The Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia was founded in 1965 by Anshel Brusilow, then concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Brusilow, who studied conducting and played under Pierre Monteux, George Szell and Eugene Ormandy, auditioned more than 1,000 musicians for the 36 full-time positions and conducted the ensemble from 1966 until 1968, when it was disbanded for want of adequate philanthropic support in the city for a second orchestra. But over the course of two-and-a-half 34-week seasons it had already performed more than 200 concerts and made six albums for RCA Victor.

Sony Classical is now issuing all these LP recordings by the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia on CD for the first time. The original LP releases were praised by High Fidelity, which called the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia “an orchestra of rare quality”. Reviewing its début release, Brahms’s D major Serenade, the US classical music magazine opined: “Brusilow could hardly have chosen a better work to show off the capabilities of his new orchestra – every first-chair woodwind and brass player has his chance to shine (and each does shine, brilliantly).” The Brahms was followed by a series of choice couplings: Tchaikovsky’s “Mozartiana” Suite with Arensky’s Variations on a Theme by Tchaikovsky (“Brusilow is thoroughly at home in this literature, and his players respond beautifully to his direction” – High Fidelity); symphonies by Haydn and Cherubini; a French programme of Ravel, Ibert and Françaix (“Perhaps a reflection of the Monteux influence … this record … carries true stylistic conviction in matters of phrasing, texture, and timbre” – High Fidelity); and Richard Strauss’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme as well as Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade.

The orchestra also premièred and recorded a new sacred choral work by Richard Yardumian, the Philadelphia-based composer championed by Eugene Ormandy. Come, Creator Spirit for mezzo-soprano, chorus (or congregation) and orchestra was the first mass setting by an established American composer in the English vernacular following the Vatican Council’s 1963 decision. The work was lauded for its integrity, spiritual fervor, and power to communicate the essence of devotion in all its nuances from praise to supplication.

The c/o chamber orchestra is a collective of thirty young musicians from a dozen different countries. Playing without a conductor, the orchestra is dedicated to that particular collaborative process which is the essence of chamber music. For their first album, the members have chosen to highlight a genre more difficult to pin-point than one might think. Its very name, divertimento, implies that it is simply a diversion, light music for entertainment – but many of the best-known examples of the form transcend that definition. And as many composers have learned, even light-hearted music should be taken seriously: humor requires a master’s touch. The four works recorded here offer different perspectives on the genre, starting with Ibert’s seven-movement suite in which the composer constantly plays with the listener’s expectations. Some forty years before Ibert, his compatriot Émile Bernard composed a very different Divertissement. It is scored for double wind quintet, reminiscent of Mozart’s divertimenti and serenades for winds. But even though the music is melodious and carefree, the debt owed by Bernard to the German romantic composers is never far from the surface. A very special case is Bartók’s Divertimento for strings, composed just before the outbreak of World War II. The closing work on the album reunites the winds and strings of the c/o orchestra in a work written especially for this project by the American composer Michael Ippolito, who in his Divertimento pays full tribute to the contrast-rich nature of the genre.

Performed by the trio for whom it was written, Paul Schoenfield's new composition "Last Silence" picks up where "Cafe Music" left off. A show stopping tour de force of excitement and emotion. Schoenfield's "Four Souvenirs" is finally released here by violinist Lev Polyakin and pianist Frances Renzi, who commissioned the work. Beautiful trios by Rota and Cui round out the album. Paul Schoenfeld‘s music is widely performed and continues to draw an ever-expanding group of fans. According to Juilliard’s Joel Sachs, “he is among those all-too-rare composers whose work combines exuberance and seriousness, familiarity and originality, lightness and depth. His work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience, popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, and the ‘normal’ historical traditions of cultivated music making, often treated with sly twists. Above all, he has achieved the rare fusion of an extremely complex and rigorous compositional mind with an instinct for accessibility and a reveling in sound that sometimes borders on the manic.”

