XIAN: Yellow River Cantata and Other Choral Works

RUBINSTEIN: Piano Works

ENESCU: Romanian Poem / Romanian Rhapsodies Nos. 1 and 2

SUCHON : Metamorphosis / Suite Balladesque

DVORAK: Rhapsody Op. 14 / Overtures

Ritzen: Chinese Requiem;Chinese Violin Rhapsody

STRAUSS I, J.: Edition - Vol. 5

Published in 1912, Leopold Godowsky' Waltz Masques: 24 Fantasies in Triple Time for Piano pay homage to such illustrious pianist-composers as Chopin, Schumann, Liszt, Debussy and the 'waltz king' Johann Strauss.

Godowsky, L.: Piano Music, Vol. 7

Louis Spohr composed string quartets throughout his career, the String Quartet No. 36 being his last completed large-scale work, composed in 1857 and modelled on those of Haydn and Mozart.

Includes work(s) by Joly Braga Santos. Ensemble: Algarve Orchestra. Conductor: Alvaro Cassuto. Soloist: Jan Bastiaan Neven.

Includes work(s) by Johann Strauss Sr.. Ensemble: Slovak Sinfonietta. Conductor: Ernst Märzendorfer.

Includes work(s) by Hans Christian Lumbye. Ensemble: Tivoli Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: David Riddell.

SUPPE: Overtures, Vol. 6

This live, 2003 performance is middling, but on the whole, competent. The liner notes focus on the opera, but are decent of their kind. A synopsis is provided with CD points, but neither original text nor translation is included. This last is especially missed. But despite this and the album's short timings, Prinzessin Brambilla is truly worth knowing.

— Fanfare (Barry Brenesal)

Hailed by critics at the Lucerne Festival as a modern Rachmaninov and the triumphant winner of the first Rachmaninov Competition in Moscow in 1983, Konstantin Scherbakov presents the 14th volume in Marco Polo’s Godowsky complete edition, and the first featuring selections from the 53 Studies on Chopin’s Études. Previous volumes have been critically acclaimed. In addition to recitals, orchestral performances and tours all over the world, his concert activity has brought participation in major festivals, including Salzburg, Frankfurt, Bregenz, Bodensee, Lugano, Evian and Colmar. His contribution to the Naxos Liszt piano music series includes critically acclaimed performances of Liszt's transcriptions of Beethoven's Symphonies, of which the Ninth Symphony was awarded the German Critics' Prize 2005.

Popular Chinese Piano Pieces: Scenes from China & Music of W

MARCO POLO FILM SAMPLER

S. WAGNER Der Kobold • Frank Strobel, cond; Rebecca Broberg ( Verena ); Regina Mauel ( Gertrud ); Andreas Mitschke ( Ekhart ); Achim Hoffmann ( Trutz ); Johannes Föttinger ( Fink ); Philipp Meierhöfer ( Kümmel ); Volker Horn ( Friedrich ); Nicholas Isherwood ( Der Graf ); Martina Borst ( Die Gräfin ); Ksenija Lukic ( Jeannette ); Marco Bappert ( Jean ); Joachim Höchbauer ( Knorz ); Heike Kohler ( Käthe ); Young Jae Park ( Seelchen ); PPP Music Theatre Ens; Nuremberg SO • Marco Polo 8.225329 (3 CDs: 195:27)


Each time I listen to this recording of The Goblin , I am utterly unnerved—do not be fooled by the descending flute figures that cue the overture, like Pan himself coming down to bless the land. Obviously, there is no shortage of warped and twisted librettos, which tend to serve as jumping off points for music yet more warped and twisted, but my goodness, our man Siegfried was exorcising some personal demons with this work—ironically, by enlivening some.


The first “sung” note, once the gentle, autumnal instrumental opening has concluded, is a scream, one that comes through on the recording like a spike—no reverb, no vibrato, just fear, hammered home. We are dealing with a dramatis personae of goblins (including one whose entrance into the world comes courtesy of a mixture of a hanged man’s seed and the yellow grass below), a wizard, some assassins, night phantoms, a few satyrs, a circus collective, a rapist, and such cheery pursuits as infanticide, abortion, flesh trading, and prestidigitation for, shall we say, less than salubrious ends. Good luck sorting out the plot, which is about as close to postmodernism as Siegfried ever got, and features an opera within the opera, and a climax not dissimilar to F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu , which had the subtitle, intriguingly enough, of “A Symphony of Horrors.”


