George Petrou and his ensemble have advanced to the first ranks of Handel interpreters in record- breaking time. This time the Greek conductor presents us a CD premiere featuring the rebirth of Alessandro Severo, a Roman emperor from the beginning of the third century. Petrou also offers us a special surprise treat with Don Crepuscolo by the Greek composer Niccolo? Manzaro.

George Petrou again draws an outstanding vocal ensemble including Kristina Hammerstro?m, Mary- Ellen Nesi, Irini Karaianni, Marita Solberg, Gemma Bertagnolli, and Petros Magoulas. The recently founded Armonia Atenea performs on historical instruments. On their fifth opera recording the Handel specialists again score a major coup.

“This is a MUST for organ aficionados.“ (American Record Guide)

"Only rarely can one ever say of a big recording project, that it is definitive. In this case I´m going to risk it.” (BBC Radio 3)

”This multi-faceted Dutchman gives us performances of Guilmant’s eight sonatas which, quite frankly, could not be bettered.” (American Record Guide)

GRECHANINOV String Quartets: in c, op. 75; in F , op. 124 ? Utrecht Str Qrt ? MDG 603 1388 (68: 40)


Grechaninov is commonly thought of as a composer whose works are somewhat conservative and hark back to the style of his teachers, above all Rimsky-Korsakov; but the two quartets given here amply demonstrate the extent to which he fell under modern Western influences. Debussy, Scriabin, Richard Strauss, and Wagner all left their subtle imprint upon the C-Minor Quartet, the fabric of which is a fine construct of emotion and restraint in which the influences are balanced by a clear understanding of form and structure. Iosif Raiskin?s fine booklet note aptly terms this ?New ideas in old words,? which goes some way to explain the compositional aims of Grechaninov in his later years. For all this, his own voice comes across as unfailingly vital and soulful within the music.


It is the Fourth String Quartet in F that most clearly articulates Grechaninov?s vision of what a string quartet might be. Composed at the age of 65 during his self-imposed exile in Paris, the work looks back with some clarity of vision to Borodin in particular, and Beethoven, too, in his quotation and metamorphosis of themes drawn from the latter?s Fifth Symphony. Grechaninov?s lyrical gifts are displayed to the full in the second movement, within which the central section is a notable aria for violin solo with trio accompaniment. The work is worth hearing for the sensitivity of this passage alone.


The Utrecht String Quartet?s performances project confidence, musical handling of individual lines and care with the shaping of phrases that never suggests an over-studying of the score, though these works have undoubtedly been lived with. Recorded with immediacy, the individual instruments relate well to each other and integrate pleasingly within the sound picture. There is a slight bias towards the bass register, which allows the 1680 Medard cello to project its rich tone with ample fullness, though the other three instruments also possess warmth of tone that in no small measure contributes to these enjoyable readings.


The third quartet receives a performance by the Dante Quartet on the Dutton label that was welcomed in Fanfare 28:3. With the only competing version of both works from the Moyzes Quartet on Marco Polo currently unavailable, the present release holds the field. A rewarding journey into all too-neglected repertoire.


FANFARE: Evan Dickerson

Includes ov(s) by Joh Christoph Graupner. Ensemble: Nova Stravaganza. Conductor: Siegbert Rampe.
Includes work(s) by Joh Christoph Graupner. Ensemble: Nova Stravaganza. Conductor: Siegbert Rampe.

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death, Nova Stravaganza present the recording premiere of some of the few chamber works by Graupner and perform on historical instruments.

A little over a hundred years have passed since Enrique Granados met his death in the English Channel. After an acclaimed concert tour that took him to New York at the height of World War I, a German submarine sank the ship on which he was returning to Europe. Many manuscripts by the famous pianist were also lost in the ciy waters and must have included priceless treasures - as we may gather from the interpretations of his surviving works by Maria Luisa Cantos, the grande dame of Spanish piano music, on her latest recording. After Granados had initially been brought to safety, he plunged into the water to save his beloved wife and lost his life in the effort - lending a romantic element to this extremely tragic episode.

