Furtwangler: The Best Studio Recordings (1929-1943)

Classical Music

Few things small enough to fit in the palm of the hand can inspire wonder about the limitless potential of human creativity. A collection of early Renaissance devotional objects- elegantly precise boxwood carvings of miniature rosaries, prayer beads and altarpieces, on display as part of a major international exhibition- served as the direct inspiration for this musical program. These objects draw viewers into a private and intimate world of meditation; religious scenes carved with precision and poetry evoke a bygone world of intense spiritual devotion- sometimes tormented, sometimes luminous, but always fascinating. The music in this program is designed to elicit similar sensations in listeners. Originating in northern European circles, contemporary with those who produced these boxwood carvings, these spiritual pieces are not intended for grand cathedrals or public ceremony, but for personal meditation, private chapels and rooms, family houses and assemblies. Like the beads and rosaries, their craftsmanship is precise, superb; rich in subtle details, they lead us to wonder, and to contemplation.

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During the late 1930s the Great Depression was still raging. Kreisler, Heifetz, the young Menuhin, Szigeti and Milstein represented the topmost echelon of violinists in box office draw, followed by Elman, Huberman, Spalding, the young Ricci and Morini. Many a European violinistic luminary had made an American debut during the Depression years, hoping for success. Despite everything, the United States was still the Mecca for musical artists, in terms of financial reward. But in the face of intense competition only a violinist of the very highest qualifications - and one whose musical personality and character were in some measure different from those of the reigning elite - could hope to launch a top-level concertizing career. Such an artist was René Charles (Zino) Francescatti. At thirty-seven, he was already a fully seasoned performer when he made his American debut in November, 1939, playing the Paganini Concerto No.1 (complete version) with the New York Philharmonic. His rise to stardom had been long and arduous, but he was recognized eventually not only as the heir to Thibaud, once the 'greatest French violinist', but also as one of the world's leading violinists. Fellow-violinist Henry Roth said: 'As a bravura technician, Francescatti belongs in the first rank. And what is more important - he never sacrifices beauty of sound or sincerity of purpose in the interest of technical exhibitionism.' - This collection features never-before-released live performance recordings of favourite concertos and chamber works he excelled in.

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Adolf Busch had been one of the highly celebrated violinists and greatly admired exponents of the Beethoven concerto in Europe before WWII, but had never recorded it prior to his emigration to the U.S. in 1939. After a period of relative neglect, he was invited by American Columbia to record the work in 1942, but the outcome was not a success. Critic Tully Potter tells the story in his linernotes: "On 7 and 8 February [1942] the Busch brothers ... collaborated with the Philharmonic-Symphony, in the Beethoven Concerto, Adolf airing a new set of cadenzas written the previous year. ...the Saturday-evening interpretation gained mixed notices, the best being very good, the worst very bad; and perhaps the violinist was not at his best. Two critics indicated that he seemed nervous--hardly surprising, when it was his first performance for years of a work he had been accustomed to play almost every week. He was certainly in excellent form on the Sunday afternoon: the CBS network broadcast was taken down by at least two home recordists and one of those documents is here released for the first time. It makes an admirable corrective to the official Columbia recording, made next day at Liederkranz Hall. Unfortunately the production was delegated to the talented but inexperienced Goddard Lieberson. Busch was palpably under strain in the opening movement, his nervousness exacerbated by Lieberson's insisting he stand on a raised platform, which made him feel remote from his brother and the orchestra and brought him too close to the microphone. The resulting poor balance caused him to reject the recording and it was not issued until after his death. The live performance is everything one might expect." The fillers include a Bach concerto (in a minor) never commercially recorded by Busch.

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In the Romantic period, the connections between love and death were an obsession of artists. Composers were naturally drawn to explore the great themes that entered literature in the works of Dante, Petrarch and Goethe: good and evil, love and death. Liszt was no exception. The powerful, evocative works presented here range from moments of repose and contemplation to nearly unbearable contrasts of dynamics, pitch registers and tempi, dramatized by bold juxtapositions. “A fearless, flawless knight of the piano” is how Vienna’s Die Presse characterized pianist Carlo Grante.

