Leopold Godowsky's liberal adaptations of three Bach Cello Suites retool the originals in the image of hyper-romantic pianism. Harmonies implied by Bach are filled out and elaborated, with new counterpoints and sundry inner voices popping up like rabbits out of a magician's hat. Climaxes get reinforced with booming chords or octave doublings, emerging from the bowels of the keyboard. At times the music's dance origins threaten to buckle under Godowsky's garish filigree. Carlo Grante's light touch and digital deftness, however, keep the textures airborne and alive. He occasionally fidgets with rubato in a way that throws rhythmic definition askew, but he always makes the piano writing sound offhandedly easy. Excellent booklet notes make this release even more enticing. --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

HAYDN: Trumpet Concerto in E flat major / MOZART: Serenade N

This CD contains a spoken word track with excerpts from a talk Busoni gave at Harvard in 1965.
In commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Ferruccio Busoni's birth, in 1941 the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York performed and broadcast an all-Busoni program. For the first time in any format, this program has now been released. The conductor, Dimitri Mitropolous, and the two soloists, pianist Egon Petri and violinist Joseph Szigeti, had all been professionally and personally associated with Busoni, and their knowledge and commitment to his music make for some first-rate performances.
This is not a disc for those intolerant of historical recordings--the sound quality, while never unbearable, is highly variable. Still, the high level of the performances does shine through, with Szigeti's playing in the Violin Concerto especially fine. The program makes for an interesting cross-section of this eclectic composer's music. From his arrangement of a Mozart overture we proceed to the 'Indian Fantasy' with its attempt to represent both noble and "barbaric" elements in his interpretation of Native American culture. The solid late-romantic Violin Concerto is preceded by the wholly personal and idiosyncratic "Sarabande and Cortége," reflective and ambiguous orchestral studies drawn from his opera 'Doktor Faust.' As a composer, pianist, conductor, teacher and theorist, Busoni was an influential figure, and this program remains a fitting tribute to him.

Godowsky, L.: Godowsky Edition (The), Vol. 2 – Very Freely T

VERDI: OTELLO KLEIBER, FRENI,

Classical Music

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]

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]

This is one of the most exciting "New World"s I've ever heard... [C]laims were made that it was a 1941 recording made by Wilhelm Furtwängler... It wasn't until the 1990s and detective work by German discophiles that the truth came out... The "Romantic" is remarkable for the flexibility that Kabasta builds into his brisk tempos; his Bruckner breathes... In short, this is a fascinating issue, and one well worth exploring for anyone who admires Furtwängler's athleticism.

-- Raymond Tuttle, www.classical.net

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]

Classical Music

Following on the success of her acclaimed release, Donna Voce, award winning pianist Anna Shelest continues her exploration of works by women composer in Donna Voce Volume 2 - Women of Legend. Featured are Fanny Mendelssohn's monumental feat of imagination and virtuosity Das Jahr (The Year), Melanie "Mel" Bonis' suite of musical portraits Femmes de Legende (Women of Legend), and contemporary Ukrainian composer Olena Ilnytska's evocative Nocturne 1. Hailed by The New York Times as a pianist of a fiery sensibility and warm touch, Anna Shelest is an international award-winning pianist who has thrilled audiences throughout the world.

Two CD set. Fritz Lehmann became conductor of the H�ndel Festival in G�ttingen in 1934, and held numerous conducting posts, the last one in G�ttingen (1946-1950). He subsequently was a teacher at the Hochschule f�r Musik in Munich (from 1953). a consummate conductor, he led notable performances in Oratorio, opera, and symphonic literature, ranging from the Baroque period to the 20th century. He died at age 52 of a heart attack during a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion. Especially noted for his Bach and Handel interpretations, he made numerous acclaimed Bach cantata recordings for DGG. He left no studio recording of the St. John Passion so we are fortunate that this live performance, with the highly experienced soloists Julius Patzak as the Evangelist and Gerard Souzay as Christ, was taped.

Classical Music

Classical Music