On his sophomore leader CD and Criss Cross debut, pianist Victor Gould joined throughout by bassist Dezron Douglas and drummer Eric McPherson, with guest appearances by Tim Warfield on soprano saxophone, Godwin Louis on alto saxophone, and percussionist Khalil Kwame Bell presents a diverse, well-paced program comprised of originals and a cohort off-the-beaten-track numbers from the Great Jazz Songbook. Gould has spent consequential time apprenticing in groups led by such modern masters as Donald Harrison, Ralph Peterson, Terri Lyne Carrington and Wallace Roney, and you can hear it in his fresh, harmonically erudite approach to the repertoire, which he addresses and inhabits on it's own terms of engagement while retaining an entirely 21st century perspective.

This outstanding album of Italian Renaissance songs is beautifully performed with expert performance practice by soprano Jessica Gould and lute and chitarrone player Diego Cantalupi. Works by Benedetto Ferrari, Tanquinio Merula, Giovanni Felice Sances, and others are featured. Jessica Gould has wowed audiences and critics across the globe with her impressive interpretations of early music. “A dramatic intensity that honored the texts.” (The New York Times) “Dazzling… expansive range, coloratura facility, and multi-hued, powerful sound” (Seen and Heard International) “Astonishing passage and ornaments, executed to perfection” (Lute News, UK) Diego Cantalupi was born in Milano and studied at the Civica Scuola di Musica di Milano, and the Conservatorio di Parma. He holds a degree in lute performance.

IDIS continues their tradition of re-issuing young Glenn Gould great live performances. These recordings were made in 1959 when the Canadian artist was only 27 years old. Gould's artistic maturity shines throughout this album but what mainly comes through is the absolute and unique originality of this incredible talent he possessed. This album comes his his offbeat interpretation of Brahms' Concerto in D minor, Op. 15. We have the top of his artistic talent in the Mozart Concert No. 24 where the lucky meeting with Leonard Bernstein gives us a unique and incredible result of beauty and poetry.

This recording brings together three youthful masterworks all composed by Benjamin Britten before his 30th birthday. Originally released in 2005 'Britten: Les Illuminations' has been re-issued as part of Linn's ECHO series which offers a second chance to enjoy the best of the label's award-winning catalogue. These are highly insightful performances, widely considered to be modern reference versions to set next to Britten's own. Clio Gould and the ensemble demonstrate playing of impressive unanimity of purpose, joyous intensity and clarity of detail. The ensemble is joined by the Royal Philharmonic Society's 2012 'Singer of the Year' Toby Spence, for two of Britten's most popular song cycles. Toby Spence's voice is ideally suited to the wide-ranging demands that Britten makes on it; his tonal freshness and acutely observed articulation of the words are absorbing. Martin Owen, whose horn playing has drawn comparisons with Dennis Brain, is equal to every one of the near-impossible tasks set him by Britten in the Serenade. Re-defining the string orchestra, Scottish Ensemble inspires audiences with vibrant and powerful performances. Scottish Ensemble is the UK's only professional string orchestra, built around a core of twelve outstanding string players. The ensemble is known both in the UK and internationally for it's versatility and ambitious programming. Performing standing up, the individual layers bring an energetic and passionate dynamic to every performance.

In a passionate and emotionally gripping recording, Scottish Ensemble performs Shostakovich's deeply personal Chamber Symphony, a transcription by Rudolf Barshai of the composer's monument to 'the victims of fascism and war'. Originally released in 2000 'Shostakovich: Chamber Symphony' has been re-issued as part of Linn's ECHO series which offers a second chance to enjoy the best of the label's award-winning catalogue. The Chamber Symphony is a gripping portrayal of the brutality of con?ict. It's jagged, dynamic rhythms in the central sections are contrasted by elegiac outer movements that never fail to move the listener. In contrast the Piano Concerto is one of the most exuberant examples of Shostakovich's wonderfully subversive sense of humour. Sophia Rahman and John Wallace are the highly accomplished soloists who excel in this repertoire. The programme concludes with the rarely heard Two pieces for string octet which includes the feverishly brilliant Scherzo. Re-defining the string orchestra, Scottish Ensemble inspires audiences with vibrant and powerful performances. Scottish Ensemble is the UK's only professional string orchestra, built around a core of twelve outstanding string players. The ensemble is known both in the UK and internationally for it's versatility and ambitious programming. Performing standing up, the individual layers bring an energetic and passionate dynamic to every performance.