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MOZART ON THE 1793 FORTEPIANO

Nobody could call Scriabin a fussy man. All he asks of a pianist who would traverse his early sonatas is that he manage to be as sounding brass (Sonata No. 1), to walk on water (No. 2), to burn and be not consumed (No. 3), to fly (No. 4), and to dematerialize (No. 5). In that order. Oh yes, and stretch a twelfth.

Boris Berman, of Yale University by way of Moscow and Tel Aviv, is ready for this or any decathalon. Born and raised in the one country where Scriabin is as securely ensconced in the Pantheon as Bach or Beethoven, he believes in the music the way Sofronitsky did, the way Horowitz did, the way you will after you've heard him play. I must say his performances of the First and Second Sonatas were revelations to me. These are the sonatas one only encounters in integral recordings, and the other complete Scriabins I've heard (Szidon, Ponti) have not been satisfactory. In Berman's hands the first movement of the First, composed by a twenty-year-old just out of the Conservatory, is one of the great Scriabin experiences. It may be as yet conventional in form and only vaguely suggestive in its harmony of the composer's mature idiom. But it already has his inimitable rhythmic fluidity (yes, literally inimitable; God knows Stravinsky and Prokofiev tried) and his unique command of three- and four-handed pianistic textures. Berman sprouts as many hands as are required, and he has an ability to phrase in long periods—plus the pedal technique to support it—that keeps the music airborne despite its sequential construction. He also has his teacher Lev Oborin's famous way with inner voices; how many pianists could bring out the tenor in the chorale section of the funeral-march finale within an overall marking, scrupulously observed, of pppp?

When, beginning with Sonata No. 3, Berman hits the big-time competition, he more than holds his own. He knows the idiom to the extent that his eighth-note triplets are regularly distended, as Scriabin played them, with a hesitation on the second note and a correspondingly shorter third. His tempos are brisk and flexible, his touch remarkably like Scriabin's own, to the extent that we may judge it from the composer's Vorsetzer rolls and from verbal descriptions (e.g., that of Alexander Pasternak, the poet's brother: “I . . . had the impression that his fingers were producing the sound without touching the keys; his enemies liked to say it was not real piano playing, but a twittering of birds or a mewing of kittens“). This mercurial lightness is really indispensable in the Fourth Sonata, not only in the Prestissimo volando, but also toward the end of the Andante, where the right hand must caress a steady stream of high repeated chords while the left hand sings the tune. You will indeed have the impression that Berman's fingers are not touching the keys. When that main theme of the Andante comes back riding the crest of the Prestissimo in what James Baker (in truly excellent program notes) calls the first of Scriabin's many thematic apotheoses, Berman's effortless tone production is suitably glorious.

In fact, nowhere in this set is there the slightest sense of sweat or strain, even in the Fifth Sonata, so full of explicitly erotic gestures. (Yes, Scriabin appeals to forces mystérieuses, but we know very well what they are.) It's a very playful, aristocratic sort of ecstasy Scriabin summons up, the kind reflected in the Kama Sutra, far, oh very far from 42nd Street. Berman has the cosmic skittishness it takes to make what is often such a heavy harangue a tickly, spritzy delight. Porno-phony, perhaps, but definitely soft-core.

Volume 2, expected shortly, will require the pianist to cast spells, be like the sun, worship the devil, and ultimately become an insect. Can't wait.

-- Richard Taruskin, FANFARE [5/1990]

Phyllis Bryn-Julson has been America's foremost Lieder and oratorio singer for decades; her sensitivity to texts and intelligent singing, along with the natural beauty of her voice, have been matched by no other singer. But Schoenberg's Cabaret Songs (Brettllieder), written for a Berlin nightclub—virtually his only means of support during 1901—need a young, teasing chanteuse to express their coy, fey, often erotic sentiments. No problem: Bryn-Julson becomes that chanteuse for these 1990 recordings. She does not go as far as Marni Nixon, who mimics a childish voice in her 1970s RCA LP of these songs, going over the line into caricature. Accompanist Ursula Oppens, a great artist in her own right, seems not to share the cabaret atmosphere; her grand piano sounds as if it belonged on the concert stage, which is really the case for these songs nowadays. The differing attitudes do not compromise these fine performances. Unfortunately, this disc omits one of Schoen-berg's eight cabaret songs, Nachtwandler, because it calls for piccolo, trumpet, and snare drum as well as piano; Nixon includes it, as does Dorothy Dorrow on an Etcetera disc {Fanfare 12:3).