During his lifetime, Enrique Granados was highly valued above all for the poetry of his piano playing - and his compositions also breathe the same poetic spirit. Stephen Marchionda honors the composer on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his birth with a highly personal selection from these works. His own arrangements for the guitar create an illuminating link to Granados' roots in Spanish folklore. In the quieter pieces, Marchionda displays the quality of his guitar playing: flageolet passages with a touch of the ethereal, yearningly traced melodic lines, and gentle arpeggios magically generating a unique color are especially fitting for the "Eight Poetic Waltzes" concluding this highly atmospheric collection. As special encores the Spain resident presents two wonderful songs brightening Andalusian and Catalonian melancholy with fine humor.

Johann Sebastian Bach regarded the young Johann Gottlieb Goldberg as his most talented pupil. Not much more is known about the Danzig native Goldberg besides the fact that he was the dedicatee of the famous variations bearing his name. He died of tuberculosis at the very early age of twenty-nine but left behind a compact oeuvre giving us an idea of what might have come next. Alina Ratkowska teams up with the Goldberg Baroque Ensemble from the composer’s native Danzig/Gdansk on this recording of his two extant harpsichord concertos – which with their elegance, sensibility, and expression very much move beyond his teacher’s contrapuntal style. Since Alina Ratkowska earned doctoral and postdoctoral degrees in Warsaw and Katowice, it is hardly surprising that she herself edited the scores for this recording. Her close association with Goldberg, also demonstrated by the establishment of the Danzig Goldberg Festival more than ten years ago, is reflected at every turn in her playing. Everything is captured in finely nuanced recording technology, and comes with an unlimited guarantee of all-around genuine listening pleasure!

GOLDBERG Trio Sonatas: in a; in C; in B?; in g; in f. Sonata a quatro in c. Polonaises: in F; in d; in E?; in c; in G; in C • Musica Alta Ripa (period instruments) • MDG 3090709 (76:50)


Though he lived for only 29 years, Johann Gottleib Goldberg (1727–1756) has been guaranteed a niche in the annals of music, for it was for him that Sebastian Bach wrote his famous Aria with Thirty Variations which posterity has come to know as the Goldberg Variations . The story of their creation has been recounted by Bach’s biographer, Johann Nikolaus Forkel, and the following excerpt is taken from Ralph Kirkpatrick’s edition of the score:


Once the Count mentioned in Bach’s presence that he would like to have some clavier pieces for Goldberg, which should be of such a smooth and somewhat lively character that he might be a little cheered up by them in his sleepless nights. Bach thought himself best able to fulfill this wish by means of variations, the writing of which he had until then considered an ungrateful task on account of the repeatedly similar harmonic foundation.


But since at this time all his works were already models of art, such also these variations became under his hand. Yet he produced only a single work of this kind. Thereafter the Count always called them his variations. He never tired of them . . .


Apparently Herr Goldberg was not only a brilliantly gifted harpsichordist, but also an excellent composer. Our Editor sent me a disc of Goldberg’s harpsichord concertos with which I was favorably impressed (see Fanfare 30:2), and now I have this CD of some of Goldberg’s chamber music. Very little of Goldberg’s music has survived; many of the compositions that he failed to destroy didn’t survive the Allied bombing of Dresden. But as always, there are exceptions as this MDG compact disc illustrates. Goldberg’s surviving manuscripts were thought to be limited to two harpsichord concertos, two cantatas, the sonatas recorded here, and several harpsichord pieces, but more recently, another trio sonata turned up that might be the missing one advertised in a 1763 publication by Breitkopf. The jury remains out on the authenticity of this work.


Bach scholar Peter Wollny speaks of “powerful and profound harmonies and at times almost gloomy ones” that—when combined with Goldberg’s undisputed contrapuntal mastery—give us chamber music of almost unprecedented craft for a composer so young. The sonatas are indeed impressive; they augur well for Goldberg’s contemporary reputation and also warrant examination by other early music ensembles. Structurally, all but one of the sonatas resemble the Corellian sonata da chiesa , while the brief Polonaises­ for harpsichord—taken from a collection of 24 (one in each key)—are apparently from Goldberg’s years as a student of W. F. Bach in Dresden. The cyclical character of the collection reflects the influence of J. S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier.