The revival of interest in the music of Robin Milford (1903–59) has largely bypassed his exquisite chamber music, an omission this recording seeks to redress. It presents some of his most attractive chamber works, showing his very personal – and very English – combination of melodic freshness, elegiac lyricism and echoes of folksong. The clarinetist Robert Plane has been described as the ‘current occupier of the shoes of the late Thea King in his championship of British clarinet music’. Other notable performers include violinist Lucy Gould, violist David Adams and cellist Alice Neary.

With music by Leonard Bernstein and book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, On The Town enjoyed a successful Broadway run during the 1940s. The London production opened at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1963 and starred Elliott Gould along with Don McKay, Carol Arthur, Andrea Jaffeand Gillian Lewis. The Original London Cast Recording of On the Town has never before been available in the U.S.

---------

Starring in the London production was Elliott Gould, not long after he closed on Broadway in I Can Get It for You Wholesale – his big break as a musical leading man, which was an even bigger break for his wife-to-be Barbra Streisand. Gould played the happy-go-lucky Ozzie (a role created by Adolph Green). As Gaby, the lovestruck hero, the London production featured Don McKay, a Broadway singer/dancer with an attractive, boyish voice who had been the first Tony in the hit West End staging of West Side Story. The trio of sailors on leave was completed by another American, Franklin Kiser, as the nai?ve but determined Chip. A favorite in West End musicals like Salad Days, Gillian Lewis played Claire de Lune (Betty Comden in the original production), and American Carol Arthur was Hildy, the raucous cab driver unforget- tably created by Nancy Walker. American audiences know Arthur as a comedic actress (Blazing Saddles) and as the wife of comedian Dom DeLuise, but on this recording she belts out Hildy’s show-stopping, double-entendre-laced “I Can Cook, Too” with joyous abandon.

The London recording preserved much of Bernstein’s dance music, though some arrangements were updated and smoothed out – “I Can Cook, Too,” for instance, loses its fractured-big-band musical setting. Best of all, the London recording lets us hear this spectacular score with the charm of a cast that was performing the show onstage at the same time. With its Coplandesque ballet music and hyperkinetic invention, the score, oddly enough, may the most challenging aspect of On the Town. The London recording reminds us it is a challenge full of rewards – a heartfelt masterpiece, hilarious and zany, with romantic longing and unbridled hope lurking just beneath the gleaming surface. Maybe its time has come?

-- From the liner notes by David Foil

CAST
Ozzie – Elliott Gould
Chip – Franklin Kiser
Gabey – Don McKay
Hildy – Carol Arthur
Claire – Gillian Lewis
Diana Dream – Meg Walter
Workman – Howarth Nuttall
Policeman – Lewis Henry

MUSICAL NUMBERS:
1. Opening: 10:55
I Feel Like I’m Not Out of Bed Yet – Workman
New York, New York – Chip, Gabey, Ozzie and Chorus
Miss Subways – Policeman, Workman, Chip, Gabey, Ozzie and Chorus
2. Taxi Number: Come Up to My Place 2:15 – Hildy and Chip
3. Carried Away 3:15 – Claire and Ozzie
4. Lonely Town 5:07 – Gabey
5. I Can Cook Too 2:49 – Hildy
6. Lucky to Be Me 2:44 – Gabey
7. Dance: Times Square (Finale Act I) 5:14
8. Night Club Sequence: 4:59
So Long Baby – Chorus
I Wish I Was Dead – Diana Dream
You Got Me – Hildy, Ozzie, Claire, Chip, Gabey
9. Dance: Imaginary Coney Island 8:11
10. Some Other Time 3:48 – Claire, Hildy, Ozzie, Chip
11. Real Coney Island, Finale 4:01

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

WAGNER Siegfried • Marek Janowski, cond; Stephen Gould (Siegfried); Christian Elsner (Mime); Tomasz Konieczny (Wanderer); Jochen Schmeckenbecher (Alberich); Matti Salminen (Fafner); Violeta Urmana (Brünnhilde); Anna Larsson (Erda); Sophie Klussman (Woodbird); Berlin RSO • PENTATONE 5186408 (3 SACDs: 227:30) Live: Philharmonie, Berlin 3/1/2013

This set has much to recommend it. In many ways, it is by far the finest installment of the PentaTone series so far, including the non-Ring items, and as such increases the impression that Janowski’s is a Ring that evolves and improves as it goes along (Rheingold got a lukewarm reception from me in Fanfare 37:2; Walküre was better: see Fanfare 37:3). The sound quality is superb in this Siegfried throughout. Perhaps this is shown best at the very beginning, where the timpani roll is just there, but audible. If, as it continues, this opening is not quite as evocative as Furtwänger at La Scala (who is more primordial), it remains an impressive achievement. The evil undercurrent of that roll seems to be mirrored by the descending bassoon figure. Janowski keeps it moving, and his orchestra is astonishingly well disciplined; yet there is space for lyricism, too. Janowski’s achievement is to provide a terrific sense of momentum, while never rushing.