In the 1899 Four Songs, op. 2, Schoenberg writes in the late-Romantic style of Brahms and Wolf. Bryn-Julson's true pitch is a blessing to the ear after Susanne Lange's velvety but unreliable mezzo {Fanfare 14:3). The Book of the Hanging Gardens gets an exceptional performance; Bryn-Julson makes every word intelligible, her precise diction aided by the digital recording. Jan De-Gaetani, in another fine performance, goes in for more exotic vocal effects, at the cost of some intelligibility; perhaps the loss is also due to the analog Nonesuch recording (also Fanfare 14:3). This disc's otherwise excellent recording goes momentarily over the edge on the final word of Erhebung in op. 2, as the engineer underestimates the joint power of this voice and this piano. The close-up sound is totally appropriate for the heavy atmosphere of op. 15, and the cabaret songs are recorded with more space. The booklet includes texts of all these songs, with English translations. Those who have Jan DeGaetani's Nonesuch disc of Pierrot lunaire already possess a superb Book of the Hanging Gardens; the stronger coupling makes that disc the more generally recommendable, but there will be many who will want to hear Phyllis Bryn-Julson's views on all this music.

-- James H. North, FANFARE [1/1992]

When the first volume of sonatas turned up (Music and Arts CD-605, Fanfare 13:5), Richard Taruskin wrote of Berman that, “Born and raised in the one country where Scriabin is as securely ensconced in the Pantheon as Bach or Beethoven, he believes in the music the way Sofronitsky did, the way Horowitz did, the way you will after you've heard him. ...“ Indeed, in the complete traversal sweeps—Ponti, Laredo, Taub—Berman's most consistent competition comes from Ashkenazy (London 425 579-2, two silver discs), who, needless to say, shares Berman's distinctions. In fact, heard after other pianists, Berman and Ashkenazy seem remarkably at one in their view of Scriabin and in their effortless projection of it—even their timings are often identical ! Within this basic similarity, however, one may say that Berman favors a voluptuously febrile approach, couched in veiled, bass-rich, pedal-held sound (abetted by a lushly resonant acoustic), while Ashkenazy opts for an almost crystalline (though seldom dry) clarity, crisper articulation, and brighter color. In the later sonatas, with their incantatory repetitions flaring into great washes of sonority, Ashkenazy's larger, more pointed climaxes bring these hallucinatory soundscapes into sharper focus, though Berman s accarezzevole touch and cumulative power awaken the music's daimonic eroticism with an hypnotic sureness scanted in Ashkenazy's patrician brilliance.

Both are high-voltage players, though neither quite matches Horowitz for sheer nervous energy, sinister intimations, trembling-on-the-verge spellbinding, eruptive grandeur, or overall éclat— though we are close: if Horowitz overwhelms, Ashkenazy compels, while Berman seduces. It is only fair to add that Ashkenazy recorded his cycle over a period of years, going back to 1975, where Berman committed his to the microphone in a matter of days—a staggering achievement. As noted, Music and Arts's aural perspective, while immediate and detailed, favors the bass. James E. Baker's extensive notes are a decided bonus, though his placement of Scriabin in the cultural history of his time and place will probably amount to obscurum per obscurius for most readers, to whom the likes of Solovyov, Balmont, lvanov, Baltrushaitis, Gippius, et al., are unlikely to be even superficially as familiar as the also named Nietzsche, Rudolf Steiner, and Madame Blavatsky. Hearing the sonatas together is one of music's great adventures, and Berman, aside from being an astounding pianist, is also gifted with that touch of the psychopomp which enables him to convey us unerringly to the heart of Scriabin's mystery. Enthusiastically recommended.

-- Adrian Corleonis, FANFARE [9/1991]

Includes work(s) by Martin Peerson, François Couperin, Louis-Claude Daquin, Franz Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Soloist: Igor Kipnis.
Includes work(s) for harpsichord by William Byrd, Louis Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, George Frideric Handel, Johann Sebastian Bach. Soloist: Igor Kipnis.