Musica Alta Ripa ( alta ripa means “high bank or cliff” in Italian) is a well-credentialed and established ensemble. Founded in 1984 and based in Hanover, the home of the musicians, Musica Alta Ripa has gone on “to enjoy extraordinary success in its numerous concerts and in collaboration with various (European) radio networks.” Their playing is poised, erudite, and fluent. Stylistic conventions of the period are observed, but never is sound musicianship abandoned. The music is appropriately nuanced and weighted with emotion, but never overblown where it would become a parody of itself. True Baroque music-lovers shouldn’t have a problem finding space on their shelves for this one.


FANFARE: Michael Carter

On May 14, 1763, Bologna’s Teatro Comunale opened with the world premiere of Il trionfo di Clelia. Completed a year after Orfeo ed Euridice, Gluck’s setting of Metastasio’s story of romantic fidelity put to the test against the background of the Siege of Rome, was tailored both to display the new theatre’s capacity for spectacle (Act II calls for the collapse of a bridge and a heroic swim across the rising waters of the Tiber) and a cast hand-picked for their fioritura (embellishment of a melodic line). Thus while musicologists may cherish Il trionfo di Clelia for its pivotal role in the composer’s progress from the gilded cage of opera seria to the grand austerity of his reform operas, the rest of us can enjoy an inventive score.

Giuseppe Sigismondi de Risio’s performance with Armonia Atenea is one of tireless dynamism, the trumpets, oboes and kettle drums parade-ground smart in the overture and tempestuous sinfonias. Gluck’s bravura instrumentation extends to unusual effects, using horns to add a subtle blush of colour to Orazio’s limpid serenade ‘Saper ti basti’, while the styles employed range from coloratura showpieces to concise French-accented palate-cleansers. With the possible exception of Vassilis Kavayas’s Porsenna (too much the cartoon villain), the casting favours clear, agile voices, the sweetest of which is Burçu Uyar’s Larissa, the warmest Mary-Ellen Nesi’s Orazio, the most heroic Hélène Le Corre’s Clelia and Irini Karaianni’s Tarquinio.

-- Anna Picard, BBC Music Magazine [6/2012]

GLAZUNOV String Quartets: No. 1; No. 7 • Utrecht Qrt • MDG 603 1736-2 (52: 16)


Contrasting the first and last string quartets of Glazunov on a single release is a good idea. Unlike many such pairings, they literally do represent the beginning and end of his compositional career, a sort of real-life version of Machaut’s Ma fin est mon commencement . And Glazunov, as one of the foremost admirers in his day of the Franco-Flemish School and its antecedents, would have caught the reference.


His String Quartet No. 1 was the composer’s first published work, premiered in 1882, when he was 16. It was first presented at one of the Friday soirées of the wealthy timber merchant Mitrofan Belyayev, where composers and performers met each week to perform and critique each other’s work. The public premiere took place a few months later, and received an ovation similar to Glazunov’s First Symphony. At a time when Russian nationalism was still a subject of intense debate, with few adequate examples in chamber music, this First Quartet conveys technical assurance and a rich sense of style. The opening movement possesses an authority in its inspired materials and detailed, idiomatic writing that would credit a far more experienced composer. The scherzo is competent, but less individualized, as Glazunov wouldn’t start up his series of remarkable essays in this vein until the Second Symphony, four years later. By contrast, the songful, miniature andante is an early cradle song-like example of the striking lyricism and harmonic subtleties the composer would subsequently lavish on many similar movements. The finale is one of those hybrid sonata-rondos based on two folklike themes that Glazunov would use repeatedly to round off his larger multimovement works.