The cast is strong, although inevitably one always finds oneself pining for perfection. (From this stance, it is easy to see Richard Caniell’s point over at Immortal Performances with his “Dream Ring.”) Christian Elsner’s Mime is wonderfully angry, not a caricature at all (Peter Bronder’s Mime, in Barenboim’s Ring at the BBC Proms this year, was lighter, and clipped and wheedling in the more traditional way). The Wotan/Wanderer here is Tomasz Konieczny, as it has been in the previous two installments. Here he seems to come into his own, a completely different take to that of Hotter yet still big enough of voice and interpretatively sound. Ironically, perhaps, for Head God, Konieczny’s Wotan is one of the most human interpretations on the market today. A darker sound would also have emphasized the differences between Wanderer and Alberich in the second act.

But it is the titular hero that carries the work. Gould has a wonderfully lusty voice (a shame he sounds a tad rushed, by Janowski, in the Forging Song). His exchanges with Mime throughout are expertly managed, and the extended Wanderer/Siegfried part of the final act is enlivened by Gould’s splendidly healthy voice, even at this stage.

Each act fits neatly onto a single disc (Janowski is generally not one to linger). Act II begins with a perfect sense of darkness and foreboding, and both Alberich (Jochen Schmeckenbecher) and Wotan are in top form, especially perhaps Schmeckenbecher in his invoking of Fafner. The grumpy (and excellent) Fafner on this occasion is the experienced Matti Salminen. For the final act, perhaps the “Heil dir, Sonne” is only well done by Urmana rather than radiantly done, but the fault really lies with Janowski, who after excelling so much in this reading does not quite step up to the final moments. Ecstasy is not quite achieved. The final act suffers from a loss of momentum around half way through, which contributes to this.

Despite this, this remains a valuable, involving and rewarding Siegfried that demands to be heard.

FANFARE: Colin Clarke

Iconoclastic takes on Romantic masterpieces that are at times infuriating, other times mesmerizing, often both.

Recordings taken from CBC television transmissions from CBC Studios, Toronto on December 9th, 1970 and September lst-4th, 1967.

While most of us turn gratefully to music we cherish and admire, Glenn Gould often performed and even recorded music he despised. And reading his accompanying comments - an infuriating mix of brilliance and jargon, insight and psycho-babble - the omens are not good. "Whenever Chopin tackled large-scale forms and tried to write pieces demanding a high degree of organization he almost invariably came to grief." To illustrate his point Gould chooses the Third Sonata, anaesthetizes it and after "freezing up the heat of life" applies his surgeon's scalpel. Chopin's occasional flutter with a form of romantic polyphony (the start of the development of the first movement) momentarily engages his sympathy, but elsewhere the essentially vocal conception of keyboard writing and the ecstatic entwining of melody and counter-melody are clearly viewed as frivolous. The overall result is so literal and Teutonic that it left this listener, at least, stranded, gasping for air and longing to break Gould's stranglehold. His didacticism in the finale's exultant bravura is notably perverse and rarely have I heard a performance by a great pianist that more obviously declares his limitations.

Gould's Mendelssohn is scarcely less cramped (though he responds to the hymnal pieties of the Song without Words. op. 30 No. 3 with surprising warmth) but his Scriabin is, arguably, as mesmeric as it is strange. All listeners nurtured on an ultraromantic Russian tradition will jettison Gould's alternative and spring more than a few questions. Why so ponderous in the powerfully striding drammatico rhythm of the Third Sonata's opening? Since when is a languorous Andantino the same as Presto con allegrezza in the Fifth Sonata? From anyone else such things would be unacceptable. But from Gould you pause to reconvene, to reconsider and note that there is nothing random or inchoate about his conclusions. Both these performances, together with some wintry Prokofiev, hold a powerful and compelling fascination.