2009 two CD release. The recordings contained in this set of Shostakovich's Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Symphonies were all made soon after the first performances of each work, and have an authenticity as well as a musical immediacy that later recordings inevitably have lacked, good as they may be. These recordings stand as unique sound documents in the history of the interpretation of Shostakovich's music. In addition they testify to Stokowski's own personal style as an interpreter of this composer's works. Shostakovich held Stokowski in high esteem as an exponent of his music.

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is the second volume of our complete Scarlatti project - Volume I appeared on Music & Arts box set CD-1236 in April. New Classics [UK] wrote of that release: "Scarlatti's 555 keyboard sonatas are single movements, mostly in binary form.... Some of them display harmonic audacity in their use of discords, and also unconventional modulations to remote keys. They combine pure joyous sounds with the taut rhythms of Spanish dance and the harmonic brilliance of his Italian heritage to a degree that places him among the greatest musicians of all time. This first volume of the recordings of all of Scarlatti's sonatas, eloquently played on the Bösendorfer Imperial piano by Carlo Grante, is a splendid and fascinating undertaking: a journey through shared cultural experience, as well as one that explores the subtle thought processes of a highly influential musical genius." " "Sales Inventory

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This is the famous performance given in memory of Arturo Toscanini by Mr. Walter. It was originally released in 1973 on Lp by the predecessor company Educational Media Associates, to Music and Arts. The performance was later released on CD and was an international best seller for over a decade. Deleted about four years ago, this title has been re-issued in response to wide-spread demand. In his review in Fanfare Mortimer H. Frank found the reading "closer to a Toscanini-like leanness than to the weightiness Walter usually favored."

On the 1956 set from Bayreuth [the role of Kothner] is taken by no lesser artist than Fischer-Dieskau, who presents to the life the precise, fussy keeper of the seal, none better on any recording of the work. But there is hardly a poor performance from any singer. Windgassen, who rarely undertook Walther, sings the part with untiring freshness and life, phrasing with a long line and an innate musicality that make Walther's music for once a pleasure to hear from start to finish. Brouwenstijn is his lull-throated if not very individual Eva. Stolze's David is predictably vivid, Schmitt-Walther's pedantic, unexaggerated Beckmesser a nice change from the then-customary caricature. Greindl's Pogner is not ideally steady but imbued with eloquent diction and feeling.

The clinching performance is Hotter's Sachs, profoundly satisfying in its depth of feeling, its understanding of every facet of Sachs's complex character, and he gives his two monologues a musing. interior quality that goes to the heart of the matter. Vocally, he starts a shade tired - not surprising when he was also that festivals Wotan - but, crucially, by the start of Act 2 he strikes his best form. This set would be worth hearing for him alone.

Cluytens's conducting is not on the Knappertsbusch level, rather matter-of-fact in the first two acts, much more inspired in Act 3—but in any case nothing can dim the quality here of the handpicked Bayreuth forces. Unfortunately this recording, unlike the other two, has moments of poor sound, but it is never unsatisfactory enough to mar the performance's many assets.

-- Gramophone [10/1998]

The conductor’s Prometheus, the Poem of Fire (without wordless chorus; not uncommon during the period of recording) is Scriabin without the impressionistic gauze that often covers the piece on other recordings. In Mitropoulos’s reading, the work is mercurial, its buoyant rhythms never lost beneath the soaring thematic phrases. The conductor’s management of overlapping instrumental layers is striking: nothing is lost, all voices distinctly heard without sacrifice of impetuosity. It’s a too often made complaint by those of us who were raised in the 78-rpm and LP eras that there are digital releases of a given composition that supply less transparency and color than an old analog reissue; but in the case of this work, it certainly holds true. For all its age, this is a welcome addition to the catalog.

As with Prometheus, so with Pelleas und Melisande. All too readily it is cloaked in an opulent, impressionistic haze, with Karajan/Berlin Phil providing a good example of this bad approach (DG 2GOR 457721). Mitropoulos, by contrast, exhibits commitment, clear-edged detail, and a naturally expressive pulse that makes Karajan sound like a well-oiled machine. He doesn’t round off the corners of this music, but balances the various orchestral lines in a way that brings out its more fiery, dramatic nature.

-- Barry Brenesal, FANFARE