The Seventh String Quartet was completed in 1930, in Paris. It was among Glazunov’s last compositions, and is both considerably more vivid and imaginative than the pallid Sixth of nine years earlier. Its opening movement is unusually rich in imitative textures and contrapuntal procedures, looking back to the Renaissance, as noted above—not for nothing its subtitle, Hommage au passé . Russian nationalism, which had become less pronounced in Glazunov’s later works, reappears as well, though without discarding the chromatically shifting harmonies of his Eighth and unfinished Ninth symphonies. The slow movement, “Le souffle du printemps,” has the character of a lyrical recitative surrounding lighter material that occasionally launches into full-throated, Borodin-like song. The scherzo, labeled “Dans la forêt mystérieuse,” is the last in an amazing series notable for their delicacy, whimsy, and imagination. This one, spun out of short motifs, irregular rhythms, and counterpoint, creates an impression of unpredictable, fast-moving shadows and complex features beneath a transparently simple surface. The finale, “Festival Russe,” is exactly what it says—with celebratory bells, balalaikas strumming, and a chorus singing joyous hymns, as well as brief recollections of earlier movements, handled with panache. Thus Glazunov returned to the inspiration of his musical youth, and for a brief moment successfully recovered it.


This is the final release in the Utrecht String Quartet’s Glazunov series. I’ve previously reviewed its recordings of the Third and Fifth quartets (MDG 603 1236-2), the Sixth Quartet and the Novelettes (MDG 603 1239-2), and the String Quintet and Suite for String Quintet (MDG 603 1238). The features of its work as a group have remained fairly constant: technically expert playing, a sleekly attractive tone, and an internal response to each other and to the music that is only possible when an ensemble has worked a great deal of time on a given work. The approach is cooler, more objectified than the older Shostakovich Quartet recordings of Glazunov from the 1970s (on Olympia; deleted, but still available from some sources) that feature warmer phrasing, a less linear approach to tempo, and more rubato and portamento. Overall, I respond better in this music to the Shostakovich’s approach, which was developed in training under musicians to whom Russian nationalism was as natural as Beethoven and Brahms. But I find much to enjoy in the Utrecht’s balance, textural clarity, and affection for these works.


The group is least successful in the First Quartet’s finale, where in place of the moderato tempo designation it prefers an andante for much of the movement, and in the Seventh Quartet’s andante affectuoso , which goes at a moderato clip and loses much of its charm in the process. These two instances on this disc (and others, in the series) seem of a part with the group’s emotional coolness, a certain reticence to engage the music at a simple emotional level—hence the inability to express effusive enthusiasm and tenderness. Far better is the finale to the Seventh Quartet, also marked moderato , but with more vigor and flexibility, perhaps because the movement is more complex than its counterpart in the First. The soft playing in the Seventh’s scherzo is a treat, and the four-part harmony, though lacking the richness of the Shostakovich performers, has a spaciousness and majesty that contributes much to the opening movements of both works.


The sound is immediate and close, yet without mechanical noises. In short, this is a distinguished recording by the Utrecht String Quartet, and a suitable one on which to end its survey of Glazunov.


FANFARE: Barry Brenesal

Cut: Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers saunter along, accompanied by their dogs, with fascinating suppleness over the ship's deck. Who could have better composed the soundtrack to the incomparably relaxed motion of these superstars of the American musical film than George Gershwin? The film Shall We Dance is not shown all that often today. It is thus all the more enjoyable that the pianist Corinna Simon has now made the enchanting "Walking the Dog" available tonally, together with great hits and less familiar numbers penned by Gerswhin.

The Leipzig String Quartet sets out on yet another musical journey, and a genuine discovery is in store inasmuch as Niel Wilhelm Gade’s Quartet “Willkommen und Abschied” is being heard here for the first time in complete form. Since the Dane Gade, like Edvard Grieg, whose Quartet op. 27 is also part of this tour, had important musical roots in Leipzig, the journey also covers home turf.

During the first half of the nineteenth century the string quartet was regarded as the embodiment of absolute music. It may seem to have been a rather bold move for a young composer for Gade to have used the literary source, Goethe’s poem “Willkommen und Abschied,” for his first string quartet.