The final record contains a damp squib rather than a jeu d'esprit (the Strauss Burleske was another work that gave Gould heartache rather than joy) and a heavily personalized, monochrome Beethoven Emperor Concerto. Here, once again, are rhythms in the opening flourishes articulated like so much phonetic spelling and a deliberately poker-faced, uninflected response to the Adagio's espressivo. Conductor and orchestra fight to match their soloist's aggression but end sounding tubthumping and militaristic. Gould was, incidentally, a last-minute replacement in the Beethoven for the ever-indisposed Michelangeli, a situation that provoked the impish riposte from Gould, "My God, just think that the Number One pianist is going to substitute for Number Two". All these discs contain either previously unreleased material or first authorized issues.

-- Gramophone [4/1996]

A very good and well-conceived musical celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.

No doubt there will be plenty of recordings issued in 2012 to celebrate - or cash in on, the cynic might say - the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. This is John Rutter’s contribution.
 
You may ask, what have Schubert’s psalm setting or a movement from the Brahms Requiem to do with the British royal family? It may be similarly objected that a piece such as the one by John Tavener has little to do with jubilee celebrations. After all, its sole connection with royalty is that it was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. The answer to such questions lies in the title of the disc. “Music on Royal Occasions” allows John Rutter to cast his net wide. In fact, all but two of the pieces included here have been performed either at a royal wedding or funeral between 1947 - the marriage of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh - and 2011 - the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The two exceptions are the piece by Richard Rodney Bennett, which was written for the diamond wedding anniversary of the Queen and Prince Philip, and the extract from Britten’s opera, written to celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. In case you were wondering, the Schubert was sung at the 1960 wedding of Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones while the Brahms was heard at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in 2002: I didn’t know those last two facts but the booklet helpfully tells us which piece was heard at which royal event.
 
Both of the new pieces written for the 2011 Royal Wedding are included. Rutter’s own offering is a nice, readily accessible piece. To be frank - and I speak as an admirer of Rutter’s music - it’s a trifle disappointing in that it’s pretty predictably Rutter-ish. Then, to be fair, an occasion such as the Royal Wedding is one when a composer probably ought to write something that is readily appreciated by a worldwide audience. As I wrote recently, when reviewing a disc of music by Paul Mealor, I’ve revised my view of his Ubi caritas since I first heard it. At the Royal Wedding I thought it a somewhat grey piece but hearing it again on the Mealor disc I thought it came over better. However, I clearly recall thinking when I first heard it that it wasn’t a patch on the Maurice Duruflé setting and hearing the two one after the other merely confirms that view. The Mealor piece is nice and sincere but Duruflé’s fluent setting is simply inspired.
 
New to me was the Richard Rodney Bennett piece and I’m delighted to make its acquaintance. Written for unaccompanied choir it’s a very fine setting of the famous passage from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians - ‘If I speak with the tongues of men and angels …’ It receives a v ery fine performance, as do all the other pieces on the programme. It’s enterprising to include this unfamiliar piece and it’s equally enterprising to include the extract from Britten’s Gloriana.
 
Soprano Elin Manahan Thomas is on hand to sing the solos in the Mozart and Handel selections. She sings both very well, though, to my taste, her ornamentation in the Handel is a bit too florid. Incidentally, the Handel is also distinguished by excellent silvery trumpet solos by Simon Cox.
 
The Brahms piece is given in English. I’d much rather hear it in German but I can understand why it’s done in English here since that’s how it’s done as a separate Anglican anthem - and, presumably, that’s how it was given at the Queen Mother’s funeral. The Elgar piece that follows is the prologue to the oratorio The Apostles and it, too, is often heard as a separate anthem. I was mildly disappointed to hear it done here with organ accompaniment - though Andrew Lucas plays splendidly. It’s a bit illogical to do the Brahms with orchestra and the Elgar without; I can only think that the Aurora Orchestra isn’t sufficiently big for Elgar’s scoring.
 
So, to anyone who might glance at this CD on a shelf and dismiss it as ‘just another Jubilee potboiler’ I’d say: think again. I must honest and say that’s what I expected when I saw the disc advertised but I was wrong. This selection is a bit different and a bit more thoughtful and reflective than one might expect. Perhaps one should coin a phrase and say ‘don’t judge a CD by its cover’. The performances are all expertly done and the recorded sound and documentation are very good. This is a very good and well-conceived musical celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.
 
-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

A swift and nimble account of Beethoven's 2nd Concerto paired with a fiery Bach D minor Concerto, showing how Gould could be far more animated live than in the studio.