The quality of the recording itself will jar you, but that’s part of its effectiveness—weapons crash to the ground as though they’ve landed on microphones, or like something is kicking inside the speakers and trying to get out. It’s a fascinating, weird kind of audio-vérité, that further unsettles the nerves; but distortion was Siegfried’s ally in the creation of this work, and some passages even appear, at first, to be atonal. Rebecca Broberg as Verena, the opera’s heroine—a default designation, really, in this case, given her successive and ultimately defeating tragedies—is really stretched on the rack in her exceedingly taxing role, and it is through her vocal lines that we experience whatever empathy—which often takes the forms of anxiety and fear—the opera has to offer. It’s been remarked that for all of its fantastical elements, Der Kobold is something of a gangster story, but the noir -ish element becomes almost hallucinatory in the constant churn of crises, a vortex of demonism, you might say—of both the supernatural and human variety, the latter, of course, always being worse. Cpo has a Siegfried Wagner sampler disc with the West German Radio Symphony Orchestra and Roman Trekel handling an excerpt, but for the whole, vivid nightmare, you’ll need this set to be properly shocked and disturbed. And for those who cherish their illusions of childhood, there is perhaps no 20th-century opera that poses such a menacing threat to any and all forms of latency.


FANFARE: Colin Fleming

Learn more about this recording on the Naxos Classical Spotlight podcast!

This, the final volume in Konstantin Scherbakov's recording of Godowsky's complete works for piano is also the second of two volumes dedicated to Godowsky’s Studies on the Chopin Études. Scherbakov performs these fearsomely challenging works with aplomb: ‘There is no one better for Godowsky’ (American Record Guide). The first volume is available on 8.225372 (volume 14 in the series).

Meyerbeer, long considered one of the greatest of operatic composers, is being rediscovered. His first music drama was Jephtas Gelübde, based on the biblical story of Jephta and his rash vow of sacrifice. The musical language is varied in expression, with an exceptionally advanced use of leitmotif and a subtle depiction of psychological process, all revealing a powerful command of material. Marches and dances of radically different moods, allied to choruses of folk-like simplicity and grandiose power, are part of a mature score in which intense monologues and gripping ensembles embody music of lyricism, drama and rapture.

This third volume of music by Eduard Strauss I features many new discoveries including the Electric Lights waltz and the polka, Leaps of Pegasus, displaying Eduard’s gift for melody and orchestration. All but one of the tracks on this album are premiere recordings of the original full orchestrations. Volumes 1 and 2 can be heard on 8.225369 and 5371.

This recording of Siegfried Wagner’s An allem ist Hütchen Schuld! is of an acclaimed live performance of the Bayreuth production from the year of the composer’s 125th birthday in August 2019. The production uses a new critical edition of the score created by Ulrich Leykam. It is the first complete audio recording, recorded live at the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth, Germany on 9–10 August 2020.

REVIEWS:

Siegfried Wagner (son of Richard) wrote Everything is Little-Hat’s Fault (An Allem ist Hutchen Schuld) during WWI. Although appreciated at the time, this fairytale opera has had sporadic stagings owing to its fanciful, complex plotline and scenic demands. This new release of a 2019 performance at the Margravial Opera House is a major improvement over the 2016 DVD, which includes some of the same performers. The DVD performance suffered from a terrible Eurotrash production where I couldn’t figure out what was going on or why. Even in this non-visual presentation, certain scenes and even placement of dialog shifts the level of meaning.

The problem with Wagner’s own libretto is that the composer can’t seem to decide if this is a light comedy with music like an operetta, or a horrific drama with music like Act 2 of his father’s Walkure. Regardless of the libretto, the music is truly impressive. The style is mostly late-romantic and influenced by his teacher, Humperdinck. Act I will remind you of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel. Act II is very much in the Richard Wagner style of monumental orchestration and sweeping, flowing music. Some arias, duets, and ensembles in this act have truly beautiful music often requiring the leads to sing full-out as if they are Siegfried and Brunhilde. Act III is altogether different: some scenes sound like Humperdinck, along with Debussy’s gossamer sounds and Stravinsky’s music from Petrouchka. It’s all very inventive and entertaining.

The recording is excellent. The singing by some of the leads is somewhat shaky in the opening scenes, but then everyone warms up, and all are outstanding for Acts II and III. I wasn’t expecting this level of performance. Conductor Coleman leads everything with the assurance of someone who is intimately involved with the score and knows how each scene should be played. The sound is generally good, though the microphones are at the edge of the stage, so you hear some stage movement and footfalls, particularly in Act I.

The earlier DVD production was so bad that I couldn’t enjoy the music. This new set has completely changed my mind. The composer’s excellent score can now be appreciated. Notes and synopsis are in English and German in Naxos’s usual tiny typeface.

-- American Record Guide (Elliot Fisch)

One of the great ‘march kings’ of his time, Julius Fucik gained worldwide fame for his immortal Entry of the Gladiators, but after the composer’s death in 1916 many scores were lost. Painstaking editorial work has been carried out allowing us to hear the full range of Fucik’s works in these premiere recordings.

The National Museum – Czech Museum of Music has done its best to collect what remains of the composer's music, and about half of the contents of this album emanate from handwritten scores acquired by the museum but never performed, as there were no printed parts published as far as is known.

What makes this album so special is that it contains dance forms for which Fučík was little known. This recording therefore contains the first ever original orchestral performances in addition to seven pieces that have had to have performing sets created by a team of specialists who painstakingly prepared them from often poorly handwritten scores. But it is all genuine, original Fučík, and so puts this recording into a category of its own.

ROMANTIC WIND MUSIC