Separated by the Pyrenees, the musical milieus of Spain and France have sometimes been like oil and water - or maybe like oil and wine. It took Bizet's opera Carmen to open the ears of the French to the Spanish rhythms and inflections which were to become so important to so many later composers, from Debussy to Ibert. On the present disc, Carmen - in the guise of Borne's Fantaisie brillante - plays a similar role, creating a bridge between Rodrigo's Concierto pastoral and Ibert's Flute Concerto, two of last century's main concertante works for the flute. Soloist Sharon Bezaly will hardly need a closer presentation after her highly praised recordings of the past couple of years. Her recital with pianist Ronald Brautigam (BIS-SACD-1429) and her recording of Mozart's concertos (BIS-SACD-153901), to mention only two, have garnered such high praise and so many distinctions that it would be impossible to list them - suffice it to say that the reviewers have called her 'a sorceress of timbres', 'God's gift to the flute', 'a First Lady among equals' and a 'graceful Mozartean, with limpid tone, an impish sense of humour, and sometimes staggering breath control.' The present recording was made with the São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and conductor John Neschling, whose performances of the music of Brazilian composers Guarnieri, Mignone, Braga and Santoro have been praised for their vitality, rhythmic vigour and wide range of colours - all qualities that should be just the thing for building a bridge across the Pyrenees.

Almost forty years after his first recording on Chandos, this unique limited-edition release gathers some of the best and most-awarded recordings on the label by one of the most prolific conductors of all time: Neeme Järvi. It highlights a 200+ discography that explores an astonishingly wide repertoire, with selections from the legendary complete series of Prokofiev’s symphonies and Tchaikovsky’s ballets to the groundbreaking discoveries of composers such as Atterberg or Suchon. It features nearly a dozen of the numerous orchestras with which he has collaborated, including the RSNO, Chicago Symphony, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, all here celebrated at their best. Offered at a very special price and retaining the original covers, this product also includes very special notes by James Jolly, Editor in Chief of Gramophone, as well as exclusive photos and interviews with figures central to Järvi’s extraordinary musical life.

Past praise of previously released material included in this set:

Prokofiev: Symphony No 6, Waltzes Suite / Järvi, SNO

As in all of his Prokofiev symphony recordings–this was the first, by the way–Järvi really digs into the music. The engineering is as big and bold as the performances. This recording deserves classic status.

– ClassicsToday

Smetana: Má Vlast / Järvi, Detroit Symphony

Järvi and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra deliver an expansive reading of the complete work, and their feeling for the music's vivid imagery and richly Romantic expression is spot on.

– All Music Guide

Parisian, Emma Boynet (1891–1974) studied with Isidor Philipp at the Conservatoire and became an established part of the local music scene in the 1920s and 30s. She was one of the few French pianists to find success in the USA, travelling there for the first time in the company of her former teacher in 1934, and as a result, made several albums for Victor in New York, including a five-disc 78rpm album entitled ‘French Piano Music’. Her career seems to have faltered in the 1950s but not before she made two highly regarded (but now rare) Faure LPs which have become collectors’ items. We are delighted to reissue them here.

REVIEW:

I had never heard of the French pianist Emma Boynet (1891-1974) before this remarkable release came to my attention and hooked me for life. Boynet studied with the legendary Isidor Philipp, with whom she remained associated throughout his long life. During the 1930s and ’40s Boynet made frequent concert and radio appearances in the United States, yet kept a low profile in her final decade. More importantly, she made extraordinary recordings. APR has reissued on two generously filled CDs all of Boynet’s solo 78s, together with the contents of two all-Fauré LPs recorded for Vox in 1950 and 1952.

If Boynet had left us nothing else, the sheer insouciance and effortless mastery of her 1932 Pathé Weber Rondo brillante (sound clip) assures her legendary status, although her sultry Falla Andaluza is nothing to sneeze at. She takes Schubert’s G-flat Impromptu at an appropriately alla breve tempo. True, she dashes through the Rondo finale of Haydn’s two-movement C major sonata like a bat out of hell, yet what staggering control and timing!

Apparently all of the selections in Boynet’s 1938 RCA Victor French Music Anthology were first takes, including an audaciously winged and imaginatively phrased Chabrier Bourrée fantasque that makes everyone else’s sound thick and clumsy. Naturally she plays Philipp’s charming Nocturne and scintillating Feux-follets with total affection and style. Boynet subjects Debussy’s Les sons et les parfums tournent dans l’air du soir from Preludes Book I to capricious tempo shifts, and arpeggiates chords at random; it’s a curious reading that doesn’t convince. However, Boynet and Fauré merge as one.