The "Fourth Programme" of Sony Classical's Glenn Gould Edition contributes to the Beethoven deluge with a swift and nimble account of the Second Concerto, recorded live in Leningrad in 1957 (SMK52686). Ladislav Slovak conducts, and the coupling is a fiery Bach D minor Concerto—which is far more animated than Gould's studio version under Bernstein.

-- Gramophone [11/1993]


The [Beethoven] Second Concerto, which to my knowledge has only previously been released on Melodiya, is something very unique. Not only is the recording taken from a live concert (Gould gave up public performance in 1964), but it presents playing of consummate artistry in a work that often receives condescending attention from critics. But be warned—the orchestral playing, especially the strings, is dreadful. It is Gould's spontaneity in colouring the writing in different registers, in treating fast passages with an unmannered expressivity (where most pianists rattle off figurations)— in a word, his 'musicality'—that make this a memorable reading. There may be no real sense of peace in the Adagio, where Gould's sensuous use of piano tone is much to the fore, but the finale has an infectious humour that demonstrates how different was his playing in concert, as opposed to the recording studio.

-- Gramophone [9/1986]
reviewing the Beethoven concerto on LP, issued as part of CBS Masterworks 39036

John Ireland' violin sonatas gained extraordinarily positive reviews when they were premiered. The Star praised the 'delicacy, lucidity, and tonal charm' of the First Violin Sonata, the most genial and optimistic of the three sonatas recorded here.

This is the Hindemith so many listeners and commentators love to hate—earnest, workaday neo-classicism based on cardboard harmonic progressions and squared-off rhythms, conveyorbelted via an apparently inexhaustible supply of wrong-note marches, sicilianos and pastorales. And yet these sonatas can be great fun to play, and when the players are masters of their instruments they are fun to listen to as well. Moreover, when the accompaniments are in the hands of a recreative personality as strong as Glenn Gould's they assume an entirely new and unexpected range of character.

Gould's fundamental insight into Hindemith's world was his identification of its "true amalgam of ecstasy and reason". These were the very qualities which fused in Gould's own artistic make-up, and it should not be surprising that his empathy with Hindemith is strong. Only in a rare eccentricity of tempo (such as the dead slow opening to •the finale of the Trumpet Sonata) or in a tendency to peck at lines marked with slurs (in the finale of the Tuba Sonata at a point actually marked molto legato) does the perverse side of his nature assert itself; and even here the sensation of intense commitment overrides all. The added vocals are of course something that every Gould-listener has to learn to take in their stride.

The soloists were members of the Philadelphia Brass Ensemble and all thoroughly distinguished musicians. Hornists could no doubt fault Mason Jones's steadiness of tone and intonation, particularly in the Alto Horn Sonata. Otherwise the playing is consistently well-focused and alert (Hindemith gives the tubist an especially severe examination in rhythmical awareness).

As with other issues in this series, the recordings (from 1976) are clear and forward, though instrumental perspectives do appear to vary slightly from sonata to sonata. It does seem a pity, though, that Sony Classical did not include Gould's accounts of the three piano sonatas in this set, rather than issuing them separately (they would still have fitted onto the two discs).

-- Gramophone [3/1993]

Rescued from the vaults, ArkivMusic reissues a long lost Christmas Treasure! The Musical Christmas Tree from Morton Gould is an orchestral holiday classic. Featuring Holiday standards, this unique release includes many of Morton Gould's own arrangements as well as original compositions written for the holidays, including "Winter" from the Burchfield Gallery and "Skiers Waltz" from the Cinerama Holiday Suite.

This is the first authorized release of this performance. The disc also includes Bernstein's pre-performance remarks and an interview with Glenn Gould from a 1964 New York Philharmonic broadcast.
This disc should serve as an extremely important historical novelty to those listeners familiar with the players and the repertoire. The performance is taken from a 1962 radio broadcast, and Bernstein begins the program with a disclaimer. He tells the intrigued audience that while he looks upon Gould as a supreme artist, he does not agree with the soloist's interpretation of the work, that they share major interpretive discrepancies. Despite this, Bernstein opts to go along with Gould's interpretation.
And so begins this disc, followed by what Bernstein himself called one of the most "unorthodox" renditions of the Brahms he has ever heard. With its varying tempi, sometimes as slow as molasses, Gould still manages to express perfectly what this piece calls for: a sense of majesty, intensity, and delicacy all at once. Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic create an ambience that is as reflective as Gould could have asked for. This disc is indeed a fascinating tribute to the two great artists who could not agree.