Continuing their series of orchestral works by Sir Eugene Goossens, Sir Andrew Davis and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra turn to the Phantasy Concerto for Violin and the Second Symphony. Goossens was born in London in 1893, into a family of Belgian conductors and musicians. He trained in Brugesand at the Royal College of Music (studying composition under Stanford), played violin in the Queen’s Hall Orchestra under Sir Henry Wood, and became Sir Thomas Beecham’s go-to stand-in because of his ability to conduct the most demanding programmes on little or no rehearsal. Goossens gave the first UK concert performance of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps, in 1921, and in 1923 became the first music director of the newly formed Rochester Philharmonic, before succeeding Fritz Reiner, in 1931, as chief conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He spent nine years in Australia, as chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and was instrumental in the planning of the Sydney Opera House. Both works recorded here were composed towards the end of his life. The Second Symphony, dating from 1942–45, is a vivid and personal response to WWII. The Phantasy Concerto for Violin and Orchestra was originally promised to Heifetz, who never performed it. Having returned to London, Goossens gave the work’s premiere in a BBC broadcast in July 1959, and this was followed by a Proms performance in 1960; on both occasions the soloist was Tessa Robbins. Sir Andrew Davis and his Melbourne forces perform these rarely heard works with care and finesse, and Tasmin Little shines as the soloist in the Phantasy Concerto. The album is recorded in Surround Sound.

“[Ehnes] is the protagonist in this all-Berlioz programme, but the disc is equally distinguished by the lucid, exhilarating, smoothly contoured playing of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under that experienced Berliozian Sir Andrew Davis.” - The Daily Telegraph (UK)

-----

The nine-time Juno-winning Canadian James Ehnes is centre stage in a new recording of orchestral works by Berlioz, with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. This recording was made following an extraordinary concert in November 2014 with the same forces, in which James Ehnes played two instruments made by Stradivarius, respectively a viola in the solo part of Harold en Italie – ‘symphony with a principal viola part’, in Berlioz’s words – and a violin in the solo of Rêverie et Caprice, both of which works feature here.

Berlioz was never ashamed to recycle his music from one work to another, especially when the earlier work had been rejected by the public or by the composer himself. In 1834, Paganini asked Berlioz for a work in which he could display his prowess on a fine Stradivarius viola. Berlioz then composed the four-movement symphony Harold en Italie, incorporating passages from the Rob-Roy overture which he had recently rejected.

Similarly, Rêverie et Caprice was the form eventually given to an aria from the opera Benvenuto Cellini, unceremoniously booed in Paris in 1838. Berlioz transformed the aria into a piece with solo violin three years later. It is the only piece Berlioz ever wrote for solo violin. - Chandos

Digital CD 16Bit 44.1Khz and originally recorded in: 24Bit 96Khz.

GOOSSENS Kaleidoscope. Tam O’Shanter. Three Greek Dances. Concert Piece 1. Four Conceits. Variations on “Cadet Rouselle.” Two Nature Poems. Don Juan de Mañara: Intermezzo • Andrew Davis, cond; Melbourne SO; 1 Jeff Crellin (ob, Eh); 1 Marshall Maguire (hp); 1 Alannah Guthrie-Jones (hp) • CHANDOS 5119 (SACD: 74:16)


Chandos’s Goossens series began promisingly under Richard Hickox with a recording of the First Symphony and Phantasy Concerto for piano and orchestra, but stalled after the conductor’s unexpected death in November 2008. Andrew Davis has since taken over as the company’s house conductor of English music. Having given us fine recordings of Delius, Elgar, and Holst, he now turns his attention to Goossens in this second volume of the series. Unlike the first it concentrates on shorter pieces.


Eugene Goossens (1893-1962) came from a musical family; both his father and grandfather were conductors. He studied composition with Stanford, and as a conductor was mentored by Beecham. (Later he himself was mentor to Richard Bonynge.) Young Eugene played violin in Beecham’s Queens Hall Orchestra during the years of the First World War, and may well have been a part of that orchestra when they premiered Holst’s Planets in 1918. Certainly Goossens’s orchestral finesse recalls Holst’s masterpiece in respect of clarity and sonority. The short tone poem Tam O’Shanter is the earliest orchestral work in this collection: Vigorous and deftly scored, it predates Malcolm Arnold’s better-known overture of the same name by 36 years. The sprightly children’s suite Kaleidoscope (so reminiscent of the work of another composer/conductor, Gabriel Pierné) and the Four Conceits were originally written for piano in 1918 and orchestrated much later. The Three Greek Dances , the Nature Poems , the Variations on the French folk song “Cadet Rousselle,” and the Intermezzo from his opera Don Juan de Mañara all date from the decade 1927-1938 when Goossens was a resident conductor in America, first with the Eastman Orchestra, then from 1931 on as successor to Fritz Reiner in Cincinnati. The composer’s handling of orchestral forces is even more assured here. The effects he achieves in the second of the Nature Poems (entitled “Bacchanal”) are so striking it is hard to imagine this work started life as a piano piece. (In this, he recalls another major influence: Maurice Ravel.) Interestingly, the folk-song variations are one of those collaborative hybrids that turn up every so often in 20th-century music. Orchestrated by Goossens, who composed the finale, the piece also contains variations by Arnold Bax, Frank Bridge, and John Ireland.


