteran blues singer/guitarist has the vocal urgency & immediacy of singers like Otis Redding & Wilson Pickett; Ward pioneered the use of the Magnatone amplifier which was featured on many of his 1960s recordings as Robert Ward & the Untouchables - here he presents 10 new originals done in his trademark sound.

STAMITZ, J.: Symphonies, Vol. 2

Symphonies Nos. 23 and 24 were written in 1764 for performance before Prince Nikolaus at Eisenstadt, where the Ester�hzy palace boasted a reception hall that could have held some four hundred people, although such numbers would not have been present at w hat was a purely domestic entertainment for the Prince, members of his family and entourage, and his guests. These symphonies form part of a group of eight symphonies written in 1764 and 1765. Symphony No. 23 in G major opens with a triple time Allegro, a lively and cheerful movement. It is followed by a slow movement scored for strings. To this the use of suspensions adds an element of poignancy, as the momentary discords are resolved. The Menuet is a canon between upper and lower parts, with a Trio that has motivic connections with the Menuet that frames it. The last movement makes use of dynamic contrasts, ending with a reduction of volume, instead of the expected emphatic conclusion. In Symphony No.24 in D major Haydn shows once more his ability to produce, even at this early stage of his career as a composer, music of infinite variety and invention, within existing formal limitations. The opening Allegro makes initial use of the wind and string timbres available in a sonata-allegro movement that has it's moments of stronger feeling in the central development. The slow movement makes use of the flute in apart apparently written for the Esterh�zy flautist Franz Sigl, for whom Haydn also wrote a flute concerto, now lost. Here he exploits the abilities of the player, allowing him a brief cadenza. The following Menuet is repeated after a Trio in which the flute again has apart to play. The two oboes of the orchestra return for a final movement of dramatic contrasts. Symphony No. 61 in D major belongs to a slightly later period of Haydn's life. It was written in 1776, at a time when Prince Nikolaus Esterh�zy's interests in theatre and opera predominated, with visiting theatre-troupes working at Esterh�za and a marionette theatre established there in 1773. Haydn provided music for operas on special occasions, but the seasonal presence of actors and the requirements of the marionette theatre involved the provision of incidental music for a variety of German plays, including translations of Shakespeare. Although the material Symphony No. 61 cannot be directly associated with any of the plays known to have been performed at Esterh�zy, it belongs to a group of symphonies that do make use of incidental music originally intended to accompany drama. These include Symphony No. 60, Il distratto, using music for Jean Fran�ois Regnard's play Le distrait and Symphony No. 63, La Roxelane, with music composed for Favart's Les trois sultanes. The vigorous opening Vivace of Symphony No. 61 is followed by a moving Adagio and a cheerful Menuet, with the customary repetition after a contrasting Trio. There is a particularly theatrical final movement that seems to tell it's own story.

Haydn: Symphonies, Vol. 7

MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 6 - 10

MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 19, 20 and 37

Classical Music

TELEMANN: Changeante (La) / Les Nations Anciens et Modernes

MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 1 - 5

With this third volume (the first two were reviewed in 12/96), Nicholas Ward and the Northern Chamber Orchestra complete their series of Mendelssohn’s youthful string symphonies, joining others who include the Hanover Band (RCA), the Nieuw Sinfonietta Amsterdam (BIS, 6/94, 9/95 and 11/96), the Concerto Cologne, the English String Orchestra (Nimbus, 3/89) and the London Festival Orchestra (Hyperion, 12/91). Once completely unknown outside the library, these delightful and in many ways enterprising works have been a natural draw to string orchestras, and since they demand plenty in the way of instrumental skill and liveliness but, really, little in the way of interpretative subtlety, it is unsurprising that there is not a great deal to choose between the different versions. In some of the earlier symphonies, Ward seemed to be setting unnecessarily fast tempos, which did not over-tax his players but which sometimes left the music too little time to breathe. There is no suggestion of this here: the Allegro molto finales of Nos. 11 and 12 speed along with a lively spring, but with plenty of air in the rhythms. Other tempos are nicely chosen, such as that of the Swiss song in No. 11, and Ward pays agreeable attention to the niceties of scoring which were absorbing the young Mendelssohn. There is plenty to enjoy here, and in the whole of his set. Roy Goodman’s Hanover Band have a particular brightness and charm, though their set is at full price. It also includes, as does Ward’s and that of the Concerto Cologne, the Thirteenth Symphony, the so-called Sinfoniesatz.

John Warrack, Gramophone [Awards Issue 1997]

MENDELSSOHN: String Symphonies, Vol. 2