She understands and internalizes the composer’s textural transparency and intricately wrought counterpoint, while projecting the melodies so that they move over the bar lines. As a result, some listeners may feel that her animation in the Fifth and Sixth Barcarolles borders on impatience, a factor arguably mitigated by the Vox LPs’ dry sonics and less-than resplendent concert grand. On the other hand, her Vox Fourth Nocturne is smoother and more lyrically unfolding than in her earlier 78 rpm version. And Boynet’s spacious, poetic Vox accounts of the great Sixth and Seventh Nocturnes count among the Fauré piano discography’s treasures.

Frédéric Gaussin’s extensive annotations are as scholarly and informative as one could wish, not to mention Mark Obert-Thorn’s world-class transfers. In all, a significant addition to APR’s ongoing French Piano School reissues, and an absolute must for pianophiles.

-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)

John Wilson and his Sinfonia of London release their second album, following widespread and universal critical acclaim for their first recording, of Korngold’s Symphony in F sharp. This new recording explores the unique sound world of French orchestral music of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The programme juxtaposes well-known favorites, such as Debussy’s Prélude àl’après-midi d’un faune, Massenet’s ‘Méditation’ from Thaïs, with pieces far more rarely heard, for example Duruflé’s Trois Danses and Saint-Saëns’s Le Rouet d’Omphale). Whether specifically evoking the ‘exoticism’ of Spain or North Africa (as was the fashion in French music of this era), or creating a less defined, impressionistic atmosphere, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London capture the mood and spirit of these pieces with consummate skill and outstanding musicianship. Originally formed in 1955, Sinfonia of London was re-established in 2018 by the British conductor John Wilson to devote itself, at least initially, to recording projects, of which this is the second album.

REVIEW:

Wilson has the ability to make familiar music sound wonderfully fresh and new-minted, all the while carefully judging and calibrating the sound world of each piece. The enthusiasm that he elicits from his orchestra is very much apparent on every track, though what really impresses is the finesse as well as the virtuosity of the playing, the refinement of detail, the subtlety of texture and color.

– Gramophone

The legendary Syrinx Quintet performs wind quintets by Françaix, Hindemith, Ibert, and Taffanel on this critically acclaimed recording. The individual instruments merge with a rarely heard homogeneity to create an ensemble sound that is unrivaled.

American-Australian harpist Emily Granger made an indelible impression with her solo debut recording, In Transit. She follows up with Something Like This, a beautiful collaboration with flautist Sally Walker, featuring original music for flute and harp alongside adaptations and arrangements for the instrumental combination. Woven among classics by J.S. Bach and Mozart are works by living composers including Australians Elena Kats-Chernin, Sally Greenaway, Lachlan Skipworth and Jessica Wells, and indigenous composer Christopher Sainsbury. 20th century works by Jacques Ibert and Witold Lutoslawski are juxtaposed with Erik Satie’s timeless Gymnopédies.

REVIEWS:

Something Like This is a beautifully programmed collection of well-known works performed in sumptuous style and ensemble by Walker and harpist Emily Granger.

In a superbly executed Bach Sonata in G Minor, Granger shines with sprightly and impeccable technique. As well, the slow movement from Mozart’s Concerto for flute and harp does not disappoint as one of the loveliest sounds you’ll hear. That’s until two Gymnopedies by Erik Satie, their simplicity and floaty-ness able to transport us to another realm entirely. 

[In] the fervently dramatic Three Fragments by Witold Lutoslawski. Walker’s tone is rich and indulgent, almost weeping in its expressiveness with Granger’s style full of colorful nuance, just as the music requires—its original intent was to accompany a play. Similarly, Jessica Well’s delightful Sati—Sanskrit for mindfulness—offers the duo room to experiment with shadings of hue, phrasing and musical line, sometimes at peace, other times menacing. Beginning mindfully serene, the piece explodes to an ecstatic reverie of sonorities. 

For just sheer beauty of line and tone, the three short Poems by Sally Greenway are astonishing miniatures. You dare not breathe in order not to miss a thing. The inspiration comes from the poem Roses du Soir by Pierre Louÿs which describes lovers finding a secret spot in the forest where a magical rose bush grows. Walker and Granger create a sound as if one instrument with delicate passion. This sensibility appears again in Christopher Sainsbury’s Djagamara, a work written to honor the life of a young indigenous friend.

-- The Harp Column