NEPOMUCENO: Piano Works

NIN-CULMELL: Tonadas

Although pianists who studied with Theodor Leschetizky (1830-1915) were active well into the post-Second World War era, the eminent teacher himself was very much a man of the 1850s and 1860s, at least insofar as his role as a composer was concerned. After all, he had been a pupil of Czerny. One should, perhaps, think of Mendelssohn's Songs without words as being the model for these miniatures.

This is the first recording devoted to Leschetizky the composer and it is played with evident sympathy by Peter Ritzen. To some extent, however, I was surprised at his choice of pieces, since a number-such as Les deux alouettes, the Canzonetta alla toscana, Tarantelle, Op. 39 No. 5 and Arabesque, op. 45 No. 1, which were among the most popular-are omitted, and yet the CD plays for five minutes under the hour.

The music strikes one as a bit patchy. The Lucia Paraphrase (Andante finale, Op. 13) for left hand, which opens the programme, is pretty routine and fails to capture the atmosphere of Donizetti's original. The "Romance" from Op. 40, on the other hand, is a real gem. A surprise too is the "Danse russe" from the same Suite, which has plenty of that impish humour one associates with the teacher's personality. It is attractively fresh and contains a Grainger-like enthusiasm with its buoyant rhythms. In this light one is not surprised by the stories of the venerable man eagerly reading through the piano rags of Scott Joplin, which were then the rage of many of his young American lady students.

As a composer, then, Leschetizky principally was Out to charm. His was a salon style that reached its apogee in the works of Moszkowski. The release will certainly give considerable pleasure to those who like this sort of repertoire and the piano sound, if a little thick in the bass, is perfectly acceptable.

-- Gramophone [7/1994]

The career of Alexander Grechaninov (1864-1956), like Rachmaninov’s, bridged the Tsarist and Soviet eras. He, too, emigrated to America and wrote in a style that barely acknowledged musical advances in Europe and elsewhere. Yet these quartets reveal a fecund creative mind, with music suffused with Russian melodic patterns, even if the Fourth Quartet (1929) moves very little further along the road of musical history from his already assured Second (1913). These performances have plenty of personality and the sound is excellent.

-- Matthew Rye, BBC Music Magazine

ALKAN: Piano Music

Lajtha: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 / Suite No. 2

FURTWANGLER: Symphony in D Major / Symphony in B Minor

RAFF: Symphony No. 6 / Jubel-Overture / Festmarsch

BOELLMANN: Piano Quartet / Piano Trio

Sullivan: Macbeth - King Arthur - Merry Wifes of Windsor

TOVEY / BRIDGE: Cello Sonatas

AUBERT: Orchestral Works

This disc was nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Orchestral Performance."
Igor Markevitch is that rare musician who left behind his years as a composer to pursue a conducting career. But with this first volume in a series devoted to his orchestral works, this inventive Russian composer will receive the audience that he has long deserved. 'La nouvel âge' begins with a plaintive line from the string section and then bursts into a frenzied whirlwind that barely lets up (apart from the dark and moody Adagio). This is an exciting and gripping work that, despite its occasional breaches of conventional tonality, ought to be a concert staple. The Sinfonietta calls to mind the grittiness and drive of Prokofiev but with a touch of Hindemith's classicism. It is a colorful work that so enraptured the great ballet impresario Diaghilev that the young composer was asked to play the finale at the piano three times in a row. The "Cinéma Overture" stems from an aborted film project in 1931. Although Markevitch was only nineteen when he wrote it, the overture is a mature work that not only recalls the seriousness of Stravinsky, but utilizes some humor as well--a nod to Satie--by employing all manners of bells, whistles and sirens.

Coates: Springtime Suite - Four Ways Suite

One of music's greater mysteries was why LP collections of Suppe's overtures stuck to the same few favourites despite occasional radio broadcasts that revealed less familiar overtures every bit as compelling. In 1990 things finally began to look up, with a sudden burst of CDs of Suppe collections under Zubin Mehta, Sir Neville Marriner and Gustav Kuhn proving the irresistibility of less hackneyed alternatives. Now Marco Polo are going still further, with a whole series of Suppe CDs in which the overtures are broken up with an occasional march or other shorter item.

As with the first volume, this second confirms not just the melodic invention of Suppe, but more particularly his astonishing rhythmic resource and vigour. Can any other composer's music have been so unremittingly exciting? Of course not all the overtures maintain quite the same consistency of invention as the very best. Yet there is always something at which to thrill, including a beautiful violin solo in the overture to Donna Juanita and a rousing conclusion to Dos Modell. A particular surprise comes with the overture to Der Kramer und sein Kommis, which turns out to be an only slightly varied version of the familiar Ein Morgen, ein Mittag, und ein Abend in Wien of seven months earlier. Sadly the point is lost on the author of the accompanying notes, as is the fact that the piece listed and described as the Fatinitza March is certainly not the familiar piece of that title. Whereas in Marco Polo's Johann Strauss Edition the conductor Alfred Walter failed to capture fully Strauss's more sensitive writing, he seems altogether better equipped for the brasher Suppe style. The result is exhilarating stuff indeed.

-- Gramophone [6/1995]