The longest work here is the three-movement Concert Piece for oboe, two harps, and orchestra, lasting just under 22 minutes. It dates from 1957, a year after Goossens had returned to London in disgrace following a sex and pornography scandal in Australia. It could be that he wrote this work for his highly respected siblings Leon (oboist), Sidonie and Marie (harpists) in order to help salvage his reputation. The piece is mellow, especially in the Delian slow movement, and is notable for introducing quotations from other composers, such as Debussy and Richard Strauss in the finale. Shades of Berio’s Sinfonia.


Covering approximately 40 years, the program on this disc displays Goossens’s strengths: exquisite craftsmanship—especially in scoring—piquant but not ‘difficult’ harmony, and economy. What he lacks compared to several of his peers is a distinctive melodic profile, but that does not prevent an appreciation of this adroitly realized music. Three of these works have appeared in a three-CD set from ABC Australia, conducted by Vernon Handley with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra ( Tam O’Shanter and the Concert Piece ) and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra ( Kaleidoscope ). Handley is livelier than Davis. Concert Piece in particular sounds like a stronger work in his hands. However, the magnificent Chandos sound trumps the perfectly acceptable 17-year-old Australian recordings. The Davis disc is in a class of its own in terms of sonics, and his excellent soloists Crellin, Maguire, and Guthrie-Jones in Concert Piece seem better attuned to 20th-century English style. (I can only report on the Chandos disc in regular stereo.) While the first release in this series contained works of greater significance, this follow-up is fully enjoyable in its own right. The Second Symphony should be next up.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

This well-filled disc contains excellent performances of some of Ives most popular and significant works. It’s easy to understand why the “Holidays” Symphony has enjoyed greater success as four individual tone poems. With the exception of Thanksgiving, the three other movements (as well as Central Park in the Dark and other Ives pieces) all share the same basic form. They start with a dissonant, slow passage scored mostly for strings, then there’s a lively middle section based on popular dance, march, and hymn tunes. This quickly rises to a chaotic climax and then the opening music returns in a brief coda.

Andrew Davis deserves credit for differentiating the first three movements in a way that prevents monotony–a function of flowing tempos and carefully delineated string textures–while still letting Ives’ cacophony sound aptly cacophonous. Only the unnamed chorus at the end of Thanksgiving could have enjoyed greater prominence, but it’s no big deal. For all we know the singers might be members of the orchestra, which is just fine. The tune, “Duke Street” is still used in the New Haven Protestant churches. I know because when I was in high school in New Haven we sang it there, although not at Thanksgiving.

This performance of Three Places in New England is also first rate, with a rambunctious middle movement and a particularly poetic account of The Housatonic at Stockbridge. The Unanswered Question is basically unkillable (although it has been done), although I’m not sure why it’s separated from its companion piece, Central Park in the Dark, by the Three Places. That was gratuitous, but it hardly matters and you can always play the music in any order you choose. This being Ives, it hardly matters. Fine sonics round out a very desirable release.

– ClassicsToday (David Hurwitz)

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

PROKOFIEV: Peter and the Wolf / BRITTEN: Young Person's Guid

During his long and exceptionally fruitful creative life, Richard Strauss (1864–1949) composed only a few works for the cello. Only three have survived and small as that number may seem, those cello works are critical to the composer’s development. Daniel Muller-Schott sees the early Sonata for cello and piano op. 6 and the late tone poem “Don Quixote” op. 35 as marking the path that was to lead Strauss within the space of a few years from Romanticism to the Modern era in music. The cellist highlights this watershed in Strauss’s artistic development with his own transcriptions, expressly made for this album, of the Lieder “Zueignung” op. 10/1 and “Ich trage meine Minne” op. 32/1.

If you have a weakness for Grainger the orchestral wizard, then this is one disc you simply cannot afford to be without... I hope Simon will soon follow it up (I long for new recordings of priceless miniatures like Children's March and Colonial Song); in the meantime, see if you agree with Delius who thought The Warriors by far Grainger's greatest thing". I know I do." (critic's Choice, Dec.1990, Gramophone)

Percy Grainger was one of the great “originals” of 20th century music. Australian-born, he studied with his mother while a boy and later went to Germany where his career as a virtuoso pianist began. As a composer he was largely self-taught and strongly influenced by the folk music of Great Britain and Ireland, Many of his “miniatures”-such titles as Country Gardens, Handel in the Strand and Molly on the Shore-established his composing credentials very early on. But Grainger was also an inveterate innovator and experimenter in music, and the kaleidoscopic aspects of his compositional creativity-evident in highly imaginative works often with unprecedented rhythms, harmonies and scoring-are fully represented in the programme heard on this recording. The music was digitally recorded with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in February 1989, at the acoustically excellent South Melbourne Town Hall.

HILL: Symphonies Nos. 4 and 6 / The Sacred Mountain