Edvard Grieg studied under Gade in Copenhagen, where he developed ideas for his Nordic music like in his Quartet op. 27. The powerful introduction of the first movement already contains the famous “Grieg motif,” from which many themes derive. Grieg himself fueled speculations about its autobiographical connections by working with his “Spielmannslied”; his quartet is a top-class chamber event in this gripping interpretation by the members of the Leipzig String Quartet.

GADE Piano Trio, op. 42. Piano Trio (1839): first movement. Novelettes, op. 29. Piano Quartet: Scherzo • Trio Parnassus; Thomas Selditz (va) • MDG 303 1665-2 (64: 06)


Gade’s works for piano trio are pragmatic, thorough, technically accomplished, and compact. Their reluctance to sprawl is an advantage as it allows one to concentrate on their salient features, which include romantic ardor, lyric profusion, and a confident sense of projection. The op. 42 Trio in F Major was written between February 1862 and December 1863, and the vibrant playing of Trio Parnassus and the excellent recording allow a full exploration of its Schumannesque elements. Pianist Chia Chou anchors the performance with considerable strength and finesse, while violinist Yamei Yu essays some effective slides. Michael Gross is the excellent cellist. They bring a fine corporate sense of buoyancy and lyricism to the second movement, an Allegro molto vivace. (However, I was able to go back to the first-ever recording of this movement, in a 1917 performance by Albert Sammons, W.H. Squire, and William Murdoch, and there you will find a far greater sense of characterization and intensity.) The Andantino is a rather lovely Lied, rich in legato, and the finale rings with an almost Mendelssohnian panache.


The 1854 Novelettes are possibly as well known as the trio. There are five miniatures in all, and one explicitly quotes Schumann. They’re played with genuine poise, with fine unisons, excellent soliloquies, and a judicious balance. The plangent elements of the Larghetto are as well explored as the more bucolic, folkloric elements of the central Moderato. The discarded finale to the Novelettes in the original 1853 version—Gade revised the work in 1854—is also included, and it’s a fiery and confident affair. The projected four-movement Piano Trio of 1839 never materialized and all that remains is the opening movement, a solid 12-and-a-half-minute affair opening with an Adagio section and moving on to the Allegro con fuoco . Sketches do exist of the inner movements, but nothing remains of the finale. It’s a very strongly programmatic movement, and fortunately Gade’s narrative has survived, a typically romantic one, reprinted in the liner note. But it’s not at all necessary to know this narrative to appreciate the slow, intense introduction and the extroverted Allegro replete with passionate declamation. The Scherzo for a piano quartet (1836) is a youthful, big-boned work strongly reflecting Gade’s absorption of Mendelssohn once again.


I referred earlier to the recording quality, which certainly enhances this traversal of the complete piano trio works materially and so too, obviously, the playing. There is a fine performance of the op. 42 and the Novelettes by the Abegg Trio on Tacet 112, but that is coupled with the Chopin Trio. So if your priority is wholly Gade, then this MDG fits the bill perfectly.


FANFARE: Jonathan Woolf

Grigory Frid’s politically and morally ambitious operas have made him known to a broader public even outside his native Russia. His chamber music is not so popular, but it too holds discoveries in store, as John Finucane and Elisaveta Blumina impressively demonstrate on this recording premiere of his two clarinet sonatas. Musical wit, tonal beauty, and virtuosity in the treatment of tonality and instrumentation reveal a compositional talent stimulated by exchanges with the greatest of Frid’s times. This did not come about by mere chance. When Frid established the Moscow Youth Music Club rather precisely midway through his long life of almost a hundred years, the beneficial effect of this cultural classical oasis in the midst of the oppressive Soviet present could not yet by foreseen. Schnittke, Gubaildulina, Denisov, and Kancheli had their works performed there, and world stars of the present and future like Shostakovich, Gilels, Bashmet, and Richter were guests. Even when he was a boy, Frid was exposed to this special atmosphere: Nathan Milstein and Vladimir Horowitz played duets and his parents home. Elisaveta Blumina is especially fond of much to little known music from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She received an ECHO Klassik award for her trio recording with works by Francaix, Poulenc, and Previn. With John Finucane she now continues this commitment.